"In the Vault" is a short story by American

horror fiction Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian ...

writer H. P. Lovecraft, written on September 18, 1925 and first published in the November 1925 issue of the amateur press journal '' Tryout''.

Plot

George Birch, undertaker for the

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

town of Peck Valley, finds himself trapped in the vault where coffins are stored during winter for burial in the spring. When Birch stacks the coffins to reach a transom window, his feet break through the lid of the top coffin, injuring his ankles and forcing him to crawl out of the vault. Later, Dr. Davis investigates the vault, and finds that the top coffin was one of inferior workmanship, which Birch used as a repository for Asaph Sawyer, a vindictive citizen whom Birch had disliked, even though the coffin had originally been built for the much shorter Matthew Fenner. Davis finds that Birch had cut off Sawyer's feet in order to fit the body into the coffin, and the wounds in Birch's ankles are actually teeth marks.

Inspiration

"In the Vault" was based on a suggestion made in August 1925 by Charles W. Smith, editor of the amateur journal '' Tryout'', which Lovecraft recorded in a letter: "an undertaker imprisoned in a village vault where he was removing winter coffins for spring burial, & his escape by enlarging a transom reached by the piling up of the coffins". Lovecraft accordingly dedicated the story to Smith.

Reaction

The story was rejected by ''

Weird Tales ''Weird Tales'' is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. The first editor, Edwin Baird, pri ...

'' in November 1925; according to Lovecraft, editor Farnsworth Wright feared that "its extreme gruesomeness would not pass the Indiana censorship",H. P. Lovecraft, letter to Lillian D. Clark, December 2, 1925; cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 125. a reference to the controversy of C. M. Eddy, Jr.'s "

The Loved Dead The Loved Dead is a story written by C. M. Eddy Jr. in 1919. A controversial tale of necrophilia, it was published in ''Weird Tales'' bumper issue for May/July 1924. Plot The plot centres around an unnamed narrator living in the rural village of ...

". After being published in ''Tryout'', the story was submitted in August 1926 to ''Ghost Stories'', a "very crude" pulp magazine that specialized in "true" tales of the supernatural, which also rejected it.

August Derleth August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and th ...

urged Lovecraft to resubmit the story to ''Weird Tales'' in 1931, which finally published it in its April 1932 edition. ''

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia ''An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia'' is a reference work written by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. It covers the life and work of American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. First published in 2001 by Greenwood Publishing Group, it was reis ...

'' calls "In the Vault" "a commonplace tale of supernatural vengeance" in which "HPL attempts unsuccessfully to write in a more homespun, colloquial vein."

References

External links

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"H. P. Lovecraft's 'In the Vault'"
The H. P. Lovecraft Archive; publication history 1925 short stories Fantasy short stories In The Vault Short stories by H. P. Lovecraft Works originally published in Tryout {{1920s-horror-story-stub