Cover of The festival

The festival

by H. P. Lovecraft

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.

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