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Post by dem bones on Nov 1, 2008 14:36:48 GMT
Don't mess with people like us. We take our vocation very seriously, and we'd dig up and sell our granny's to get our hands on a slightly soiled copy of the elusive Partridge Family #4: The Ghost Of Graveyard Hill. Don't call it a "hobby". You call it a "hobby", you die, simple as that. We may look inconsequential, wear enormous glasses and have leather patches sewn on our sleeves, but we're evil and we mean business.
Mary E. Counselman - Hargraves Fore-Edge Book: "I'll teach you to mutilate a book! You - woman!"
Bibliophile Jonathan Hargraves, Patron Saint of Vault, isn't the least concerned that his Uncle and Guardian should leave his mansion and fortune to second wife Jessica, but how could he will his book collection to the over-sexed gold-digger? And now, true to form, she's going to auction them off and he'll never see them again! To top it all, his poor uncle's not cold in his grave and she's already chasing Jonathan around the doomed library! Well, he's seen what goes on between immoral men and loose women in some of the more exclusive volumes and it disgusts him. So he breaks her neck with a carefully aimed copy of Les Miserables.
Somehow he gets away with it. The death is recorded as accidental and now he's free to bask in the pleasures of his collection .... until Miss Tresser, his local book-dealer's glamorous assistant gets to look over his mansion and likes what she sees. What's a misogynistic psychopath to do other than what he always does in such circumstances?
Books, multiple murders and supernatural retribution. It really doesn't get much better than this.
Michael Avallone - The Man Who Thought He Was Poe: Tales Of The Frightened magazine, August 1957, reprinted in Sam Moskowitz's A Man Called Poe (Gollancz, 1970: Sphere, 1972)
Selecting a meerschaum pipe from the elegantly carved rack on his desk, he filled it with studied pomp from the large humidor squatting beside it. damn her anyway ! Blast her for owning, such a plain, coarse figure, for being unfortunately endowed with such a trite, unromantic name as Agatha. Agatha Beggs, when he had married her six years ago. Why couldn't she have been called Lenore, or Eulalie, or Ulalume - or even Helen? Poe was right, bless his fevered brow! Those were names a lover could conjure with!
Roderick Legrande permanently affects period costume, has replaced all of wife Agatha's lovely modern furniture with mouldering antiques, frittered away their money on first editions and artefacts for his Poe shrine and recites passages from The Raven around the clock. Should his meek, devoted spouse ever have the temerity to complain - well! It is the full "apology and entreatment of my forgiveness!" or else he'll make her life even more miserable!
But don't worry, girls. Even Agatha has her breaking point and dreams up a deliciously appropriate punishment for The Man Who Thought He Was Poe!
The inspiration for this story and its variants is:
Robert Bloch - The Man Who Collected Poe: As was his grandfather, Launcelot Canning is the greatest living authority on Edgar Allan Poe. He lives alone (or does he?) in a Maryland approximation of the House of Usher, surrounded by his beloved first editions, impossibly rare manuscripts and all the Poe memorabilia he and his ancestor have collected down the years. Lancelot has even starved himself to affect his hero's consumptive look. In short, he has taken his hobby way beyond the point of obsession. And hidden away from public view is his most treasured possession of all ....
Bloch other obsessive collectors include Christopher Maitland in The Skull Of The Marquis de Sade and Abraham Van Helsing (after a rare Dracula manuscript) in Undead
Kim Newman - The Man Who Collected Barker: Private detective Sally Rhodes' investigation into the disappearance of Clive Barker leads her to an obsessive book collector, Wringham, whose prize possession is a special edition of The Books Of Blood bound in human skin. It's obvious what's going on from very early on in the story but works well as both a ghastly tribute to both Barker and Robert Bloch.
A man whose taste's run to more specialist fare is schoolteacher Sam Strutt in ...
Ramsy Campbell - Cold Print: An unlikely Christmas tale, set in snowbound Brichester with our hero looking to add to his impressive library of Ultimate Press corporal punishment titles (Prefects And Fags, The Secret Life of Whackford Squeers, The Caning Master, Miss Whippe, Old Style Governess, etc). Mr. Strutt's flogging fun comes to an abrupt end when he encounters one of Cthulhu's lot masquerading as a dealer in such material.
Sometimes Bibliophiles and collectors get together. Imagine what fun they have!
Davis Grubb - The Brown Recluse: Every year the six-strong West Virginia Chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars award a beautiful Persian Slipper to the member who solves a crime for which the wrong person has been prosecuted. Much to one-legged spinster Ms. Ellen Lathrop's consternation, Charles Gribble, the town banker, local pillar of society and the only lover she ever had, has retained the award since it's inception - he must be in cahoots with Sheriff Voitle or something. Ms. Lathrop detests Gribble, or the "brown recluse" as she thinks of him after the area's most venomous spider, not least because he called her a "cripple" during their final row all those years ago. She is the district's foremost authority on Sherlock Holmes, not him! That slipper is rightfully hers and she must win it to grace her shapely right foot, and not just for a year but in perpetuary! But the only way to do that is to solve a murder - and Glory is such a trouble-free community. Then Gribble's employee Jim Smitherman is battered to death with a brick in the fog ...
Far gentler;
Brian Stableford - The Haunted Bookshop: Based on a non-fiction article Stableford contributed to Stephen Jones Dancing In The Dark (horror authors talk about their first hand experience of the "supernatural").
Stableford is working on an introduction to a new edition of C. D. Pamely's Tales Of Mystery & Terror when he's contacted by his old friend, Father Lionel Fanthorpe who has a haunting in Barry to investigate, one he can't feature on Fortean TV due to the reticence of the hauntee, Martin. Martin has been acquiring the stock of several colliery libraries, a useless haul according to Stableford as it's the massed ranks of books nobody will ever buy. The haunting is vague and far from horrific, but it's a loving celebration of Fanthorpe as an almost preternaturally tolerant, good-humoured and optimistic man who evidently believes that vigils on allegedly spook-ridden premises should begin with a decent pizza. Also includes references to Stephen Jones, Drif's Guide, a humourless girl named Penny from the Society for Psychical Research, and the aforementioned Pamely who turns up in our Gruesome Cargoes section every now and again (and Hugh Lamb uses him in one of his Star Book Of Horror volumes).
Find it in Stephen Jones & David Sutton's Dark Terrors #5 (1998)
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Jan 14, 2009 12:04:04 GMT
Anthony Boucher's "Review Copy" (featured in the 3rd Mayfair Black Magic collection) has a rather nasty, "Casting the Runes" style death by book theme.
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Post by monker on Jan 16, 2009 3:27:35 GMT
We may look inconsequential, wear enormous glasses and have leather patches sewn on our sleeves, but we're evil and we mean business... We've got it! Dem' leads a double life as Graeme Garden!  Sorry...I'll run along now...  |
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Post by carolinec on Jan 16, 2009 12:32:07 GMT
We may look inconsequential, wear enormous glasses and have leather patches sewn on our sleeves, but we're evil and we mean business... We've got it! Dem' leads a double life as Graeme Garden! So was it really you, Dem, who signed my "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" lime green plastic kazoo for me in Ilkley a couple of months ago, then? I thought it really was Graeme Garden!  |
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Post by dem bones on Jul 9, 2010 8:44:49 GMT
Hell, I've done plenty I'm not proud of, but even at my degenerate worst I always drew the line at signing anyones kazoo, lime green or otherwise. Anthony Boucher's "Review Copy" (featured in the 3rd Mayfair Black Magic collection) has a rather nasty, "Casting the Runes" style death by book theme. yeah, there are a few in that vein and as I'm struggling to come up with any bona fide 'collector' additions. Anthony Boucher – Review Copy: San Francisco. Mark Mallow, brilliant if brutal critic, destroys the reputation of occultist authority Jerome Blackland with one of his trademark molten reviews. Blackland takes it to heart and consults a Diabolist to exact revenge. Consequently Mallow receives in the post a copy of For The Blood Is The Death by Hieronymus Melancathon (Chorazin Press, New York, 1955) for his personal attention. The evil spell works and the reviewer is bloodily disposed of, but … Margaret Irwin - The Book: Mr. Corbett, a mild-mannered stockbroker, inherits his late uncle’s library. Among its contents, a hand-written Latin manuscript which, on translation, proves to be a DIY black magic manual. His career prospers even as he loses his grip, alienating his family and colleagues. As the book takes over, it demands more and more of him, to the point where it orders him to murder the baby. Robert Bloch - Undead: Carol is about to close the bookshop when the customer arrives. His card reveals him to be none other than Abraham Van Helsing, great-grandson of the famed vampire hunter, and he's inquiring after the Dracula manuscript, a hundred pages of which - outlining the King Vampire's plans for world domination - were omitted from the published version. |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jul 9, 2010 16:52:16 GMT
Off the top of my head, how about, from Mary Danby's Frighteners 2: Sydney J. Bounds - A Complete Collection: Pulp author Michael Cox is ambushed by his number one fan at the World Fantasy Convention in London and can't shake him. Jonathan Jamieson also has a morbid obsession with Egyptian burial practices .... Dem may recognise the summary as it's his that I pinched from the Frighteners 2 thread  |
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Post by dem bones on Jul 9, 2010 18:26:12 GMT
ah, but we already used Syd's story for our BFSA nominated Don't Go To The Horror Convention opus. Tsk! honestly, you fellows. I do wish you'd pay attention to my every divine utterance. |
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Post by Johnlprobert on Jul 9, 2010 21:22:30 GMT
I had no idea stories were only allowed to be used the once! After all, in the great tradition of British pulp anthos, surely certain titles should be used again and again? |
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Post by dem bones on Jul 10, 2010 7:34:13 GMT
Of course, you are entirely correct Lord P. and I can only blush profusely at my school-boyish error! Perhaps we should play it safe and go the Peter Haining route, give the story an entirely spurious alternative title and pass it off as "recently discovered"? We might even impose on Sir C. Lee to contribute an introduction as I believe there is something on the statute books which states that he must recycle his boring reminiscences of life at Eton with 'Monty' and drone about Dracula on a bi-annual basis?
None of which brings us any nearer to turning up more tales of admirable types who so want a copy of John Tigges' Slime they're prepared to kill for it. I note Mark Samuels' new collection for expensive books bears the title The Man Who Collected Machen so clearly they are out there, just waiting to be unearthed. And why am I thinking the Black Book Of Horror series all of a sudden ....
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Post by marksamuels on Jul 10, 2010 13:22:35 GMT
There's "Diminish like the Word" by Ron Weighell. It was published in the now terrifyingly-expensive-to-obtain but stupendously good Ghost Story Press collection The White Road, but I believe you may have it, Dem, in (probably also now super-rare) the G&S booklet An Empty House and Other Ghost Stories. vaultofevil.suddenlaunch3.com/index.cgi?board=small&action=display&num=1134741163Diminish Like the WordRichard Sewell's mania for books "anything from a first edition to a dog-eared paperback" has caused him to amass a collection that's engulfed his home. Despite his wife Edith's attempts to cause him to rein in the habit, he can't help himself. One day he spots a choice item in a catalogue sent to him by Myers Book Service. It's a privately printed volume called "Hymns to the Nephilim" by one Nicholas Hallam and is illustrated by an artist called Alphonsus Gaunt. These drawings of "alien abnormalities from excremental depths" explore "the limits of biological monstrosity and perversion". Jolly good, thinks Sewell: I'll be having that. And the book arrives. A few days later he gets a call from the head honcho of Myers Book Services. There's been a dreadful mistake. Some fool of an office boy put it into the catalogue by mistake, and it was already promised to another client. Money's no object and would Mr Sewell send it back? Not likely. Despite the fact it's the author himself who's after the copy, not having one of his own. And Mr Sewell then has Nicholas Hallam on his case. The notorious Nicholas Hallam, that is, for "if half the tales about Hallam were true, the standard villains of twentieth century occultism were, by comparison, so many saints of the Gnostic Church". Ooer... What follows is very much in the tradition of Monty James's "Casting the Runes" & Wakefield's "He Cometh & He Passeth by". Mark S. |
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Post by dem bones on Jul 10, 2010 17:49:21 GMT
Thank you Mark! That is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind but .... how personally depressing! Still have my copy of The Greater Arcana, but stupidly gave away An Empty House and Other Ghost Stories during previous lamentable 'v*mp*re' incarnation. Can't for the life of me fathom why, as I rated Ron Weighell, Roger Johnson and David Rowland as three of the most incredible talents to emerge from the sacred Haunted Library.
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Post by marksamuels on Jul 10, 2010 21:54:18 GMT
Yes, been there often Dem. When I think of some of the books I used to own  Oh, there's also this, from ANL Munby's The Alabaster HandHerodes RedivivusCharles Auckland shows his friend, the narrator, his impressive library and one book in particular startles. It's the fabulously rare 1545 editon of Herodes Redivivus, which details the abominable fiendishness of Gilles De Rais. Sight of it after all these years induces the narrator to recount to Auckland his experience of decades ago, when as a schoolboy he saw the self-same copy. It was upstairs in a Bristol bookshop, one run by a creepy tubby gent with pale smooth skin. This man, called Mr Race, encouraged the narrator's visits, often giving him books as little gifts in order to ensure the boy would return. On one of the visits, left alone, he did a bit of wandering and came across a vile, terrible and unknown painting by Goya "which made his 'Witches Sabbath' look like a school treat" whilst, on the mantelpiece below rested the copy of Herodes Redivivus. Unfortunately, the narrator can't have been too quick on the uptake because he not only came back to the bookshop, he ended up locked away in Race's dank and dark old cellar... But for "divine" intervention in the form of a passing clergyman things might have got unspeakably nasty indeed. For Mr Race later spent time in the Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Herodes Redivivus? It just goes to show that a little knowledge of the New Testament and a smattering of Latin just might come in handy... Otherwise... Mark S. |
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Post by Middoth on Mar 6, 2019 23:48:39 GMT
+ "Bindings Deluxe" by David H. Keller.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 7, 2019 11:29:50 GMT
Charles Black - The Collectors: ( A Taste for the Macabre , 2018). A 'Book collectors hate everyone, especially other book collectors' entry, and a must for fans of The Satyr Book of Horror Stories series. As premièred on the Lurker turbo-powered Vault Ad. Calendar for 2017. Read it here.
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Post by Swampirella on May 12, 2020 3:50:08 GMT
The Ending of the Tale - John Glasby (The Substance of A Shade - Linford Large Print edition available at archive.org)
Retired wealthy industrial magnate Philip Bransom, collector of rare and lesser-known Victorian masters of ghosts and horror stories, finds a bookshop he'd never noticed before in a little alley far away from London's main thoroughfares. It's dimly lit and the featured books on display are old and tattered. However he decides to go in and browse. A few other late-night customers are browsing; he has just found the fiction section when the shopkeeper calls him by name, asking if he's looking for anything special. Apparently the seller knows who he is, and that his particular interest is the rare works of Victor Forrest.
The small wizened bookseller, who looks about 90, invites him into a small room before relating the story of Forrest's life and death, reminding Bransom of the rumour that all of his stories are based upon real life events that happened to him. A collector of Cornish tales, unmarried and apart from occasional meetings with writers such as Dickens and Stoker, Forrest suddenly moves to Bramlington Hall, Essex where he writes his best work.
The man hands Bransom a slim volume of Forrest's last collection of ghost stories. Bransom can't believe his eyes; he had thought it had never been published. It seems there are 19 stories in it, the twentieth and final was begun but never finished before the author's death in 1897. The Hall has remained unoccupied since his death there. Bransom is immediately interested, believing that if everything in the Hall has been left as it was when Forrest died, that's where the unfinished story would be found.
The old seller insists on giving him the volume. As he offers to pay for it, he suddenly finds himself on the narrow lane outside, book in both hands. He had no memory of getting there and, of course, when he turns around, he's even more shocked to find an abandoned building where the bookshop was. He notices an old man handily nearby, who tells him there used to be a bookshop there but it closed down about 80 years ago.
Bransom falls asleep, planning to buy Bramlington and all it's contents. He has an eerie dream in which he's following a "solitary figure some distance ahead". As he reaches the summit of a low hill, he finds the figure gone, but below him is an ancient turreted house. The great door is open and he's unable to resist entering. He hears a voice welcoming him by name, saying his tale may indeed be ended. The dark figure emerges, carrying something awful in it's hands as it advanced towards him. Bransom cries out, waking himself up.
It's only 3am so he dozes off again and the dream continues. He's now in a huge room with a blazing fire in the hearth. The room is empty but he goes towards a door that's ajar. It opens as he approached; he goes along a corridor to a smaller, poorly lit room. A man is sitting at a long table, writing. Naturally it's Victor Forrest; he turns his head to Bransom who is horrified to see it's the face of a dead man which leered up at him. "Now, after all these long years, comes the ending of the tale."
The next day, after a detailed search, he finds Forrest's obituary which includes a photo of Bramlington Hall, near the village of Frampton. Naturally it's the building in his dream. Of course he quickly finds the dilapidated Hall and buys it from a surprised but no doubt happy estate agent. Before he does, they come upon the unfinished page Forrest was writing when death overtook him. Norton, the estate agent, tells him he won't be able to find any workmen from the Frampton locality to do any work to make the place habitable. It seems Bramlington has a bad reputation, and Forrest is believed to haunt the Hall and it's environs, unable to rest until his last story is finished.
After hiring workmen from London, the Hall is ready to move into a month later. Bransom starts befriending the locals, buying them drinks in the picturesque hotel bar. One old man tells Bransom of his encounter with Forrest's ghost in the wood or "driftin' across the moors." He tells Bransom to speak to Ted, the barman who looks 40 but has pure white hair.
It seems Ted was driving past the Hall last Easter when he spotted a light in the windows. He thought it strange as he knew the place was empty and had been since It seems Ted was driving past the Hall last Easter when he spotted a light in the windows. He thought it strange as he knew the place was empty and had been since before he was born. He foolishly gets out of his car & goes to the window to look. He sees a red light, and everything in the room gleaming and new. A man was sitting in a chair at a table, his back to the window, but Ted knew it was Forrest. The writer suddenly turns and looks Ted right in the eye; he had the face of a devil or madman. He gets up and seems to be about to approach the window but stops and gives the most horrible laugh poor Ted has ever heard. He seems to be pointing to the far side of the room, where there was a body hanging from one of the ceiling beams. Ted naturally rushes off to his car, drives to the hotel and drinks himself stupid. His hair was black when the evening began.
Bransom moves into the renovated Hall the next day and spends the first week going through Forrest's papers. He sleeps well. Yet one day he goes into the study, restored to it's original style, to find some papers disturbed. On his way to Frampton for more supplies. He realized all sounds have ceased after he entered the woods and that "something long-dead yet horribly alive was watching him."Next he notices a man standing by an ancient oak; he only catches glimpse of his face but it's enough to know it's Victor. Frampton is terrified after seeing "the expression of feral malice on the bearded features.". The figure quickly disappears and Bransom tries to convince himself it was a trick of the light. He obtains his supplies in the village; the shopkeeper tells him people have been seeing "him" more lately and that if he were him, he'd be very careful.
He hurries home just ahead of a thunderstorm, lighting candles as there is no electricity yet and settling down with the unfinished manuscript before the fire. The story is called The Midnight Visitor, about an old isolated house on the moors and it's evil occupant who, even after death, continues to haunt the place, waiting to wreak vengeance upon anyone who had wronged him in the past. Bransom hardly notices the thunder and lightning outside, only that the room seems to have grown darker and colder.....
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