 Although marketed as "Edgar Allan Poe's "The Haunted Palace"", the film actually derives its plot from "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", a novella by H. P. Lovecraft.The title "The Haunted Palace" is borrowed from the 6-stanza poem by Poe, published in 1839 (which was later incorporated into Poe's horror short story "The Fall of the House of Usher"), and the film uses eight lines from the poem within the framing of the story.In 1765, the inhabitants of Arkham, Massachusetts, are suspicious of the strange phenomena surrounding the grand "palace" that overlooks the town.