d in the legislature on May 4, 1776, for the
independence of the Rhode Island Colony. Around him in the damp,
low-ceiled library with the musty white panelling, heavy carved
overmantel and small-paned, vine-shaded windows, were the relics and
records of his ancient family, among which were many dubious allusions
to the shunned house in Benefit Street. That pest spot lies not far
distant--for Benefit runs ledgewise just above the court house along the
precipitous hill up which the first settlement climbed.

When, in the end, my insistent pestering and maturing years evoked from
my uncle the hoarded lore I sought, there lay before me a strange enough
chronicle. Long-winded, statistical, and drearily genealogical as some
of the matter was, there ran through it a continuous thread of brooding,
tenacious horror and preternatural malevolence which impressed me even
more than it had impressed the good doctor. Separate events fitted
together uncannily, and seemingly irrelevant details held mines of
hideous possibilities. A new and burning curiosity grew in me, compared
to which my boyish curiosity was feeble and inchoate.

The first revelation led to an exhaustive research, and finally to that
shuddering quest which proved so disastrous to myself and mine. For at
the last my uncle insisted on joining the search I had commenced, and
after a certain night in that house he did not come away with me. I am
lonely without that gentle soul whose long years were filled only with
honor, virtue, good taste, benevolence, and learning. I have reared a
marble urn to his memory in St. John's churchyard--the place that Poe
loved--the hidden grove of giant willows on the hill, where tombs and
headstones huddle quietly between the hoary bulk of the church and the
houses and bank walls of Benefit Street.

The history of the house, opening amidst a maze of dates, revealed no
trace of the sinister either about its construction or about the
prosperous and honorable family who built it. Yet from the first a taint
of calamity, soon increased to boding significance, was apparent. My
uncle's carefully compiled record began with the building of the
structure in 1763, and followed the theme with an unusual amount of
detail. The shunned house, it seems, was first inhabited by William
Harris and his wife Rhoby Dexter, with their children, Elkanah, born in
1755, Abigail, born in 1757, William, Jr., born in 1759, and Ruth, born
in 1761. Harris was a substa