shunned apple trees

'' what i heard in my youth about the shunned house was merely that people died there in alarmingly great numbers. ... it was plainly unhealthy, perhaps because of the dampness and fungous growth in the cellar, the general sickish smell, the draughts of the hallways, or the quality of the well ... the general fact is, that the house was never regarded by the solid part of the community as in any real sense "haunted" ...

'' what is really beyond dispute is that a frightful proportion of persons died there; or more accurately, had died there, ... these persons were not all cut off suddenly by any one cause; rather did it seem that their vitality was isidiously sapped, ... which spoke ill for the salubriousness of the building. neighboring houses it must be added, seemed entirely free from the noxious quality. ...

'' in my childhood the shunned house was vacant, with barren, gnarled and terrible old trees, long queerly pale grass and nightmarishly misshapen weeds in the high terraced yard where birds never lingered. ... and i can still recall my youthful terror not only at the morbid strangeness of this sinister vegetation, but at the eldritch atmosphere and odour of the delapidated house, whose unlocked front door was often entered in quest of shudders ...

'' it is still spectral, but its strangeness fascinates me, and i shall find mixed with my relief a queer regret when it is torn down to make way for a tawdry shop or vulgar apartment building. the barren old trees in the yard have begun to bear small, sweet apples, and last year the birds nested in their gnarled boughs. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the shunned house.