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Post by dem on Jan 29, 2009 20:10:00 GMT
Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg & Jenny-Lynn Azarian (eds) - The Lighthouse Horrors: Tales of Adventure, Suspense, and the Supernatural (Down East Books, Oct 1993)  Chris Van Dusen
Rudyard Kipling - The Disturber of Traffic (Atlantic Monthly Sep, 1891)
Anon. - The Lighthouse Keeper’s Secret
T. Jenkins Hains - The End of the Reef (The Century, Aug 1905)
John Fleming Wilson - Ghost Island Light (Harper’s Weekly, Feb. 25th 1911)
Henry Van Dyke - Messengers at the Window (The American Magazine, Oct 1912)
Wilbur Daniel Steele - The Woman at Seven Brothers (Harper’s, Dec 1917)
Robert W. Sneddon - On the Isle of Blue Men (Ghost Stories, Apr 1927)
Charles Francis Coe - Madhouse Light (Munsey’s, July 1929)
George G. Toudouze - Three Skeleton Key (Esquire, Jan 1937)
Ray Bradbury - The Fog Horn (aka The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) (The Saturday Evening Post, Jun 23 1951)
Robert Bloch & Edgar Allan Poe - The Light-House (Fantastic, Jan/Feb 1953)
Jack Vance - When the Five Moons Rise (Cosmos SF&F, March 1954)
Jaime Sandaval (Dan J. Marlowe) - All the Way Home (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Sept 1965)
Hugh B. Cave - The Door Below (Whispers III, 1981)
Joe R. Lansdale - By the Hair of the Head (Shadows #6, 1983)
Delia Sherman - Land’s End (F&SF, Mar 1991)
Edward Wellen - The Driven SnowBlurb: Storm-swept, remote light stations — and the isolated souls who man the beacons — are the perfect inspiration for tales of suspense and horror. Here are 17 of the best, from such writers as Rudyard Kipling, Robert Bloch, Jack Vance, and Ray Bradbury. The stories range from the Great Lakes to South America to Britain, from the past century to the present, and the horrors they portray are sometimes purely psychological, sometimes terrifyingly real.
Lighthouse Horrors is a book to save for a fogbound or rain-dark night. Once you’ve read these pages, you’ll never look at a lighthouse in quite the same way again.Still waiting for my saviour
storms tear me limb from limb
my fingers feel like seaweed
I'm so far out I'm too far in ....That's Peter Hammill, cheering us up as usual with the first few lines of Van Der Graaf Generator's mighty A Plague Of Lighthouse-Keepers ( Pawn Hearts, 1973). I was trying to find some info on George G. Toudouze' Three Skeleton Key when I came across this unlikely anthology. I don't have a copy but the fact that it's top heavy with relatively obscure (?) pre-WWII stories bodes well. Anyway. Here's some notes on groovy lighthouse horror stories, some of them featured in the Waugh book, others to be found elsewhere. I'm sure there are plenty more - J. S. Fletcher's The Lighthouse On Shivering Sands for one - so if you can suggest some titles ..... George G. Toudouze - Three Skeleton Key: The keepers at Three Skeleton Key lighthouse off the coast of Guiana endure a nightmare when the derelict Cornelius de Witt crashes on the rocks and an army of starving rats scramble ashore. Thousands of heads rose, felt the wind and we were scented, seen! To them, we were fresh meat, after possible weeks of starving. There came a scream, composed of innumerable screams, sharper than the howl of a saw attacking a bar of iron, and in the one motion, every rat leaped to attack the tower!. There's no chance of the the men escaping into to sea because the corpses of the many drowned rodents have attracted sharks, so all they can do is pray as the rats eat their way through wood and brick to get at them ..... You can read this one at Scary For Kids but if you've a fondness for old time horror Radio broadcasts pay a visit to Escape-Suspense blog, "Vintage Radio Broadcasts of Dangerous Adventure, Urban Legends, and Tales of Fear and Trembling", where you can download an mp3's of the 1950 broadcast featuring Vincent Price. Frank Belknap Long - The Man With A Thousand Legs: ( Weird Tales, August 1927). Arthur St. Armand, youthful mad scientist, experiments with etheric vibrations (whatever they are) transforms him into a blood-drinking half man - half squid trailing streams of noxious golden slime. The many tentacled monstrosity commits several gruesome murders - notably those of a child and a heroic diver he takes apart piece by piece - before heading out to sea. The part that is still Armand pleads with a lighthouse keeper for help but, rejected, takes out a cutter, killing a hundred men in the process before meeting its doom. Utterly bonkers and a true horror pulp classic. Villiers De L'Isle Adam - The Desire To Be A Man:: The actor Chaudval has reached the age of fifty and now the grey hairs are sprouting he's decided to retire from the stage and take up the post of lighthouse-keeper. But first, he wants to feel remorse. All great men feel remorse and all are haunted by the ghosts of their victims. So he sets a massive conflagration in which a hundred innocents are burnt to death and twice that number ruined. But it doesn't work. Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Bloch - The Lighthouse:: A *ahem* posthumous collaboration, Bloch aping Poe's style to complete one of his unfinished stories which he does surprisingly well, the end result being a weird sea vampire shocker. Told in diary form, The Lighthouse details the decline of an unnamed misanthrope into madness and despair after he wills a beautiful woman from the ocean floor to be his companion.
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Post by severance on Jan 29, 2009 20:59:50 GMT
Down East Books followed that up with Lighthouse Hauntings in 2002. Edited by Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg Contents: The Nephews - Rick Hautala It Must Burn - Jane Lindskold The Tourist Who Wasn't There - Brendan DuBois Ghost of a Chance - Ed Gorman Dread Inlet - Billie Sue Mosiman The Light in Whale Cove - Kristine Kathryn Rusch And the Sea Shall Claim Them - Matt Costello and A.J. Matthews Until the Butterflies - Janet Berliner A Beacon Shall I Shine - Yvonne Navarro Gone - Nina Kiriki Hoffman Lux et Veritas - Thomas F. Monteleone Captain Jim's Drunken Dream - Gary A. Braunbeck |
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Post by dem on Feb 2, 2009 11:10:24 GMT
Cover of Peter Hammill's lyric book, Killers, Angels, Refugees, (Charisma, 1974). Note Lighthouse!Ta for the info, Sev. I hope you don't mind that I scanned in the cover? I dug out Whispers III for Hugh B. Cave - The Door Below: Alan Coppard, a sleazy journalist on the Star News doesn't believe Danny Marshall's unlikely account of the facts surrounding the disappearance of Roy Bolke, his wife, Elaine, and his mistress, hot young Spanish model Maria Oviedo. According to Danny, something terrible happened to the trio at the abandoned Dolphinback lighthouse, with Maria being the only one to escape with her life. Coppard reckons the story is just a smokescreen to conceal Elaine's murder, and together with sexy girlfriend Wendy, he explores the gloomy lighthouse, hoping to uncover some incriminating evidence. He thinks he's got lucky when he turns up a cassette recording of conversations between the parties involved .... but the contents are far from comforting. Meanwhile, the squelchy footsteps on the stairs draw closer and closer .... Vaguely related to the Cthulhu Mythos but mercifully, the references are not overdone and don't get in the way of Cave's enjoyable 'the sea monsters are coming!' romp. Maybe my mind's playing tricks on me, but am sure there's a really obvious, even famous lighthouse horror that Waugh & Co. have overlooked. Rats. Why am I thinking rats?
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Feb 12, 2009 15:51:16 GMT
I didn't realise there were quite so many lighthouse-set horrors when I wrote my own lighthouse story for t'wireless. All I knew was that I was trying not to make it too similar to the classic Doctor Who story "The Horror of Fang Rock". According to some friends, I failed.
Lighthouses also put me in mind of one of Conan Doyle's cheeky mentions of untold Sherlock Holmes adventures, in this case the story of "the politician, the lighthouse and the trained cormorant." Now, if that doesn't sound like a set-up for a dirty joke, I don't know what does.
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Post by ghostwriter2109 on Feb 12, 2009 17:07:33 GMT
Willie Meikle's book Island Life is lighthouse based...and if I knew how to do it, I'd post the cover...it's on his website www.williammeikle.com/ |
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Post by David A. Riley on Feb 12, 2009 18:14:15 GMT
How's this:  And, by the way, that really is one hell of an atmospheric cover. David |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Feb 12, 2009 22:09:11 GMT
yes, it's a goodie David. Helps having a lighthouse - always been a favourite theme, lots of potential. Need to write one about a lighthouse...but of course they're all unmanned nowadays...or are they?
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Post by dem on Feb 18, 2009 13:41:13 GMT
Thanks for posting the Island Life cover, gents. Another quick burst of vintage lighthouse lunacy ....  Page Trotter, Ghost Stories, Aug. 1929. : "I hate 'em! I hate 'em all! I'd like to see 'em dead. I'd love to see 'em torn apart on the rocks, night after night. I could bathe my hands in their blood, night after night." Roy Johnson, 22, is the assistant to keeper 'Old Fedderson' at the Seven Brothers Lighthouse. Fedderson's wife is far younger than he, and clearly despises the isolation his job forces her to endure. She comes on to Ray and advises him that she will leave Fedderson next shore leave, and it seems to the young man that she's deliberately trying to distract him from his duty to bring about a shipping disaster on the rocks. When, eventually, the couple head back for dry land, they are lost in a storm and drown. Now alone at the Lighthouse, Roy's problems go into overdrive when he receives a visit from a beautiful woman with seaweed strewn in her hair .... J. S. Fletcher - The Lighthouse On Shivering Sands: ( A Century Of Thrillers: From Poe To Arlen). Head keeper Graburn has to somehow prevent his assistant, Jezreel Cornish, from murdering new arrival Chaddock until the next supply boat docks in a month's time. Chaddock's treachery led to Mrs. Cornish dying penniless in the workhouse and the children thrown into the street. Now all the man cares about is revenge, so it's likely a case of when and how Cornish decides to kill him, not if. Eventually, he settles upon a protracted drowning. Can Graburn save the scoundrel's hash? |
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Post by franklinmarsh on Feb 18, 2009 14:47:31 GMT
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Post by dem on Feb 19, 2009 10:33:37 GMT
..... perhaps, but it sure worked for me! Franklin Marsh - The Lighthouse: Worulde End lighthouse off the north coast of Scotland. With his two young colleagues Mel and Slick confined to the sick bay, this is not a good time for head keeper Cornelius to black out, then awaken with an axe in his hand and no memory of what he's been up to ...... Is it alright if I say it, FM? Oh go on! Please! I'm going to anyway!  "Nautical - but nice!" |
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Post by paulfinch on Nov 18, 2009 9:09:35 GMT
Has anyone considered THE DARKHOUSE KEEPER by Rosemary Timperley? Surely that's one of the great lighthouse horror stories.
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Post by dem on Nov 19, 2009 18:33:25 GMT
Thanks for putting me onto it! ashamed to say, must have skipped this when I read Cold Fear as it's not a story you forget! It took me a bit to get into Rosemary Timperley. For all her Pan Horror credentials, she was hardly your one stop shop for gratuitous sex 'n violence and The Darkhouse Keeper was never going to break with that tradition, which likely accounts for me putting off reading it 'til now. More fool me. Rosemary Timperley - The Darkhouse Keeper: Lighthouse keeper Frank Valley is the last to find out that his wife Joan is having an affair with the womanising, vaguely saturnine Captain Markalon. Frank's job offers him the perfect opportunity to gain revenge - all he has to do is wait for the next time Markalon's boat is at sea during a storm, drug his companions' tea, turn off the light and descend the staircase ... |
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Post by monker on Nov 27, 2009 15:13:47 GMT
The Foghorn by Gertrude Atherton is another that at least features a lighthouse.
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doctor3
Crab On The Rampage
Posts: 35 
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Post by doctor3 on Mar 3, 2013 17:08:03 GMT
Still waiting for my saviour
storms tear me limb from limb
my fingers feel like seaweed
I'm so far out I'm too far in ....
Stories about killer fish and rabid lemmings?
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Post by dem on Mar 5, 2015 11:28:27 GMT
Kaaron Warren - The Lighthouse Keepers’ Club: The young men of a small Australian community each spend a fortnight guarding the undying damned as a rite of passage. A truly ghastly lighthouse horror from ( Exotic Gothic 4)
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