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Post by dem bones on Jan 13, 2019 18:59:54 GMT
100 Wild Little Weird Tales would be my pick of those I've half-read (does anyone actually finish them?), though to my way of thinking, they all have much to recommend them. Creepy Creatures is a particular joy. Nearest equivalent I can think of are Mary Danby's excellent '65' books ( ... Horror, ....Supernatural, ... Spinechillers, and Realms Of Darkness) with more of a pulp slant. I swear I've read the following from cover to cover: 100 Wild Little Weird Tales 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories 100 Creepy Little Creature Stories 100 Tiny Tales of Terror 100 Fiendish Little Frightmares 100 Twisted Little Tales of Torment 100 Astounding Little Alien Stories 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories 100 Wicked Little Witch StoriesCome to think of it, that's a thousand stories in all! Given that I didn't take notes, most of it's a blur of fine print to me now. I do recall the vampire and witch books as being the weakest of the bunch--probably because the stories in them were mostly originals, rather than reprints. I've also read the Danby "65" anthologies, which I remember as being stronger on average and as including stories that tended to be a bit longer. The second part could account for the first; I think it might be particularly tough to write a standout short-short story. As for how I got through them all: It came down to my fixation on finishing any book I start reading. Maybe it's a principle; maybe it's a compulsion; maybe it's a deep-seated fear of being haunted by the ghosts of the books I haven't finished. I can't really say. In any event, the same habit has put me off of cracking open my 782-page copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (which one of my wife's friends gave me as a gift) or the equally massive Armadale (which I purchased on Jojo's recommendation). Would that I had your tenacity, Mr. B! I'm getting there with 'Weird Tales' and 'Creepy Creatures' but still a long way to go with the others (don't have 'Witch', 'Fiendish Frightmares' or 'Aliens'). William F. Nolan - The Ex: ( Deathrealms, Spring 1996). A retired baseball legend receives a visit from parties acting on behalf of his vengeful late wife. David A. Drake - Awakening: (Gerald W. Page [ed.], Nameless Places, 1975). Missy is a powerful witch who refuses to work bad magic - until Mab imposes on her to join the coven. H. Warner Munn - Out of the Night: ( Weirdbook #1, 1968). A drunk driver is stalked through the swamp by the charred remains of the man whose family he killed.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 16, 2019 19:01:57 GMT
Elizabeth Engstrom- The Final Tale: (Eldritch Tales #13, 1987). An evening of ghost stories takes a turn for the Tales from the Crypt when a mysterious stranger joins the circle.
Edward D. Hoch - In the Straw: (Vic Ghidalia & Roger Elwood [eds.], Beware More Beasts, 1975). An elderly farming couple are persecuted by the indestructible, invisible entity taken up residence in the barn.
Kim Antieau - Great Expectations: (Cemetery Dance Summer 1990). Money is tight at home and Dollie gripes that's she's not getting her fair share of the food. How comes her sisters never go without? Fun with rat poison. W. B. Maxwell - The Prince: (Cynthia Asquith [ed.], The Black Cap, 1927). Maggie versus Charlie, the underworld lothario. Straight crime story. A woman scorned, etc.
John Galt - The Buried Alive: (Blackwood’s, Oct, 1821). "The undertakers ... treated what they believed a corpse, with the most appalling ribaldry." First hand account of the horrors endured by man in a cataleptic trance. Bodysnatchers deliver his body to the medical college for dissection.
All good stuff.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 17, 2019 17:04:11 GMT
.... and still going strong. The KEW is especially good, likewise this from the shudder pulps before the sex and sadism took hold.
William Hines - The Triumphant Dead: (Terror Tales, Nov/Dec 1936). Fearful of premature burial, Martin Black insists on burial in his own cellar with a bell-pull in his coffin to summon assistance should he revive. When the alarm is raised, his murdering nephew, Bill Bolger has no intention of responding, but curiosity betters him. He just has to know ...
Karl E. Wagner - Cedar Lane: (Kathryn Cramer [ed]. Walls of Fear, 1990). The ruins of the house are haunted by the ghosts of all the men Garrett Larkin might have grown to be had he not been incinerated in the 1962 nuclear strike on Chicago.
H. D. Everett - Fingers of a Hand: (The Death-Mask & Other Ghosts, 1920). Spinsters Sara and Grace are mildly terrorised by a seaside resort's answer to The Beast With Five Fingers.
Vincent O'Sullivan - The Business Of Madame Jahn: (A Book of Bargains, 1896). Events leading to the suicide by hanging of Gustave Herbout, bank clerk, a week after he inherited the considerable wealth and property of his despised, pious aunt, Madame Jahn. Everyone is shocked. Gustave had been very poor at the time of her murder, having lost heavily at the racetrack, and now, with everything to look forward to, he takes his life! Perhaps he was overwhelmed with grief. It couldn't be that he stabbed the old biddy because she wouldn't die quickly enough, as two servants are already on their way to the guillotine for that one ....
Mark Channing - The Feet: (Dennis Wheatley [ed.], A Century Of Horror, 1935). In the footsteps of his father, Uncle Harvey is a collector of Indian curios . A Bloomsbury studio houses his 'Chamber of Horrors,' the grimmest of these mementos being a pair of ankle bracelets with bells on. The previous occupant was a sadistic Nawab, exiled for cruelty, whose disposition worsened when he arrived in to London. When one of his harem fell for an Englishman, he cut off her feet and sent them to her lover ...
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 17, 2019 17:51:05 GMT
Spinsters Sara and Grace are mildly terrorised by a seaside resort's answer to The Beast With Five Fingers. If mild terror is an option, you should always choose it; you will not regret it.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 20, 2019 21:46:11 GMT
Blanche Bane Kuder From What Strange Land: (A Century of Horror Stories, 1935). Gentle Ellen inadvertently marries and falls pregnant by an evil spirit. Their child is diabolical. Excellent.
Richard T. Chizmar - Dark Whispers: (Midnight Promises, 1996). For every life he saves, a MAD SURGEON reckons it's only fair he take one or three to balance the score. All the fault of his abusive father.
Don Webb - Key to the Mysteries: (Eldritch Tales #18, 1989). Silbar of Mannot collects a doppelgänger in multiple instalments. Necromancy, human sacrifice, Cthulthu Mythos, etc.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 23, 2019 13:10:45 GMT
Garry Kilworth - The Elevator: (Nicholas Royle [ed.] Darklands 2, 1992). The disadvantage in marrying a dying Indian millionaire like Prince Sabash is he may be a stickler for the old traditions ....
Hilda Hughes - Those Whom the Gods Love: ( Cynthia Asquith [ed.] Shudders, 1929). Tormented by the knowledge that her husband has always loved the most beautiful girl in the village, Blodwyn prays her God to strike Deirdre dead.
William Brandon - Fire-Bringer!: (Dime Mystery Magazine, Aug 1949). Pascal murdered an old native American for his savings and cremated the body. The victim is intent on repayment in kind.
H. Russell Wakefield - The Frontier Guards: (Illustrated London News, 25 Nov 1929). A lethally haunted house beside a Buckinghamshire golf course. Despite it's terrible reputation, Brinton insists his psychic pal give him the guided tour.
August Derleth - A Room in a House: (MFSF, Fall 1950). As children, Sheldon and Abner Grenfield dreamed up an imaginary Genie to violently avenge them on bossy parents and tattle-tales. It's still living.
Fritz Leiber - Little Old Miss Macbeth: (MFSF Dec. 1958). When the bomb falls, those few survivors can take their pick of a city each. Miss Macbeth takes a late night somnambulate in the ruins of Pittsburgh.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 24, 2019 10:49:19 GMT
L. A. Lewis- Haunted Air: ( Tales of the Grotesque, 1934). Gremlins roam the skies high above the ridgeway. These green, gelatinous, monkey-like entities commandeer light aircraft, send them hurtling to destruction. Hugh B. Cave - The Room Above the Top: ( Shudder Stories #1, 1984). A greedy construction manager responsible for the deaths of four men, is haunted by voices from the non-existent room above his penthouse suite. Saki - The Interlopers: ( The Bystander, 17 Jan. 1912). Carpathian Mountains. Pinioned beneath a tree, lifelong enemies Ulrich von Gradwitz and Georg Znaeym finally make their peace as they await rescue. The situation is looking bleak until several shadowy figures come loping toward them out of the mist ... S. Baring-Gould - On the Leads: ( A Book of Ghosts, 1904). Rather than pack Aunt Eliza off to a lunatic asylum, her family instead lock her away in the West Wing of Fernwood where the only means of escape is via a rooftop window where she can scream and pretend to be a bat as much as she likes. One icy November, the inevitable happens .... Her ghost manifests itself in the form of a spectral arm, scrawny fingers working at the window latch ... Maurice Level - In The Light Of The Red Lamp: ( Black Mask, May 1920). "In the first shock of grief, you sometimes have extraordinary ideas ... can you believe that I photographed her lying on her deathbed? I took my camera into the white, silent room, and lit the magnesium wire. Yes, overwhelmed as I was with grief, I did with the most scrupulous precaution and care things from which I should shrink today, revolting things ... yet it is a great consolation to know she is there, that I shall be able to see her again as she looked that last day."Six months after the death of his beloved, he prepares to develop the photographs of the dead woman. Slowly the images appear - and a horrible tragedy is revealed.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 10, 2019 10:43:20 GMT
Thomas F. Monteleone - Time Enough to Sleep: (Jeff Gelb [ed.], Fear Itself, Warner, 1995). A daddy can't be too protective of his best little girl in the whole wide world. Not an easy read for first time parents, this one. Scrub that. Not an easy read for parents. E. F. Benson - Outside The Door: ( The London Magazine, Jan. 1910). The old house in Sheringham village on the Norfolk Coast is haunted by the phantom footsteps of a seventeenth century heiress and the cousins who murdered her. Told by new owner Mrs. Aldwych following a failed attempt at table turning. More effective than I've made it sound. Nicholas Royle - Crispy Notes: (Gary Raisor [ed.] Obsessions, 1991). West, a first class waiter in a pizza parlour, is fastidious to the point of ironing banknotes (he feeds any soiled ones through a shredder). We are worried for his new lover, Metcalfe. Can he possibly meet such exacting standards? R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Playmate: ( The Unbidden, 1971). Pauline, Richard and Rufus the puppy fall foul of an ancient amphibious horror in the attic. Early RCH, concise, played straight, the better for it.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 11, 2019 11:38:27 GMT
And the hits keep on coming.
Alan Ryan - Onawa: (David Stuart Schiff [ed.] Death, 1982). The Bracknells adopt an abandoned half breed, unaware that the little girl has special needs. Never give a blood sucker an even break.
John Metcalfe - “Beyondaril”: (August Derleth [ed], Dark Things, 1971). Muswell Hill, North London. Geoffrey Stigden nightly dreams of the place he will meet his death - the grass verge of a small stream in the shadow of a steeple. Consequently he refuses to travel beyond familiar territory. That the ending is telegraphed during opening paragraphs adds a note of horrible inevitability.
Georgia Wood Pangborn - Broken Glass: (Scribner’s, Aug. 1911). Mrs. Waring accuses young Aileen the governess of gross negligence and resolves to dismiss her. Aileen's dead mother intervenes on her daughters behalf, pointing out many uncomfortable home truths in the process.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 13, 2019 21:26:00 GMT
Mandy Slater - Food for Thought: (Stephen Jones & David Sutton [eds.], Dark Terrors, 1995). A community of ancient ghouls descend on a small rural community. Nancy A. Collins - Cancer Alley: (Richard Chizmar [ed.], Earth Strikes Back, 1994). Arcadia Petrocheminals have been polluting the Mississippi with contaminated waste for decades, leading to an inordinately high cancer mortality rate among the citizens of Redeemer Parish. An environmental group invite Homer Marsalis, a pensioner who has lost everyone he's ever known to the disease, to attend a meeting in the town hall, and be sure to bring your family and friends with you. Homer does just that. R. Harrington H. L. Gold - Don't Take It To Heart: ( Fantastic July-Aug 1953). Ace shoe salesman Eliot Grundy is a curmudgeon of inflexible routine. It is as though he believes there will be apocalyptic consequences should he even slightly deviate from standard procedure. One day his manager nervously announces that Footfillers will henceforth accommodate customers of both sexes ... Fred Chappell - Free Hand: ( Deathrealm, Spring 1990). The blind man has the power to destroy a person by manipulating their dreams, fast driving them to madness and suicide. His client wants rid of Tate Keylor, the louse responsible for the death of his wife. Keylor duly takes his own life but the repercussions are severe as they are bizarre.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 14, 2019 10:35:39 GMT
Lucy Taylor - The Baku: (Kathryn Ptacek [ed.], Women of Darkness, 1988). Much to Michael's frustration, Sarah accompanies him on his Japanese jaunt in a last ditch attempt to save their marriage. When Michael duly takes a lover, Sarah drifts into alcoholism and despair. The Sado islanders - who despise Westerners - mock her plight. Tiring of playing with her, an old woman gifts Sarah a charm to "eat" her bad dreams ... Clark Ashton Smith - Told in the Desert: (August Derleth [ed.], Over the Edge, 1964). A festering old nomad confides his sorry lot. Left for dead by desert tribesmen, he was nursed back to health by a mystery girl. Their life at the lonesome oasis was Paradise on earth, until he stupidly turned his back on same when the wanderlust came upon him. Guy de Maupassant - The Hand: (1883. Aka The Englishman). Big Game Hunter Sir John Rowell keeps the severed, flayed arm of his deadliest enemy chained to the wall of his study. Out of necessity, as it turns out.
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annwa
New Face In Hell
Yay!Everybody on the board!
Posts: 1
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Post by annwa on Feb 23, 2019 10:00:54 GMT
I think the stories (besides the classic Keller) that struck me the firmest were L. A. Lewis's "Haunted Air", Saki's incomparable "The Interlopers", and a jewel of a tale, "Told In The Desert" by Clark Ashton Smith which is bittersweet defined. Not scary by any means but sad and touching. I loved it.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 23, 2019 10:33:46 GMT
I think the stories (besides the classic Keller) that struck me the firmest were L. A. Lewis's "Haunted Air", Saki's incomparable "The Interlopers", and a jewel of a tale, "Told In The Desert" by Clark Ashton Smith which is bittersweet defined. Not scary by any means but sad and touching. I loved it. Agree that the lovely Told In The Desert is not the least scary, but it makes a good fit for this selection as there's no disputing the nomad is tormented. Have you read any of the other books in this series? Welcome to Vault. Thank you for registering and I hope you have fun here.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 21, 2024 19:25:11 GMT
Leo Morey[/color[
Carl Jacobi - Sagasta’s Last: ( Strange Stories Aug. 1939). An Augmented Eye Pierces the Mist-wall Rising from the Grave. A wife murderer is persecuted by a pair of disembodied female hands visible only through the black magically enhance lens of the narrator's telescope. Steve Rasnic Tem - Crutches: (Charles L. Grant [ed.], Shadows 6, 1983). Jobless couple Michael and Doris house-sit a friend's property in Elkin's house, a community comprised of life's failures, the exception being a large bearded man who hand carves wooden crutches. "Everyone needs a crutch now and then, eh?" A metaphor for modern life or something. William F. Nolan - The Ex : ( Deathrealm #27 Spring 1996). Two 'fans' drop in on a retired baseball star. He graciously signs their Louisville slugger 35'. A little presumptuous, as they've not come for an autograph. Chet Williamson - Night Deposits: ( University Man Aug. 1987). College football star Tommy Martin took his own life shortly after losing both hands and an eye to the bandsaw in Zane Kaylor's mill, his stingy employer having failed to provide an adequate safety guard. Disgraced and bankrupted, the mill owner spends the rest of a miserable existence atoning for his negligence. A. R. Morlan - Bringing It Along : (Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg [eds.], Night Screams, 1996). A holiday in Hawaii. Laughing boy Gary's cruel 'joke' at wife Carey's expense spectacularly backfires. He fails to see the funny side.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 22, 2024 21:30:32 GMT
Al Sarrantonio - The Quiet Ones: ( Weirdbook #18, 1983). It began with legion withered arms reach up from between paving slabs to drag random pedestrians down underground, never to begin again. A fresh and brilliant take on a horror lit archetype since done to death. J. D. Beresford - Powers of the Air: ( Nineteen Impressions 1918). The condescending young townie defies a Cornish man's warning to keep off the cliffs during 'the black time' or the wind devils will get him. "It's absurd to pretend a kind of superior wisdom if you can't give me some reason for this superstition of yours. I must go out and test if for myself." Townie 1 Wurzel 0. Ardath Mayhar - The Little Finger on the Left Hand: ( Weird Tales, Summer 1990). Demolition man Hamp Carstairs endures agonizing ghost pains in the finger he lost when he was caught beneath a collapsed brownstone. It is as if something with terrible sharp teeth were gnawing it down to the bone. As he recuperates in hospital, Rose, his fiancée, visits the site to retrieve the severed digit ... Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman - A Far-Away Melody: ( Westminster Magazine Aug. 1890). Mary Brown chides her twin sister for insisting she hears the most beautiful heavenly melody when there is no music to be heard. Priscilla takes this as a premonition of her imminent death - and she is right. After the funeral, a lonesome Mary sits by the window listening hard for the same sweet sound. Blanche Bane Kuder - From What Strange Land: (Dennis Wheatley [ed]. A Century of Horror, 1935). A game of "invite the guest" during a house party on October 31. A table is set for two in the adjoining room, and, on the stroke of midnight, a girl is volunteered to step inside to dine with the spirit of the man she is to marry. Ellen thinks it foolish until a young man she has never met before comes in, takes a silent supper, bows and vanishes, leaving behind his sword. A year later they meet, fall in love and marry, but ....
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