The Charles Dexter Ward case

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The Halsey Estate at 140 Prospect Street, built in 1801 by Colonel Thomas Lloyd Halsey. This house is the house of the Wards in history.
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The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (originally The Madness Out of Time and published as The Case of Charles Dexter Ward ) is a horror novel by HP Lovecraft . It was written in 1927 and only published in Weird Tales magazine after his death in 1941 . This story is one of the first works by him to be set in his hometown of Providence .

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The main character, Charles Dexter Ward, is a young man from a well-known Providence family who disappears from a hospital in 1928 after a long period of mental confusion and mysterious physical changes.

In this story, Lovecraft, like its main character, proves to be a connoisseur and lover of the colonial history of his hometown. In the introductory chapter, he reconstructs its appearance at that time in the description of the walks the young Ward took along the architectural evidence of that era that could still be found at the beginning of the 20th century. The plot gradually takes shape in the life of a certain Joseph Curwen whom Ward, occupied with historical research from a young age, identifies as one of his ancestors. In 1692 (the year of the Salem Witch Trials ) Curwen fled Salem to Providence and settled here. According to tradition, he lived as a wealthy merchant who created a leading monopoly for imported goods in Providence , but was feared and hated by many of his contemporaries. His sinister reputation resulted from his strange behavior, hanging around the city cemeteries at night and doing alchemy on a farmhouse far from the city. Screams and demonic incantations on his remote property, as well as his quality of not having aged even after decades, gradually give Curwen the reputation of a dark warlock who is avoided by his fellow men. Eventually Curwen is killed in a commando that some of the city's leaders have conspired against him. His memory is deliberately denied in the following years, the inscription on his tombstone erased in order to erase any memory of him.

After discovering that Curwen was his ancestor, Charles developed an obsessive zeal to find out more about him, which also led to occult and alchemical studies, which he discovered in Curwen's manuscripts and then pursued himself. His helpless parents have to endure the fact that he keeps intoning incantations behind the closed doors of his study during his secret experiments. A contemporary portrait of Curwen discovered by him shows that Ward looks astonishingly similar to his disreputable ancestor. He spent a long time researching the old cemeteries of Providence to find his lost grave.

The ensuing events bring in the Ward’s GP , Doctor Marinus Bicknell Willet, who investigates the reasons for Charles’s strange changes. The reader is drawn deeper and deeper into a dark secret of black magic and revenantism. In the dark catacombs under the former Curwens farmhouse, into which Dr. Willett finally lead, the story culminates in a terrifying way.

The period of action changes between the present (around 1920 in the book) and the eighteenth century. Lovecraft makes the life of his invented characters appear authentic by meticulously describing the alleged sources (letters, diaries, entries in church registers) and quoting them in the antiquated English of the 17th and 18th centuries. He also includes some of the New England historical figures of that era in the narrative.

Others

The character was apparently implemented in the MMORPG World of Warcraft , albeit with a different name , as the corpse molester Dextren Ward .

Films / adaptations

  • 1963: Roger Corman , The torture chamber of the Witch Hunter ( The Haunted Palace ), with Vincent Price .
  • 1992: Dan O'Bannon , The Resurrected , with John Terry and Chris Sarandon.
  • Howard P. Lovecraft: The Charles Dexter Ward Case. A radio play. LauschRausch / CDHW Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-9805820-9-4 .
  • Howard P. Lovecraft: The Charles Dexter Ward Case. From the HP Lovecraft Library of Secrets series. Audiobook, first full reading, 5 CDs. LübbeAudio / LPL Records.
  • The Charles Dexter Ward case. Episode 24 + 25 from the series Horror Cabinet Radio Play, Titania Radio Play.

Web links

Wikisource: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward  - Sources and full texts (English)