The East Sider

Posted Wednesday, September 28, 2016 2:55 pm

Olney Street resident Donovan Loucks, with his clean-cut appearance and polite Midwestern manner, may not be what most would typically associate with eccentric horror author H.P. Lovecraft and his, at times, cult-like posthumous following of devotees who make pilgrimages from far corners of the globe to shadow Lovecraft’s footsteps, haunt his haunts and pay homage at his grave in Swan Point cemetery. But Loucks has owned and managed the outrageously comprehensive HPLovecraft.com website since the mid-‘90s, and specifically relocated to Providence in 2013 to conduct research for a book, as well as participate in the biannual NecronomiCon festival.



As a teenager growing up in Phoenix, AZ in the mid-‘70s, Loucks first caught wind of the author during the Lovecraft publishing resurgence happening at the time. He studied computer programming and had created his own personal website during the early Internet frontier days.



“I saw the web as a giant encyclopedia of knowledge, and I wondered, ‘Which chapter will I contribute?’” says Loucks. The answer was a no-brainer: Lovecraft. Over one weekend, he created a dozen web pages initially housed as a subcategory within his personal site. They have now morphed into a 600+ page behemoth of Lovecraftian lore, literature and resources that generates over 2,500 hits a day.



Lovecraft is already a popular topic for academically-minded research, and Loucks decided that the best way to make a meaningful contribution would be to put his geography buff tendencies to good use with a geographical categorization and mapping of not just the places mentioned in Lovecraft’s stories, but his letters as well. It’s a daunting task since Lovecraft wrote over 80,000 correspondences during his lifetime using tiny, page-filing print. To date, Loucks has located 1,500 points of interest and counting.



“Many people believe that Lovecraft was a shut-in, but that simply isn’t true,” he notes. “After his mother died, he did quite a lot of traveling.”



Loucks is working on a book about Lovecraft geography, and he gives presentations, moderates panels and organizes the walking and bus tours during NecronomiCon. His walking tour hits 37 key places in Providence, including the Ladd Observatory, the site of

Lovecraft’s home on Angell Street and his beloved Prospect Terrace.



After retiring from corporate America in 2008, Loucks and his wife Pam began to explore various relocations, finally settling on Providence as “the only real solution for my research,” he says, having vacationed here since 1993. He recommends The Case of Charles Dexter Ward as Lovecraft’s “love letter” to our city.



If you had one wish to enhance life on the East Side, what would it be?

Although he loves the East Side for its walkability to restaurants, theatre, events and universities: “Coming in as a Midwesterner, it has been challenging making friends since regional mentalities can be so different. The topography and roads here can also make getting around much more difficult than in cities that were built more recently – there’s a sort of frictional overhead that makes things more time-consuming and draining. Overall, I wish it were easier to meet and get together with new people.”