Kurt Singer - Horror Omnibus

Kurt Singer - Horror Omnibus (W. H. Allen, 1965, Panther, 1966)



Robert W. Chambers - The Yellow Sign
Frank Lillie Pollock - The Last Dawn
H. P. Lovecraft - The Dreams In The Witch-House
E. F. Benson - Mrs. Amworth
Charles Collins & Charles Dickens - The Trial For Murder
Merle Prout - The House Of The Worm
Tigrina - Last Act: October
Frank Belknap Long - The Man With A Thousand Legs
August Derleth - The Pacer
H. G. Wells - The Inexperienced Ghost
Henry S. Whitehead - Cassius
C. Hall Thompson - Clay
J. S. Le Fanu - Shalken The Painter
Laurence Manning - Caverns Of Horror


I remember buying this when I was 15. There used to be a book stall on Accrington market which always had the latest paperbacks, and even amongst them this book stood out for some reason, even though, looking at it now, it's rather a cheap cover illustration! Still, it worked at the time.

I must have spent a fortune on the market stall in those days (they also sold all the latest American DCs and Marvel comics too, which were another drain on my money).

I loved this anthology, perhaps mainly because it was the first time I read Lovecraft's The Dreams in the Witch-House, which is one of his most effective and atmospheric stories. - David A. Riley

Working on the contents lists for Magazine Of Horror and Startling Mystery Stories and it was impossible not to notice the huge debt Singer owes to Robert A. W. Lowndes for "his" selections for Horror Omnibus.

Robert W. Chambers - The Yellow Sign MOH 1
Frank Lillie Pollock - The Last Dawn MOH 1
H. P. Lovecraft - The Dreams In The Witch-House MOH 4
E. F. Benson - Mrs. Amworth
Charles Collins & Charles Dickens - The Trial For Murder SMS 3
Merle Prout - The House Of The Worm MOH 5
Tigrina - Last Act: October MOH 4
Frank Belknap Long - The Man With A Thousand Legs MOH 1
August Derleth - The Pacer MOH 6
H. G. Wells - The Inexperienced Ghost MOH 1
Henry S. Whitehead - Cassius MOH 5
C. Hall Thompson - Clay
J. S. Le Fanu - Shalken The Painter
Laurence Manning - Caverns Of Horror MOH 6

As for Tales Of The Uncanny (W. H. Allen, 1968), it's the same story.

Austin Hall - Almost Immortal MOH 13
S. Baring-Gould - The Leaden Ring MOH 16
Edgar Allan Poe - The Oblong Box MOH 7
Henry James - The Ghostly Rental MOH 5
Nathaniel Hawthorne - Dr. Heidegger's Experiment MOH 6
Leonid Andreyeff - Lazarus MOH 16
Nell Kay - The Voice MOH 20
A. Hyatt Verrill - The Plague Of The Living Dead MOH 10
Robert W. Chambers - The Mask MOH 6
John Steinbeck - The Affair At 7 Rue de M---------- MOH 12
Katherine Yates - Under The Hau Tree MOH 11
Rudyard Kipling - The Strange Ride Of Morrowbie Dukes MOH 2
Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Abyss MOH 13
Ray Bradbury - Fevre Dream
C. Hall Thompson - Spawn Of The Green Abyss

Merle Prout - The House Of The Worm: "I saw for a moment - his face! Purple, bloated, the crawling flesh nearly covered his staring eyes; white worms swarmed his puffed body, exuded squirming from his nostrils and fell upon his vivid lips. The foul stench grew stronger, so thick was it that my tortured lungs cried out for relief."

A black magic cult worship at a shrine in Sacrament Wood, unleashing a terrible plague across the US. Only the narrator, Art, and his fellow weird fiction enthusiast, Fred, know the truth behind the epidemic - but the authorities won't believe them!

Told in a hysterical spasm of (bad) journalese, but a must for fans of the festering corpse.

August Derleth - The Pacer: " ... since these souls were moving merely to and fro in the cellar, it would be a comparatively easy thing to draw them back, if one had a body to put them into."

St. John's Wood, London. Immediately prior to his death, the eccentric scientist Brent found a volunteer for his experiment and successfully bagged a lost soul. Unfortunately, the house at number 21 has proved difficult to let ever since, due to the sudden death of the next tenant and unaccountable noises from the locked room upstairs. Mr. Larkin, an author of romantic novels, moves in and is soon troubled by the phantom footsteps. And what's that buried by the lilac bush ...?

Frank Belknap Long - The Man With A Thousand Legs: (Weird Tales, August 1927). Arthur St. Armand, youthful mad scientist, experiments with etheric vibrations (whatever they are) transforms him into a blood-drinking half man - half squid trailing streams of noxious golden slime. The many tentacled monstrosity commits several gruesome murders - notably those of a child and a heroic diver he takes apart piece by piece - before heading out to sea. The part that is still Armand pleads with a lighthouse keeper for help but, rejected, takes out a cutter, killing a hundred men in the process before meeting its doom. Utterly bonkers and a true horror pulp classic.

Tigrina - Last Act: October: Original to Magazine Of Horror. Young Meg Clayton was burnt as a witch by the Bloomsbury Villagers. Before she died, she placed a curse on them and all generations of their families to come - "October shall bode ill for you and yours".

Jump to the present day and Miss Simpson's Residence for Refined Gentlewomen where spinster Hortense Pilkington - the last descendant of the 'witch-finder - has just agreed to mind the Cranston child on All Hallows Eve. Being aware of the curse and conscious of how many of her family have died during October down the years, she takes every precaution to ensure her safety until one minute past midnight when she'll be safe for another year ...

Frank Lillie Pollock - The Last Dawn: New York. Eastwood and his team at Columbia University Observatory keep vigil for the imminent new star which, provided it shows, will prove Prof. Bernier's theory that the universe is finite. At last it appears, two weeks late. "Oh, ace!" thinks Eastwood, "this will be great!" The new star promptly sets the planet ablaze killing everyone. Eastwood and assistant Alice are the last to go and she decides that now is as good a time as any to have her first bunk up so at least they go out on a happy note.

E. F. Benson - Mrs Amworth: The village of Maxley, Suffolk, is roused from its slumbers with the advent of a very merry 45 year old widow, fresh back in England after a soujourn in India. Only one person doesn’t take the gregarious Mrs. Amworth - Mr. Urcombe, a retired professor with a deep interest in the occult who suspects there’s something of the night about her. when the residents begin falling ill and one young boy teeters ion the brink of death, Urcombe confronts her. She is so angered by his accusation that she walks in front of a car. But a small thing like death isn’t going to stand in the way of her bloodlust.

When it comes to my personal favourite Benson trad. vampire chiller, The Room In The Tower just about has the edge over this ripping yarn, but Mrs Amworth is another instant classic from one of our greatest horror authors.