Despite quickly giving you the ability to stomp around in some Power Armor, there are still quite a few legitimate scares in Fallout 4. This little journey into the depths of the Earth takes the creepy cake though.
Potential spoilers follow. Just make a note to explore Dunwich Borers at some point if you want to take it all in fresh.
To find this Lovecraft-inspired locale, you’ll want to head to a mine called Dunwich Borers. It’s located towards the far eastern bit of the map, right before you hit the Museum of Witchcraft.
You might have already been directed to this location via a quest for the Railroad faction, but there’s a lot more to it than just that section.
It starts with this ominously chained up door:
Which soon leads to this:
If that isn’t enough to send you screaming in the opposite direction, it gets way spookier.
Continue down the path, and you’ll soon be seeing a flash of light, followed by a glimpse at life before the bombs dropped:
It’s a surprisingly idyllic image, until it quickly shifts to this as you approach it:
See those corpses? Some of them aren’t dead…
After a short walk through some more spooky fog and feral ghouls, you’ll find yet another “flashback,” this time of some kind of creepy cult ceremony:
Before you can get a good look at what they’re up to though…
Yikes.
These ghouls (all named for some reason) are surprisingly tough. I wouldn’t recommend going this far until you’re fairly confident in your gear.
If you do manage to get past them though, you’ll find a pool of deep water. Pop some Rad-X and dive in. You can swim to the bottom of a long tunnel to find this giant face (if you activate no-clip using the console, you can see that the face is actually part of an even larger bust… super creepy).
And finally, this altar, with a particularly nasty weapon (check out the “mod”).
Diehard Fallout fans might have recognized the name before things turned spooky. There’s a location in Fallout 3 called the Dunwich Building, which likewise has its share of supernatural occurrences; due to some mix of radiation, and the fact that it was built over eldritch ruins. In-universe, it seems that’s no coincidence, as both facilities are owned by Dunwich Borers LLC, a company that specializes in deep drilling. It seems Dunwich maybe dug just a bit too deep.
As you might have guessed, all of this is a reference to H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos; and in particular, his short story The Dunwich Horror (which, you guessed it, takes place in New England).
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn, vault dwellers.
It’s a neat easter egg. The ghouls near the end aren’t named for no reason, though. If you check the terminals in the mines, you’ll find notes from the site managers about their discovery and the cover up of the mine’s true purpose. It’s them that you find next to the pool leading to the altar