Lovecraft borrows from the folklore and locales of New England for "The Dunwich Horror." The stone circles that cap the hills near Dunwich are based on Stonehenge-like structures that are scattered through New England. He had visited the most spectacular of these at Mystery Hill in New Hampshire, which with its large slab of stone called the "sacrificial table" resembles the short story's Sentinel Hill, where the Whateleys expect to call forth the terrible "Elder Thing," YogSothoth. In addition, the ground of the area around Dunwich sometimes gives off booming noises reminiscent of those said to come from the land around Moodus in Connecticut. The overall description of a lushly vegetated region that is "more than commonly beautiful" seems based on western Massachusetts, which Lovecraft visited in 1928.

The portrait of rural New Englanders is uncomplimentary. The denizens of the isolated village of Dunwich are "repellently decadent...