
The festival
- Reading level
- Plain English
- Price
- Free
About the book
"The Festival" by H. P. Lovecraft is a short story written in October 1923. An unnamed narrator travels to the ancient Massachusetts town of Kingsport to honor a family tradition—attending a forbidden festival held once every century. He finds a decrepit town frozen in time, where silent, masked figures lead him through colonial streets to a church hiding dark secrets. Beneath the crypt lies a nightmare realm where ancestral horrors gather for rituals older than mankind itself.
- Short stories
- Horror tales
- New England
Updated September 2026. Public domain in the USA. Text and summary from Project Gutenberg eBook #68553. The festival on Wikipedia.











