Great Tales of Terror & the Supernatural

[Johnlprobert]

Great Tales of Terror & the Supernatural ed Herbert A. Wise & Phyllis Fraser (Phyllis Cerf Wagner in later editions)
(Hammond, Hammond & Co., 1949)

Tales of Terror

Honore de Balzac - La Grande Breteche
Edgar Allan Poe - The Black Cat
Edgar Allan Poe - The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
Wilkie Collins - A Terribly Strange Bed
Ambrose Bierce - The Boarded Window
Thomas Hardy - The Three Strangers
W. W. Jacobs - The Interruption
H. G. Wells - Pollock and the Porroh Man
H.G. Wells - The Sea Raiders
Saki - Sredni Vashtar
Alexander Woollcott - Moonlight Sonata
Conrad Aiken - Silent Snow, Secret Snow
Dorothy L. Sayers - Suspicion
Richard Connell - The Most Dangerous Game
Carl Stephenson - Leiningen versus the Ants
Michael Arlen - The Gentleman from America
William Faulkner - A Rose for Emily
Ernest Hemingway - The Killers
John Collier - Back for Christmas
Geoffrey Household - Taboo

Tales of the Supernatural

Edward Bulwer-Lytton - The Haunted and the Haunters
Nathaniel Hawthorne - Rappaccini's Daughter
Charles Collins & Charles Dickens - The Trial for Murder
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - Green Tea
Fitz-James O'Brien - What Was It?
Henry James - Sir Edmund Orme
Guy de Maupassant - The Horla
Guy de Maupassant - Was It a Dream?
F. Marion Crawford - The Screaming Skull
O. Henry - The Furnished Room
M. R. James - Casting the Runes
M.R. James - Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad
Edith Wharton - Afterward
W. W. Jacobs - The Monkey's Paw
Arthur Machen - The Great God Pan
Robert Hichens - How Love Came to Professor Guildea
Rudyard Kipling - The Return of Imray
Rudyard Kipling - "They"
Edward Lucas White - Lukundoo
E. F. Benson - Caterpillars
E. F. Benson - Mrs. Amworth
Algernon Blackwood - Ancient Sorceries
Algernon Blackwood - Confession
Saki - The Open Window
Oliver Onions - The Beckoning Fair One
Walter de la Mare - Out of the Deep
A. E. Coppard - Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
E. M. Forster - The Celestial Omnibus
Richard Middleton - The Ghost Ship
Karen Blixen - The Sailor-Boy's Tale
H. P. Lovecraft - The Rats in the Walls
H. P. Lovecraft - The Dunwich Horror

I couldn't find this elsewhere on the board so I've copied Paisleycravat's listing from Vault Mk1.

This has to be the best anthology of classic horror I've ever come across and as I slowly work my way through its 1000 plus pages, I thought I'd wax lyrical on some of the more memorable stories. The nice new hardcover edition I bought about five years ago can still be picked up for around £12-00 and I'd say it's well worth the investment.

[Johnlprobert]

And away we go!

Honore de Balzac - La Grande Breteche One of the things I love about anthos like these is discovering an author I would never have gone within a million miles of otherwise and finding I want to read more of his stuff. The classic Confessions of a Window Cleaner scenario is here made truly horrific as a cuckolded husband surprises his wife and her paramour who, as one would under the circumstances (ahem), hides in the wardrobe. Hubby's request for bricks and cement aftre his wife swears on the Bible that there's nobody in the cupboard means everything swiftly takes a delciously nasty turn. A cracker to open the volume with & I can recommend Balzac's Penguin collection as containing some similarly cruel vignettes

Thomas Hardy - The Three Strangers. Not exactly a horror story, more a 'Tale of the Unexpected', I must say I was expecting something rather bleaker from Mr Hardy. Three strange men pop into a Wessex Inn during a night when a vicious criminal has escaped, but are they who they claim to be? You can see the ending coming but fair play to Mr Hardy this was probably very fresh when he wrote it.

H. G. Wells - Pollock and the Porroh Man - I read this years ago in Pan No.2 and I'd forgotten how bloody good it is. Pollock is your typical unpleasant great white hunter who ends up being haunted by the severed head of the Porroh man in question, all the way back to London. Great last line

H.G. Wells - The Sea Raiders - Another one for our 'When Animal Attack!' thread. Old HG does Guy N Smith with a great little tale about man-eating octopuses that doesn't skimp on the grue. It's not in Tartarus' collection of HG Wells' horror stories either. Shame on them.

Saki - Sredni Vashtar - Another 'When Animals Attack'! Sredni Vashtar is the name given to the weasal our young protagonist decides to worship & which he keeps locked in the garden shed. When his evil guardian decides to get rid of it it's time for a bit of nastiness...

[Johnlprobert]

Alexander Woollcott - Moonlight Sonata. Another one that got pinched for the Pan series. Is that shadowy shape that appears in the darkness of the strange bedroom and appears to be performing crochet the ghost of an old woman? Or is it something far worse? Hooray! It's something far worse!

Conrad Aiken - Silent Snow, Secret Snow. Now here's a classic, which I first encountered as one of the good episodes of Rod Serling's 'Night Gallery' TV series. A sensitive description of a 12 year old boy's descent into schizophrenia, with a wonderful description of the symptoms of depersonaliation and internalisation that can occur.

[dem]

A book with 'Great' in the title that merits it. I've scanned in a cover, though the best i could do was this Book Club edition from 1982.

Hamlyn (of all publishers) ransacked this for two similarly generous, inspired collections, Best Ghost Stories (1977) and Best Horror Stories (1984), and you can see why. That Thomas Hardy's a bit of a dark horse. I wasn't exactly knocked out by The Three Strangers, but if you haven't already, try his Barbara Of The House Of Grebe which is horrible! His The Withered Arm is bloody miserable too. Christopher Fowler has mentioned his admiration for Silent Snow, Secret Snow a story i've always found incredibly depressing (i mean that in a good way) and Woolcott's outrageous three pager is worthy of Charles Birkin doing his ghoulish uncle bit. As to La Grande Breteche: only on Vault would you find a reference to Balzac and Confessions Of A Window Cleaner in the same sentence!

Thanks for reviving this from the grave, Lord P.

[Johnlprobert]

Dorothy L. Sayers - Suspicion. There's a murderer on the loose who wheedles her way into families as the cook (!) and our central character isn't feeling too well. Should he avoid her sausage rolls or should he be looking elsewhere for the cause? Not really horror I must say.

Richard Connell - The Most Dangerous Game - Back on track with this cracking Boy's Own yarn that was filmed in 1932 as The Hounds of Zaroff (but released in the UK under the story's title). What's the last thing you want when you find yourself stranded on an isolated island? Yup -for that island to be owned by the loony Count Zaroff who considers himself the ultimate hunter because he hunts...well, you can guess can't you?

Carl Stephenson - Leiningen versus the Ants. More 'When Animals Attack! Also pinched for Pan 2 this is another cracking yarn of a man's man against, well, millions of fucking ants. Action packed, tense and worth a few minutes of anyone's time.

[Johnlprobert]

Michael Arlen - The Gentleman from America. Never heard of this guy before but here's a little gem of cruelty that had me chuckling at one almost Pythonesque scene. Can our hero spend the night alone in a haunted house? With a candle and no matches? And a book of scary children's stories? Well yes...kind of.

William Faulkner - A Rose for Emily. Also featured in the Pan series. Won't say much about this other than the ending is a cracker, and told in such an understated way that the true horror keeps growing on you well after finishing the tale.

Ernest Hemingway - The Killers. More not-really-horror. Two hired guns are out to get poor old Ole and torture the staff at a coffee shop to find out where he might be.

John Collier - Back for Christmas. This was a Tale of the Unexpected and uses that old moral - if you're going to bury your wife under the floorboards check she hasn't arranged for you to have a wine cellar built for you as a birthday surprise!

Geoffrey Household - Taboo. Someone or something is killing and eating people in a remote European village. Is it a werewolf? Seeing as we haven't reached the supernatural section of the book yet that's a bit of a giveaway so hooray! It must be cannibalism!

[mattofthespurs]

I'm in the middle of reading this one too.

This book and "The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural" are probably my favourite two anthologies.

[Johnlprobert]

I've popped back to this book for a bit .

Edward Bulwer-Lytton - The Haunted and the Haunters. I've said enough about this elsewhere but I've read it three times now & I still love it & can't understand why his Lordship comes in for such stick

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Rappaccini's Daughter. On the other hand I read this & I can hardly remember a thing about it! Rather than read it again to remind me I'll wait until I tackle the Tartarus Press edition of his stories

Charles Collins & Charles Dickens - The Trial for Murder. Here's an odd one, written by a relative of Wilkie Collins and then 'substantially revised' (ie made a lot better probably) by Charles Dickens. It's still not that much cop - a juror sees the ghost of a murdered man trying to influence the courtroom decisions at his murderer's trial

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - Green Tea. Just read this again & I like it all the more. The intial description of the evil monkey demon - twin points of light in the corner of a darkened carriage - is just superb and the scene where the vicar describes it leaping onto the Bible during his sermon to prevent him from being able to read the text is just great. It's probably better that LeFanu wasn't too explicit about what 'blasphemies' the monkey was uttering in his ear, and the downbeat ending is excellent. The 'scientific' endpieces could have been dispensed with, though

[Johnlprobert]

Henry James - Sir Edmund Orme. I've read very little Henry James & so I'm wondering if this is typical of his output - a LOT of social niceties punctuated by a couple of ghostly appearances by the title character, who is haunting the mother of our narrator's intended (so he hopes) because she jilted him at the last moment many years ago & so he did himself in. Not in the least bit scary or atmospheric, I was actually reminded of some of old Ron Chetwynd-Hayes' less successful attempts at 'funny' ghost stories with the ghost causing the old lady to spill tea/faint etc. I've read that this has plenty of Freudian undertones which I suppose it might but it all felt a bit dry to me.

[Craig Herbertson]

Jun 28, 2010 19:15:11 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Henry James - Sir Edmund Orme. I've read very little Henry James & so I'm wondering if this is typical of his output - a LOT of social niceties punctuated by a couple of ghostly appearances by the title character, who is haunting the mother of our narrator's intended (so he hopes) because she jilted him at the last moment many years ago & so he did himself in. Not in the least bit scary or atmospheric, I was actually reminded of some of old Ron Chetwynd-Hayes' less successful attempts at 'funny' ghost stories with the ghost causing the old lady to spill tea/faint etc. I've read that this has plenty of Freudian undertones which I suppose it might but it all felt a bit dry to me.

Yes, I think that's why we frequent this board. In various guest rooms, overnight stays, bus journeys and waiting rooms where I have had really absolutely nothing to read I've ended up trying to labour my way through Jane Austin, Hardy, Solzhenitsyn, Miller. I wouldn't deny for a second that some literati authors and their works are really good - I'm a big fan of Tolstoy and Joyce as examples, but for the most part these classics are middle class fuck stories with a few stabs at the complexities of the human condition.

The worst of them all is 'Moby Dick'. If you are the type that must finish the novel you start, never never never start this book. I've read The Decline and Fall, Grote's encyclopedic History of Greece, War and Peace, several editions of Arabian nights in unabridged editions. I like long and worthy tomes but never never never go near Moby Dick. Never. I still regret the wasted hours... If I meet Herman Melville in hell I will punch him on the nose as they make me read his work for eternity.

I can cope with James. The Turn of the Screw is a well constructed story and the inquisitorial subtext is masterly- The Preparatory Torture , the Ordinary Torture and so. It's well thought through. However coping and admiring is a bit different from enjoying. A whole collection? Think I'd leave it.

I should add that I wouldn't apply that final judgment to this collection which looks ideal for that long train journey into the night

[Johnlprobert]

Jun 29, 2010 9:20:48 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

Yes, I think that's why we frequent this board. In various guest rooms, overnight stays, bus journeys and waiting rooms where I have had really absolutely nothing to read I've ended up trying to labour my way through Jane Austin, Hardy, Solzhenitsyn, Miller. I wouldn't deny for a second that some literati authors and their works are really good - I'm a big fan of Tolstoy and Joyce as examples, but for the most part these classics are middle class fuck stories with a few stabs at the complexities of the human condition.

The worst of them all is 'Moby Dick'. If you are the type that must finish the novel you start, never never never start this book. I've read The Decline and Fall, Grote's encyclopedic History of Greece, War and Peace, several editions of Arabian nights in unabridged editions. I like long and worthy tomes but never never never go near Moby Dick. Never. I still regret the wasted hours... If I meet Herman Melville in hell I will punch him on the nose as they make me read his work for eternity.

I can cope with James. The Turn of the Screw is a well constructed story and the inquisitorial subtext is masterly- The Preparatory Torture , the Ordinary Torture and so. It's well thought through. However coping and admiring is a bit different from enjoying. A whole collection? Think I'd leave it.

I should add that I wouldn't apply that final judgment to this collection which looks ideal for that long train journey into the night

I frequent this board because I would never have got round to reading 90% of this stuff if it hadn't been for them being recommended (or just even mentioned!) here. Add in the fact that pretty much everything on here you can find in second hand shops for a few quid and it really is literary horror heaven.

And then there are comments like Craig's above that really make my day and make me realise I'm among such like-minded individuals it's (almost) scary . I raise my glass to you Vault of Evil!

[ramseycampbell]

Sept 9, 2009 20:05:11 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Michael Arlen - The Gentleman from America. Never heard of this guy before but here's a little gem of cruelty that had me chuckling at one almost Pythonesque scene. Can our hero spend the night alone in a haunted house? With a candle and no matches? And a book of scary children's stories? Well yes...kind of.

It's essentially a retelling of "A Watcher by the Dead", is it not? Similarly, Arlen's novel Hell! Said the Duchess owes a good deal to Machen. I think Arlen was something of an imitator, though he did create the Falcon character played in films by George Sanders.

[Johnlprobert]

Jun 29, 2010 10:46:48 GMT ramseycampbell said:

Sept 9, 2009 20:05:11 GMT Johnlprobert said:

Michael Arlen - The Gentleman from America. Never heard of this guy before but here's a little gem of cruelty that had me chuckling at one almost Pythonesque scene. Can our hero spend the night alone in a haunted house? With a candle and no matches? And a book of scary children's stories? Well yes...kind of.

It's essentially a retelling of "A Watcher by the Dead", is it not? Similarly, Arlen's novel Hell! Said the Duchess owes a good deal to Machen. I think Arlen was something of an imitator, though he did create the Falcon character played in films by George Sanders.

Interestingly I read two Bierce collections last year - the Wordsworth and the Tartarus, both of which contain that story so I probably read it twice but it obviously didn't make such an impression on me as this 'version' of the story did!

Oh, and Hell! Said the Duchess is a great title, by the way.

[Johnlprobert]

Fitz-James O'Brien - What Was It? O'Brien was a contemporary of LeFanu's. He also has an amiable writing style and he'd be a good candidate for a Wordsworth collection. I've read this story before I think in Joshi's American Supernatural Tales from Penguin. Apparently it's the first tale to feature an invisible monster, and the way the characters in this story deal with it is admirably scientific - they tie it up and cover it with plaster to find out what it looks like, which isn't pleasant at all.

Guy de Maupassant - Was It a Dream? This was called 'The Dead Girl' when I reviewed it on the De Maupassant thread. A cracking little story with a brutally cynical punchline for the romantically inclined.

F. Marion Crawford - The Screaming Skull. Captain Braddock is haunted by screaming in his quiet little Cornish cottage, the one he inherited form his cousin Dr Luke, who may or may not have killed his wife, whose skull the screaming may or may not be coming from. This is a tale of madness (or is it?) that's pretty well done, especially the bit where the skull allegedly comes knocking at the door to be let in, which could be unintentionally hilarious but Crawford is skilled enough that I didn't find it funny at all. And the ending is great, in an Italian horror movie kind of way (anyone who's seen Lamberto Bava's Macabre will know what I mean!)

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jun 29, 2010 9:20:48 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

The worst of them all is 'Moby Dick'.

Well, you have to be interested in the history of whaling to enjoy it. Or drunk.