Peter Haining – The Nightmare Reader

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Peter Haining (ed.) – The Nightmare Reader (Gollancz, 1979)

Preface – Peter Haining
Introduction: “What Hath Light Wrought?” – Isaac Asimov

'Matthew Lewis' [Sarah Wilkinson] – The Midnight Embrace
Mary Shelley – The Transformation
Washington Irving – The Bold Dragoon
Thomas de Quincy – Levana And Our Lady Of Sorrows
Lord Lytton – The Magician
Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice
J. S. Le Fanu – The Drunkard’s Dream
C. F. Hoffman – The Man In The Reservoir
Lafcadio Hearn – Haceldama
Madame Blavatsky – The Ensouled Violin
Ambrose Bierce – Visions Of The Night
Arthur Machen – The Soldier’s Rest
Lord Dunsany – The Bureau D’Exchange De Maux

Blurb:
Thirteen supernatural stories from the past two hundred years dealing with different facets of the mind unbalanced

Peter Haining - The Nightmare Reader: Volumes 1 & 2 (Pan, 1973)

Alan Lee

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle - The Silver Mirror
Aleister Crowley - The Testament Of Magdalen Blair
H. G. Wells - A Dream Of Armageddon
M. R. James - A School Story
Montague Summers - The Grimoire
H. P. Lovecraft - The Evil Clergyman
August Derleth - The Slayers And The Slain
John Gawsworth [& Edgar Jepson] - The Shifting Growth
Algernon Blackwood - Along Came A Spider
Robert Bloch - The Head Hunter
Ray Bradbury - The Haunting Of The New
Arthur C. Clarke - The Curse

Blurb:
Twelve supernatural stories to enthrall lovers of the occult - all dealing with different facets of the mind unbalanced

Originally published as a gorgeous Gollancz yellow cover in 1973 and dedicated to the memory of August Derleth, "author, editor, publisher and maker of dreams." Twenty-five short stories and essays on the horrors of sleep, introduced individually by Mr. Haining.

The Blood Drinker Lafcadio Hearn - Haceldama: An authentic and truly nightmarish tour of the Cincinnati Hebrew and Jewish slum district at the beginning of the twentieth century. The torture of a blind, terrified cow by a sadistic butcher making for a particularly harrowing read. The account ends with Hearn accepting a sochet's kind offer of a glass of fresh blood, as favoured by the neighbourhood consumptives.

Arachnophobia: Algernon Blackwood - Along Came A Spider: A short anecdotal essay on phobias, specifically the morbid fear of bats, cats and Blackwood's pet irrational dislike of spiders, stemming from a childhood nightmare and exasperated by an encounter with a tarantula in Toronto. Ends on what i can only term a note of polite gross-out.

Night Fantasy Robert Bloch - The Head Hunter: Bloch's obsession with decapitation is given free reign in this charming tale of Otto Kranz, public executioner, a man so devoted to his job he takes his work home with him. First published in 15 Mystery Stories (June 1950) with a truly ghastly double-page illustration, which Haining would soon reproduced in Terror! A History Of Horror Illustrations From The Pulp Magazines (Sphere, 1978)

Nightmare August Derleth - The Slayers And The Slain: "What if everything behind the printed page could make itself felt?"

As students, the narrator and his friend Ken Hurley fretted that every murderer and every victim recorded in print walked the lonely lower floors of the Wisconsin Historical Society Library after closing time. Hurley even claims to have witnessed Burke and Hare going about their nefarious business down there.

Twenty years later, and the narrator is now employed as a librarian. He thinks back to these self-manufactured ghosts of his youth and insists that the students give the newspaper archive a wide berth of an evening. But Darwin Vesper - subject: abnormal psychology - will not be told. He has a paper on mass murderers to complete and he'll remain all night if needs be!

Possibly an early try out for The Lonesome Place. I think Derleth was maybe attempting something in the style of Robert Bloch this time.

Fear Of Illness John Gawsworth [& Edgar Jepson] - The Shifting Growth: When swimming champ Sylvia Bard complains of abominable stomach pains, her surgeon lover has a quick delve inside her and removes .... something slimy and unpleasant.

Psychic Experience Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Silver Mirror: “What dire deed could it be that has left its impress there …?”. Told in diary form. An accountant working all hours on an important criminal case witnesses the bloody deed re-enacted in his antique mirror. At first the only distinct figure is that of a beautiful woman in her mid-twenties, high forehead, chestnut hair, brown eyes ablaze with rage and horror. The next night the narrator can clearly discern another image, that of a man he doesn’t like the look of clinging to her skirt. And so it goes on until he bears witness to one of the most infamous murders in the annals of Scottish history.

The Future: Arthur C. Clarke - The Curse: Nuclear war finally totals mankind and ends our collective nightmare. Shakespeare's grave is washed away as the Avon floods. A suitably cheerless note to finish on, originally published iin a 1953 issue of Cosmic SF & Fantasy

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Matthew Lewis – The Midnight Embrace: Josephine's death-like form glided from the portal, and with solemn pace, proceeded along the hall to the spot where Lord Albert stood. Pale was her face, and her features seemed to retain the convulsive mark of the horrid death to which Guimilda had revengefully consigned her. Clad in the habiliments of the grave, her appearance was awe-inspiring. In a hollow, deep-toned voice, she addressed her perjured lover ...."

With her sainted mother not yet cold in the grave, the innocent Josephine, nineteen, falls prey to the lecherous Lord Albert of Werdendorff castle, who vows to take her as his bride. But Albert has no intention of wedding a mere sewing girl, however comely, and, once he's had his pleasure, hastily marries Guimilda, the daughter of a rich neighbouring Baron, behind his lover's back. Guimilda is a fiery type and, learning of her rival, insists that Albert poison Josephine as a wedding present, something he is not too fussed about as he's come to despise the girl as a nuisance. Consequently, while his guests enjoy a "mysterious orgy", the double-dealing libertine pockets a vial of poison and sneaks from the Castle to visit jilted Josephine at her humble cottage. It's all a mistake, he lies. He only married Guimilda on the insistence of his father, but it's she he loves and "At midnight's dark hour thou shalt embrace me again" - and so it proves.

Haining attributes this adorable melodrama to 'Monk' Lewis, but it is almost certainly the work of Sarah Wilkinson, and first appeared under her name in the chapbook Albert of Werdendorff; Or, The Midnight Embrace: A Romance from the German (1812).

Arthur Machen - Soldier's Rest: France during WWI. An English Tommy sustains a bullet in the head as he alerts a patrol to a German ambush and wakes to find himself slumped before a Cathedral, where a mysterious but kindly monk asks him what happened. The soldier is dead, of course, and St. Michael - for it is he - is so impressed with his heroism that he intervenes on behalf of the British. Well, there was a war on ....

Lord Dunsany – The Bureau D’Exchange De Maux: A Parisiene equivalent of Temptations Ltd., the sinister proprietor taking twenty francs commission for every transaction completed on his premises. His business is to referee the transfer of sins great and small between consenting parties. Dunsany, soon to sail home to England, trades his seasickness for another fellow's fear of elevators.

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"Lo! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. And thou," — turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she said, — "wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from her. See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch the fountain of tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies, and so shall our commission be accomplished which from God we had,—to plague his heart until we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit."

Thomas de Quincy – Levana And Our Lady Of Sorrows: (1821). The handmaidens of the Goddess have haunted de Quincey's opium dreams since Oxford. Mater Lachrymarum, our lady of tears, is the ever-wailing spirit of bereavement and loss; Mater Suspiriorum, our lady of sighs; beaten and abject, the mother of hopelessness; and the youngest, Mater Tenebrarum, our lady of darkness, "mother of lunatics, suggestress of suicides," thriving on the miserable plight of the reject, the outcast, the dungeon-bound captive, the betrayed.

Madame Blavatsky - The Ensouled Violin: (Nightmare Tales, 1892). Paganini's masterly of the violin causes a sensation wherever he plays, and rumours abound that his talent is Devil-given, that his instrument is strung with the intestines of the wife and mistress he sacrificed to Satan. Franz Stenio, a young Styrian virtuoso, is sworn to eclipse 'the Genoese magician,' become the undisputed greatest fiddler the world has ever known. His mentor, Professor Samuel Klaus, nobly offers his life for the cause. With his violin now fitted with the professor's guts, Stenio challenges his rival to a public musical duel. They will each perform Paganini's darkest composition, The Witches. Our money's on Paganini because; (a) we've heard of him; (b) his is the greater sacrifice; and (c), we've read this story before.