 The star of the Dunnidge Horror was a sense play produced, edited and directed by William Spears. Come in, Dunnidge, Massachusetts. Come in, Dunnidge. Good evening. This is Henry Armitage. I'm speaking to you... Dr. Rice, please close the window. I'm speaking to you from my laboratory on the slopes of the Sentinel Hill near Dunnidge, Massachusetts. The present with me is Dr. Warren Rice, my distinguished colleague from Muscatonic University. We are now about a hundred yards from the summit of the hill, which is crowned by a huge table-like stone set in the center of a circle of stone pillars, a place of prehistoric worship. A moment ago, you may have heard the dogs of Dunnidge Townships barking as we have heard them for three days and three nights. Dr. Rice and I know the horror which they're barking for ten, but the purpose of this broadcast is to make this unbelievable horror believable to you. I hope for your sakes and ours we are successful tonight. It is the eve of all hallows. Tomorrow will be too late. Our time tonight is very short, so I'll speak only of those more recent events which, believe me, may culminate at any moment in a climax too frightful to wholly contemplate. I will begin with a burst of Wilbur Waitley. This is the night of February the 2nd, 1921. Candleman. Toward dawn when Lavinia Waitley, a deformed albino woman about 35 years old, gave birth to her dark, gothish-looking son in the crumbling Waitley farmhouse northeast of the village. No one attended her. No doctor, or mitzvah. No one was with her, except her agey, half-insane father who was known as Wizard Waitley. So Wilbur came into this world under heaven's nose what incantations, what appeals to what power. A week later, Wizard Waitley drove his sleigh into Dunnidge Village and reported the event to a group of loungers and husbands general's store. Hey, yeah, grandson got yellow hair like Lavinia Wizard? No, takes out to his father more. He's dark, dark. You never spoke of who his father might be now. Oh, you know his father when the time comes. Oh, Lavinia's red in seed, some things the most of you only talk about. Calculate her husband as good as you can find this side of Aylesbury. We don't be nosy, Wizard. Maybe it weren't a no church that none of you hear, though. No better church wedding than Lavinia's. Why didn't he tell no wedding wizard? Hmm, when was that? Not a wedding you'd hear, of course. Not a husband you'd hear of, neither. But let me tell you something. Someday you folks will hear a child of Lavinia's calling its father's name on top of Sentinel Hill. Prophecy? Or idle boasting by an insane old man? I know I ask a great deal when I ask you to believe that the arrival of an infant into that house of diapoverty and squalor could possibly constitute a horror and a threat to all our known world. Yet it has an earthly history. Perhaps through this history, you will be able to give it credence. Wilbur Waitley's growth was uncanny. But even if he had been an average child, he would have become in time an unnatural being for he was surrounded from the first by the most malign infant. There was his grandfather, old Waitley, wizard Waitley, who each Halloween climbed Sentinel Hill to the great circle of stone and while the hills shook, stood holding a great folk open on his arms and shrieked into the wind. Shrieked! Yag! Yag! Yag! Yag! Yag Sartor, that dreadful name mentioned in the hideous forbidden book, the Necronomicon. And this wizard Waitley was Wilbur's teacher. The villagers began to notice curious things that were going on at the Waitley farmhouse. Soon after Wilbur was born, old Waitley began to remodel the house. The abandoned upper story was restored and all the windows were tightly boarded up. And then, the wizard began to buy cattle in large numbers, both horses and cows. Yet the livestock on the farm didn't seem to increase. Young Lim Brown was one day curious enough to creep close to the house to count the Waitley herds. Dr. Amatige there want more than 12 cows and them sick. Looked like they had the blight and funny wounds on them like cut. I heard something too in the top part of Wizard's house, slapping inside only big, big like a sea. One other person went to the Waitley farm in the years before I met Wilbur, Dr. Ken Houghton of Aylesbury, who was called by Wilbur himself who said that his grandfather was dying. Dr. Houghton found the old man in a bedroom on the ground floor and Wilbur with him. While outside the window, a legion of Whippoor will cried loudly and rhythmically. Wilbur spoke about the town. Time with his breathing now. They're ready, listen doctor. They know his soul's going out. They're waiting. Yes Wilbur that's a interesting superstition. Late in the year for them too. When he goes, if they catch him they'll keep laughing till break of day. If they don't catch him they'll quiet down. You mean you believe it? In just a minute. I think he's conscious. Yes, the bird's changed. What he's breathing changed. Like they say. I'm here. More space Willy. Remember more space Yes, I'll build it. You grows. But that grows faster. It'll be ready to serve you soon Willy. I know. But remember, when it's time you open up the gates to Yogsothoth with a long chant. You weren't on page 7 and 51 of the book. But mind you, he ate it enough because if it gets out before you open up to Yogsothoth it's all over. It's now you. He's going now. He's dead Wilbur. Listen, they didn't catch him. Yes, he's free. He's gone. It was the winter following Wizard Waitley's death that I first met Wilbur. He came in person to the library at Miss Katanic University to consult a copy of the hideous Necronomicon which was kept there in its Latin version. As printed in Spain in the 17th century. I tell you, when he came into my office it was his appearance. Eight feet tall, shabby, dirty, bearded. But I was even more appalled by his voice when he spoke to me. I wrote you a letter a month past, doctor. I wanted a loan of the book. Well, that's a book that's never learned from this library. I doubt if it is from any library. Well, I have to see it then. Very well, it's just kept right here. There are only three copies of this book in existence. That's why I'm careful. Yeah, you can look at it on this table. Wizard said it would be on page 751. What? What is it you're looking for? The formula, the long chant. The one that opens the gate to Yogsotha. I felt a wave of fright as tangible as a draft from the tomb. And somehow like a spawn of another dimension like something only partly of mankind linked to black gulfs beyond all spheres of force and matter space and time. And presently he raised his head and spoke again. It's here all right, but I'll have to have a copy. That paragraph there? I don't know. Do you know that, doctor? Read it, doctor. Let's hear how you make it out. That shouldn't be difficult. Let's see. Nor is it to be thought that man is the oldest or the last of Earth's masters. The old ones were and the old ones shall be. Not in the spaces that we know, but between them, but only Yogsotha knows the gate. Yogsotha is the gate to where the old ones broke through of old. Their hands are at your throat. Yet ye see them not. Doctor Armitage, you see, I reckon I've got to take that book home. There's things in it I've got to try and you can't hold me up. No, I'm tired. I tell you, doctor, I'll have the book sooner or later, no matter what. You see, it. That's waiting for me at home. Won't wait much longer. The week later that I was awakened by the hiss of the great watchtower on the campus followed by a sound from a wholly different throat and I knew instantly that Wilbur had come back for the necronomicon. I hastened into my clothes and rushed across to the library before the smashed window of my office. Inside there was a fearful groaning and growling and some instinct warned me that what was taking place there was not for unfortified eyes to see. I brushed back the crowd, motioning only to Professor Rice to come in with me. When we opened the study door, Professor Rice screamed. No, Dr. Armitage, no, I can't. Come close the door. What a job that dog's done. Turn him to bed. What a horrible sound that morning. Those we ought to call a doctor? A doctor? A doctor for that? No doctor in the world would know what to do for that. It's not human, nor animal. Where did it come from? Can you tell me? Can you tell me what it is? You know, I couldn't tell what Wilbur was. The thing that Leha bent on its side in a pool of greenish-yellow thickness was nine feet tall. The dark had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin. It was partly human beyond a doubt. It was very man-like hands and heads, but the torso and lower part of the body were faceless. The chest had the leathery hide of a crocodile or alligator. But below the waistline the skin was covered with coarse black fur. And from the abdomen long greenish-gray tentacles of a limb terminated in ridge-evaned pads that were neither hooves nor claws. And as Dr. Rice and I stood tearing at this present seat, the whipper wheels began to cry in unison outside the study window. And then the thing on the floor roused in a mumble. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I