Dark Tales: Haunted Authors of Providence Tour
Walk through Providence's dark side!
The eerie writings H.P. Lovecraft- one of the most significant supernatural horror fiction authors of the 20th century- are inexplicably bound to his hometown of Providence. This tour walks in the tortured author's footsteps through his traumatic upbringing and favorite haunts; guests also meet some of the fictional characters that Lovecraft wrote into the city's fabric through dramatic retellings of his creepiest tales.
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But Lovecraft isn't the only author that ambled the city's centuries-old sidewalks: Sarah Helen Whitman was an eccentric local spiritualist and poet who was briefly engaged to master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe. This tour also explores her life and relives the couple's whirlwind- and doomed- romance.
"I am Providence, and Providence is myself - together, indissolubly as one, we stand thro' the ages; a fixt monument set aeternally in the shadow of Durfee's ice-clad peak!"
HP Lovecraft, Author
Sights to See
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The Providence Athenaeum, our nearly 200-year-old library which all Providence authors enjoyed (and continue to!)
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Prospect Terrace Park, Lovecraft's favorite and the city's best view
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Lovecraft's and Whitman's homes
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135 Benefit Street: the inspiration for Lovecraft's The Shunned House
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The place where Poe first saw Whitman, later claiming "love at first sight"
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140 Prospect Street: Home of H.P. Lovecraft's character, Charles Dexter Ward
