Kurt Singer - Ghouls & Ghosts

[dem bones]

Kurt Singer - Ghouls & Ghosts (W. H. Allen, 1972)

Bob Marchant

Preface - Kurt Singer

Seabury Quinn - Birthmark
F. Marion Crawford - The Screaming Skull
Peter Phillips - Death's Boquet
Henry James - Sir Edward Orme
Seabury Quinn - Vampire Kith And Kin
Edmond Hamilton - The Valley Of The Assassins
Arlton Eadie - The Nameless Mummy
Guy De Maupassant - The Horla
Robert Bloch - The Man Who Cried Wolf!
Wilkie Collins - A Terribly Strange Bed
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch - The Seventh Man
Bram Stoker - The Judge's House
Richard Middleton - The Ghost Ship
Edith Wharton - Afterward
Seabury Quinn - Gotterdammerung

Seabury Quinn - Vampire Kith And Kin: (Weird Tales, May 1949). Inspired by a passage concerning the bottling of a Vrykolakas in Montague Summers' book of the same name. Anastasia Pappalukas - she's Greek, in case you've not guessed - is dying, having been cursed by her sadistic fiance Timon Kokinis when she broke off their engagement after he beat her so badly she was bedridden for a week. Kokinis took this in very bad humour and warned that after his death he would return to destroy her in the guise of a Vrykolakas. Then he blew his brains out.

Anastasia has now fallen in love with young Dr. McCormick, and he implores Trowbridge to examine the ailing girl, but as ever it is De Grandin who resolves the unpleasant situation.

It's not one of his exciting adventures, but Quinn is to be congratulated on finding a monster De Grandin hadn't previously encountered in the course of his busy phantom fighting schedule, and I've always had a soft spot for the Vrykolakas since I learned that one of their favoured means of delivering death is to smother their victims by sitting on them.

Some from earlier, but I wouldn't bother. They haven't improved any since you last avoided them.

Arlton Eadie - The Nameless Mummy: (Weird Tales, May 1932). Professor Peter Venn, curator of the Helmstone Museum, is toiling in the Egyptian Gallery, paying particular attention to a mysterious mummy casket, when the beautiful woman appears unannounced and instantly gives him the hump by demonstrating that she knows miles more about his specialist subject than he does, and her a "mere slip of a girl"! Oh no, not so! She is, in fact, Cleopatra and the mummy is also a big wig from Caesar's day! As a reward for Venn's assistance, she slips off her dress to reveal underneath "what seemed to him like a fancy-dress costume of an elaborate and rather daring nature, consisting as it did almost entirely of flashing jewels. Jewelled was the fringed girdle which encircled her slender waist ....", and embarks on her story, "a picture of Egypt more vivid and moving than a lifetime poring over musty records" she reckons, before sniffing the green powder that will finally put an end to her wandering.

Richard Middleton - The Ghost Ship: Fairfield, the most haunted village in England is nonetheless a peaceful place where the ghosts and humans co-exist in harmony ... until the Jubilee celebrations of 1897 when Captain Roberts' spectral pirate galleon turns up in the garden behind The Fox & Grapes. The ship is well stocked with rum and soon all the phantoms have become anti-social binge-drinkers.

Peter Phillips - Death's Bouquet: (Weird Tales, Sept. 1948) The narrator, an agent for a Paris-London bookseller, despises his client the widower Lebrum and casts a lusting eye over his vineyard and 'mute 'daughter Heloise. Lebrum, however, is fiercely protective of both and Heloise hasn't been near a boy since Theophile Morin went missing three years back after her father caught them together. After a heavy night's drinking, the rep's body briefly becomes the earthly receptacle for Theophile who shows him how he came to be murdered by the old man. The sadistic bully Lebrum creeps up on him just as he discovers the boy's secret grave and walks him into the barn at sword-point: "And he talked. Of his surpassing, but unreciprocated love for his daughter; of her particular beauties and the agonies he suffered when she deigned to notice young men; of the loving punishments he had inflicted on her body" - yes; go on, go on: out with it, man! - " ... I won't recall details. It was infinitely pathetic, but infinitely disgusting...."

Robert Bloch - The Man Who Cried Wolf!: (Weird Tales, May 1945) Charles and Violet Colby move to a cabin in the wilds of Canada, home to Violet's Canuck ancestors from whom she's inherited a headful of superstition. So, when a wolf glares in at her through the window during the night of a full moon, she immediately assumes "loup garou!". Charles - who assures her it's nothing of the sort and tells her off for being such a babbling imbecile - knows more about the situation than most. He's been secretly seeing Lisa, the "half-Indian, half goddess", and together they play on Violet's fears hoping to drive her insane. But then the killings begin, with chewed and torn corpses littering the county and it transpires that Lisa really is a werewolf - Colby witnesses her metamorphosis with his own eyes. With Sheriff Crogin of the Mounties on the case and vigilantes searching the woods, will Colby save his wife or leave her to be murdered by his lycanthropic bit on the side?