Set in Lovecraft's hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, it was first published (in abridged form) in the May and July issues of Weird Tales in 1941; the first complete publication was in Arkham House's Beyond the Wall of Sleep collection (1943).

The doctor slowly begins to reveal the truth behind the legends surrounding Curwen, an eighteenth-century shipping entrepreneur and alleged alchemist, who was in reality a necromancer and mass murderer.

It is also revealed that Curwen has been engaged in a long-term conspiracy with certain other necromancers, associates from his previous life who have somehow escaped death, to resurrect and torture the world's wisest people to gain knowledge that will make them powerful and threaten the future of mankind.

[1] Ward's ancestor (great-great-great-grandfather)[2] and dead ringer, a successful merchant, shipping magnate, slave trader, and highly accomplished sorcerer, born in what is now Danvers, Massachusetts, seven miles from Salem, on February 18, 1662.

He dies, at least temporarily, in 1771 in the course of a raid on his lair by a group of important Providence citizens (Abraham Whipple, John and Moses Brown and Esek Hopkins among them) who have got wind of only a few of his crimes.

To this end his agents scour the graveyards and tombs of the world for the corpses of illustrious persons which are then smuggled back to Providence, where Curwen temporarily raises them to torture their secrets out of them.

In this endeavour he is assisted by two fellow necromancers and Salem exiles; Jedediah/Simon Orne, alias Joseph Nadek, who lives in Prague, and Edward Hutchinson, who masquerades as Baron Ferenczy in Transylvania.

It is evident he was betrayed and probably killed by the entity summoned in his defense during the siege to the hidden grounds of his farm, but the identity of this being, as well as its possible connection with Yog-Sothoth (whose name is mentioned in the incantations) is left open to speculation.

Prior to his first death, Curwen finds a way to create a spell that would transcend time and inspire a descendant to become interested in him and his work and attempt to bring him back should he ever be slain.

The undead Curwen showed vampiristic tendencies as a side effect of his resurrection, thereby attacking local travelers and breaking into houses to drink the blood of the inhabitants.

He also feigns some degree of civic spirit and decency, both to his fellow citizens and to his wife, as part of a clever ruse—a social gambit aimed at producing an heir, as well as improving his public image to avoid forced displacement.

"[5] In August 1925, Lovecraft's Aunt Lillian sent him an anecdote about the house at 140 Prospect Street, built in 1801 by Colonel Thomas Lloyd Halsey in Providence, Rhode Island.

He describes it in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" as a tale in which "We see the soul of a dead man reach out of its grave of two centuries and fasten itself on the flesh of the living.

[7] Another proposed literary source is M. R. James' short story "Count Magnus", also praised in "Supernatural Horror in Literature", which suggests the resurrection of a sinister 17th century figure.

The entire quote (which is actually a paraphrasing by Mather) is as follows: The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.

Writing in the New York Times, reviewer William Poster described Ward as "a good story in the New England witchcraft tradition, well seasoned with alchemy, vampirism, ancient documents and mummy-stealing".

The incantation invokes several divine names, such as Adonai, Eloim, and Jehova, and references the Salamander, Sylphs, and Gnomes, which are the alchemical representatives of Fire, Air, and Earth respectively, as described by Paracelsus.