Self-Guided Audio Tour

The World of H.P Lovecraft: A Providence Walking Tour

Through our narrator’s investigation, you’ll experience the origins of cosmic horror that inspired modern pop culture, including film, video games and tabletop roleplaying. Perfect for fans of horror films, lovers of myth, gaming enthusiasts and history buffs, we’ll unravel the real Providence behind Lovecraft's fiction – and by the end, you may find it harder than expected to tell the two apart.

Providence was the city that made H.P. Lovecraft, and Lovecraft made Providence something stranger than it had any right to be. On this walking tour through College Hill, you'll trace the real streets, houses, and churchyards that fed the imagination of the man who invented cosmic horror, discovering how a lonely, brilliant, and deeply troubled writer turned his hometown into the backdrop for some of fiction's most unsettling mythology.

The tour begins at the Roger Williams National Memorial, where you'll learn how the founder of Rhode Island – a man who once tutored John Milton – may have quietly inspired Lovecraft's own literary ambitions. From there, you'll walk the length of Benefit Street, past the Cathedral of St. John where Lovecraft famously led friends through its graveyard at midnight, listening for scratching sounds in the walls. You'll stop at 135 Benefit Street, the real house behind The Shunned House, and hear the full, deeply unsettling story of what its narrator finds buried beneath the basement floor.

The route continues through the Brown University campus and along Waterman Street, thought to be the inspiration for Lovecraft's short story The Street, before heading to Angell Street, where Lovecraft was born in 1890 and which he spent much of his life trying to reclaim. The tour ends at Prospect Terrace, a park overlooking the city that Lovecraft called home until his death in 1937 at just 46 years old.

What to expect on this audio tour:

• Hear Lovecraft's letters about the graveyard at St. John's Cathedral, which inspired Rats in the Walls

• Visit 135 Benefit Street, the real house behind The Shunned House, and hear its deeply unsettling plot

• See the Fleur de Lys building on Thomas Street, home to the artist Henry Wilcox in The Call of Cthulhu

• Explore the Stephen Hopkins House, where Rhode Island's governor plots against villain Joseph Curwen in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

• Learn the fictional history of the Necronomicon, from 8th-century Damascus to its influence on Sam Raimi's Evil Dead

• Stop at the Samuel B. Mumford House, where Lovecraft wrote At the Mountains of Madness and The Haunter of the Dark in his final years

This audio tour immerses you into the world of Lovecraft. Through our narrator’s investigation, you’ll experience the origins of cosmic horror that inspired modern pop culture, including film, video games and tabletop roleplaying.

Perfect for fans of horror films, lovers of myth, gaming enthusiasts and history buffs, we’ll unravel the real Providence behind Lovecraft's fiction – and by the end, you may find it harder than expected to tell the two apart.

Our audio tours are carefully researched, written, recorded and produced by our team of tour guides. We love bringing history to life through storytelling, lesser known facts, acting and comedy.

Listen to a preview of this audio tour here: