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Post by dem on Oct 21, 2008 9:01:58 GMT
Hugh Lamb - The Thrill Of Horror (W. H. Allen, 1975: Magnum, 1978)  Bob Marchant
H. Rider Haggard - Only A Dream
L. A. Lewis - The Meerschaum Pipe
A. Erskine Ellis - The Life-Buoy
Sir T. G. Jackson - The Lady Of Rosemount
John Gawsworth - How It Happened
Valerie Bryusov - In The Mirror
Joy Burnett - "Calling Miss Marker"
Dick Donovan - A Night Of Horror
L. T. C. Rolt - The Shouting
Charles Birkin - The Happy Dancers
William Hope Hodgson - The Weed Men
Frederick Cowles - Eyes For The Blind
H. R. Wakefield - Mr. Ash's Studio
Robert Haining - Montage Of Death
Grant Allen - Pallinghurst Barrow
Eleanor Scott - Randall's Round
E. H. Visiak - The Skeleton At The Feast
E. H. Visiak - Medusan Madness
A. C. Benson - Out Of The Sea
R. Murray Gilchrist - Witch-In-Grain
A. N. L. Munby - The Tudor Chimney
M. R. James - The ExperimentInside cover blurb The accent of this collection of horror stories is on quality and rarity, and the twenty-two pieces more than fulfil both requirements. The book starts where most anthologies end. It is one of the most outstanding collections of its kind available today.
The torso in the bed ... the thing in the chimney ... the beast from the sea and the burial alive ... the cloven hoof-print and the midnight caller ... the skull in the basket and the ghost in the rain . . . the lurking terror in the madhouse ... the wizard's ghost and the gouged-out eyes — these are some of the terrifying tales in the anthology.
Ghost story enthusiasts will be delighted to see a story by M. R. James making its first appearance in book form for over forty years. There are also stories from famous writers, like H. R. Wakefield and Charles Birkin, tales from neglected authors such as E. H. Visiak, A. C. Benson and Frederick Cowles, new unpublished chillers from L. T. C. Rolt, Joy Burnett and A. Erskine Ellis, and unexpected terrors from H. Rider Haggard and Valery Bryusov. Includes .... lots and lots of Proper horror! Like: Charles Birkin - "The Happy Dancers": Russia on the eve of the revolution. Serge, son of the Grand Duke, marries Louba, a peasant girl whose father is Boris Kerensky, a political agitator. The Duke has recently had him whipped and has threatened him with Siberia if he continues to stir up dissent. Come 1917 and Serge is a soldier, while Louba has blossomed. As 'Nikakova' she is a celebrated cabaret performer at "The Happy Dancers". She is also pregnant with the couples' first child and is awaiting Serges return from duty to break the good news to him. The only blot on the landscape is that her father has discovered her whereabouts and his mob are fighting with the infantry on the outskirts of town. Their arrival at "The Happy Dancers" coincides with Serge's ... Frederick Cowles- Eyes For The Blind: "I shuddered. Who had not heard of John Dangerfield? This monster had been convicted of the most vile crimes. His mania was to attack unsuspecting persons, often children, and gouge out their eyes. He had blinded five people in this manner ...." Sydney Jackson, a young medium, holds a seance at a haunted castle in Ecclefain where a black magician had been blinded and killed in 1694 after a grave-robbing, eye-plucking spree. Guess who he becomes possessed by? L. A. Lewis - The Meerschaum Pipe: The narrator moves into 'Heroney', the former country residence of Harper who butchered several women and buried them in the surrounding fields. Or rather, parts of them: "The most revolting feature of the murders was his habit of severing the head and limbs and leaving them on the scene for identification, while carrying away the trunk for addition to a sort of museum ..." In between visits to the Vicarage and brushing up on his golf handicap, the new squire takes to smoking Harper's best pipe. The discovery of a gypsy girl's mutilated remains in Arningham Woods signals a new reign of terror ... L. T. C. Rolt - The Shouting: Rolt had a brilliant collection of industrial age ghost stories, Sleep No More, published in 1948 after which he wrote nothing else in the field until Hugh Lamb tempted him out of retirement. The Shouting is an atmospheric piece set in Devon. Edward confesses the reason why he's terrified of woods. It seems that he has witnessed a diabolical ritual by feral children to summon their God - the Green Man. John Gawsworth - How It Happened: Surrey: Stanley Barton's handsome elder brother and Marjery are in love. They meet every evening beneath the fir tree. Stanley isn't happy about this at all because he also loves Marjery. She makes the mistake of laughing at him when his brother scorns "he ought to have more pride than to hang about where he isn't wanted." Soon he isn't the only one hanging about, as Stanley explains from the asylum.
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Post by dem on Sept 20, 2011 18:07:40 GMT
H. Rider Haggard - Only a Dream: Arguably the most despised last line in horror & supernatural literature and HRH uses it as a title? this has to be a dud of The Old English Baron proportions, right? Wrong! During my tragic 'asterisk marking system' phase i awarded it a coveted red star denoting very good (two reds indicated a feat of literary excellence, double blue was 'good', one blue 'worth the effort' while a sad little tick could mean anything from 'deadly dull', 'didn't understand a damn word of it', or 'give this pretentious git/ gitess a miss until they come to their senses') and i am happy that, revisiting it a decade-plus on, i remain of that opinion!
It's the eve of Frank and Annie's wedding. For Frank, it's his second marriage, having lost his first wife to a nervous disease three years ago. The dead bride - never once in the text can he bring himself to say her name - was aware of his blossoming relationship with her friend and even endorsed it. All she asked of him was "Don't forget me!", and it's clear he still can't.
Night falls. Frank can't sleep. A storm kicks up something terrible. In the churchyard, a figure climbs from a grave clutching a very special present for the happy couple ....
it might not sound all that (not from that godawful synopsis, at any rate) but Rider-Haggard's morbid ménage à trois scores for a dreamlike, portentous atmosphere reminiscent of H. B. Marriott-Watson's super creepy The Devil Of The Marsh. It is also included in Peter Haining's Mammoth Book Of Modern Ghost Stories (Haining gives the setting as Ditchingham, Norfolk, 1905), but i've stuck it here to see if we can lure some Hugh fans from their tombs. Only a Dream makes me eager for a rematch with Rider-Haggard's voodoo laced novella, Black Heart And White, which i also seem to have liked plenty backed then.
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Post by dem on Sept 21, 2011 17:05:20 GMT
Spoilers a go-go ... A. E. Ellis - The Life-Buoy: A collision on the Clyde, a small motor-boat taken out by a liner. Both passengers are thrown into the river and in his panic, the man, Potherington, drowns his wife to secure a grip on the life-buoy that would easily have supported them both. Unable to forget his craven actions, he's as good as doomed from that day forth, so perhaps it is a mercy when Mrs. P - she makes for an impressive, slimy corpse -rises from the deep to pay him in kind. A. E. Ellis is among our most under-rated ghost story writers. Sure I read somewhere ( The Second Star Book of Horror?) that he'd written The Life-Buoy & Co. some decades before they were published, so maybe there are more where they came from? Robert Haining - Montage Of Death: Convinced he is going insane, twenty-five year old artist Gerald Miller commits spectacular, gory suicide in an East London flat. Immediately prior to his death he'd been working on a figure constructed from the best bits hacked from twelve waxwork dolls. Unfortunately, his creative self knows nothing of a second, darker personality given to hanging around in graveyards after dark. Robert is the late Peter Haining's younger brother. A scientist, his career doesn't leave much free time to write fiction which is the genre's loss as he's a gifted horror author. Think a morbid, Poe-enthused Tim Stout and you're almost there, though The Wall is plain weird (in a good way). M. R. James - The Experiment: More trouble at t' rectory. After the unexpected death of Squire Francis Bowles, the Rev. Hall is preparing to open the family vault when he learns that the deceased has left specific instructions that he be buried in a freshly dug grave in the churchyard - and no coffin. There is also some business as to how his corpse should be arranged, but that's for his widow and stepson to see to. A mystery. The Squire was known to be fabulously wealthy, so his widow is irked that no-one seems to know where the money is. It transpires that he had long been in contact with an Oxford scholar and collector of black magic 'recipes' who knows a thing or two about Necromancy. Bowles was keen to participate in a macabre experiment to test his theories: if capable, once his surviving family have dug him up, he will reveal the means by which they can get their grasping hands on his considerable fortune. Unfortunately for them, the two had been too busy poisoning him to pay scrupulous attention to detail, and ... A real surprise, this, as for all the scholarly touches, it's not entirely dissimilar in tone to E.C. comic strip, though i guess you could say the same of Lost Hearts (that is, if you didn't want your head kicked in by a Ro Pardoe hit squad you could). Hugh writes that finding an uncollected MRJ story fulfilled a lifetime's ambition. I am falling in love with this collection all over again.  |
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Post by dem on Sept 22, 2011 18:09:19 GMT
Joy Burnett - "Calling Miss Marker": Beneath her veneer of respectability, Miss Marker hides a dark secret. Now it's back to torment her, stalker style. A distaff take on Thomas Burke's Johnston Looked Back? Wasn't particularly keen on the last two lines.
'E. H. Visiak' (Edward Harold Physick) - The Skeleton At The Feasti and E. H. Visiak - Medusan Madness: Skeleton ... is a brief (eight line) macabre poem, Medusan Madness is engagingly ... odd!. Visiak is visiting a friend, Evans, the inmate of a suitable grim lunatic asylum. They are served tea by a strange, striking-looking patient named Diomedia whose problem, according to Evans, is that she's completely sane. In her presence Evans is finally able to tell of the incident off the Japanese coast that drove him to madness. As he describes his encounter with Medusa, so Visiak visualises the episode in appalling clarity. Result: neither man will be leaving the asylum in the foreseeable future.
Grant Allen - Pallinghurst Barrow: Rudolph Reeve, a house-guest of the formidable Mrs. Bouverie-Barton at Pallinghurst Manor House, suffers a headache on the night of the Autumn Equinox. Prescribed cannabis by kindly Dr. Porter, a stoned Reeve somnambulates to Old Long Barrow where he encounters a ghostly tribe of savage Picts. Easily captured, he's taken to their King, a cannibal skeleton! Can he escape becoming this year's human sacrifice?
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Post by Michael Connolly on Apr 12, 2021 11:26:53 GMT
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