parentalia

'' i had not been a day in anchester before i knew i came of an accursed house ... the bare statistics of my ancestry i had always known, ... of details, however, i had been kept wholly ignorant. ... nor was any kind of tradition handed down except what may have been recorded in the sealed envelope ... the envelope that had bound us all to the past. ... neither my father nor i ever knew what our hereditary envelope had contained ... i lost all interest in the mysteries which evidently lurked far back in my family tree, ... had i suspected their nature, how gladly i would have left exham priory to its moss, bats and cobwebs! ...

'' apparently the delapores had a colorful and perhaps sinister history, for a friend of my son's ... dwelt near the family seat at anchester and related some peasant superstitions which few novelists could equal for wildness and incredebility. ... the anchester villagers had an almost unbelievable fear and hatred of the place. ... they viewed exham priory as nothing less than a haunt of fiends and werewolves. ... they represented my ancestors as a race of hereditary daemons ... and hinted whisperingly at their responibility for the occasional disapearances of villagers through several generations. ''

h.p.lovecraft, rats in the walls.