Alden H. Norton - Masters Of Horror

Alden H. Norton (ed.) - Masters Of Horror (Berkley Medallion, 1968)



Introduction - Sam Moskowitz

Clemence Housman - The Werewolf
Bram Stoker - Dracula's Guest
Mary Shelley - The Transformation
Robert W. Chambers - The Yellow Sign
A. Merrit - The Women Of The Wood
H. R. Wakefield - Blind Man's Buff
David H. Keller - A Piece Of Linoleum
Henry Kuttner - Before I Wake
Ray Bradbury - The Candy Skull

Blurb.

Here is a wicked brew of the chillingly bizarre and gruesomely grotesque in an outstanding anthology of horror stories.
Beware
Your blood will curdle and your hair will stand on end as you read these nerve-shattering tales by such masters in the terror trade as Bram Stoker, Ray Bradbury, Robert W. Chambers, A. Merritt and Henry Kuttner.

Credited to Norton but, according to E. F. Bleiler, ghosted by Moskowiz whose ever-welcome contribution compensates for the over-familiar Stoker, Shelley, Chambers and Wakefield selections. Better still, a welcome revival of Abraham Merrit's The Women In The Woods (Weird Tales, August 1926): McKay, mentally scarred by his experience as a pilot in the Great War, convalesces at a remote inn in the Vosges Mountains. He has always had an affinity with trees, and now they enlist him in their fight versus the woodcutters. The tree spirits promise McKay his heart's desire if he will only help them destroy Old Polleau and his axe-wielding sons.

Merrit has been surprisingly neglected by Vault so far but make no mistake, he's one of the pulp greats, and you'll always have a good time with his weird horror fantasies.

I'm currently engaged in a rematch with Clemence Houseman. One by one they disappeared, first the child, then the old woman, never to be heard from again. Each had received the deadly kiss of the stranger in white, a beautiful woman with odd, glittering eyes ...

Nice cover, too!