Those who had visited the property had seen bizarre collections of stones in the front yard and observed the old man carrying on conversations with mysterious bottles on his table, which make "certain definite vibrations as if in answer."

Angelo Ricci, Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva, three robbers, learn about the old man's supposed hoard of treasure and resolve to take it.

After waiting impatiently for a long time, Czanek is startled by an outburst of horrific screaming from the house but assumes that his colleagues have been too rough with the old man during their interrogation.

He has a number of similarities with later characters created by Lovecraft, in particular Joseph Curwen, the villain of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: Both were improbably old, such that no one remembered when they were young; possessed vaguely defined but powerful abilities oriented around storing the dead in peculiar objects and calling them forth to serve them; and had access to ancient coinage of precious metals (as do the Whateleys in "The Dunwich Horror").

Joshi wrote that modern critics have "tried to deny the racism seemingly evident in the tale", but Lovecraft takes obvious satisfaction in killing off the criminal immigrants.