A small unsolved mystery has long lurked in the text of “The Dunwich Horror”. The name “Buzrael” is used by the Rev. Abijah Hoadley when evoking the source of one of the “cursed Voices”. These Voices having been heard coming from under the ground near Dunwich Village, and thus preached against by Hoadley in a fateful sermon of 1747.

Joshi’s Annotated Lovecraft deems the name invented, and his Penguin Classics edition of Lovecraft states the same. Klinger follows, stating “unknown”.

I can now reveal that the name was invented, but not by Lovecraft. He took the daemonic name “Buzrael” from the satirical squit “The Funeral of Benedict Arnold” (Anon, 7th Oct 1780), in which the devil is deemed to have written a letter to congratulate his daemon emissary Buzrael (this being the infamous traitor Benedict Arnold) for subverting America. This letter was deemed to have been plucked from Arnold’s dying hand before the flames took it, and duly published as a public duty in the Pennsylvania Packet.

Lovecraft would have known this satiric letter from reprints in one of several standard early American history books, such as A Short History of the American Revolution. The earliest I can find it reprinted is in the collection Diary of the American Revolution: from newspapers and original documents (1860).

The name of course evokes ‘Buz—’ as in ‘buzzing’, thus lending itself easily to the idea of ‘strange noises’. The real Hoadley was the intellectual spark who lit the flame which led to the armed revolution in New England, and a man vehemently written against by Pope and Swift — as I reveal in my fourth book of Lovecraft in Historical Context essays. I can see no further connection between the real Hoadley and the real Arnold, although in this transitional period of Lovecraft’s writing the idea of linking the devil and the American Revolution was obviously on Lovecraft’s mind. For instance, as S.T. Joshi has noted of “Dexter Ward” (written 1927)…

the threat of Curwen and his unholy alliance with the devil becomes, according to Lovecraft’s retelling, the first spark of the American Revolution.