What is this short story? possibly by lovecraft, or similar?

it involves a thing, searching around what is understood to be the basement area of what i remember to be a castle like building, where the thing lives. it seems to regard itself as human like, but it is only at the end when it finds its way to the main floor and encounters actual humans that the reader comes to find out it is actually some sort of skeletal figure due to the horrified reactions of the people.