What Is the House of the Seven Gables, as a historical object and an object of American memory and imagination? Why do The House, Nathaniel Hawthorne's homonymous novel, and Hawthorne in general, still matter? And most importantly, what really happened in The House of the Seven Gables between 1692, the date of both its construction and the death of its founder Thomas Pyncheon, and the 1820's, when the action of Hawthorne's novel unfolds?
To answer such urgent questions, I have begun writing a series of interlocking stories and novels that relate the Mysterious and Weird yet absolutely True events fictionalized by Nathaniel Hawthorne's now-classic The House of the Seven Gables. Watch for more Exciting News coming Soon!
In the meantime, amuse yourself with my blog on the historic House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts. According to legend, this House inspired Hawthorne to write his novel. But within the strange and unexpected discovery of the journals of my missing friend and colleague William Cullen, which I have also begun to transcribe below, lie mysterious tales that suggest Hawthorne was not entirely forthright when he led his contemporaries to believe that the events depicted in his novel were completely fictional. Nor did they, as many believe, take place in the House in Salem. As you will soon learn, Dear Reader, the true House of the Seven Gables served as the Abominable setting for Horrific events so Unspeakable that Hawthorne could, in his 1851 literary masterwork, only obliquely allude to them .