It is the night-black Massachusetts legendry which packs the really macabre "kick". Here is material for a really profound study in group-neuroticism; for certainly, no one can deny the existence of a profoundly morbid streak in the Puritan imagination.
H. P. Lovecraft (2010). “Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft”, p.145, Lulu.com