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Post by dem bones on Oct 27, 2008 9:13:05 GMT
Again edited by Robert A. W. Lowndes and surviving 18 issues from Summer 1966 - March 1971, another great source for Not At Night stories and contenders that escaped Christine Campbell Thomson's notice. Seabury Quinn fans are spoilt rotten, as are those of Paul Ernst's Dr Satan and Edward D. Hoch's Simon Ark. Another stub, but looking down the list I can see there are plenty of stories that have been name-checked elsewhere on the board and maybe some new notes to add. All issues edited by Robert A. W. Lowndes. Startling Mystery Stories #1 (Health Knowledge Inc. Summer, 1966) Seabury Quinn - The Mansion Of Unholy Magic H. P. Lovecraft - The Lurking Fear Robert Bloch - The House Of The Hatchet Edward D. Hoch - Village Of The Dead Gerald W. Page - The Off Season Edgar Allen Poe - The Tell-Tale Heart S. B. S. Hurst - The Awful Injustice August Derleth - Ferguson's Capsules Startling Mystery Stories #2 (Health Knowledge Inc. Fall, 1966) Cover - Carl Kidwell Seabury Quinn - The House Of Horror John Brunner - The Men In Black Roger Eugene Ulmer - The Strange Case Of Pascal Edward D. Hoch - The Witch Is Dead Paul Ernst - Dr. Satan Terry Carr & Ted White - The Secret Of The City Robert W. Lowndes - The Street (Verse) Bertram Russell - The Scourge Of B'moth Startling Mystery Stories #3 (Health Knowledge Inc. Winter, 1966) Cover - Virgil Finlay Gaston LeRoux - The Inn Of Terror Robert W. Lowndes - The Other Hugh B. Cave - The Door Of Doom Ralph E. Hayes - A Matter Of Breeding Roma Wells - Esmerelda Charles Collins & Charles Dickens - The Trial For Murder Seabury Quinn - The Blood-Flower Startling Mystery Stories #4 (Health Knowledge Inc., Spring, 1967) Seabury Quinn - The Tenants Of Broussac Oscar Cook - Si Urag Of The Tail Robert E. Howard - The Secret Of Lost Valley Victor Rousseau - Medium For Justice H. G. Wells - The Temptation Of Harringay August Derleth - The Tottenham Werewolf Startling Mystery Stories #5 (Health Knowledge Inc., Summer, 1967) Seabury Quinn - The Gods Of East And West Edward D. Hoch - The Man From Nowhere Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Council And The House (verse) Leslie Jones - Behind The Curtain Robert Barr - A Game Of Chess (introduced by Sam Moskowitz) Murray Leinster - The Darkness On Fifth Avenue Startling Mystery Stories #6 (Health Knowledge Inc., Fall, 1967) Arthur J. Burks - My Lady Of The Tunnel Stephen King - The Glass Floor Sterling S. Cramer - Death From Within Robert E. Howard - A Vision (verse) Beverly Haaf - Aim Of Perfection Marion Brandon - The Dark Castle Anna Hunger - Dona Diabla Seabury Quinn - The Druid's Shadow Startling Mystery Stories #7 (Health Knowledge Inc., Winter 1967/68) E. Hoffman Price - The Bride Of The Peacock Dona Holson - Nice Old House August Derleth - Those Who Seek Ambrose Bierce - John Bartine's Watch Robert Barbour Johnson - The Pet Of Mrs. Lilith Paul Ernst - The Man Who Chained The Lightning The Man Who Chained The Lightning is another Dr. Satan story. Robert Barbour Johnson's Far Below is a nailed on Not At Night contender but, not having #7, I can't vouch for The Pet Of Mrs. LilithStartling Mystery Stories #8 (Health Knowledge Inc., Spring, 1968) Thanks to Gaspard du Nord for scanSeabury Quinn - White Lady Of The Orphanage John Campbell Haywood - The Gray People (introduced by Sam Moskowicz) Jay Tyler - ... And Then No More Anthony Rud - The Endocrine Monster Clark Ashton Smith - The Return Of The Sorcerer Paul Ernst - The Three From The Tomb Startling Mystery Stories #9 (Health Knowledge Inc., Summer, 1968) Colonel S. P. Meek - The Black Mass Earl Pierce jr - The Last Archer Jay Tyler - The Sight Of Roses Ferdinand Berthoud - Webbed Hands L. Sprague de Camp - Acrophobia (verse) Paul Ernst - Hollywood Horror Startling Mystery Stories #10 (Health Knowledge Inc., Fall, 1968) Harold Ward - The House Of The Living Dead Max Nugor - The Indoor Safari L. M. Montgomery - The House Party On Smoky Island Robert A. W. Lowndes - Settler's Wall Seabury Quinn - The Isle Of Missing Ships Startling Mystery Stories #11 (Health Knowledge Inc., Winter, 1968/ 69) David H. Keller - Wolf Hollow Bubbles Beverly Haaf - Mrs. Kaye Robert E. Howard - The Haunter Of The Ring Phillip Hazelton - After Sunset Phillip M. Fisher - The Ship Of Silent Men Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Whisperer (verse) Seabury Quinn - The Vengeance Of India Startling Mystery Stories #12 (Health Knowledge Inc. Spring, 1969) Thanks to Gaspard du Nord for scanGaston LeRoux - The Woman With The Velvet Collar Stephen King - The Reapers Image L. Sprague de Camp - Sirrush (verse) Edward D. Hoch - Sword For A Sinner Bassett Morgan - Tiger Murray Leinster - The City Of The Blind Startling Mystery Stories #13 (Health Knowledge Inc. Summer, 1969) Everill Worrell - The Gray Killer J. Ramsey Campbell - The Scar Donna Gould Welk - Where There's Smoke Seabury Quinn - Ancient Fires Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Cases Of Jules de Grandin: Part 1 (article) Ken Porter - The Hansom Cab Eugend de Rezske - The Veil Of TanitStartling Mystery Stories #14 (Health Knowledge Inc. Winter, 1969) Edmond Hamilton - The Dogs Of Dr. Dwann Dorothy Norman Cooke - The Parasite H. P. Lovecraft - The Outsider Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Crawler (verse) Urann Thayer - The White Domino Raymond Lupoff - The Case Of The Doctor Who Had No Business Gilbert Draper - The Feline Phantom Paul Ernst - The Consuming Flame Startling Mystery Stories #15 (Health Knowledge Inc. Spring, 1970) Paul Ernst - Horror Insured Francis Flagg - By Hands Of The Dead W. W. Jacobs - The Monkey's Paw Henry Slesar - Cry Baby Cry Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Cases Of Jules De Grandin: Part II Seabury Quinn - The Man Who Cast No Shadow Startling Mystery Stories #16 (Health Knowledge Inc. Summer, 1970) Francis Flagg - The Smell David H. Keller - The Temple Of Death Phyllis A. Whitney - The Silver Bullet Eddy C. Bertin- The Man Who Collected Eyes Seabury Quinn - The Devil's Rosary Startling Mystery Stories #17 (Health Knowledge Inc. Fall, 1970) Hugh B. Cave - The Infernal Shadow Clark Ashton Smith - The Vaults Of Yoh-Vombis Joseph H. Bloom - Laura Edward D. Hoch - The Vicar Of Hell Seabury Quinn - The Bride Of Dewer Startling Mystery Stories #18 (Health Knowledge Inc. March, 1971) John Scott Douglas - Drome Of The Living Dead Larry Eugene Meredith - Conjured Aubrey Feist - The Golden Patio F. Paul Wilson - The Cleaning Machine Murray Leinster - The Storm That Had To Be Stopped
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Post by lobolover on Feb 9, 2009 23:07:03 GMT
Good thread, ( I dunno how to call you, though, Dem sounds to familiar-like) I have a question, though:could you suply any details of The Strange Case Of Pascal or The Man Who Collected Eyes? One evokes, as least in name, Stevenson, and the other the one E.T.A.Hoffman tale I so long to read, but havent found the chance yet.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 10, 2009 0:04:34 GMT
Been a while since I read it, but at the time I wrote against The Man Who Collected Eyes: When he was a child, Claes Perquois' strict Catholic parents hung a print on his bedroom wall displaying a huge eye in a triangle and bearing the legend "God Sees You". So began his morbid obsession with the eyes of all creatures great and small, until, having acquired a pair of baby blues direct from the mortuary, it seems he's all collected out. So he branches out into black magic.. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but my memory ain't that great that I could tell you why. The Strange Case of Pascal is, i'm afraid, a complete blank. Maybe I'll make a start on re-reading these soon - excellent editorials, a weird and wonderful selection of pulp horrors; they're a model of how I love a horror fiction mag to be.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 4, 2009 13:57:34 GMT
Startling Mystery Stories #17 (Health Knowledge Inc. Fall, 1970) Richard Schmand Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Editor's Page: On Father Brown
Hugh B. Cave - The Infernal Shadow Clark Ashton Smith - The Vaults Of Yoh-Vombis Joseph H. Bloom - Laura Edward D. Hoch - The Vicar Of Hell Seabury Quinn - The Bride Of Dewer
The Reckoning (Your Findings On 14th issue, Winter 1969/70) The Cauldron - Your Letters And Our Comment Coming Next Issue Readers Preference PageCan't get at my books just now, so when it came to reading Seabury Quinn's The Bride Of Dewer, i grabbed this from the shelf instead. A brilliant issue of a brilliant magazine, but one thing i'd forgotten is that along with the judiciously selected pulp reprints, SMS also ran at least one items of original fiction per issue. Anyway, one story didn't ring any bells at all, so i thought i'd give it a go and .... Joseph H. Bloom - Laura: The narrator receives a mysterious note in the post from 'L' who requests his urgent presence at her home where she'll return the pair of driving gloves he lost five years ago. He decides to go along with it, and a middle-aged, wheelchair-bound invalid, Laura, welcomes him in, tells him how much she hates men, pulls a gun and demands money. He has an alternative. Beyond the door she indicates is a walk-in cupboard and there, hanging on meat-hooks are the remains of the eight gents who've denied her to date, some just starting to go off, at least three in advanced stages of decomposition (Mr. Bloom is very good at describing the state of them) and a couple of out-and-out skeletons. Well, that is incentive enough for our man to open his wallet! Laura, satisfied with his generous donation, allows him to leave. Not surprisingly, he reports the incident to the police and the Inspector agrees to accompany him to the house where they're met by Miss Owen, sister of the five-years-dead Laura, and that's when things take a turn for the really weird. Joseph H. Bloom doesn't seem to have written anything else for Lowndes and i can't find any other writing credits against his name. Maybe he only ever had this one story published but between them, he and Mr. Quinn have got me going on an extreme SMS revival. Startling Mystery Stories #10 (Health Knowledge Inc., Fall, 1968) Virgil Finlay Harold Ward - The House Of The Living Dead Max Nugor - The Indoor Safari L. M. Montgomery - The House Party On Smoky Island Robert A. W. Lowndes - Settler's Wall Seabury Quinn - The Isle Of Missing Ships Seabury Quinn - The Isle Of Missing Ships: De Grandin and Trowbridge are 'rescued' by cultured Goonong Besar when their ship is captured by his bunch of wreckers. A charming tale in which our heroes get to kill sharks and Paupan cannibal butchers, even inadvertently dine on the "long pig". There's a heroine to rescue, of course, as white women's flesh is very much in demand (for eating) and even some inspired lunacy involving an octopus! Besar is so unspeakably evil that the Frenchman has no qualms about slitting his throat in cold blood rather than have the bother of delivering him into police custody. The third of the De Grandin tales and one of my favourites. The villain has a touch of Dennis Wheatley's 'Doctor Saturday' from Strange Conflict about him and De Grandin even has a Duc de Richleau moment when he's forced to watch helpless as the cannibals stake out a Dutch planter and his wife prior to battering and roasting them. In correspondence to Robert Lowndes, Quinn recalled "I feared Farnsworth Wright might return it because it contained no supernatural elements the readers of forty-plus years ago seemed to enjoy it although one or two of the lady readers did reproach me for having de G cut Besar's throat, saying it was cold blooded murder." Harold Ward - The House Of The Living Dead: ( Weird Tales, March, 1932): “Living corpses! Men and women filched from the grave, festering in their mouldering cerements, talking, laughing, dancing, breathing, holding hellish jubilee!” So begins The House Of The Living Dead, and Ward keeps up this hysterical note for the entire 33 pages. Dr Darius Lessman, mad scientist, abducts and kills several persons with no strong family ties and projects their minds into various corpses to reanimate them. Fortunately, Ada Rider, PI, is on to his pranks and determines to put a stop to these macabre games of musical chairs. Grave-robbing, Egyptian mummies, shambling corpses gyrating to Betty Coed on the radio - in many ways, the quintessential Not At Night story, so no surprise that it turned up in Grim Death. Max Nugor - The Indoor Safari: Mild-mannered librarian Paul Trence reluctantly accepts an invitation from sadistic big game hunter Sebastian to dine at his home, the walls of which are hung with the heads of his prey. Paul is in love with Sebastian's other half, Constance, and at this point you're thinking, 'oh great, something really horrible is going to happen', but it's not that good, unfortunately. Sebastian has merely coated a pin in fast acting poison and concealed it somewhere on the premises. If Paul can avoid it, Sebastian will grant his trophy wife a divorce and throw in an generous insurance settlement. Original to SMS as far as i can make out. L. M. Montgomery - The House Party On Smoky Island: ( Weird Tales, Aug. 1935): The reputation of Dr. Anthony Armstrong has been under a cloud since the suspicious death-by-overdose of his unmourned first wife Susette. At Madeline Stanwick's get-together, the truth finally comes to light during a round of piss-poor ghost stories when uninvited guest Christine Latham takes her turn. The dead return, Flapper girls reduced to quivering jellies, etc.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 9, 2009 10:13:25 GMT
Startling Mystery Stories #18 (Health Knowledge Inc. March, 1971) Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Editors Page: On Nero Wolfe
John Scott Douglas - Drome Of The Living Dead Larry Eugene Meredith - Conjured Aubrey Feist - The Golden Patio F. Paul Wilson - The Cleaning Machine Murray Leinster - The Storm That Had To Be Stopped
Inquisitions: Book & Publication reviews ( includes Dion Fortune's The Secrets Of Dr. Taverner and small press publication The Sax Rohmer Review) The Cauldron: Your Letters & Our Comments Coming Next Issue (it was to have been David Charles Pascow's The Full Moon Maniac Readers' Preference PageSome more SMS, this one the final issue, provided that elusive first break to a young author who'd go on to greater things. Just as Stephen King's The Glass Floor in #6 was his first professional sale to a horror pulp (King maintains he had previously been paid for an early version of The Raft when it appeared in fetish mag Adam but he never got to see a copy), so F. Paul Wilson made his debut in this one - a decade on and he'd score massive success with Demon versus Nazi extravaganza The Keep. includes; John Scott Douglas - Drome Of The Living Dead; Weird Tales (August 1935): Ace American World War II pilots are given a lethal drug by the evil Van Kauptmann. He revives them as zombies to man his Fokkers versus the Yanks. Russ Cameron is fortunate not to go the same way and eventually leads the revolt of the undead airmen. Larry Eugene Meredith - Conjured: Harper Finley, sceptic, reckons that all fortune tellers and conjurers are "pickpockets and thieves". The Great Amazar sets out to prove him wrong. Finley's servant and several household objects disappear and, when Finley still remains defiantly unmoved, Amazar has one more trick up his sleeve. F. Paul Wilson - The Cleaning Machine: A paranoid woman leads her neighbours down to the basement where one by one they disappear. Dr. Parker and Detective Burke don't believe this crazy lady for a minute, but there's one troubling aspect of the case they can't explain away.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 10, 2009 14:52:32 GMT
don't mind me, i'm just doing my thing. Startling Mystery Stories #14 (Health Knowledge Inc. Winter, 1969) Virgil Finlay Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Editor's Page: On A Literary Descendant of Dupin [Willard Huntington Wright]
Edmond Hamilton - The Dogs Of Dr. Dwann Dorothy Norman Cooke - The Parasite H. P. Lovecraft - The Outsider Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Crawler (verse) Urann Thayer - The White Domino Raymond Lupoff - The Case Of The Doctor Who Had No Business Gilbert Draper - The Feline Phantom Paul Ernst - The Consuming FlameT. Wyatt Nelson Edmond Hamilton - The Dogs Of Dr. Dwann: ( Weird Tales, October 1932): On the advice of his physician, Jameson moves to a quiet village in the Adirondack Hills to get away from it all, only to discover that his new neighbours, Doctors Dwann and Bowman are mad zoologists. Hardly has he moved in than Jameson is startled by two dog-faces staring in at him through the window. And when he goes outside to investigate - no paw-prints, just four human footprints leading off into the woods! What can it all mean? Turns out Dwann and his crony are conducting bizarre experiments involving police dogs and the scientists who had them expelled from the foundation! Hamilton, to his eternal credits, gives a detailed, thoroughly plausible account of the head transplant procedure and illustrator T. Wyatt Nelson provides a rather alarming illustration of the resultant hybrid. Of course, while Jameson is only in on half of their abominable secret, they can allow him live in return for a vow of silence, but the poor fellow is so exhausted there's nothing for it but to offer him a bed for the night. "Bowman and I have the rooms just across the hall, so you'll be alright here. Just forget our scientific horrors and go to sleep." "I'll try", I said.' But that night he gets to realise that, if you can have humans with dog heads, why not dogs with ... By rights, we should be talking the most insane story in the issue, but that's to reckon without .... Dorothy L. Cooke - The Parasite: "Well, Hermie, the particles we removed from your hand had all the appearance of human flesh but structurally', he shrugged, "It has the substance of a vegetable. In other words .... we have the facsimile of a man in this town who isn't human. If you had exerted pressure on one finger, I firmly believe that it would have snapped off like a carrot." My money's on the stranger in town, 'Ted Parks', whose plane mysteriously landed out there in the field couple of days back. Parks spends most of the day in the Golden Doubloon drinking vast quantities of tomato juice. Local fence and nosy parker Herbie Gold gets some of his boys to lend a hand in removing the planes cargo of flowers to the gulch, but agrees a temporary truce with the Police Lieutenant after he's assaulted and three men are found hung in the cockpit, their bodies drained of blood. Can they stop vegetable man before all the citizens of Lafayette are reduced to something less than man, more than celery? Urann Thayer - The White Domino: ( Ghost Stories, July 1928): A macabre little ghost-cum-vampire gem which begins and ends with a man in the condemned cell awaiting his date with Madame Guillotine." ....The windows of the neighbouring buildings are crowded with drunken, laughing, singing men and women peering out and waiting for the morbid pleasure of my decapitation." Robert Merrill, Medical School graduate treats himself to that long promised visit to the Paris morgue a few days before carnival in July 1927. He is captivated by the corpse of "the most exquisite woman I have ever seen" laid out on a slab, with only two bruises on her throat to mar her beauty. Her eyelids flicker. Merrill screams to the keeper "Good grief man! The girl isn't dead!", but the man tells him he's imagining things. She was strangled in Pere Lachaise the previous night and has already been examined by a doctor. Have they caught the killer? "Not yet, but we will. French justice moves very slowly, but it gets its man every time." At carnival that night, Merrill meets a strangely dressed girl who conceals her identity behind a white domino and, being the worse for drink, he declares his undying love and "I would die for one kiss from those beautiful lips!" She informs him that it is his decision, but if, once they've left the house, he then refuses to kiss her, he will die anyway. She leads him to a damp Pere Lachaise vault and, once inside, all that Gallic reserve goes right out the window. She presses her hard, cold breasts against him and offers her dead, frozen mouth. As he struggles to be free of the sex-crazed corpse, her mask slips aside to reveal .... Paul Ernst - The Consuming Flame: ( Weird Tales, Nov. 1935): The third of eight Ernst novellas pitting "the world's strangest criminologist", Ascott Keane, and Beatrice Dale, his dishy secretary, against super master criminal Dr. Satan, "a human spider spinning ever and ever more ghastly webs". I hope to give the series its own thread but, briefly, this one finds Dr. Satan reducing motor-industry moguls to charred spots on the highway by means of static electricity, and may well have inspired Karl E. Wagner's 'Curtiss Stryker' pulp homage, Sign Of The Salamander!
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Post by dem bones on Nov 13, 2009 20:17:44 GMT
Startling Mystery Stories #2 (Health Knowledge Inc. Fall, 1966) Cover - Carl Kidwell Robert A. W. Lowdnes - Introduction Seabury Quinn - The House Of Horror John Brunner - The Men In Black Roger Eugene Ulmer - The Strange Case Of Pascal Edward D. Hoch - The Witch Is Dead Paul Ernst - Dr. Satan Terry Carr & Ted White - The Secret Of The City Robert W. Lowndes - The Street (Verse) Bertram Russell - The Scourge Of B'moth
Reviews: Seabury Quinn - The Phantom Fighter: Roger Elwood & Sam Moscowitz - Strange Signposts The Reckoning The Cauldron: Readers Letters
Seabury Quinn's Jules De Grandin versus a sadistic, seriously misogynistic surgeon, Ernst's Ascott Keane versus Dr Satan, and Ed D. Hoch's Simon Ark versus a deluded old girl (and the Commies) - who comes out top? Seabury Quinn by a landslide! Spoilers ahoy! Not finished it yet, but this issues hidden treasure is .... Roger Eugene Ulmer - The Strange Case Of Pascal: Weird Tales (June, 1926). Dr. David Pascal is ruined and imprisoned for the embezzlement committed by his odious partner, Louis Blenheim, who not only gets off scott free, he steals Pascal's bride-to-be into the bargain. On his release, Pascal confronts his treacherous once-friend and swears vengeance. That night he has a horrific dream; he's imprisoned in a huge, sticky web, a giant spider drawing ever closer - a giant spider with the face of Blenheim! A terrible struggle ensues during which the spider repeatedly sinks its venomous fangs into its writhing victim, while Pascal slashes and stabs the hideous body, eventually landing a death blow; "But how short-lived was my triumph! Of what avail the struggle of man in death's grip? I too was surrendering to the inevitable .... annihilation. My last impression was of Blenheim's face, with spider body, gloating over my dead form." Awakening from his nightmare and hurrying from the house, on impulse Pascal buys a newspaper. The macabre headline is of particular interest. John Brunner - The Men In Black: Body-builder, pretend big game hunter and ladies man Royston, first becomes aware of the men in black when he catches one watching him at the gym. At first, he takes him for a "pansie", but that can't be right - this guy isn't drooling, this guy has no facial expression whatsoever. Perhaps he's a private dick, wouldn't be the first time an irate husband has tried to put the frighteners on him. That night Royston makes a tactical withdrawal from the life of latest conquest Lulabelle (helping himself to some jewellery as is his custom) as he doesn't want to be around when her other half returns from Japan. Wherever he goes he catches sight of one of the three men in black and it's starting to get on his nerves. At least he's hit upon his next dupe, Mrs. Arnheim, a rich widow, who is easily won over with his story of how he bagged a leopard and skinned it. But when he attempts to kiss her, she lets out an inhuman roar, and the MIB's emerge from behind the couch. They are visitors from outer space collecting museum exhibits. The only thing i don't like about issue 2 is RAWL's review alerted me that Seabury Quinn had revised the stories in The Phantom Fighter (Mycroft & Moran, 1966) and removed any reference to the depression era. So when a copy turned up in the Fantasy Centre (R.I.P.) i passed on it!
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Post by dem bones on Nov 26, 2009 21:02:50 GMT
Startling Mystery Stories #13 (Health Knowledge Inc. Summer, 1969) Robert Schmand Robert A W Lowdnes - The Editor's Page: On Poe, Dupin, etc, part 2.
Everill Worrell - The Gray Killer J. Ramsey Campbell - The Scar Donna Gould Welk - Where There's Smoke Seabury Quinn - Ancient Fires Ken Porter - The Hansom Cab Eugend de Rezske - The Veil Of Tanit
Robert A. W. Lowdnes - The Cases Of Jules de Grandin: Part 1 (article) Inquisitions: reviews of new books and magazines. August Derleth's Mr. Fairlee's Final Journal, various Arthur Conan Doyle, The Baker Street Journal, The Sax Rohmer Review, The Armchair Review. The Cauldron (Readers Letters) Coming Next Issue: full page blurb for Edmond Hamilton's barking The Dogs Of Dr. Dwann The Reckoning: Readers' votes Everill Worrell - The Gray Killer: Zingler, the new Doctor is a godsend to the Hospital, working around the clock and administering a miracle drug to the horribly injured and terminally ill. The nurses adore him, not least because he's dashed handsome. This view is shared by everyone bar patient Marion Wheaton who lives in dread of a nocturnal visit from the man she dubs "the gray killer." Several horrible events befall the Hospital. A child is savagely murdered in what seems to be a ritual murder and a new born child is abducted from the Maternity ward, while those who've submitted to the bogus doctor's ever-handy hypodermic discover the miracle drug has a nasty side-effect; overnight leprosy! As more patient's disappear and Marion's fear and paranoia reach stratospheric levels, the gray killer is forced to strike again and, strapping her down on a trolley, wheels her into theatre. At least he leaves her hands free so she can keep her journal going to the last. It's no consolation to Marion, who'll spend the rest of her life in an insane asylum, but it transpires that Dr. Zingler was entirely blameless in the affair. The culprit was a High Priest from the planet Horil who worships the Devil God of Space! This evil being, who resembles a colossal devil-fish, is believed by the Horillians to react favourably to human sacrifice. And what about all that leprosy business? He was merely fixing himself something to eat. "Countless centuries ago our epicures evolved a taste for the flesh of leprous persons ..." If ever a story warranted a "they just don't write them like that any more" ... Ramsey Campbell - The Scar: Brichester. Jack Rossitor's brother-in-law, the hapless Lindsay Rice, meets Jack's doppelganger, similar in every respect to the original save for a nasty scar down his face. When Jack is attacked by his double and has his face slashed with a rusty tin can they are identical - even his wife, Harriet, can't tell them apart. Lindsay begins to suspect the awful truth behind 'Jack's recent irrational behaviour including the savage beatings he inflicts on his kids. Lindsay's worst fears are confirmed when he discovers a body in a derelict building. Ken Porter - The Hansom Cab: New York. Proto-yuppie Clabbits, is drunk out of his brains and insistent that O'Flaherty finds him a Hansom to ride him back to his hotel. As if by divine intervention, one pulls up alongside. Despite the protests of the muffled driver, Clabbits drags his elder companion inside and begins to grope the pretty young passenger. Mary McGinnis doesn't seem to mind much. She tells them she's recently recovered from a long illness, and judging by her dress it must have been a very lengthy one, somewhere in the region of fifty years. O'Flahery takes a good look at the driver and hurls himself smartly through the door. Clabbits isn't so lucky. The headless demon and his skeleton horse speed ever faster and the ghostly carriage takes off into the night. Donna Gould Welk - Where There's Smoke: Billboard painter Hubert Whipple's driving ambition in life is to land the next restoration job on old man Brix's cigarette hoarding. Thanks to his constant cheating and a little help from his long-suffering wife who makes a pact with the Devil, Hubert gets his wish. Painless at six pages but maybe a little too slight, if i'm brutally honest.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 3, 2011 22:29:55 GMT
Robert A. W. Lowndes (ed.) - Startling Mystery Stories #3 (Health Knowledge Inc. Winter, 1966) Cover - Virgil Finlay The Editors Page
Gaston LeRoux - The Inn Of Terror Robert W. Lowndes - The Other Hugh B. Cave - The Door Of Doom Ralph E. Hayes - A Matter Of Breeding Rama Wells - Esmeralda Charles Collins & Charles Dickens - The Trial For Murder Seabury Quinn - The Blood-Flower
The Cauldron Books Readers Preference Couponit's tempting to say this was a classic issue but so very few of them were anything other than classic issues that so lazy an observation doesn't really tell you much. Gaston Le Roux's Inn Of Terror takes Wilkie Collins' A Terribly Strange Bed and gives it the nasty, Grand Guignol makeover it always cried out for and Seabury Quinn's werewolf yarn - while by no means the the best of the De Grandin's - at least includes a masterly face at the window episode. The Hugh B. Cave is a blur so will have to reread that. The three originals first. Something i find brilliant about Startling Mystery Stories, Magazine Of Horror & Co., is that the contemporary fiction is in no way out of place and nor do the stories read like mere pastiches of the old pulps. The Lowdnes and Hayes shorts are particularly striking. Esmerelda is maybe one line too long, but an enjoyable read none the less. Robert W. Lowndes - The Other: "It moved slowly, and, as it approached, I could see why. It was black and charred, a hideous burned thing. I saw the blackened lips and ruin of a face ... Nothing was human but the eyes[/i]. They were my eyes." A man is haunted by his own personal premonition of death. The doppelganger appears in various stages of bloody ruin and decomposition depending on whichever impending catastrophe threatens his life. The recipient of these visitations has already survived a fatal fire at a New York rooming house and a train crash that horrifically ended several lives simply by heeding the warnings, but the clock is running down. Against his better nature, Albert Higgens acts on this lunatic's tip off and cancels his flight to Bermuda. Ralph E. Hayes - A Matter Of Breeding: Benson, lost in the backwoods, approaches a cabin in a clearing to ask directions. Unfortunately, the occupants are a rifle-toting old timer and his daughter, a hideously deformed, drooling lunatic with an over-sized head whose favoured diet is human flesh. "Look what I've got, Sary!", enthuses Ed (that's his name). Between them, they soon have Benson tied to a spit and roasting nicely before the fire. The girl's mother - Ed's sister, naturally - returns home and bawls them out for their deplorable manners. It takes the lady of the house to show them how to treat a guest. Rama Wells - Esmeralda: The five college students called themselves the Spiderstein Club on account of their mutual fondness for all things arachnid. Five years after he last attended the annual dinner, Twisdale, the black sheep of the group who took a job in Africa, sends James a confessional letter admitting his responsibility for a series of macabre pranks during college days. Twiz has since become a witch-doctor but in those days he was more of a dabbler in the black arts, avenging himself on students who didn't like him by means of personalised voodoo dolls and his pet black widow and closest friend, Esmeralda. But he and Esmeralda have now fallen out on account of Twiz scrunching her under his boot during a row. Sadly for Twiz, he didn't take Esmeralda's vindictiveness into account and now a monstrous spectral spider is out for his blood!
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Post by dem bones on Feb 4, 2011 21:02:54 GMT
Seabury Quinn - The Blood Flower: "A pair of round, baleful eyes, green as the luminescence from a rotting carcass in a midnight swamp, glared at us across the windowsill ...." You can always rely on dear old Dr. Trowbridge! Young, beautiful Mrs. Edith Evander is preyed upon by a hirstute, corpse-like entity which appears nightly beneath her bedroom window to bark at the moon. When Edith takes to snarling at the servants and answering the madman's howls, her nurse is concerned enough to call in Trowbridge who, as ever, is accompanied by his friend and colleague Jules de Grandin. Trowbridge has been treating the patient for "threatened Leukemia" but the dapper Frenchman soon establishes that Edith has gone werewolf and all thanks to her uncle, Friedrich Hoffmeister! This notoriously sinful buffoon recently returned from Kerovitch in the Transylvanian Alps with a bunch of blood red roses, insisting they each wear one to the theatre on the night of the full moon. The phantom fighter knows all about these evil flowers and their capacity to induce lycanthrope! There's no hope for Hoffmeister - de Grandin has no qualms about ending his wretched existence - but Madamoiselle is a different matter. The stakes are high. Will he be prepared to risk his immortal soul by performing an exorcism to rid Edith Evander of her demon?
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Post by dem bones on Aug 27, 2012 15:18:28 GMT
Startling Mystery Stories #11 (Health Knowledge Inc., Winter, 1968/ 69) Robert A W Lowndes - The Editors Page: On Solar Pons, etc.
David H. Keller - Wolf Hollow Bubbles Beverly Haaf - Mrs. Kaye Robert E. Howard - The Haunter Of The Ring Phillip Hazelton - After Sunset Phillip M. Fisher - The Ship Of Silent Men Robert A. W. Lowndes - The Whisperer (verse) Seabury Quinn - The Vengeance Of India
The Cauldron: Readers Letters Philip Hazleton - After Sunset: ( Strange Tales, November 1931). Fifth Avenue, New York. Begins with the marriage of heiress Anita Gillett to Merle Crossley, but the festivities are short lived as, that same night, Anita is sadistically vampirised by a combination of the groom and his accomplice, our narrator Vera Gregorsk, who promptly fall to bickering over which of them delivered the fatal bite. Anita duly rises from the grave and attacks an infant, whereupon the trio turn their attentions to her beautiful sister, Gloria. But Jaffee, loyal butler to the Gilletts, is wise to the squabbling vampires and leads a priest to their tombs. You can't really say "they don't write therm like that any more!" because 'they' always have and will, but few give quite so much morbid entertainment value. The resurrection scene - with Anita crawling from her grave watched by Merle and Vera in bat form - is particularly effective. Beverley Haaf - Mrs. Kaye: There was something about Karen that frightened me yet she herself lived in endless terror. Karen, a sensitive artist with a history of mental illness, confides in Jane, the friendly widow next door, that she's being persecuted by the sinister Rena Kaye who has followed her to town. Karen believes Mrs. Kaye to be a werewolf, on the very reasonable grounds that the glowing eyed ghoul has cheerfully admitted as much. The truth lies closer to home, as Jane discovers when she enters her friends room to find image upon image of her infant daughter ....
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 27, 2012 15:35:09 GMT
"Wolf Hollow Bubbles" is the strangest story title I have seen in quite a while. The very few Keller stories I have read are all excellent.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 27, 2012 16:24:35 GMT
"Wolf Hollow Bubbles" is the strangest story title I have seen in quite a while. The very few Keller stories I have read are all excellent. Lowndes tended to favour his uneven Tales From Cornwall fantasy series, whereas in the personal preference stakes, mine is for the 'Psychiatrist' and 'Fantaisiste' content of Tales From Underwood which I recommend you pick up should you find one on your travels. Mr. Shrinkproof would likely find it of interest, too.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 27, 2012 18:20:29 GMT
which I recommend you pick up should you find one on your travels. I guess AbeBooks is out of the question, then?
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Post by dem bones on Aug 27, 2012 19:29:49 GMT
I guess AbeBooks is out of the question, then? Abebooks, Amazon & the rest are always out of the question for me, but it's as you prefer! If you like what you've read of Keller's to date, Tales Of Underwood shouldn't disappoint. I value the chatting with dealers, market traders and car boot hawkers as essential to the whole experience, have made some enduring friendships that way and the many treasured memories are perhaps more precious still now so many of the old haunts have gone to the wall. You could probably hold a successful convention on the theme "personal memories of the Fantasy Centre."
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