You Can Now Rent a Room in H.P. Lovecraft's Former Home

Looking for a new home? This one-bedroom apartment inside a Victorian house in Providence, Rhode Island, boasts hardwood floors, high ceilings, and off-street parking. It’s a five-minute walk to Brown University, and it has basement laundry facilities. Did we mention it’s also located inside a house where H.P. Lovecraft used to live?

The godfather of pulp horror was born in Providence. Aside from a two-year stint in New York City, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England, writing magazine pieces and novels that often drew inspiration from his real-life surroundings.

In 1924, Lovecraft married a woman named Sonia Greene, from whom he’d later separate. He moved with her to Brooklyn, but he disliked New York so much he came back to his birth city after only two years.

Upon his return to Providence, Lovecraft moved in with his two elderly aunts, who lived in a house on 10 Barnes Street. There, the burgeoning author spent the next seven years writing some of his most famous stories, including “The Call of Cthulhu.” He also used the home’s address as that of Dr. Marinus Bicknell Willett in his posthumously published novel, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which was set in Providence. 

Shortly after he arrived at Barnes Street, Lovecraft described his accommodations in a letter to a friend. “As for the place—I have a fine large ground-floor room (a former dining room with fireplace) and kitchenette alcove in a spacious brown Victorian wooden house at the 1880 period—a house, curiously enough, built by some friends of my own family, now long dead,” Lovecraft wrote.

The Barnes Street residence is currently listed on Craigslist, and can be rented for $965 a month. Pictures show a large, airy residence filled with light—hardly the type of space you'd expect a dark, twisted mind like Lovecraft's to inhabit. Just try to score the lease before a bunch of Brown University English majors beat you to it. And be careful not to run into Lovecraft's ghost, who has reportedly been spotted roaming the apartment.