Tales of the Dead edited by Bill Pronzini (1987)

[Calenture]

Uncredited cover

Tales of the Dead edited by Bill Pronzini

Part 1: Traditional Voodoo
Papa Benjamin - Cornell Woolrich
"...Dead Man Working in the Cane Fields" - W B Seabrook
Mother of Serpents - Robert Bloch
The Digging at Pistol Key - Carl Jacobi
Seven Turns in a Hangman's Rope - Henry S Whitehead

Part 2: Voodoo Elsewhere and Otherwise
The Isle of Voices - Robert Louis Stevenson
Powers of Darkness - John Russell
Exú - Edward D Hoch
Seventh Sister - Mary Elizabeth Counselman
The Devil Doll - Bryce Walton
Kendu - Morris West

Part 2: The 'Ultimate' Voodoo
The Candidate - Henry Slesar

Book Two: Mummy!
Part 1: Egyptian Mummies
Lot No. 249 - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Some Words With a Mummy - Edgar Allan Poe
Monkeys - E F Benson
Bones - Donald A Wollheim
The Vengeance of Nitocris - Tennessee Williams
The Mummy's Foot - Theophile Gautier
The Eyes of the Mummy - Robert Bloch

Part II: Other Lands, Other Cultures
Charlie - Talmage Powell
The Weekend Magus - Edward D Hoch
The Princess - Joe R Lansdale
The Eagle-Claw Rattle - Ardath Mayhar
The Other Room - Charles L Grant

Part III: In the Far Future
Revelation in Seven Stages - Barry N Malzberg

Book Three: Ghoul!
Part 1: Traditional Ghouls
The Edinburgh Landlady - Aubrey Davidson (verse)
The Body-Snatchers - Robert Louis Stevenson
The Loved Dead - C M Eddy
Indigestion - Barry N Malzberg
The Chadbourne Episode - Henry S Whitehead
Disturb Not My Slumbering Fair - Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Quietly Now - Charles L Grant

Part II: Variations On the Theme
The Ghoul - Sir Hugh Clifford
The Spherical Ghoul - Frederic Brown
Corpus Delectable - L Sprague De Camp and Fletcher Pratt
Memento Mori - Bill Pronzini
Gray Matter - Stephen King



Published in 1987 (my copy is a book club edition) this book is comprised of two previous anthologies, Voodoo! (1980) and Mummy! (1981) with another previously unpublished anthology Ghoul! The book includes an informative introduction, plus detailed notes with each story, and a bibliography.

Papa Benjamin by Cornell Woolrich: New Orleans, the 1930s, and at Four in the morning a scarecrow of a man staggers into police headquarters saying that he’s murdered someone. The walking skeleton is Eddie Block, a bandleader, a celebrity, and officers Humphries and Desjardins don’t understand why he’s so concerned about murdering a black man. This is the South.

Block says that Papa Benjamin has been killing him by voodoo, directing hostile thought waves through the air. That’s why he’s lost so much weight that his wrist is about as thick as another man’s thumb. The police think he’s crazy, but he’s Eddy Block, and they have to investigate. They take off in the band leader’s car, a policeman “just touches it with a nail and they’re off like velvet” with Desjardins on the running-board, into the Congo Square area where prostitutes whisper from windows in narrow alleys.

Eventually the commissioner coaxes the story out of Block, how he’d followed one of his band members into that run-down area one night and had seen him entering a building using a severed chicken leg as a pass. Hearing the wild music from within, Block realises that here is the answer to his problem: his music has become stale and he has just a week to come up with a show that will draw the crowds back into Maxim’s or his contract with the club will be lost. Now he decided to crash the voodoo party and steal the voodoo chant.

At this point, you might be beginning to recognise the storyline from a certain 1965 Amicus film (it was also filmed in 1961 as a segment of TV’s Thriller). The story was first published in 1936 in one of the shudder pulps, Dime Mystery. It runs for almost 50 pages without wasting a word, with twists and suspense right up to the end. The voodoo rituals are convincing and threatening, and the story takes in suicide, maiming and dismemberment. I finished it almost breathless. No doubt about it: Woolrich was the real Master of written suspense.

The Loved Dead by C M Eddy: This one starts well, with a doomed narrator sitting on a gravestone, waiting to be arrested. He tells the story of how he found that he loves the dead. The presence of a corpse fills him with joy, and clearly it’s a psychosexual experience, producing a ‘tumult of the arteries.’ Employment in a funeral parlour brings him satisfaction, but in time he needs to create more dead to love. Although this story caused outrage when it appeared in Weird Tales for May-June 1924, it wears out its welcome before its ten or eleven pages are covered despite the potential of the WWI and deep swamp settings. The belief is that H P Lovecraft, a close friend of Eddy and his wife, rewrote parts of this before its submission.

Indigestion by Barry N Malzberg: If one’s body is a temple, and if the soul survives it, then it follows that the people one ingests make up the congregation within. At least so runs the logic of Henry, the madman who narrates this story. Henry cares about the two hundred and fifty members of his internal congregation, although sometimes he wonders if he should be more choosy about his diet. But he is disturbed by the Other, the inner demon who haunts him and frowns upon his morbid repasts. First published in Fantastic, 1977.

The Chadbourne Episode by Henry S Whitehead: Little Abby Chandler is too young to be badly disturbed when she sees a pig with “a lady’s head” suckling her young. But then little Truman Curtiss disappears one afternoon about sundown; he was last seen “with a lady” just outside the Old Cemetery. Some cattle have disappeared in the past few weeks, and they have all turned up near the cemetery, or parts of them had. So when Dr Thomas Merritt phones Gerald Canevin and tells him to come over and to bring his Männlicher rifle, he doesn’t hesitate.

Thomas Merritt has lived in Persia, and has seen similar things, and shot and killed them. But Gerald still has no idea what to expect when the search party closes in on the mausoleum.

Gerald Canevin appears as the narrator of many of Henry Whitehead’s stories which first appeared in Weird Tales, Strange Tales and Adventure. Typically his stories have Caribbean settings or deal with various aspects of the voodoo religion. This one is from Weird Tales, 1933, and though the plot is by-the-numbers, this one is done with some zest and it strikes me as one that August Derleth would have liked.

Dem' added several reviews to the original thread. And for convenience, Dem', this link will save hunting about if you want to transfer them: here.

[dem bones]

The cover's by a fellow named Dennis Luzack.

Some selections from Ghoul! first. This begins with a macabre poem by Aubrey Davidson, The Edinburgh Landlady. Normally, I frown on such things, but I find this one irresistible:

... For just beyond the hospital, two killers idly lurk -
The name of one is Mr. Hare, the other Mr. Burke
Slung across their handcart
Rests a coffin box
That carries pretty ladies
Along to Dr. Knox

I dunno. It has a nice nursery rhythm feel to it, don't you think? Robert Louis Stevenson's The Body snatchers was savaged by at least one reviewer on publication for its thinly veiled assault on the reputation of the same Dr. Knox. I've read complaints about the the 'supernatural' aspect of the story being unnecessary, but it frightened me when I first read it as a kid. In C. M. Eddy's The Loved Dead the narrator, holed up in a cemetery with the police closing in, takes the opportunity to share with us the ups and downs of a necrophiliac. Colin Wilson devotes a few pages to The Loved Dead in one of his massive non-fiction works. The gist of it is that the psychology of the story is utterly skewed. I wouldn't know about that, but it remains one of my all time favourite trash pulp horror stories whoever wrote it. The fabled "banning" of that particular issue of Weird Tales may have some truth to it, though it's been suggested that Farnsworth-Wright exaggerated the episode to publicise the magazine (the first issue he edited was the one directly after The Loved Dead first appeared).

And then there's:

Chelsea Quinn Yarbo - Disturb Not My Slumbering Fair: "It was almost an hour later when Dierdre climbed up the hill again, scratched, bruised and happy. Tied to her belt by the hair, the woman's head banged on her legs with every step she took ...."

Dierdre thrives on a diet of human flesh. Our heroine attacks first a cemetery warden and then a woman who gives her a lift. Eventually she gets herself hired at a morgue where she can feast to her heart's content - until she comes into conflict with a second ghoul.

Henry S. Whitehead - The Chadbourne Episode: Chadbourne, Conneticut. Gerald Cavenan, a veteran of Whitehead's adventures, takes centre stage in this investigation into the disappearance of five year old Truman Curtiss, last seen in the company of 'a lady'. Prior to the boy's abduction, the gnawed bodies of several lambs and cats had been found up on Cemetery Ridge. Cavenan comes upon the Persian ghouls as they are feasting on the boy in the old Merritt mausoleum. Very similar were-pigs, can be found in Edward Lucas White's Anima.

Sir Hugh Clifford - The Ghoul: Sir Hugh's nasty adventure in necromancy - detailing a graveside ritual in which a stillborn child is temporarily brought back to life for just as long as it takes to have its tongue bitten out - first appeared in his In Court and Kampong (1897) and has been something of a horror staple ever since. The aforementioned tongue-job, is no gratuitous thing. The grave-robbing hag needed this specific organ to create a PELESIS, a kind of demonic house cricket which works in conjunction with a likewise magically created thumbsize vampire, the P0LONG - the blood of a murdered man being the all important ingredient should you wish to conjure forth one of these. The Pelesis burrows into the chosen victims flesh forging a channel just wide enough for the Polong to squeeze in and between them they reputedly drive their unfortunate host insane!

Barry Malzberg - Indigestion: "You've been eating people" said the Other flatly. "You've been going to graves and tearing them open and you've been taking out corpses and eating them. A finger here, an eyeball there, sometimes even a whole arm."

The delights of devouring human carrion as narrated by 37 year old Henry who can claim 256 victims.

Bill Pronzini - Memento Mori: Anthropologist Philip Asher keeps a skull in his study as a reminder of man's mortality. Douglas Falconer, his assistant, finds a poetic use for it when the sneering Asher tells him just who it belonged to.

Bill Pronzini (ed.) - Voodoo!: A Chrestomathy of Necromancy (Arbor House, 1980)

Antler & Baldwin, Inc.

Cover scan: ISFDB

Bryce Walton - The Devil Doll: (Dime Mystery, Nov. 1947). Earl is intent on leaving the devoted Crita for the fabulously wealthy - and white - Joan. Aware of his scheming, Crita kisses him on the shoulder at the climax of a voodoo ritual leaving a red mark burnt into his skin from which erupts a miniature of his spurned girlfriend. The figure taunts him constantly, provoking him to kill Joan. Only Crita can lift the spell, but when he pays a visit to her room ....

A minor voodoo classic, reminiscent of Edward Lucas White's Lukundoo. I wouldn't care if everything else in the book was rubbish (it isn't), discovering forgotten works like this reminds me why I got into this game in the first place.

Edward D. Hoch - Exu: Brazil: Jennings is obsessed with "finding voodoo" and eventually persuades a girl to escort him to the cemetery where the Quimbanda cult perform their black magic rituals. Also present is Father Aaral whose business it is to ensure no human sacrifice takes place: his head winds up in a bowl of his own blood. Events take a turn for the peculiar as Jennings is convinced that he is the devil, Exu, and the poor girl who sells candles outside the cemetery is the ruling divinity of the sea.

Carl Jacobi - The Digging At Pistol Key: Trinidad. Jason Cunard, an Englishman who maltreats his slaves, kills a young black when his newspaper is mutilated. The boy's mother, a suicide, wreaks revenge on the man who has now broken her twice as he digs for buried treasure on his land. Effective ending, put me in mind a little of Frederick Cowles' Terrible Mrs. Greene.

There was at least one more book in the series:

Bill Pronzini (ed.) - Werewolf! A Chrestomathy of Lycanthropy (Arbor House , 1979)

Cover scan: ISFDB

Bill Pronzini - Introduction

Avram Davidson - Loups-Garous
Clemence Housman - The Were-Wolf
Guy de Maupassant - The Wolf
Rudyard Kipling - The Mark of the Beast
Bram Stoker - Dracula’s Guest
Saki - Gabriel-Ernest
James Blish - There Shall Be No Darkness
Barry N. Malzberg - Nightshapes
Fritz Leiber - The Hound
Bruce Elliott - Wolves Don’t Cry
Peter S. Beagle - Lila the Werewolf
Clark Ashton Smith - A Prophecy of Monsters
Brian W. Aldiss - Full Sun

Bibliography

[dem bones]

Bill Pronzini (ed.) - Mummy!: A Chrestomathy of Crypt-ology (Arbor House, 1980)

Antler & Baldwin, Inc.

Cover scan: ISFDB

Bill Pronzini - Introduction
Part 1: Egyptian Mummies

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Lot No. 249
Edgar Allan Poe - Some Words With a Mummy
E F Benson - Monkeys
Donald A Wollheim - Bones
Tennessee Williams - The Vengeance of Nitocris
Theophile Gautier - The Mummy's Foot
Robert Bloch - The Eyes of the Mummy

Part II: Other Lands, Other Cultures

Talmage Powell - Charlie
Edward D Hoch - The Weekend Magus
Joe R Lansdale - The Princess
Ardath Mayhar - The Eagle-Claw Rattle
Charles L Grant - The Other Room

Part III: In the Far Future

Barry N Malzberg - Revelation in Seven Stages

Some Words With a Mummy, Lot No. 249, Bones, Monkeys and The Eyes Of The Mummy were later tomb-looted by Martin Greenberg for his Mummy Stories anthology.

Joe R Lansdale - The Princess: A Danish mummy this time, three thousand years old, perfectly preserved, retrieved from the peat bogs near Bjaeldskov Del by Dr. Olson and his daughter, Anna, and transported across the ocean to their Southern California mansion. 'The Princess', as they christen her, is the deadliest find they will ever make. A powerful sorceress seeped in evil, she is bent on taking possession of Anna, body, mind and soul, and is entirely capable of doing so. Dr. Olson and Richard Dale - a graduate student in archaeology and Anna's fiancé - bind the sneering mummy to a cross and immerse her in a the tar pit. But are they already too late?

Edward D. Hoch - The Weekend Magus: Sir Richard Forbish discovers a pyramid on the banks of Loch Awe, north of Glasgow (!). Buried along the bandaged Satni is his mummified 'pet', Gavia, a close relative of the Loch Ness monster. Now Forbish sets to work reviving the creature by means of radiation in between tennis matches with the lovely Minerva.

Ardath Mayhar - The Eagle-Claw Rattle: Dakota. A dealer in native American artefacts severs the head of Sioux chief Thunder-On-The-Mountain to secure the treasured rattle. The mummified warrior revives and the tomb-robber suffers a dreadful comeuppance.

Barry N. Malzberg - Revelation in Seven Stages. So, it's not the cockroaches and Goths who survive global nuclear war after all, but the mummies, approximately half a million of them, buried beneath the Egyptian valleys. In 5528, the Lyrans, a highly advanced race, arrive on Earth to survey the damage. Mystified at the mummies lack of internal organs, they assume the bandaged ones are machines and exhume the lot to pilot their probe ships. What will happen when the ancient ones reawaken?

[helrunar]

Intriguing!

H.