The Dead Valley

by Ralph Adams Cram

"In The Dead Valley the eminent architect and mediævalist Ralph Adams Cram achieves a memorably potent degree of vague regional horror through subtleties of atmosphere and description." H.P. Lovecraft.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Classics

6 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1895

About the author

Ralph Adams Cram (December 16, 1863 – September 22, 1942) was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partnerships in which he worked.

Reviews

[Tom Mathews · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eerie tale by an author I hadn't read before. An online copy of it is available here: http://www.loa.org/images/pdf/Cram_De...

[Latasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard this story on the h.p. lovecraft litrary podcast. I fell in love with it. I absolutely love this story. it's about 2 guys that take a trip to the next town over to buy a dog. they come across a very disturbing landscape. read the story to find out more! it's soooo worth it :)

[Alex Bright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Atmospheric.

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1893, The Dead Valley was singled out by H. P. Lovecraft for achieving “a memorably potent degree of vague regional horror through subtleties of atmosphere and description.” This, and five other short stories forming a book Black Spirits and White , was the only fiction he wrote, despite living for 50 more years.
The tale recounts an experience from an immigrant’s boyhood in Sweden, who as a 12 year old, encounters the dreadful valley, when on a day hike with a friend to collect a puppy from a neighbouring farm.
Its one of those stories that lingers in the mind long after completing it.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

The tale is told second hand as a remembered conversation with a Swedish immigrant. The Swede named Olaf tells his friend, the narrator a chilling event that happened to him in his youth. When he was twelve years old, he and his best friend made an unchaperoned, overnight trip to a nearby village to purchase a puppy they had seen on the previous market day promising their parents to return on the next day leaving early so as to return home before dark. The boys being young adolescents get taken up with a shooting game and leave much later than promised and get caught going home in the dark. On the return journey they lose their way and find themselves wandering through a terrifying valley that transforms into a harrowing tale of two boys lost in a dreadful land devoid of life and hope. They find themselves beset on all sides with frightening, unfamiliar scenery enveloped in a thick milky white oppressive fog with a feeling of dread and despair hanging thick within a pervasive silence except for a spine-chilling horrifying and tortured wail that shatters the oppressive quiet. The boys barely escape only to return home sick and falling ill with brain fever and Olaf's friend having no memory of that Dead Valley. The narrator is determined to find the valley again to prove if it is real or just a brain fever hallucination. He explores the hills and indeed finds the valley and once again barely escapes. Robert Frost notwithstanding, the road not taken can indeed lead to terrible, strange domains where one may not only lose his way, but his sanity or life as well.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two young boys, on a trip to buy a puppy, get lost in the mountainous terrain on their way home.

You may read online here.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

"At that instant came again the shriek, close, close, right in our ears, in ourselves, and far out across that damnable sea I saw the cold fog lift like a water-spout and toss itself high in writhing convolutions towards the sky. The stars began to grow dim as thick vapor swept across them, and in the growing dark I saw a great, watery moon lift itself slowly above the palpitating sea, vast and vague in the gathering mist.”


[Illustration for “The Dead Valley” by Jesse Willis]

“The Dead Valley” is an exceptional example of a weird tale. I read it this year because it is featured in The Literature of Lovecraft, Vol. 1. This collection features stories of a horrific or fantastic nature that were admired by the American author H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937).

In his literary essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft wrote, “In ‘The Dead Valley’ the eminent architect and mediaevalist Ralph Adams Cram achieves a memorably potent degree of vague regional horror through subtleties of atmosphere and description.” HPL argued that “the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” In “The Dead Valley,” our protagonist Olof Ehrensvärd never understands what forces he uncovers, and the story is all the better for it. What we do get is outstanding imagery and use of sound that brings the reader into the shoes of the young Olof:

"Perfect silence,—the crushing silence of deep forests at night; and more, for always, even in the most impenetrable fastnesses of the wooded mountains, is the multitudinous murmur of little lives, awakened by the darkness, exaggerated and intensified by the stillness of the air and the great dark: but here and now the silence seemed unbroken even by the turn of a leaf, the movement of a twig, the note of night bird or insect. I could hear the blood beat through my veins; and the crushing of the grass under our feet as we advanced with hesitating steps sounded like the falling of trees.”

Cram’s use of language is wonderful. It is hard to believe that writing was only a hobby for him (Fifer & Lackey, 2013) while his real work was as a highly successful architect. I can't help resenting people who are so talented.

"...the air was stagnant,—dead. The atmosphere seemed to lie upon the body like the weight of sea on a diver who has ventured too far into its awful depths. What we usually call silence seems so only in relation to the din of ordinary experience. This was silence in the absolute, and it crushed the mind while it intensified the senses, bringing down the awful weight of inextinguishable fear.”

Title: “The Dead Valley”
Author: Ralph Adams Cram
Dates: 1895
Genre: Fiction - Short story*, horror
Word count: 3,847 words*
Date(s) read: 8/19/22-8/20/22
Reading journal entry #235 in 2022

Link to the story: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26687...
Link to Lovecraft’s essay: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/...

Sources:
Fifer, C., & Lackey, C. (2013, November 14). Episode 183 - The Dead Valley. H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast
https://www.hppodcraft.com/episodes/2...

Lovecraft, H. P., & Joshi, S. T. (2012). The annotated supernatural horror in literature (second edition). Hippocampus Press. https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/... (Original work published 1927)

Cram, R.A. (2021). The dead valley. In H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (Ed.), The literature of Lovecraft, vol. 1.. (S. Branney, Narr.; A. Leman, Narr.) [Audiobook]. HPLHS. https://www.hplhs.org/lol.php (Original work published 1895)

Link to the image: https://www.sffaudio.com/the-dead-val...


The contents of The Literature of Lovecraft, Vol. 1 are:
"The Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving
"The Avenger of Perdóndaris" by Lord Dunsany
"The Bad Lands" by John Metcalfe
"The Black Stone" by Robert E. Howard
The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" by William Hope Hodgson
"Count Magnus" by M.R. James
"The Dead Valley" by Ralph Adams Cram
"The Death Mask" by Henrietta Everett
"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe
"The Ghost of Fear" by H.G. Wells (also called “The Red Room”)
"The Ghostly Kiss" by Lafcadio Hearn
"The Horla" by Guy de Maupassant
"The House and the Brain" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
"The House of Sounds" by Matthew Phipps Shiel
"Idle Days on the Yann" by Lord Dunsany
"Lot #249" by Arthur Conan Doyle
"The Man-Wolf" by Erckmann-Chatrian
"The Middle Toe of the Right Foot" by Ambrose Bierce
"The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs
"One of Cleopatra's Nights" by Théophile Gautier
"The Phantom Rickshaw" by Rudyard Kipling
The Place Called Dagon by Herbert Gorman
"Seaton's Aunt" by Walter de la Mare
"The Shadows on the Wall" by Mary E. Wilkins
"A Shop in Go-By Street" by Lord Dunsany
"The Signal-Man" by Charles Dickens
"Skule Skerry" by John Buchan
"The Spider" by Hanns Heinz Ewers
"The Story of a Panic" by E.M. Forster
"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson
"The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" by Clark Ashton Smith
"The Tapestried Chamber" by Sir Walter Scott
"The Upper Berth" by F. Marion Crawford
"The Vampyre" by John Polidori
"The Venus of Ille" by Prosper Mérimée
"The Were Wolf" by Clemence Housman
"What Was It?" by Fitz-James O'Brien
"The White People" by Arthur Machen
"The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains" by Frederick Marryat
"The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood
"The Yellow Sign" by Robert W. Chambers
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Here is a list of the stories in the order in which they were written, with links to my reviews of them:
The Vampyre (1819) by John William Polidori
The Adventure of the German Student (1824) by Washington Irving
The Tapestried Chamber (1828) by Walter Scott
The Minister's Black Veil (1836) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Venus of Ille (1837) by by Prosper Mérimée
The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains (1839) by Frederick Marryat
The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) by Edgar Allan Poe
What Was It? (1859) by by Fitz-James O'Brien
The House and the Brain (1859) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The Signal-Man (1866) by Charles Dickens
The Man-Wolf by Erckmann-Chatrian
The Ghostly Kiss (1880) by Lafcadio Hearn
One of Cleopatra's Nights (1882) by by Théophile Gautier
The Upper Berth (1886) by F. Marion Crawford
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Horla (1887) by Guy de Maupassant
The Phantom Rickshaw (1888) by Rudyard Kipling
”The Middle Toe of the Right Foot” (1891) by Ambrose Bierce
Lot #249 (1892) by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Ghost of Fear (1894) by H.G. Wells- also called The Red Room
The Yellow Sign (1895) by Robert W. Chambers
The Dead Valley (1895) by Ralph Adams Cram
The Were-Wolf (1896)
The Monkey's Paw (1902)
The Shadows on the Wall (1903)
Count Magnus (1904)
The White People (1904)
The Willows (1907)
The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" (1907)
Idle Days on the Yann (1910)
The Story of a Panic (1911)
The House of Sounds (1911)
A Shop in Go-By Street (1912)
The Avenger of Perdóndaris (1912)
The Spider (1915)
The Death Mask (1920)
The Bad Lands (1920)
Seaton's Aunt (1922)
The Place Called Dagon (1927)
Skule Skerry (1928)
The Tale of Satampra Zeiros (1929)
The Black Stone (1931)

*The difference between a short story, novelette, novella, and a novel: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Diff...

Vignette, prose poem, flash fiction: 53 - 1,000 words
Short Stories: 1,000 - 7,500
Novelettes: 7,500 - 17,000
Novellas: 17,000 - 40,000
Novels: 40,000 + words

[Forked Radish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, and most likely a true story with the "Dead Valley" being a mazuku, and CO2 the culprit. The awful sound heard could have been the gas escaping. Also, the mist which lays upon a lake of CO2, and the falcon incident logically tie in. Re. the Lake Nyos tragedy in Cameroon and the ironically named Cave of Dogs near Naples for analogs. Note: how the puppy which was closest to the ground suffered the most. I don't see how this can just be a work of fiction nor is it presented as such. Residents in the area of Hallsberg, Sweden take notice as there may be a periodic mazuku about!

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as part of the box set Classic Tales of Horror - 500+ stories. It is about two boys going on a trip to buy a dog and the horror that occurs of the way back. I would recommed too readers of fantasy horror novels. Enjoy the adventure of reading 2022

[Navallo Baynerd]

Qur’an: Chapter 50, Verse 10—
We have sent down blessed water from the sky, and We grow gardens with it as well as grain to be harvested, and soaring palms which have compact clusters as sustenance for worshippers. We have revived a dead countryside with it; thus will (your) reappearance be.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story, and that description of lonely silence is amazing.

[CRAB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creepy.

[Jörg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fand ich spannend und gut, habe es gerne gelesen

[Vonda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horrifying horror.