This house located at 48 Beebe Road in Wilbraham was built in 1785 and was originally occupied by Daniel Chappel, although he didn’t live here for long. The next family, Nathan, and Mary Mack lived here from around 1790 to 1810, and their daughter earned a place in local folklore in this house. According to the story that was passed down through generations of the Mack family, Mary, the wife of Nathan Mack, was looking out the door at her daughter sitting in the grass, playing with something in her lap. Mary walked quietly up from behind when she saw a large rattlesnake curled up in her daughter's lap. Mary kept, her cool, ran to the house grabbed a small tub, hurried back to her daughter, and dropped it down over the snake as it crawled off her lap. She then immediately pulled her daughter away and headed back to the house. When Nathan returned home from his work, he saw the tub in the yard and picked it up. All of a sudden the rattlesnake sprang out, which he then quickly killed with his hoe. He then proceeded to cut off the rattles and gave them to his daughter as a keepsake, who kept them in the family for several generations as an odd family heirloom.
By the time the 1913 photo was taken, the house was owned by Randolph Beebe, whose father-in-law, Thomas Gilligan, had previously owned it since around 1860. Randolph died in 1923, and the house was vacant for some time, although it was during this time that the house made a rather unexpected contribution to American literature.
In the summer of 1928, horror/science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft was touring parts of New England, and this included an eight-day stay at the home of Evanore Beebe who lived a short distance from this house, located at 782 Monson Road. Later in 1928, he wrote one of his most famous short stories, “The Dunwich Horror,” which according to Lovecraft himself “is based on several old New England legends. One of these legends is about whippoorwill birds being an omen of death, and that they can capture departing souls. Lovecraft heard this story while he was staying at Evanore Beebe’s house, called Maplehurst, but it was this other house, formerly owned by Randolph Beebe, on Beebe Road, that provided the legend. According to what Lovecraft wrote in 1934, “I saw the ruinous, deserted old Randolph Beebe house where the whippoorwills cluster abnormally,” and from that, he learned about the legend that provided part of the basis of his famous short story.
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