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Post by dem bones on Oct 17, 2016 5:09:10 GMT
I've only read 3 of them cover-to-cover (as well as parts of 4 of the other 6), but there hasn't been any duplication of contents in what I've read so far. You're way ahead of me, Bobby. Think I've eleven stories to go in 100 Wild Little Weird Tales, but that's it so far. Having said that, much of Ghastly Ghosts .. non- Weird Tales content (and much of it, come to that) is familiar to me, likewise Creepy Creatures. Have noticed some small duplication of content. At least three of the Wild Little Weird Tales reappear in Ghastly Ghosts, not that it matters in the great scheme of things. Alfred I. Tooke - The Ghosts at Haddon-le-Green: ( Weird Tales, Feb 1938). A butterfly-hunting curate strikes terror in the heart of the community. Vicars do the funniest things, etc. Dorothy Quick - Edge of the Cliff: ( Weird Tales, March 1941). Our heroine can't return home to face another beating from Jim - drunken brute of a husband, murderer of her lover, etc. - but lacks the courage to take "the easy way out." She confides all to a stranger who offers to jump over with her. Elsie Ellis - McGill’s Appointment: ( Weird Tales, Jan. 1926). Warder Fowler is determined that prisoner McGill be denied parole for the evening as he believes him intent on doing District Attorney Jim Downey harm. McGill is duly confined to his cell, McGill is strangled to death regardless, and Fowler hears it all happen live across the telephone line.
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Post by ripper on Oct 17, 2016 10:04:00 GMT
I've only read 3 of them cover-to-cover (as well as parts of 4 of the other 6), but there hasn't been any duplication of contents in what I've read so far. The contents vary from title to title. 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories and 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories are mostly brand new stories with only a small number of reprints, while 100 Wild Little Weird Tales is (of course) all reprints of stories from the original run of Weird Tales. The rest are mostly reprints with a small number of new stories. 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories is mostly reprints of more recent stories, 100 Creepy Little Creature Stories relies heavily on stories from Weird Tales for content, and 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories is mostly 19th-century ghost stories and stories from Weird Tales. Thank you for the very useful information, Bobby. These collections look like very good value for money and I am definitely aiming to obtain at least some of them.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 17, 2016 17:11:01 GMT
If this collection has lacked anything to date, it is nastiness. Many of the ghosts have been too well behaved, charming even. Looks like that's changed for the better if this pair are an indication of what's to come.
A. V. Milyer - Mordecai’s Pipe : (Weird Tales , June 1936). When Peter Mordecai, sadistic child-killer, is executed, Mr. Pettigrew, as notorious in his own way for "my bad taste in gruesome curios" is gifted Mordecai's briar pipe by the prison warden. The delighted ghoul feels a strange compulsion to smoke it ...
Percy B. Prior - The Tree-Man Ghost: (Weird Tales , March 1928). "I - call - that - tree - to witness - that I - have - been - foully murdered." Pals Colin Kerr and Alan Maclure retrieve a treasure trove from the ancient ruins overlooking the River Spey. Kerr is for keeping it, Maclure angrily demands its return to the church from where it was stolen. Kerr, who has fallen under an evil influence, stabs his friend and makes away with the loot. From that day forth he has loads of money, no friends, and not a moment's peace. Wherever he goes, he's pursued by a gloomy tree.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 18, 2016 12:24:56 GMT
As those of you with 101 fingers (and too much time) on your hands will have already sussed, this volume contains no mere 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories, but 101. Now that's what I call supernatural, etc. Back with the action. Particularly like this next. An uncanny tale of a picture show where dead actors flicker across the silver screen Manly Wade Wellman - The Theater Upstairs: ( Weird Tales, Dec. 1936). Meet Jan Luther, ladies man. Among his conquests, the famous Hollywood film star, Georgia Wattell, who committed suicide when he ditched her. Walking through Manhattan, Luther and Manly chance upon a Cinema neither knew existed, which, far from by chance, is screening an adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's The Horla reinvented as a woman in peril flick (I'd watch it). The movie, a "grisly classic," co-stars Georgia alongside Rudolph Valentino and Lilyan Tashman - but wait a minute. Hadn't Valentino died before the advent of the Talkie? Manly is all for leaving, the whole place is giving him the creeps, but Luther won't hear of it. The bounder even finds it in him to drool lasciviously when Georgia removes her dress. The screen fills with an image of the doomed heroine pointing a loaded gun dead ahead. It's almost as if she's trying to locate a specific member of the audience ... Renier Wyers - Kharu Knows All: ( Weird Tales, July 1936). A brief tale of the retribution that struck the ghoul who preyed on a woman's love for her dead husband. Phew! Who would have thought Tuan Kharu, self-proclaimed "The World's Greatest Medium," was only in it for the money? Certainly not old Mrs. Victoria Sanderson, recently widowed, who approached him in all good faith to ask after her Joseph's well-being on the other side. Joseph, or a photograph taken from his obituary notice in the press, duly manifests via a film projector. "I speak through the voice of Kharu," said the specter. "Kharu knows all. He is our friend. Give him power of attorney. Place all you have in his care." The wealthy old lady does so. She's destitute and suicidal within a year. Dash it all, but let's hope this most odious of hoax blokes receives his comeuppance! He's even worse than that potato-headed fraud, Derek Strang! S. B. H. Hurst - The Splendid Lie: ( Weird Tales, July 1932). A village in the Cotswolds, Christmas 1917. Lord Daywater of the war cabinet and his chum the Uni professor perpetuate a hoax they believe will benefit a public distraught at the mass loss of life in Flanders. Sceptics both, they nevertheless announce they have found incontrovertible proof of spirit communication, and all is rosy in the afterlife. Daywater's son, Bob, who is away at the front, furiously demands both old timers sign a statement admitting their well-intentioned deception, to be published after their deaths. Both put their names to the retraction, but within hours they have the evidence of their own eyes that ghosts really do exists ...
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Post by dem bones on Oct 18, 2016 19:54:24 GMT
John R. Speer - The Light Was Green: ( Weird Tales, Jan. 1938). A passenger train ploughs into the back of a freight wagon. Engineer Nat Carson is brought before a board of investigation to explain why he ran a red light. Nat swears it was green. His fireman, Will Bryant, lets slip that Nat had been drinking on duty and contradicts his version of events. Will is not an impartial witness. He volunteers his testimony partly because he wants Nat's gal, partly because he wants Nat's job, mostly because he hates Nat's guts. Nat is duly sacked. He commits suicide a fortnight later. It is now the tenth anniversary of the crash, and Will Bryant is the proud driver of The Fire Flyer. As the train approaches a signal box an unwelcome visitor slips inside the engine room ... Edna Goit Brintnall - Dust : ( Weird Tales, July 1932). What a lovely day! Nellie is not used to her parents praising her and saying she looks nice. And all those pretty roses. Why, the living room is spotless! It is almost as though Mother and Father were hosting a social gathering. Goodness, but they've even invited a neighbour around. What can it all mean? Thorp McClusky - Black Gold: ( Weird Tales, April 1937). Capt. Jeremiah Manly and Henry Cabot Wade take a glass bottomed schooner out on the channel to seek the black gold. Henry is the last of the line, the family fortune, founded on the exploits of his slave-trading great-great grandfather, Ebenezer Wade, has dwindled to nothing. Everything rests on what Henry insists is Ebenezer's 'treasure map' because Evelyn Phelps' father sure won't agree to her marrying a pauper. The captain urges caution, but Wade won't listen. '"You're trying to tell me that one of my ancestors was fool enough to draw a chart showing where he dumped overboard a shipload of niggers? You don't know the Wades." (Be warned; there's plenty more where that came from. It's a great supernatural horror, but the politically incorrect dialogue is not for the faint hearted). Meanwhile, under the water, the chained dead await their moment .... Anthology also includes the same author's very gentle The Considerate Hosts.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 19, 2016 11:07:16 GMT
The cinder bull couldn't see the man on the trestle - nor the woman either - but the engineer and the fireman and the conductor, they all did.Matt Fox Stephen Grendon - The Man on B-17: ( Weird Tales, May 1950). Typically Derleth, and that is not intended as a snipe. A murderer is lured to his doom on the railway track by the ghosts of his victims. Local meathead Bart Hinch has the hots for Lois Malone, but she only has eyes for her fiancé, Tod Benning. One snowy night, Tod inexplicably vanishes, never to return. Presuming herself jilted, a heartbroken Lois takes her own life. A train driver relates the ensuing winter of strangeness. Way more original than the above, and equally, if not more endearing is; Julius Long - He Walked by Day: ( Weird Tales, June 1934). Karl 'Shadow' Rand, seven feet tall, cadaverous, whip skinny, begs a job laying roads so he can support his sick mum. His new colleagues, good lads who take to him from the off, are astonished at his prodigious strength. How can a human toothpick like him do the job of five men? Easy, explains, Karl. Been like this since I died six years ago when I was fifteen. You see, I'm a ghost. The guys initially laugh this one off. Maybe the kid's touched in the head? But he doesn't sweat, never eats ... Walker G. Everett - The Woman in Gray: ( Weird Tales, June, 1935). A strange story of too many cocktails, and a weird nemesis in gray. When party girl Elsa lets on that she's itching to get even with the ghastly Quarrys in Hartford - they put around a story that she bought a red wig to visit a sleazy bar incognito - Bill suggests she leave it to him, he'll sic his friend the gray lady on the gossiping so-and-so's, and they'll not trouble anyone again. Of course, there is no gray lady, but the five-strong Quarry family are wiped out in a motor accident all the same. Then Corrine Gorman mutters that she could "kill" her no-show evening guests, and why doesn't Bill set his pet phantom on them? He obliges. Sure enough, they're mowed down by a Taxi. It seems that Bill can be rid of anyone just by summoning the grey lady. That slimeball Jacobson from the office had better watch his darned step.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 22, 2016 11:42:14 GMT
Beware of a "reputedly" haunted house. The reputation may be well earned.A. R. Tilburne Thorp McClusky - Dark Mummery: ( Weird Tales, Nov. 1944). 'The fast set,' a colony of hip writers and artists, are invited to spend the weekend at Bradley Merrill's place in New England. At midnight, with his guests the worse for drink, Merrill suggests a visit to the derelict property supposedly haunted by the ghosts of Jeremiah Phipps, the big bad pirate, and his right hand man. With the blessing of their host, incorrigible pranksters Mansfield and Gregory contrive a scare for the revellers, only to be upstaged by the real phantoms. Will Oursler - Mandolin: ( Weird Tales, June 1934). Its a year on from the death of his beloved wife and fellow musician, Alice. Gordon Rand, the great composer, has not written a note of music, and nor will he. Tomorrow he travels to Roaring Falls to end it all. Unless. Sweet, gentle and life affirming, which explains its continued absence from any Vault advent calendar you care to mention. Mearle Prout - Guarded: ( Weird Tales, March 1938). Foreigners ain't got no right to settle in the Tennessee Hills far as Jed Tolliver is concerned, hence his one man campaign versus those heathen Simmons folk from some Godforsaken place back East. Now there is only just twenty-year-old Ekeziel to go, and the boy can't even shoot straight. Tolliver's only concern is Abner Simmons' dying promise that he "wouldn't let him" kill his kid brother. What foolishness was that? How can a dead man interfere with his righteous cause? Shotgun all polished and loaded, Tolliver sets off to blast Eke's head clean off his shoulders.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 25, 2016 6:59:57 GMT
Strange shapes and weird faces peered out of the jungle at the American officer - a ghost-story of Santo Domingo.
Some anthologies, thankfully not too many, you're lucky if just the one, maybe two stories do it for you. I loved all three of these on top of all the other winners previously mentioned.
Arthur J. Burks - Faces : (Weird Tales, Apr. 1927). A light aircraft, lost in fog, comes down in the Gran Estero swampland. The pilot, McKenzie, is very killed on impact with a tree, his passenger, our narrator, sustains a serious head injury. Trapped in the cockpit, the survivor is tormented day and night by the hopeless phantoms of all those who met their end in the oozing quagmire.
Mary Elizabeth Counselman - The House Of Shadows : (Weird Tales, Apr. 1933). Stranded in Oak Grove having missed her train, Liz looks up her best friend from college, Mary Allison. On hearing the name, the station master gives Liz a queer look, directs her to an old colonial mansion house. Mary doesn't seem as overjoyed as she might be at this surprise visit, but ushers Liz inside to stay for tea with her parents and the three kids. The Allisons are cordial enough, but the atmosphere at table is downright eerie and Liz can't help thinking there's something terribly wrong. Christine Campbell Thomson included this in one of the later Not At Night's where it is out of place due to lack of physical menace. Works better in this very mixed company.
William F. Nolan - Gibbler’s Ghost : (Alien Horizons, Pocket, 1974, as Full of, Mostly, Bagels and Cream Cheese). He's Hollywood's hottest heart-throb but no matter how many fans he beds, dishy Des Cahill, twenty-five, has yet to lose his virginity. The reason? Just as he's about to complete the dirty deed, an armour clad ghost astride a spectral horse manifests in his bedroom. Exit terrified conquest, screaming her head off. Des confides in his pet tax accountant, Albert, who suggests he hire a ghost-buster.
Turns out the passion killing phantom is that of Joey Gibbler, an extra killed in an accident on set during the shooting of The Queen's Cute Question, directed by Des' late father. Situation temporarily resolved when Des junior wangles unknown actor Joey Gibbler junior a substantial role in box-office smash The Big Bottom. But ....
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Post by ripper on Oct 25, 2016 8:40:53 GMT
The Nolan tale sounds as if it is played for chuckles rather than scares. I like that there seems to be such a variety of stories in this anthology.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 27, 2016 14:48:29 GMT
The Nolan tale sounds as if it is played for chuckles rather than scares. I like that there seems to be such a variety of stories in this anthology. Variety is right. WFN's supernatural sex comedy a fair indication that collection includes ghosts to suit most moods. Paul Ernst - Concert To Death: ( Weird Tales, Nov. 1934). Carlo Lucchesi, the brilliant concert pianist cut down in his prime, jams with the orchestra at his own memorial concert. His dynamic one note contribution to Dance of the Sprites rescues his widow from penury. Dale Clark - Behind the Screen: ( Weird Tales, Apr 1934). Catlin, an otherwise respectable young chemist, raids a shop in Chinatown intent on stealing opium to feed lover Blossom's out of control habit. He's surprised mid-ransack by the elderly proprietor, Lung Wei, who takes the intrusion in remarkably good spirits, even offers Catlin his help. But first the young man will need to tell him all that has befallen him since he escaped from Sing-Sing on the eve of his execution. Catlin had forgotten about that, but now it is all coming back ... G. G. Pendarves - The Return: ( Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, March 1924). Arnold Drysdale, womaniser, fraud, betrayer of those who suppose themselves friends, and all round bad egg, agrees to spend a night in a haunted chamber to impress Millicent Fayne. Ah, the delectable Millicent! Full of youthful joys, loveliness and, best of all, absolutely loaded. Fear not, gentle reader. Drysdale gets a shock true enough, in the form of an unexpected visitor, Jim McCurdie. The same Jim McCurdie he left for dead in the desert eight years ago, having deliberately set him up for ambush ....
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Post by dem bones on Nov 8, 2016 19:27:18 GMT
Paul Ernst - Waiter Number 34 : (Weird Tales, July 1935). "Our value to our country in time of war is far greater as industrial executives than it would be as soldiers in a trench." Kearns and Harkness, multi-millionaires both, are petitioning for another Great War to boost the economy and make themselves even richer. A gloomy young waiter has the temerity to mention the pain and suffering of the battlefield. His account of the hideous death of a nineteen year old lad at Verdun so angers the warmongers they demand his employer fire him.
W. K. Mashburn, Jr. - The Garret of Madame Lemoyne: (Weird Tales, Jan. 1928). New Orleans during Mardi Gras. Merriweather wants to scare his Ice Maiden of a wife, Janice, and persuades her to spent a night in a room where a sadistic Parisienne beauty once set about slowly torturing seven black slaves to death. The attic dungeon was only discovered by chance when a fire broke out while the mistress was away on a social engagement. One of her victims, a poor wretch whose tongue had been torn out with pincers, resisted all offers of alternative accommodation, vowing that when Madame Lemoyne returned, he would be there to greet her ....
David Bernard - The Piper from Bhutan : (Weird Tales, Feb. 1938). Professor Du Bois mocks the stranger for insisting his bagpipes can raise the dead. But when Du Bois' colleague, Richford Mason, dies from an overdose, Lieutenant Crane decides it's worth putting the guy's claims to the test.
Renier Wyers - Attorney for the Damned: (Weird Tales, May 1936). When Horace L. Camberton, a Criminal lawyer "any way you say it," shoots dead Tony Dernac, America's public enemy #1, in cold blood he does so safe in the knowledge that, rather than face prosecution, he will receive a considerable financial reward from the public, and an even bigger one when he trousers Dernac's $100, 000 stash. Up until this point it reads like a straightforward murder mystery then story really takes off when Wyers stranges things up.
Paul Ernst anti-war pigs story and Kirk Mashburn's torture tale are particularly joyous, but they're all good weird pulp.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 9, 2016 11:55:40 GMT
August W. Derleth - Three Gentlemen in Black: (Weird Tales, Aug. 1938). Sadist and coward Otto Harper has devised a fool-proof plan for ridding himself of his tight-fisted nemesis, Uncle Alexander, and claiming a princely inheritance into the bargain. If only Harper but knew, his father pulled a similar stunt as a young man - and a lot of good it did him!
E. Hoffmann Price - The Word of Bentley: (Weird Tales, May 1933). John Bentley is a man of honour, so not even a fatal train wreck can prevent his keeping a promise to protect a friend from the worst of the Wall Street Crash. All things considered, I prefer E.H.P. in bloody-minded mode.
Miles better, to my way of thinking, at least, is this next, "A bizarre ghost story of Old Spain."
Wallace J. Knapp - The Honor of Don Pedro : (Weird Tales, July 1935). Toledo, winter 1812. Can it be that Major d'Aubigny speaks truly when he brags of spending the night with Doretea de Donosa, the beautiful young wife of his ancestral enemy who died 300 years ago? All is revealed when, the following evening, d'Aubigny leads his men on a jaunt to a gloomy chapel. There's even a moral to this one. Don't molest statues.
Almost done with the Weird Tales content. This pair are of more recent vintage. Didn't much enjoy either.
Marvin Kaye - Our Late Visitor: You can see why Janice is upset at the intrusion. It has been a week since Albert's death was reported in the newspaper, so what's he doing calling on her husband it this ungodly hour! First published as by 'Joseph Lavinson' in Marvin Kaye [ed.s] Brother Theodore’s Chamber of Horrors, Pinnacle, 1975).
Fred Chappell - Miss Prue: (Cold Mountain Review, Spring 1981). Her gentleman friend of these past twenty years keeps their date for afternoon tea, even though they both know he's dead.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 10, 2016 11:00:52 GMT
Everybody's happy in the grave. Three cases of:
Talbot Johns · Date in the City Room: (Weird Tales Jan 1939). Exactly a year to the day it happened, Reggie Fallon, New York Globe reporter, keeps his appointment with Clem Roberts, his once editor and best pal until they fell out over a gal who cared nothing for either. The Grim Reaper has put their friendship back on track.
H. Warner Munn - A Sprig of Rosemary: (Weird Tales June 1933). "Uncle Moses" the one-legged money-lender, is the meanest, most twisted man in Pequiog village, and when he is laid to rest in Highland cemetery it is cause for great celebration. His misanthropy dates from the second Independence war with Britain which cost him a limb and the childhood sweetheart who made it clear in no uncertain terms that she couldn't be doing with a cripple. A little girl laying flowers on his neglected grave offers a chance of redemption.
J. N. Williamson - Fancy That: (Fantasy Tales Autumn 1988). An aged couple enjoy a more loving relationship in sleep than they do when awake. Death is bliss.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 12, 2018 17:41:07 GMT
Perley Poore Sheehan - Monsieur De Guise: (The Scrap Book, Jan 1911). Hunting in Cedar Swamp, he arrives at a magnificent white house that can't exist where the owner nightly duets with a wife two centuries dead.
G. L. Raisor - The Night Caller: (Horror Show, Summer 1989). Its Any Elder's fifth birthday and Daddy's still not home from work though he promised he'd read her a bedtime story. Perhaps that's him on the telephone now! No, just some heavy breather ....
William Fryer Harvey - Across The Moors: (Midnight House and Other Tales, 1910). Little Peggy is poorly and her governess, Miss Craig, is sent to fetch a doctor at dead of night. This requires passing the reputedly haunted Redman's Cross, scene of a horrific murder. Having left her message at Tebbits Farm, Miss Craig meets a reverend gent who volunteers to escort her home ...
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Feb 13, 2018 1:58:46 GMT
This thread is giving me flashbacks to a decade ago, when the Barnes and Noble 100 series helped convert me from a pulp horror reader into a pulp horror fanatic.
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