Dunwich Building

Summary

The Dunwich Building is Fallout 3's 'Haunted house' location designed to scare the player.  It also contains a small side story in which the Vault Dweller can optionally seek out the fate of a traveler named Jaime who entered the building, ironically enough, seeking out his father.

Location

The Dunwich Building is furthermost south western location available, just south of the trailer park area. 

It is a rather ominous building located far out the way of most other locations.  It can be found either by exploration or by talking to Ronald Laren of Girdershade.  Though he advises the Vault Dweller to stay away from it  -saying it gives him the creeps and has a bad Mojo about it-  he helpfully marks the buildings location on your map.  Later, a quest from Point Lookout will lead you there, if you choose to complete it with Good Karma.

Background

Before the war, the building was owned by Dunwich Borers LLC. - A mining corporation that had just begun excavations on a plot beneath the buildings layout itself.  Holotapes can be found to listen to the executives talking about the excitement for the new excavations as well as a new type of drill that they've acquired for the project and all the benefits it is bringing.  Later Holotapes, captures the noise of the bombs impacting the building and finally the moans and groans of the Dunwich Building ex-employees.

A dead Raider can be found in one of the storage rooms.  Logs on a PC reveals his last moments while losing his sanity with fear.  He and a fellow Raider entered the building to loot the place.  After discovering the Feral Ghouls, both of them ran away into the storage room and locked themselves in.  One of them later ventured the building to find ammo and grenades while the other awaited his return.  The Raider who stayed behind possibly died of hunger since he didn't turn into a Ghoul.  But his friend didn't fair too well either, as the very first thing you see upon entering the building is the remains of a poor soul holding a crate of ammo and grenades.
 

Jaime's Story

Jaime's Holotapes are strewn around the building and chronicle his life in Fallout 3

Jaime was a traveler seeking his father, who had gone stark raving mad over a book and vanished into the south.  Jaime drifted around and eventually got mixed up with a group of Raiders.  Realizing they were a bad crowd and that he was probably going to wind up dead, he decided to kill them in a raid,  saving the victims of the caravan.  They repayed his kindness by directing him to the Dunwich Building, telling him that they knew his father had taken refuge there.  He eventually found his father, but is forced to kill him for he has mutated into a ghoul.  He picked up the strange book his father had been keeping and decided to rest for a bit, sleeping against the strange obelisk in the bottom of the building.  When he awoke, he too had turned into a ghoul.

His full story and Holotapes logs can be found here. 
 

H.P Lovecraft

A lot of the inspiration and setting for Dunwich seems to have come from Lovecraft's work , Cthulu Mythos, a lot of the names, settings and the overall feel and atmosphere all seems to be in homage to Lovecraft :-

• In one of Lovecraft's pieces "The Colour Out of Space", Radiation is in fact the main enemy in the book, much like the cause of the ghouls
• The mysterious book that drove Jaime and his father insane is a reference to the "Necronomicon", used as a contemporary plot device in some of  Lovecraft pieces.
• The company name and horror setting are taken from Lovecraft's piece "The Dunwich Horror".

 

Misc

There are a few 'horror train' moments in the building, Flashback devices, Doors opening, Things falling over, however they don't occur for everybody, and this has led to speculation that it may actually just be a series of glitches, or the engine falling apart.