Scarier than Rats in the Walls

      "The Rats in the Walls" by H.P. Lovecraft is one of the the scariest stories I've ever read, but it is not due to its supernatural and Gothic elements. Exham Priory does meet the typical description of a Gothic haunted house, being old and filled with creaky noises, and having a dark history. Inexplicable sounds, like that of rats in the walls, is also a trope in the supernatural fiction. The building up of the story brings a lot of tension and mystery, but it isn't until the characters find the twilit grotto, and the story drifts away from the traditional haunted house story, that things become really scary.
      What we find below the cellar goes beyond what any reader -including me- could have ever imagined. It is ugly and disturbing and, most importantly, it is caused by humans. The underground city and the monstrosities that lay there were not caused by a supernatural being; it is not a horror that we can simply attribute it to "evil forces". What is there is a horror that comes from the darkest corner of human nature, from corruption of humanity. The most disturbing thing happens when de la Poer succumbs to his family heritage, to his deepest instincts and breaks one of the biggest taboos of our society by taking a bite of his flabby friend. De la Poer is locked in a mental institution where the still hears the rats in the walls that only existed in his own ears; the rats that guided him towards his doom. You can run away from rats, and you can abandon a haunted house. But running away from your own instincts, as de la Poer proves, is a lot harder to do. And that is a really scary thought.
      Reading this text now, from a contemporary perspective and as a student of this class, somehow enhanced the effect the story had on me. I was expecting the ghost and the supernatural and the protagonist who flees from a haunted house, instead, I encountered a kind of horror I had only experienced in my The Silence of the Lambs-induced nightmares.