Weinberg et al. - 100 Wild Little Weird Tales

[dem]

Every month, when the moon was full, the mariners came up out of the sea to dance upon her grave.

Doak (Hugh Rankin)

Robert Peery - When the Sea Gives Up Its Dead: (June 1929). The torment of an ancient English sea salt, "Sailor Jack," who lives as a hermit on the South Carolina marshland. Fifty years ago, while serving as mate on the bark Greta, Jack smuggled aboard a beautiful native girl he'd sworn to return to her home at Derwood. Captain Beideman - curse the dirty lying dog's restless bones!- bested Jack in a fight and stole the girl, Naika, from him to satisfy his depraved lusts. Within days she died of a tropical fever. The disease proved highly contageous. The same night they buried her on the marshes near Pineville, the Greta sank with all hands save for Jack who somehow swam to shore.

Jack relates all this to a nature researcher who begs shelter from a storm. The worst of it is, every full moon at nine o'clock, the drunken drowned return from the sea to dance a jig on Naika's grave.

Loretta Burrough - A Visitor from Far Away: (March 1935). Galaville, Connecticut. Mrs. Bowen, forty-five, cannot bear to spend a night alone at Laurel House, legacy of the Occurrence twenty years ago when husband Roger - he of the "reptilian head" and spider-like hands - murdered her lover and, but for the brave intervention of the chauffeur, would have throttled her, too. That Mr. Bowen is serving life in the state pen is of no comfort to his wife, who recalls his threat to get even with her. Now a snow blizzard prevents the servants from reaching the house, she will just have to brave it through until morning. Even as Mrs. Bowen takes a telephone call from the jail, offering condolences on the loss of Roger, who died suddenly this afternoon, she hears footsteps on stair ...

Richard H. Hart - Rendezvous: (Jan. 1936). Dr. Dumant's mercy dash through Cajun country to administer to an ailing patient looks doomed until a one-legged ferryman intervenes and offers him passage across the Mississippi. Out of civility, Dumant offers the fellow a nip from his hip flask, whereupon the Good Samaritan inexplicably throws a strop. Dumont duly saves the life of Marcel Favret, before learning the ferryman's identity. It was Engineer Leblanc's fondness for whiskey led to the loss of a hundred lives, including his own, when his steamboat capsized twenty-five years ago. There have been no ferry crossings from that point of the river since.

A Visitor from Far Away, Rendevouz and Helen M. Reid's Under The Eaves also appear in 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories.

[dem]

E. Hoffmann Price - The Stranger from Kurdistan: (July, 1925). A traveller from afar attends a Black Mass at the Tower of Semaxii. As the defrocked priest desecrates the sacred host and the seventy-seven revellers go wild, the gatecrasher angrily calls a halt to the farcical proceedings. What do the fools think they are playing at? Everybody is a critic, but this one is worth listening to.

Apparently, this story caused a few raised eyebrows in its day due to its sympathetic portrayal of Lucifer.

H. P. Lovecraft - The Doom That Came To Sarnath: (June 1938. Originally 1920). The creatures of Ib, A strange, green frog-faced race descended from the moon, are massacred by the ruling Sarnath people who make off with a sacred statue of Bokruc, the great water lizard. The statue vanishes from the temple that very same night, and the High Priest writes a warning on the altar - DOOM - as he drops down dead.

Several centuries later, with Sarnath at its zenith, a festival is held to commemorate the destruction of the Ibs. This seriously belated celebration proves premature.

[dem]

An innocent, lovely creation of art is was, with murderous hate in its pink marble heart

Boris Dolgov

James Causey - The Statue : (January 1943). "I put my soul into that statue ... I laboured to produce a masterpiece, a work of art that would endure ... could I finish the Dawn Child? It is hard to reach for the sun when one's hands are - ugly."

When Deroults is unable to repay the exorbitant interest on a loan, Jerome Winters, Hammondsville's answer to W*nga, helps himself to our starving artist's work in progress in lieu of the debt. Deroults begs Winters to at least allow him to carve the hands, but the usurper spitefully refuses.

Once Jerome has left him, Deroults walks out in front of a truck, but his ghost diligently sets to completing the Dawn Child, whose benign smile has now morphed into a hateful leer ....

Malcolm Kenneth Murchie - Thinker: (Sept. 1949). Difficult patient for Dr. Larabie Warren, head of psych at Metropolitan State Hospital. The ambulance crew just delivered a nameless "dirty old lunatic" who was scaring children on the street. The Thinker - who seems to knows things he can't possibly know - claims to be Warren's creator, everyone else's, too. With death imminent, he's looking to transfer his accursed 'gift' to one who likes to think of himself as God.

It is not improbable that author had an unpleasant run in with a surgeon prior to writing this story.

[dem]

Carrington's mother appeared to him in a dream - and then the very hand of death fell upon him.

Uncredited illustration

Henry S. Whitehead - Across The Gulf. (Weird Tales, May, 1926). Alan Carrington's late mother always promised that one day she would pay him a visit from the grave. For years he lived in fear of her doing so. Now aged forty-four, convalescing in the Adirondacks on his doctor's advice, the moment he dreaded for so long arrives when he's laid low by a poisonous mushroom. Rev. Whitehead wrote much great stuff, but its a little unfortunate that, due to the running order being settled alphabetically, 100 Wild Weird Tales opens with the gentlest, least wild, weird or horrific of ghost stories. They can't all be The Chadbourne Episode.

Snowden T. Herrick - The Hidden Talent Of Artist Bates: (Sept. 1948) The most unusual, unheard of and deadly kind of strange talent. John Haslet Bates, a Michaelangelo in his own mind, earns his crust sketching landscapes for an advertising agency. His manager, Clifton Oglethorpe, doesn't trust him with supplying life figures, as the great artist has a tendency to base them on himself, and Mr. Bates has an extraordinarily distracting Adam's apple. Bates discovers his hidden talent by accident. Bawled out by his boss, he erases a tower from his illustration of the Empire State Building. That same moment the original comes crumbling down for real. He experiments by sketching and deleting other constructions. They all fall down. There is voodoo in Mr. Bates pencil! If it works on buildings, why wouldn't it work on people?

Hidden Talent ... was the first of two Herrick sales to Weird Tales, the second - not included in 100 Wicked Little Weird Tales - being the mercifully brief;

Open Season On The — Bottoms. (Weird Tales, Jan 1949). What was the outré malady which afflicted the kin-by-name who largely had neither claim to fame nor special attention from a cosmic joker? New Yorkers whose surnames end in '—bottom' are mysteriously vanishing at the rate of one a week. A star reporter on the Morning Bulletin investigates the disappearances as a matter of urgency - as well he might. He could be next.

Boris Dolgov, Open Season On The - Bottoms

[dem]

Much better than yesterday's selections.

M. R. Bardine - The Harbor Of Ghosts: (June 1936). A strange weird tale of the sea, and the ghosts of ships that had floundered.

Adrift in uncharted waters, the lone survivor of a shipwreck is haunted by the veiled figure of his childhood dream. The boat is drawn inside an icebound cavern where ships go to die. Among these dead vessel, The Golden Girl, as captained by his grandfather, which vanished in 1888. The ancient one is still sat in the cabin, frozen stiff over a log book. Each night the living man witnesses spectral scenes of butchery and murder knowing that soon, he too will join the ranks of the restless dead.

Clark Ashton Smith - The Disinterment of Venus: (July 1934). Strange yearnings beset a brotherhood of monks when the statue of a pagan goddess was dug up in the abbey garden.

Averoigne, 1550. Much excitement within the monastery of Perigon when Brother Hughes excavates a marble statue of a nude woman while tending the turnip and carrot patch. The erotic image exerts an impious influence over the brethren, two of whom are driven to acts of debauchery at a local hostelry. Bent on destruction, Brother Louis, who alone proves immune to the idol's lascivious charms, sneaks a hammer from the tool-shed. Venus is well prepared for the assault.

Only three to go.

[ripper]

Along with '100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories', this is one that I am planning to obtain.

[dem]

Oct 21, 2016 8:12:25 GMT ripper said:

Along with '100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories', this is one that I am planning to obtain.

I'm confident you'll enjoy both, Rip.

E. W. Tomlinson- Cat’s Cradle : (Jan. 1952). Mother and daughter practice black sorcery in basement of their remote home in the valley. A hapless traveller catches the younger woman in the act of suckling her familiar. The stuffed crocodile gives him stares. E. W. Tomlinson's solitary contribution to WT is all a bit underwhelming.

Bram Stoker - A Gipsy Prophecy: (Feb. 1937). Joshua Considine and friend, Dr. Burleigh, pay a visit to the gipsy camp pitched up on the outskirts of town. Their mission: to take the piss out of the "fortune-telling" gipsy queen who can only be a fraud. This lady is certainly a formidable character and her prophecy is nothing if not dramatic. Considine must leave Mary, his beloved wife, immediately, as he is destined to kill her! "Go away from her, now while love is fresh and your heart is free from wicked intent." All things considered, Joshua reckons he's had his money's worth.

Dr. Burleigh urges the young hot-head not to tell Mary, but Joshua can't help himself. Mary, being a WOMAN, faints dead away and, over following days, grows increasingly neurotic. Why, such annoying behaviour is enough to make even the most easy-going chap lose his patience.

Really good story - up to the point where author kills it stone dead with the most lamentable of cop outs.

Henry S. Whitehead - No Eye-Witnesses : (Aug. 1932). A young woodsman is attacked by a huge timber wolf. After the bloodiest struggle the plucky hunter scores a direct hit with a bullet between the creature's eyes. Imagine his horror when the dead wolf reverts to human form!

Everard Simon, author, witnessed the entire singular incident and fled the forest in panic. Should he report it to the police? On discovering that the dead man is Jerry 'The Wolf' Goraffsky, a vicious criminal with a peculiar reputation, he concludes it is better to let sleeping dogs lie.

[helrunar]

This is a brilliant thread. I wonder if any of these books were ever issued in paperback? A cloth edition would be bulky for a bus trip, alas.

cheers, H.

[Swampirella]

Jan 11, 2019 16:04:05 GMT helrunar said:

This is a brilliant thread. I wonder if any of these books were ever issued in paperback? A cloth edition would be bulky for a bus trip, alas.

cheers, H.

Many seem to be hardback only, but Am*z*n US has paperbacks of this one starting at just over $5 incl. shipping...

[helrunar]

Thanks again, Swampi! You are a treasure!

H.

[dem]

There's a paperback edition of 100 Creepy Little Creatures, too, not sure about the rest.