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Post by dem bones on Oct 17, 2008 9:52:35 GMT
Alden H. Norton & Sam Moscowitz - Great Untold Stories Of Fantasy & Horror (Pyramid, Oct. 1969) Introduction - Sam Moscowitz
Count Leigh de Hamong - A Study Of Destiny
Cleveland Moffat - The Mysterious Card
Norman Douglas - An Unnatural Feud
Sarath Kumar Ghosh - Jungli Admi
Robert W. Chambers - The Messenger
W. C. Morrow - The Monster Maker
Clothilde Graves - The Mother Of Turquoise
Winston Spencer Churchill - Man Overboard!
Huan Mee - The Black Statue
Waron Allan Curtis - The Seal Of Solomon The Great
H. P. Lovecraft - The Dreams In The Witch House
Blurb: Danger! These are the strangest stories ever written. Eleven shuddering tales of the haunted and the damned. Stories of demons and demigods, witches and warlocks, incredible beings and awesome events.
Take a heart-freezing trip - if you dare - through the corridors of fear with H. P. Lovecraft, Winston Churchill, Huan Mee, Warden Allan Curtis, Robert W. Chambers and other masters of the unknown.
But remember. You read these stories at your own risk. A selection of mostly obscure works, but well worth having for Churchill's brilliant conte cruel, Man Overboard! which proves conclusively that, had he not had other matters to attend to, our man could've hacked it as a horror author. The Mysterious Card is a weird minor masterpiece, and there is a sequel which attempts to explain the enigma - Jack the Ripper makes a cameo appearance. The Seal Of Solomon The Great has a marvellous climax. Uncredited cover illustration recycled from the FourSquare edition of A. N. L. Munby's The Alabaster Hand.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 20, 2014 11:38:13 GMT
Huan Mee - The Black Statue: (Harmsworth, Feb. 1899). When a servant disappears from the gloomy house on the square, suspicion falls upon his employer, Dr. Hazard, MAD SCIENTIST, but no evidence, no corpse. Hazard is never charged. He travels the continent for three years, returning to London with a trophy wife. Beatrice detests him, the more-so after he explains the secret of the man-size, extraordinarily realistic black statue - feel those muscles! - warning that she will become a companion piece unless she minds her Ps and Qs. Cleveland Moffat - The Mysterious Card: (The Black Cat, Feb. 1896). Richard Burwell, a New Yorker visiting Paris, is handed the card by a mystery woman as he enjoys an evening at the Folies Bergère. Ignorant of the language, Burwell shows the card to the manager of the Hotel Continental, and from that moment on his life unravels. The manager requests in no uncertain terms that he vacate his room, and within a month Burwell has lost his wife, his best friend, his business and near enough his sanity. Still nobody will tell him what is written on the card. And then he spots the mystery woman on Broadway. Surely now she will explain what this has all been about? There is a sequel, The Mysterious Card Revealed, which apparently drags in Jack the Ripper, but Moscowitz suggests the original works best as a stand alone story, minus any kind of attempt at explanation. Warden Allen Curtis - The Seal Of Solomon The Great : (Argosy, Feb. 1901). McGear, a government appointed hindrance to an archaeological team exploring Lower Chaldea, infuriates the team and alienates the locals with his boorish behaviour. Hoping to be rid of him for a few days Deming, Horton and the narrator take a fishing sloop and three Arab hands to explore the coastline but McGear insists on accompanying them, guzzles all the water and leaves them seething and dangerously dehydrated. The adventure isn’t an entire waste. Horton hauls in a leaden casket which freaks out the Arabs as it bears an inscription advising that the spirit of the genie, Sacar, is imprisoned within. McGear is insistent that what it actually contains is a bottle of impossibly old Cypriot wine and before anyone can stop him he’s broken the seal and downed the contents with spectacular results …  Virgil Finlay ( An Unnatural Feud, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April 1942) : (Cavalier, Dec. 1908; Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April 1942). A remote cottage in the Italian mountains, its occupants, a mother and her fifty-year-old son, locked in mutual loathing She detests him as a weakling, he despises her for driving away his wife. As the years drag on, so he gets to believing that the old sow will never die, but now, at last, there is hope. Mother has lost her sight! The valley floods. The evil spirit of the elf-waters nags at him to strike now and be rid of her ... Winston Churchill - Man Overboard: (Harmsworth, Dec. 1898). High drama on the Red Sea when a passenger is swept off the deck. The band's rendition of 'The Rowdy Dowdy Boys' drown his cries for help. It couldn't really get any worse but it does. Sometimes death just can't come soon enough. As featured on the 1st Vault Advent Calendar: Download W. C. Morrow - The Monster Maker: (The Ape, The Idiot & Other People, 1897). A young man turns up on the doorstep of an elderly vivisectionist and surgeon, about whom the neighbours circulate ghoulish rumours. The visitor is here on business. He will pay the old man $5,000 to kill him. After establishing that nobody knows the youth has come here, and that he's left a note to the effect that he is going to drown himself, the surgeon agrees to help. Of course, this is too good an opportunity to waste. He doesn't euthanise the boy, merely replaces his head with - Three years later, the surgeon's downtrodden wife goes to the police to tell of what she's seen confined in the laboratory ....
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Post by dem bones on Sept 3, 2021 6:33:51 GMT
Count Leigh de Hamong [William John Warner: 'Chiero'] - A Study Of Destiny: (Saxon, 1898). "But what escape could there be from such a prison, for a tomb underneath all the others; a place built for such secrecy, that it had baffled for centuries, every attempt at discovery. No, that fiendish laugh from Arab lips must be the last sound on earth that we would ever hear."
With the assistance of a gloomy, silent Englishman, long known to haunted the ruins of El Karnak, Egyptologist-archaeologist Prof. Von Heller and his assistant (Chiero) finally discover the entrance to a supposedly long forgotten tomb. Much to their dismay, the great burial chamber has been looted and vandalised, almost certainly by the same Arab gang who have made it their business to impede excavation from the first. As Von Heller examines the sarcophagi, an evil gloating laugh from above as the stone slab crashes down. Buried alive!
Realising his time is near, Chaney, the mysterious Englishman relates his tragic history. His father was the Colonel of a garrison on the Indian-Afghan border, his mother, a racist bigot forever stirring up trouble with the natives. Mrs. Chaney had a particular loathing for an old Yogi, but, try as she might, she failed to drive him from the immediate vicinity. One night, the Chaney's hosted a military ball. The Yogi somehow gatecrashed to prophesy that this night the garrison would come under attack and the British suffer dreadful casualties. When he was proved correct, Mrs. Chaney demanded he be shot as an insurgent. Staring out the firing squad, The Yogi, happy to die and pass to the next stage, uttered a terrible curse on the child his enemy is yet to bring into the world .....
We've already been made aware that Chaney has some cold, clammy protuberance writhing under his clothes, but only now are we to discover just how hopeless and appalling his circumstances. In the introductory notes, Sam Moskowitz suggests this short novel may have inspired an Edward Lucas White classic. The Count's story is maybe overlong, but the going gets so miserable, I can't find it in me to dislike it.
Clothilde Graves - The Mother Of Turquoise: (The London Magazine, March 1907). Franz Majerdie, turquoise mining in Sinia, falls under the spell of Thorah, the ancient witch with no eye sockets, who ensnares him into a child sacrifice to the Goddess for gemstone arrangement. Busybody narrator interferes, ruins everything.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 4, 2021 8:03:29 GMT
Robert W. Chambers - The Messenger: See R. C. Bull [ed.], Upon the Midnight. Or not, as you prefer. Sarath Kumar Ghosh - Jungli Admi: ( London Magazine, April 1907). Captain Frank Stourton and sweetheart Muriel stray into the palace compound while canoeing on the lake. Looking upward at the windows, his eyes meet those of the Rani, who is unveiled. Under her jealous husband's rule, such an offence is punishable by slow death - for both parties. The Captain is grabbed by the eunuchs, while Muriel fortuitously escapes to the harem thanks to the other sinner of the piece, who is then taken and placed in a cage inside a dust hollow serving as a gladiatorial arena. Stourton must fight a huge, two days starved tiger to save both he and the Rani. Before the Raja lets loose the beast, a wild man of the jungle begs him to at least allow the white the rudimentary weapons he can provide - a bamboo spear and a conical shield. Sam Moskowitz thought highly of the story - "It is completely safe to predict that, following its resurrection and reprinting in this volume, Jungli Admi is destined to be anthologized frequently in the years ahead." - which just goes to show you can't be right every time.
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