Swan Point cemetery

Swan Point Cemetery is a quiet memorial grounds, off of Blackstone Boulevard, in Providence, Rhode Island. It was one of the first garden cemeteries of the United States, and now over one hundred and fifty years old, it’s also one of its older graveyards. The cemetery is bright and silent, specks of white and grey (the grave markers) sprinkle across the green of the graveyard’s lawn to its borders. At rest in Swan Point Cemetery are people like Brigadier General William Ames, twentieth-century architect William T. Aldrich, and author of fantasy and horror, H.P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft rests a ways from the entrance of the graveyard, behind a large familial obelisk designating the Lovecrafts and another family who rests nearby. Lovecraft’s grave is modest, small and unimpressive, but the significance of what it represents and who it shelters far outweighs the small size of the headstone. By each of his sides lie his parents, Winfield and Sarah Lovecraft, whose headstones are very similar to Lovecraft's in design and composition: gray and small.

A number of small knickknacks sit on and around H.P. Lovecraft’s grave, flowers, pens, shells, coins, octopuses (there to represent Cthulhu, Lovecraft’s most famous creation). In front of the writer’s grave, the ground is heavily trodden down by the steps of many friends, and family members, and inspired readers (and writers). And though Lovecraft has been dead for more than fifty years, and never received the credit he deserved in his lifetime, the attention and respect the author receives now support the quality of his work, and the timelessness of his legacy.

Above are directions to Swan Point Cemetery. When you arrive, you can park at the information center to the left of the entrance and walk for about 5 minutes to Lovecraft's grave, or you can drive to his grave directly and park on the side of the road that passes his grave site.