Kurt Singer - I Can't Sleep At Night

[dem]

Kurt Singer (ed.) - I Can't Sleep At Night (Corgi, 1966)

Josh Kirby

Ray Bradbury - The Watchers (Weird Tales, May, 1945)
Carroll John Daly - Outside Of Time (Weird Tales, Jan. 1950)
Margaret St. Clair - The Family (Weird Tales, Jan. 1950)
Emil Petaja - The Skydrift (Weird Tales, Nov. 1949)
William Tenn - Mistress Sary (Weird Tales, May, 1947)
Ray Bradbury - The Dead Man (Weird Tales, July, 1945)
August Derleth - The Lost Day (Weird Tales, May, 1945
Robert Bloch - The Man Who Cried Wolf! (Weird Tales, May, 1945)
Mary Elizabeth Counselman - The Smiling Face (Weird Tales, Jan. 1950)
Charles King - Welcome Home! (Weird Tales, May, 1945)
Arthur J. Burks - These Debts Are Yours (Weird Tales, Nov. 1949)
P. Schuyler Miller - Ship-In-A-Bottle (Weird Tales, January, 1945)
Helen W. Kasson - Please Go Away And Let Me Sleep (Weird Tales, Mar. 1945)

One of several Singer collections derived entirely (or thereabouts) from post-war issues of Weird Tales. They're patchy affairs to say the least, but I Can't Sleep At Night is one of the more consistent, or so it seems to this taste void.

Ray Bradbury - The Watchers: William Tinsley, master of kitchenware, exhausts his considerable personal fortune and that of his shareholders on fly sprays and all manner of bug repellents as he wages war on THEM, the insect nation, global spy network of THE EVIL ONES. On the insistence of Steve, his increasingly worried secretary, and Susan Miller, sexy psychiatrist, Tinsley agrees to an eight week room-share in a final bid to break him of his obsession. It works, in as much that he finally realises there is no creepy crawlie conspiracy versus mankind, but the truth is more hideous still. I love when Bradbury does heads down, no nonsense, mouldering corpse horror and this is one of his very best.

Mary E. Couselman - The Smiling Face: The deep Brazilian jungle had swallowed up the woman he loved and the man he hated - the crippled explorer could only wait. A terrific Carry On Up The Jungle romp, i'd go so far as to say it is worthy of Harry E. Turner in Love Bites mode. Sir Cecil Harbin, the famous English archaeologist, and his beautiful young American wife Diana, spend their Honeymoon in the Brazilian jungle in search of the Lost City of Matto Grosso. Sir Cecil, laid up after breaking three ribs in a confrontation with a boa constrictor, is already suspicious of his bride. What is she doing with an old fossil like him? Did she only marry him for his fame? Why is she forever laughing and joking with Mario - curse the insolent half-breed swine! - their dashingly handsome tour guide?

When the local witch-doctor confirms that the couple have set off together in a canoe, Sir Cedric commands his tribesmen to retrieve "the smiling face" and do what the Hell they will with Mario. In the chief of the Urubu's - "the vulture people" to their many enemies - he certainly has the right man for the job .....

Boris Dolgov

Margaret St. Clair - The Family: ...flooded by an emotion, even more poignant because he could not be sure if it were anguish or bliss. David brings home his latest flame to meet the rest of the Vichek family. She really is the most charming, polite young woman, so unlike last year's model, the wretched Gunning girl, who screamed the moment they led her down to the Satanic altar in the basement.

August Derleth - The Lost Day: Jasper Camberveigh, entomologist, has no recollection of why sleazy Soho book-dealer Anima should have loaned him a Grimoire bound in human skin as he has no interest in Black Magic. Come to think of it, he has no recollection of the previous day whatsoever. A news item in The Daily Telegraph concerning the brutal murder of a fellow bibliophile, coupled with the blood-stains on his mackintosh confirm his terrible suspicions. Anima has worked a spell to oust him from his body and used it to commit the crime. What will happen if Camberveigh burns the Grimoire?

more to follow ...

[dem]

Robert Bloch - The Man Who Cried Wolf!: If you only get your hands on one Singer anthology, then chances are it will include Bloch's tale of a boy-girl-loup garou love triangle. Ghosts & Ghouls, Fevre Dream, Star Bumper Book Of Horror, The Second Target Book of Horror .... for all i know, he probably found cause to accommodate it in Göering - A Biography.

P. Schuyler Miller - Ship-In-A-Bottle: A pop-up curiosity shop along the lines of Temptations Ltd. The proprietor, a huge sailor with a scarred neck, doesn't set any cash price on his stock. If they want to go home with a particular item, the customer must play him at chess for it. The narrator, who first visited the shop with his father thirty years ago, wonders what would happen if you lose? The crew of the bottled ship provide the answer when their glass prison is smashed to shards.

Helen W. Kasson - Please Go Away And Let Me Sleep: An emergency indignation meeting in the Collins family vault. The dead folk are furious at having their promised eternal rest disturbed every Sunday by young Ambie Collins and his accursed three-hour mourning marathons. He's haunting them, so why not return the compliment? A sub-plot sees Ambie forced to choose between his fellow psychic, luscious Lulu, the soda pop gal at the drug store, and frosty wife Charlotte. As also revived by Sam Moskowitz for Leo Marguiles' The Ghoul Keepers.

[cw67q]

Mar 22, 2012 20:01:24 GMT dem said:

Mary E. Couselman - The Smiling Face: The deep Brazilian jungle had swallowed up the woman he loved and the man he hated - the crippled explorer could only wait. A terrific Carry On Up The Jungle romp, i'd go so far as to say it is worthy of Harry E. Turner in Love Bites mode. Sir Cecil Harbin, the famous English archaeologist, and his beautiful young American wife Diana, spend their Honeymoon in the Brazilian jungle in search of the Lost City of Matto Grosso. Sir Cecil, laid up after breaking three ribs in a confrontation with a boa constrictor, is already suspicious of his bride. What is she doing with an old fossil like him? Did she only marry him for his fame? Why is she forever laughing and joking with Mario - curse the insolent half-breed swine! - their dashingly handsome tour guide?

When the local witch-doctor confirms that the couple have set off together in a canoe, Sir Cedric commands his tribesmen to retrieve "the smiling face" and do what the Hell they will with Mario. In the chief of the Urubu's - "the vulture people" to their many enemies - he certainly has the right man for the job .....

I rememberposting about this one on another news group some years back when I was reading Ms Councilman's Arkham House collection. A quick google pulled up the following:

> "... a gloriously OTT pulp about an
expedition looking for a Lost South American City (there must be
hardly any room left for the jungle, nary a "green belt" cutting
through the endless swathes of lost conurbation). I have to say a bit
more about this one: The older leader of the expedition (which doubles
as a honeymoon with his beautiful, much younger wife) is laid up after
an attack by a constrictor and suffering from jealous fantasies
featuring his wife and the guide. Two moments stick out for me (not
counting the shock ending):

'Swat that damned tarantula over my head, will you ? It's going to
drop on me.' Says the bed-ridden explorer. Top that for nonchalance,
eh ?

& on the same page:

'...Sir Cedric drifted into a troubled slumber - and a recurrent dream
in which his lovely young wife was lost in a tangle of undergrowth and
looped lianas. She kept calling him, calling him and laughing,
somewhere just ahead, just out of reach. And he slashed away
helplessly at the green wall of jungle with a facao, a cutlass-like
machete, which kept turning to flimsy rubber in his hand...'

Hmm, let's... No, on 2nd thoughts, let's not. <



I seem to have forgotten the shock ending in the intervening years, but the floppy machete dream still makes me smile

- Chris

[dem]

glad you got a kick from it, chris!

Kurt Singer (ed.) – The House in the Valley (Sphere, 1970)

August Derleth – The House in the Valley (Weird Tales, July 1953)
Allison V. Harding – Death Went That Way (Weird Tales, Nov. 1943)
Manly Wade Wellman – Dream-Dust from Mars (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Feb. 1938)
Sidney Austen – The Frightened Planet (Amazing Stories, Oct. 1948)
Ray Bradbury – The Handler (Weird Tales, January 1947)
Seabury Quinn - Repayment (Weird Tales, January 1943)
Frank Belknap Long – We, the Invisible (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Feb. 1938)

There's more of an SF bias to this one, but it includes another of Bradbury's gleefully sick moments in The Handler, the story of put-upon undertaker Mr. Benedict who really shouldn't play with dead things. Derleth's title story is a Cthulhu Mythos novella which i'm not up for tackling any time soon (been enjoying his trad horror stories so much of late and i'm worried The House In The Valley will break the spell. The most pleasant surprise, particularly for fans of Manly Wade Wellman, is:

Seabury Quinn - Repayment: (Weird Tales, January 1943) The snakes resent wrong charming - the old man chattered - they will repay thee for this insult!.

Dirk Vanlderstein, pampered Long Island buffoon, comes to grief in Algeirs when he ruins the performance of a skull-faced cobra charmer who, for all that he's dressed in filthy rags, happens to be one of the feared hereditary North African necromancers, the Benni Senoussi. That night Mr. Vanlderstein wakes to find a slithery visitor under the sheets.

As related to Quinn by his friend Gans Field ("he speaks Arab like a native - of Dixie Land, which he is") as these two and Mrs Fran Field (Frances Garfield) dine at Café des Citoyens on East 57th Street - we hope they enjoyed their steamed snails! That none of them feel the least sympathy for the deceased Hooray Henry is another plus point.

Thanks to Nosferatu

[dem]

This pair are arguably "one of the world's most famous anthologisers" best for Weird Tales exhumations.

Kurt Singer – Ghost Omnibus (Nel-Four Square, Nov 1967)

Robert Bloch – The Shadow From The Steeple (Weird Tales, September 1950)
Allison V. Harding – The House Beyond Midnight (Weird Tales, January, 1947)
August Derleth – Mrs Lannisfree (Weird Tales, Nov 1945)
Harold Lawlor – What Beckoning Ghost? (Weird Tales, Weird Tales, July 1948)
Paul Ernst – A Witches Curse (Weird Tales, September, 1938)
Emil Petaja – The Insistent Ghost (Weird Tales, Sept 1950)
August Derleth & Marc Schorer – They Shall Rise (Weird Tales, April 1936)
Arlton Eadie – The Wolf-Girl Of Josselin (Weird Tales, August, 1938)

Blurb
'I always have my revenge. Make the most of your freedom, because you have only until tomorrow night. . .'
Here is a book of threatening evil. A book charting the half-world of reality and illusion where nameless spectres and phantoms live. Kurt Singer, one of the world's most famous anthologisers of the macabre, presents here the cream of ghost stories. His contri­butors are household names, like Robert Bloch of ' Psycho ' fame, August Derleth and Harold Lawlor. Their tales have not appeared in paperback before.

Will you still be here tomorrow night after dipping into this compendium of the unknown ?

Kurt Singer – 2nd Ghost Omnibus (Nel-Four Square, Dec 1967)

“Be warned – This book could be your passport to a coffin.”

Seabury Quinn – Lords Of The Ghostlands (Weird Tales, March, 1945)
Robert Bloch – The Druidic Doom (Weird Tales, April, 1936)
A. W. Calder – Song Of Death (Weird Tales, June, 1938)
Thorp McClusky – The Graveyard Horror (Weird Tales, March, 1941)
Gardner F. Fox – Rain, Rain, Go away (Weird Tales, May 1946)
Gans T. Field (Manly Wade Wellman) – The Half-Haunted (Weird Tales, September, 1941)
Stephen Grendon (August Derleth) – The Blue Spectacles (Weird Tales, July 1949)
Seabury Quinn – Catspaws (Weird Tales, July, 1946)

Blurb
"There came a drumming in the earth and in the silvery moonlight clutching hands rose from the pit to grasp him by his ankles and drag him to his doom. . .'
Read these stories at your own risk. Kurt Singer, whose first Ghost: Omnibus was such a success, has returned to comb the files for more great stories of the macabre.
His selections have never appeared in paperback before and came from such distinguished horror writers as Robert Bloch, Seabury Quinn and Stephen Grendon.

Will you collect your shroud now - or later ?

[dem]

Here's a thing: i've had this book since the 'nineties, never once noticed that it once belonged to a former vault regular and sometime Filthy Creations contributor ....

Right, Mr. Singer's Ghost Omnibus, 1 & 2

Thorp McClusky's The Graveyard Horror is a commendably gung-ho vampire romp. Mr 'Grendon's The Blue Spectacles sees a randy divorce lawyer lured back through time to stand trial for a rape committed in a previous incarnation. Harold Lawlor's What Beckoning Ghost? provided the basis for the movie and R. Chetwynd-Hayes' novelisation of Dominique.

Seabury Quinn – Lords Of The Ghostlands : Dr. Otis Woeltjin and several of his team are bitten by tomb-spiders and die horribly while excavating the cursed vault of Nefrah-Kemmah, Priestess of Isis, in the Libyan desert. The Priestess, who was crushed under stones for breaking her vow of chastity, somehow composing a palimpsest as her ribs gave way, the gist of which gives notice that, in the far distant future and with the assistance of strange men, she will return.

When Nefrah-Kemmah's mummified remains are transferred to Harrisonville Museum, the curator's daughter, Vella Taylor, is possessed by the Priestess, not out of any malice, but because her own brain has been removed and she requires the loan of one to relate her dreadful history. With De Grandin's aid, the Priestess is avenged, and the sanctimonious elders who condemned and tortured her to death are shamed back to the Ghostlands. Vella is fun as the living embodiment of 'forties retro flapper girl chic, and there's another respectful nod to Manly Wade Wellman - as he prepares his protective circle prior to summoning the dark council, De Grandin calls on John Thurstone, "swearing poisonous improbable French oaths" when informed that the playboy phantom fighter is away on a case - but Lords Of Ghostlands is not exactly the high watermark of the series, and certainly nothing to trouble Suicide Chapel).

A. W. Calder – Song Of Death: Trumpeter Charles Corliss and his orchestra début a song written by a young singer named Alwa on their popular radio show. At the end of her dynamic vocal, Alwa stumbles at the mic stand, drops down dead. The band agree never again to perform the-song-with-no-name, but the-song-with-no-name has other ideas. During the next live show, Charlie has to shove his tongue up his sax to prevent belting out those deadly minor keys, and it becomes glaringly apparent that Alwa's vampire melody is another Gloomy Sunday, dealing death to musician and appreciative radio listener alike. The studio shuts down and Charlie disbands the orchestra as "life would mean only an endless cringing from this song." Am sure we've all been there.



Gans T. Field (Manly Wade Wellman) – The Half-Haunted: The fourth and, i think, final Judge John Pursuivant adventure until he showed up three decades later to do battle with a centuries dead Hollywood actress in Glory. Coley's Mill at Scott's meadows, New Jersey, is haunted by the ghost of a psychotic Hessian mercenary who fought on the side of the Brits during the War of Independence, slaughtering soldiers, women and children alike. Eventually the Coley women lured him to the Mill on the promise of hanky panky, stabbed him and walled up his remains, but his evil spirit lived on. Mrs. Coley died of fright, her daughter committed suicide by jumping through an upstairs window and several more deaths have been attributed to the butcher's ghost since the place fell into disrepair.

Cut to present day and Alvin Scope, recently retired, has bought the property, demolished the mill and built a house on the site, but the haunting persists. Pursuivant volunteers to perform an exorcism for the benefit of brave Mrs. Colby and her daughter whose souls are enslaved to the mad butcher. A brief pause for Wellman to pay a reciprocal courtesy to De Grandin and Dr. Trowbridge with whom the Judge has recently spent Christmas, and the deadly battle between the living and the cold, clammy, hunchbacked dead can begin!

[weirdmonger]

Mar 24, 2012 15:26:14 GMT dem said:

Here's a thing: i've had this book since the 'nineties, never once noticed that it once belonged to a former vault regular and sometime Filthy Creations contributor ....

Thanks. I'll point it out to him.
des

[dem]

Thanx des. please give him my regards. it's been a long time, but i'm pretty sure it came from the Fantasy Centre (RIP). even so, there could only have been 150 "members" when mr. brain was a regular, so what are the chances of a book belonging to member A surviving over thirty years to wind up with member B? Also got a copy of the first BFS Winter Chills from the FC, and that one came with its own bonus bookmark - a postcard from 'Glenn' in the USA addressed to former Sounds cartoonist and sometime Fall sleeve artist Savage Pencil.

[redbrain]

Crumbs! Thank you for posting that, Demonik. I've culled my library several times, and it's good to know where one of my old books has landed.

I notice that the "J" of "Jeffery" is written in a mock Germanic way -- an affectation from the 60s, about which I now feel a little embarrassed. There is also (below my name) the monogram with which I marked my books in the first half of the 1970s. At that time, I kept a list of my books (why???) and marked each with number.

A few years ago, I bought a book (Weinbaum's "Far Below") from Coldtonnage, and was much surprised to find that it contained my monogram. I'd bought the book new, sold it, then re-bought the same copy. A very queer business, and one with which I most certainly didn't make a profit.

[redbrain]

I also once owned Kurt Singer's "The House in the Valley", and his "Second Ghost Omnibus". Wouldn't it be queer if your copies of those turned out to be formerly mine?

[Craig Herbertson]

Mar 25, 2012 12:47:25 GMT redbrain said:

Crumbs! Thank you for posting that, Demonik. I've culled my library several times, and it's good to know where one of my old books has landed.

I notice that the "J" of "Jeffery" is written in a mock Germanic way -- an affectation from the 60s, about which I now feel a little embarrassed. There is also (below my name) the monogram with which I marked my books in the first half of the 1970s. At that time, I kept a list of my books (why???) and marked each with number.

A few years ago, I bought a book (Weinbaum's "Far Below") from Coldtonnage, and was much surprised to find that it contained my monogram. I'd bought the book new, sold it, then re-bought the same copy. A very queer business, and one with which I most certainly didn't make a profit.

I did the same myself k - worse I sold them to Mike Don of dreamberry wine and bought my own books back from Mike a few years later. They basically got posted to Mike waited a year and came back to me.

[dem]

Mar 25, 2012 12:50:51 GMT redbrain said:

I also once owned Kurt Singer's "The House in the Valley", and his "Second Ghost Omnibus". Wouldn't it be queer if your copies of those turned out to be formerly mine?

I'm afraid neither of them bear your distinctive decoration, mr brain. it's really odd that i didn't put two and two together until now with regard to your signature in I Can't Sleep At Night . I guess it's no huge coincidence that one of us would find another's' old paperbacks in a place like the Fantasy Centre - it would be really amazing to turn one up in a charity shop, given their despicable policy of pulping just about everything pre-2010 unless it has a celeb's name - or the dread Jeffrey Archer - on the cover. Still, nice to hear from you!

Another from Ghost Omnibus:

Stephen Grendon - Mrs. Lannisfree: Agency worker Jack agrees to take a job in the remote woodlands of Maine as companion to convalescent Roger Lannisfree. Myra, Lannisfree's younger, super-glamorous wife, will be joining them once she's completed her novel - or at least, that's what Jack is told. In the event, his host is telling the truth despite himself. Each morning they wake to find wet footprints on the cabin floor - sea-water despite their being miles from the ocean - until finally the lovely lady shows up in person. How comes she's soaked through when it's not raining ...?

[redbrain]

Mar 25, 2012 15:44:06 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

Mar 25, 2012 12:47:25 GMT redbrain said:

A few years ago, I bought a book (Weinbaum's "Far Below") from Coldtonnage, and was much surprised to find that it contained my monogram. I'd bought the book new, sold it, then re-bought the same copy. A very queer business, and one with which I most certainly didn't make a profit.

I did the same myself k - worse I sold them to Mike Don of dreamberry wine and bought my own books back from Mike a few years later. They basically got posted to Mike waited a year and came back to me.

Well, at least I didn't buy my book back from the person to whom I sold it. The book presumably passed through several hands whilst it was out of my care.

[redbrain]

It's a funny thing about "I Can't Sleep at Night". While the book was in my possession, I certainly read all of the stories. Yet, reading your summaries of them in 2012, not a single story seems in the least bit familiar.

It must have been a long time ago that I read it -- but I still recall, fairly clearly, quite a few stories I read in the 1960s. I first read the first Pan Book of Horror Stories, for instance, around 1962 -- and several of the stories remain with me.

I'm inclined to think that "I Can't Sleep at Night" was far from a top class anthology... not as good as (say) "Kurt Singer's Horror Omnibus" (the one with a wolf on the cover of the Panther edition).

[pulphack]

ah, having gone down the front page in order, now i see why you're back and that makes my question redundant.

still, hope you'll stick around.