Hugh Lamb - The Taste Of Fear

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Hugh Lamb (ed.) - The Taste Of Fear (W. H. Allen, 1976)

Introduction - Hugh Lamb

Frederick Cowles - Three Shall Meet
David Sutton - The Fetch
W. F. W. Tatham - Manfred's Three Wishes
William Hope Hodgson - From The Tideless Sea
Michael Sims - Benjamin's Shadow
John Blackburn - The Final Trick
E. H. Visiak - The Queen Of Beauty
A. C. Benson - The Uttermost Farthing
Ramsey Campbell - Ash
L. T. C. Rolt - The House Of Vengeance
Les Freeman - Late
Erckmann-Chatrian - The Crab Spider
Roger Parkes - Interim Report

Unusually for Hugh, he serves up a selection of stories from the Victorian age through to the (then) present day. A few of the moderns to be getting along with ...

Les Freeman - Late: Darlington. Doug returns to a hotel he visited 20 years ago on a Ghost Hunt and discovers that the room he occupied on that occasion, no 75, has a reputation for being haunted and has rarely been used since.
The spectre he'd sought out on the first visit was that of a WWII pilot who died crashing his plane into the sea rather than bail out and risk it hitting a house. Whenever anyone sees his face, they die. Doug's about to find out whether or not that's true.

David Sutton - The Fetch:Campus horror. Finch hides behind a tombstone on Halloween night intent on scaring the students who, at the instigation of self-confessed 'black magician' Cookson, plan to hold a ceremony among the graves. Finch is horrified when they split open a coffin, even more-so when, during the ritual, the corpse is addressed by his name ...

Michael Sims - Benjamin's Shadow: Cornwall. An old lady leaves the narrator her entire fortune provided he spends the rest of his life on her estate, otherwise the will is declared null and void. The place is haunted by all manner of apparitions - a tiny spectral hand, mewling voices, the bath-water turning to blood, a couple dressed in the attire of a previous century, etc.
When, one morning, he sees the wall 'rippling' as he shaves, he decides it's time to investigate. He discovers a child's bones, gives them a decent burial, but still the haunting persists.

Ramsey Campbell - Ash: Lloyd, researching local customs and folk tales in the Cotswolds, temporarily moves into a house which has a reputation for being "tragic", although the only recent history attached to it concerns a couple who had a dreadful flare-up, with the guy burning all his girl's possessions before moving out. Before long Lloyd detects a presence about the place trailing ash into the rooms, and a woman's voice interupts his tape-recordings and telephone calls to his girlfriend, Anthea. When he inspects the furnace in the cellar, he learns the dreadful truth ...

Erckman-Chatrian - The Crab Spider: Great when animals attack outing although it would have benefited from a different title. The hot springs at Spinbronn are popular with gout sufferers until one day they flood and a heap of animal skeletons are washed out of a nearby cave, and with them that of a little girl who died five years earlier. What is responsible? All is revealed when Sir Thomas Haverchurch decides to have a swift skinny dip ...

At their best, E&C's stories are way ahead of their time, but if any of their tales warrants a "shocking", I'd say it's The Child-Stealer. Really nasty. Hugh compiled a Best Tales Of Terror Of Erckmann-Chatrian (Millington, 1981).

Roger Parkes - Interim Report: According to Hugh, this began life as a script for Crown Court but was rejected on the grounds that it was too grim. The Spiteri twins start behaving oddly from the day the family move into Stone Gables, nattering in their sleep and sitting like zombies before the TV during the day. Their parents get it into their minds that the house is haunted and the kids are possessed. An exorcism fails and even leaving the house for a caravan site doesn't shift the "demons", so Mrs. Spiteri takes drastic measures ...

[jamesdoig]

This Coronet cover must be on here somewhere, but it's a beauty and worth reprising:

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Some more of Hugh's Coronet covers here. Don't think we ever identified the artist (later edit: it's Alan Lee), but whoever was responsible, what an astonishing talent! Entirely in keeping with the book's contents, too.

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Frederick Cowles - Three Shall Meet: 1764. Ten years to the night of his elopement with the late Lady Madeline, William Maskell returns to the ancestral home at Boulderstone, summoned by his universally despised half-brother, Sir Ambrose, who pleads terminal illness and seeks reconciliation. Inevitably, it's just a ruse to pay back William for "stealing" the only woman he ever loved. A powder in the wine renders the prodigal helpless, whereupon a gloating Ambrose drags him down to the rat-infested torture chamber for a slow, grisly death.

H. F. W. Tatham - Manfred's Three Wishes: (The Footprints in the Snow, 1910). A Gothic horror fairy tale. Desperate to be rid of an enemy, Manfred visits the wizard in the woods, trading his soul for "vengeance, wealth and power." The first is fulfilled that same night, the second over a period of years, and the third, short lived as it is, exactly two decades later when he returns to his native land. No sooner is Manfred crowned king, than the mother of the man he murdered steps forward to denounce him. He denies the accusation, whereupon she demands he swears his innocence on the altar ....

John Blackburn - The Final Trick: Sir Thomas Beck, middle-aged millionaire, is sadly unfulfilled. He dreams of becoming a great stage illusionist like his hero, Gerald "the Maestro" Rhodes, whose career abruptly ended when he was partially paralysed and hideously disfigured in a car smash. The money man hires his idol to teach him the trade, but it's no good - Beck has no aptitude for theatrics. Realising as much, he makes a promise that one day he will perform a trick that will blow his mentor's mind.

Four years later, a jubilant Sir Thomas invites Rhodes to join him at his Tangiers residence ....

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L. T. C. Rolt - The House of Vengeance: "An angel satyr walks these hills." Lost during a rainstorm in the black mountains somewhere between Hereford and Llanvethney, John Hardy, hiker, calls at the first lighted farmhouse he reaches. His host, a gnomish fellow of few words, ushers him to a room and returns to join his chanting companions in an adjoining chamber. Some enormous thing tramps out of the house ....

Hardy wakes, unharmed, in a field. He later learns that the house where he thought he spent the night was built on cursed land, and destroyed in an avalanche which wiped out the family at a stroke.

E. H. Visiak - The Queen of Beauty: Stella, fabulously wealthy and possessed of an adventurous spirit, equips a steam yacht to seek out a Pacific island referred to in ancestral documents as "a South Sea Lourdes." It proves anything but. After several dangerous scrapes including an attack by monstrous squid and rescue from a mass of evil seaweed, they arrive at their destination. The natives, who seem to have been expecting them, worship a coral statue of the Queen of Beauty - an exact replica of Stella! Her worshippers attack the yacht determined to secure their goddess. Rather more to Stella's liking, two of her most ardent unwanted suitors set upon one another in the desperate struggle which ultimately leaves the deck strewn in corpses.

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A. C. Benson - The Uttermost Farthing: (Basil Netherby, 1926). Hebdon Hill, near Ashford, Sussex. Despite - in fact, because of - Hartley's aversion to dwelling upon matters beyond the grave, Hector Bendyshe invites the self-described 'literary hack' to holiday at his newly acquired Georgian Manor. The property is haunted by its previous owner, Squire Hugh Faulkner, a cat-cremating Black Magician, suspected of selling his soul to Satan. Bendyshe and the vicar, Rev. John Fortesque, are convinced that Faulkner's ghost is seeking out a despatch-box containing papers detailing vile occult experiments, and that it is imperative they prevent his doing so. The recent death of the Squire's sergeant, Harry M'Gee, who stood by him in the face of public hostility over a local girl's death, adds urgency to the mission, as their lives are now at threat from two murderous spirits.

A slow burner, worth sticking with for its spectacularly unsightly revenant, as though Benson had been commissioned to write a Jamesian ghost story for Not At Night. Also available in Mike Ashley's Mammoth Book of Short Horror Novels