Arkham and New Haven

Discussion

A question regarding what inspired Lovecraft and his fictional settings/stories. I've seen many essays on Arkham being a stand in or inspired by either Salem or his hometown of Rhode Island. I was curious if there was ever an attempt to link Arkham to New Haven, Connecticut. The city has a history of witchtrials like Arkham, and of course has the famous Yale University with one of the largest collections of rare and ancient manuscripts in the country. Combined with Dunnwich taking some obvious inspiration from to so far off Devil's Hopyard in Connecticut it just struck me as possessing some intriguing parallels. I was wondering if any more dedicated scholarship had attempt to make the case for Arkham being New Haven, or conversely raised an argument against the idea. Google Scholar hasn't been helpful here (but to be fair, I've been noticing Google giving worse and worse results for me for some time now, and confirmed a few times that it had entirely omitted the specific articles or results I had in mind altogether).

Posted Dec 7, 2025, 4:50 AM UTC

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