The Festival

"The Festival" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft written in October 1923 and published in the January 1925 issue of Weird Tales.
The story was inspired by Lovecraft's first trip to Marblehead, Massachusetts, in December 1922. Lovecraft later called that visit "the most powerful single emotional climax experienced during my nearly forty years of existence."
In a flash all the past of New England—all the past of Old England—all the past of Anglo-Saxondom and the Western World--swept over me an