Deaf, Dumb, and Blind

Publication, title and the writer’s identity

The story appeared in Weird Tales, volume 5, number 4, April 1925, on pages 25–30 and 177–179. It belongs to the collaborations with C. M. Eddy, Jr.; the composition catalog tentatively assigns it to 1924.

The title uses historical terminology for Richard Blake's inability to hear, speak and see. Blake is nevertheless an active author who reads Braille, composes on a typewriter and communicates through the assistance of his servant Dobbs. His impaired legs add a practical barrier to escape.

Richard Blake should not be confused with Robert Blake of The Haunter of the Dark. Similar surnames and literary occupations do not establish that the characters are the same person.

Sources: Deaf, Dumb, and Blind — publication data, H. P. Lovecraft Archive — fiction in composition order, Deaf, Dumb, and Blind — original text

The Tanner house and its inherited reputation

Blake occupies a restored stone house near Fenham, beside a swamp. Its appearance is orderly and well maintained, rather than visibly abandoned or ruined. He has an imaginative interest in the stories associated with its former occupants.

Local tradition reaches back to a Tanner condemned at Salem and becomes more specific around Simeon Tanner, whose secluded study once had blocked windows and a heavily reinforced door. In 1819 neighbors broke into the room and found him dead with a terrifying expression. They burned his body and writings.

Later discoveries included a lower chamber and a tunnel under the swamp, which were filled in. These details create a history of attempts to remove the danger, but they do not explain exactly what Tanner practiced or what survived those interventions.

Sources: Deaf, Dumb, and Blind — original text

Dobbs’s flight and the investigators’ arrival

On 28 June 1924, Dobbs runs from the house in extreme distress. Dr. Arlo Morehouse organizes a small party to investigate. The sound of Blake's typewriter initially reassures them that he is still working.

The typing stops as they enter. They find the author seated at the machine, facing the doorway to the adjoining former study of Simeon Tanner. His face and open eyes suggest an impossible perception of horror despite his blindness.

Morehouse closes the eyes before permitting the others to approach. He then establishes a fact that he conceals: Blake appears to have died at least half an hour before discovery. That interval conflicts with the typing the men have just heard.

Displaced papers and disturbed hair suggest a strong current of air, although the day has been almost windless. Two witnesses also think they felt unusual cold but will not firmly attest to it. The narrative carefully gives these clues different degrees of certainty.

Sources: Deaf, Dumb, and Blind — original text

The physician’s suppression of evidence

Morehouse takes the pages himself, especially the sheet remaining in the typewriter. He notices a difference in the force or character of the typing between that sheet and the earlier pages, reinforcing the possibility of a changed writer.

His search of the house finds no new physical passage or obvious mechanism. Dobbs, now calmer, can recall little beyond a room suddenly becoming dark. The doctor's explanation to him invokes a natural cardiac death, while the narrative has already shown that Morehouse's private conclusions are more disturbing.

At home the physician reads the manuscript and is found unresponsive, though he later recovers. His family prevents its destruction. He buys the property, demolishes the house and clears part of the swamp's trees, then refuses to explain his fuller understanding.

His inherited knowledge of local traditions evidently matters, but the story does not reveal its complete contents. An encyclopedia should not supply the secret he declines to tell.

Sources: Deaf, Dumb, and Blind — original text

Blake’s account of the first manifestations

The appended document begins with Blake's concern that Dobbs no longer answers his summons. He understands how dependent the practical arrangement of his household has become on a single companion and starts typing to organize his fears.

Vibrations appear to come from the direction of the swamp and the former Tanner study. Sulfurous smoke follows, provoking memories of fires and helpless victims. The smoke then vanishes, leaving the writer uncertain whether the experience can be classed as hallucination.

Writing functions as both testimony and resistance to panic. The routine of changing sheets briefly helps him regain composure. The document is not a calm retrospective explanation; it records an evolving experience whose meaning he is trying to determine as it occurs.

Sources: Deaf, Dumb, and Blind — original text

Impossible hearing and the refusal of an alliance

Blake next senses a presence and begins to hear whispering, despite the lasting loss of his hearing. The voices grow into an intelligible but horrifying collective speech. They offer or demand a corrupt alliance and threaten consequences for refusal.

He considers flight, surrender and death. Flight is physically unavailable, while surrender is morally unacceptable to him. He decides to resist even if resistance proves fatal.

Cold intensifies, a wind seems to enter from the swamp, and unseen contact becomes an assault. Details involving bony projections connect suggestively with the earlier stories about Tanner's skull, but the document never gives the assailant an unambiguous personal identification.

The climax includes apparent sight returning at the moment of terror. That event is part of the supernatural ordeal, not an ordinary recovery from the injuries with which the story begins.

Sources: Deaf, Dumb, and Blind — original text

The final voice and the limits of the transcript

After Blake's declaration that the end has come, the style changes. A new passage celebrates a beginning and declares resistance to the overwhelming power impossible. Its confidence opposes the writer's earlier refusal.

The changed voice, altered typing and medical time discrepancy together suggest that something continued the document after Blake's death. The text leaves that conclusion inferential rather than naming a proven possessing entity.

The copy presented to readers also contains omissions and editorial repairs. Some passages were suppressed to protect readers, while others were illegible or uncertain. The document is thus mediated by collection, family preservation and transcription, not reproduced as an untouched physical object.

This layered structure is central to the horror. Each witness knows something incomplete: Dobbs flees, Blake experiences the assault, Morehouse recognizes more than he will explain, and the compiler offers only a qualified version of the surviving pages.

Sources: Deaf, Dumb, and Blind — original text

Connections without an invented identification

The story can be read alongside accounts of forbidden studies, failed attempts to destroy dangerous knowledge and uncertain survival of personality. Its distinctive emphasis is the breach of sensory isolation: the threat reaches a writer who should not be able to perceive its sounds or appearance.

No Cthulhu Mythos deity is conclusively identified as the assailant. Christian and classical names in the manuscript express Blake's vocabulary of terror and resistance; they do not supply a technical hierarchy of the beings involved.

The narrative's assumptions about disability and dependence are part of its historical framing. Blake's intelligence, literary activity and deliberate resistance remain visible throughout, even while the practical limitations of his situation make Dobbs's departure disastrous.

Sources: Deaf, Dumb, and Blind — original text