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Post by dem bones on Jun 17, 2011 7:34:18 GMT
"Sometimes I felt the bloated toad, hideous and pampered with the poisonous vapours of the dungeon, dragging his loathsome length along my bosom: Sometimes the quick cold Lizard roused me leaving his slimy track upon my face, and entangling itself in the tresses of my wild and matted hair: Often have I at waking found my fingers ringed with the long worms which bred in the corrupted flesh of my Infant." - Agnes, incarcerated by Sister Ursula, Prioress of St. Clare's, cradles her decomposing new born in M. G. Lewis's The Monk (1797) Anonymous - The Ruins of the Abbey of Fitz-Martin (builds to stand-alone story, The Bleeding Nun of St. Catherines) Sarah Wilkinson - The Mysterious Novice: Or, Convent Of The Grey Penitents Anonymous - The Dead Man Of Varley Grange Ralph Adams Cram - Sister Maddelena Perceval Landon - Thurnley Abbey Roger Pater - De Profundis M. P. Dare - The Nun's Tragedy John Wyndham - The Cathedral Crypt Ramsey Campbell - The Hands William Sansom - The Little Room Christopher Priestly - Sister Veronica Karl E. Wagner - One Paris Night Welcome to the sex convent, holy home to the murderess, the demon in disguise (or, failing that, demonically possessed), the pregnant (by either lover on outside or a lecherous monk), the hopelessly insane - in other words, the Nun in macabre litchur! I'm sure there are plenty more shorts, but the above are the ones that stick in my head. Some crossover with the ultimate claustrophobia imaginary collection, but that's inevitable - the sadista sisters are never slow to punish erring novices by walling them up alive. One Paris Night is slightly contentious - the massacre of nuns and monks by the Communards (and a werewolf) - but it's a thrilling, proper pulp horror story and I can't bring myself to leave it out. Lord P mentioned nuns in his synopsis of Simon Raven's The Sarcophagus, but we need confirmation that they're of the horrible and creepy variety - you start letting benign sisters contaminate the project, it makes the whole thing looked ridiculous. In Harry E. Turner's Now Showing At The Roxy, among the forthcoming attractions at Lou Rouser's picture palace is something called Thigh Booted Nun Meets Abbot & Costello On Ice. Anne Radcliffe was partial to the occasional naughty knout-wielder in her novels as was, perhaps less surprisingly, de Sade. Vault co-founder Ripper alerted us to the existence of Ms Alex Severin's Bad Habit series, featuring disciples of de Sade, Father Dominus and Sister Mary Magdelene. To describe their erotic adventures as "not for the faint hearted" is to do them an injustice and i just about made it through the first of three before throwing in the towel. Bogus nuns enjoy a crafty fag during a scene in Bernard Taylor's novel The Reaping. if memory serves, one of 'em utters an expletive, too. According to friend Nightreader, a whole tribe of the sisters take over a welsh castle in the mysterious P. McCartney's Who Sups With The Devil? but if I read him correctly, it's they who are victimised and not the other way around (for a change). Seem to recall they have an unhealthy presence in James Buxton's plague pit romp, Subterranean. And, lest we forget, killercrab recently alerted us to Antonia Fraser's's Quiet As A Nun, basis for a fondly remembered Armchair Thriller serial. Any more?
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jun 17, 2011 10:32:52 GMT
Oh wow! Best thread title ever! Now you're talking. I'll re-read the Simon Raven & get back to you.
That Gregory Pendennis volume looks especially...enlightening.
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Post by lemming13 on Jun 17, 2011 10:45:17 GMT
Oh, these look so much fun - once I'm through nosferatu's box of jollies, I must go for these. Of course, I may find nuns lurking within those too...
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Post by killercrab on Jun 17, 2011 12:38:23 GMT
Sister Wendy is back on tv this week ...
KC
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Post by dem bones on Jun 17, 2011 17:40:02 GMT
Oh wow! Best thread title ever! Now you're talking. I'll re-read the Simon Raven & get back to you. That Gregory Pendennis volume looks especially...enlightening. just be thankful I spared everyone the oh so tasteful banned cover artwork for Satan's Snuffbox Am sure I've read, or at least heard of, a whole lot more nuns being creepy stories than the paltry listing suggests. pretty certain Ramsey's good for at least a couple more, but damned if I can think of any other titles right now bar his aborted novel Spanked By Nuns in Inconsequential Tales. And how could I forget M. P. Dare's A Nun's Tragedy !!!
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Post by lemming13 on Jun 17, 2011 19:24:57 GMT
How about Huxley's Devils of Loudun? More creepy nuns than you can shake a rosary at!
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 17, 2011 19:49:22 GMT
How about Huxley's Devils of Loudun? More creepy nuns than you can shake a rosary at! i was going to mention it but I got my hand smacked for literature last time
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Post by dem bones on Jun 17, 2011 20:21:16 GMT
No, you're alright, craig, I like that one. The Penguin 1974 The Devils tie-in the one to have.
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sara
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 69
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Post by sara on Jun 17, 2011 23:15:48 GMT
This paperback edition published in 1997 by Senate, an imprint of Random House UK. Cover photography by Rod Ashford.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 18, 2011 6:05:50 GMT
no, you're alright, craig. i like that one. the Penguin 1974 The Devils tie-in the one to have. ] It made a good Ken Russel film
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Post by dem bones on Jun 18, 2011 7:22:20 GMT
that Awful Disclosures Of Maria Monk cover is the best yet! ph*t*b*cket will be overjoyed! thank you so much for sharing, sara. © Chrissie Demant a detail from one of the bride's originals.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jun 18, 2011 7:29:26 GMT
Oh, I like that.
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Post by lemming13 on Jun 18, 2011 11:31:15 GMT
The Poor Clare, Elizabeth Gaskell. The nuns aren't supposed to be villainous, but I found them deeply creepy. There are nuns in Wyndham's The Cathedral Crypt, too, but sadly only as sidekicks to creepy monks and as a victim of said monks.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 19, 2011 8:27:10 GMT
William Fairlie Clarke - The Poor Nun Of Burtisford: This is excellent. A Jamesian ghost story, not dissimilar in outcome to Wyndham's cheery tale (or several others come to that), but with welcome bonus unpleasantness in pay off. After his death in 1950, the late Rev. William Farlie Clarke's daughter found manuscripts for a number of unpublished ghost stories amongst her fathers papers. Years later Hugh Lamb got involved and referred the case to Rosemary Pardoe who published two of them as a Haunted Library Booklet ( 99 Bridge Street, 1982). The Poor Nun Of Burtisford was granted the distinction of an appearance in Ghosts & Scholars #4 the same year and, four years on, Richard Fawcett's every-one-a-winner The Best Of Ghosts & Scholars which am currently revisiting. Alan Hunter as if Mr. Hunter's illustration doesn't give the game away, here's a sado-spoiler. read no further if you don't want to know the result. An Oxford tutor relates a strange episode in his youth when, suffering from insomnia, he would regularly take lengthy walks through Cotswold country in the dead of night. On one such stroll, he arrives at Burtisford church. Alerted by the toll of the bell, he chances upon a funeral procession. This is all a bit mysterious - why would anyone conduct such a service at 2 AM? As the solemn party lower the nailed-shut coffin into the vault, he hears two cries, one the wail of an infant, the other the anguished sob of a woman. They issue from the coffin where the poor nun of Burtisford has been buried alive with the instrument of her downfall crying at her breast.
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Post by killercrab on Jun 19, 2011 18:07:18 GMT
As a side note , artist Alan Hunter was quite a fixture on the fanzine art side back in the 1970's. I think he sadly died recently. I liked his individual take on things.
KC
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