Kurt Singer - I Can't Sleep At Night

[redbrain]

Mar 26, 2012 10:14:44 GMT pulphack said:

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.

I intend to post here from time to time, although not as often as I once did.

In general, I'm not spending a great deal of time on the Internet.

I have plans to launch my own site... maybe that'll make a difference.

[dem]

Seabury Quinn - Catspaw: The Trowbridgemobile sustains a puncture during the drive back from the Medical Society, obliging the Doctor and De Grandin to trudge disconsolately through Soldiers Park in a snow blizzard. There they meet with a distressed young woman in a torn party frock who has just been molested by a kerb-crawler. The car is still waiting, headlights blazing, so De Grandin steps forward to give the young scoundrel a lesson but too late. The boy is dead, his neck all broken, his face frozen in imbecilic terror.

De Grandin apprehends the girl. He doesn't really believe she's responsible - as Trowbridge points out, "she's a frail little thing who could no more break a man's neck than I could kick a hippopotamus's ribs in" - but her story, that the deceased's arm suddenly sprouted black fur and panther-claws, isn't going to convince a Jury. When Trowbridge reports the murder to Sergeant Costello, the much put-upon police officer replies that this is the fourth of its kind in one night! Who could be throttling all these young Harvard rich kids? Are the Thuggee cult really operational in Harrisonville yet again?

Wilfred Bailey Amberghast jr., provides the key to the mystery. During the war, he and the four dead college graduates were stationed in India where they found very little to do but sample the local culture. One night they leaned that the Bagree, or, we're told, "criminal tribes", were gathering in a local temple, so naturally they tagged along. That's where the old peasant - a lousy lot of crow-bait" according to Amberghast, offered them each a pair of the black fur panther gloves for a bargain three rupees apiece. "You like make yum-yum love to brown girl? You geeve gal little scratch with heem, and all is like you want." Unfortunately for him, the Thuggee take exception to his profiteering off the back of their secret weaponry. He's duly garrotted before he can spend the money and a young Hindu, Sookdee Singh is despatched to the States to punish the infidels.

Not the best De Grandin but an improvement on the overlong Lords Of Ghostlands, or so I reckon. Sergeant Costello has a habit of brightening things up and this time De Grandin calls on the assistance of his wise young Indian friend, Ram Chitra Das, who demonstrates how best to counter the famous rope trick.

Kurt Singer (ed.) – Tales Of The Macabre (Nel, Dec 1969)

Introduction – Kurt Singer
Foreword: The Atoms Of God – Ray Bradbury

Chester Geier – The Final Hour (Weird Tales, Jan. 1947)
Robert Bloch – Water’s Edge (Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Sept. 1956)
Seabury Quinn – Birthmark (Weird Tales, Sept. 1941)
Peter Phillips – Death’s Boquet (Weird Tales, Sept. 1948)
Rod Serling – The Odyssey Of Flight 33 (More Stories From The Twilight Zone, Bantam, 1961)
Mary E. Counselman – The Devil’s Lottery (Weird Tales, Sept. 1948)
August Derleth – Compliments Of Spectro (Weird Tales, Nov-Dec, 1941)
Stanton A. Coblentz – The Ubiquitous Professor Karr (Weird Tales, July 1949)
David Eynon – The Cuckoo Clock (Weird Tales, May 1951)

Kurt Singer (ed.) – The Day Of The Dragon & Other Tales Of Terror (Sphere, 1971)

Robert Bloch - A Question Of Etiquette: (Weird Tales, Sept. 1942)
Poul Anderson - The Star Beast: (Super Science Stories, Sept. 1950
H. H. Harmon - Secret Of The Lightening: (Fantastic Adventures, September 1949)
Arthur J. Burks - Black Harvest Of Moraine: (Weird Tales, Jan. 1950)
Guy Endore - The Day Of The Dragon: (Blue Book, June 1934)
Frank Gruber - The Thirteenth Floor: (Weird Tales, Jan. 1950)
Frederic Arnold Kummer, jr. - The Invisible Invasion: (Amazing Stories, Apr. 1939)

This, and companion volume The House in the Valley & Other Tales Of Terror (Sphere, 1971) were originally published in hardback as Tales Of Terror (W. H. Allen, 1967)

[dem]

this bunch from Tales Of The Macabre

Bloch's Water's Edge pits an ex-con versus a blonde babe in a fat suit and an army of ravenous wharf rats. There can only be hundreds of winners. Compliments Of Spectro is an amusing take on the rotten author with delusions of grandeur hunted down by his best-selling pulp creation, a gentleman vigilante who doesn't suffer plagiarists gladly. seem to have got along OK with Peter Phillips Death’s Boquet, too, even if i can make no sense of garbage commentary on same.

Mary E. Counselman - The Devil's Lottery: A variation on her wonderful The Three Marked Pennies of the previous decade. A street-peddler blows into Blankville inviting everyone to participate in his lottery. Those who provide the best answers to his three tricky philosophical questions will receive a substantial gift. He's a strange one, is this stranger. No two people who take him up on his challenge describe the same man. Mostly they're reminded of someone who has done them a bad turn. By Friday, when the lottery results are to be announced, the sinister practical joker is nowhere to be found and the once peaceful town has degenerated into a chaos of in-fighting, madness and suicide with the three unlucky winners coming off worst. "It was as though a perverted adult had crept into a children's birthday party, whispering thoughts and ideas into ears too young to hear such sophistry."

Chester Geier – The Final Hour: Countdown to midnight when Satan will arrive to claim the soul of Prof. Edward Crendon. In the seven years since he struck the bargain, Crendon has recovered from incurable illness to write his six volume masterpiece and provide for Ellen and the kids. He spends his last moments applying the final paragraphs, content that he's really put his soul into his work. Satan proves himself a gentleman, worst luck.

David Eynon – The Cuckoo Clock: Rothensburg, Bavaria. Old Wilhelm Stunde the hunchbacked village clock-maker, is commissioned by the local Baron to erect a monument to an ancestor. The resulting life-size effigy is so impressive that his delighted client visits Wilhelm at his hovel of a shop to express his gratitude. The Baron, however, arrogant swine that he is, decides that Wilhelm's profession is exceedingly boring. Clocks don't really do much. They can't kill a man, for instance. Wilhelm gormlessly assures him that they can, he has just such a piece in his shop, though he refuses to explain how it works. The Baron decides he's going to borrow the cuckoo clock for the night with or without this wretched old fool's permission , and if it doesn't murder anyone, God help Wilhelm!

Kurt Singer - Weird Tales Of The Supernatural (W. H. Allen, 1966)

Robert H. Leitfred - Seven Seconds of Eternity (Weird Tales, Sept. 1940)
Mindret Lord - The Mystery of Uncle Alfred (Weird Tales, Nov. 1941)
Eric Frank Russell - The Rhythm of the Rats (Weird Tales, July 1950)
Roger M. Thomas - The Bradley Vampire (Weird Tales, May 1951)
Isaac Asimov & James MacCreigh - Legal Rites (Weird Tales, Sept. 1950)
Robert Bloch - The Grinning Ghoul (Weird Tales, June 1936)
Seabury Quinn - And Give Us Yesterday (Weird Tales, Jan 1948)
August Derleth - The Keeper of the Key (Weird Tales, May 1951)
August Derleth - Potts' Triumph (Weird Tales, Sept. 1950)
Edmond Hamilton - Twilight of the Gods (Weird Tales, July 1948)
Frank Belknap Long - Two Face (Weird Tales, March 1950)
Maria Moravsky - Green Brothers Take Over (Weird Tales, Jan 1948)
Mildred Johnson - The Mirror (Weird Tales, Sept. 1950)
Tennessee Williams - The Vengeance of Nitocris (Weird Tales, Aug. 1928)
Robert Barbour Johnson - The Life-After-Death of Mr. Thaddeus Warde (Magazine Of Horror # 6, Nov. 1954)
Edmond Hamilton- The Valley of the Gods (Weird Tales, May 1946)
Greye La Spina - The Antimacassar (Weird Tales, May 1949)
Helen Weinbaum - The Valley Of The Undead (Weird Tales, Sept-Oct. 1940)
Robert Bloch - Mannikins Of Horror (Weird Tales, Dec. 1939)

Weird Tales Of The Supernatural is one of very few Singer anthologies i've read cover-to-cover, and that on account of it being one of only three macabre titles i ever found in the St George-in-the-East Free Library (now, sadly demolished. The scary, bug-infested Britannia Arms next door was converted into flats in 1996. Redevelopment is rubbish), the others being hardbacks of Peter Haining's The Necromancers and The Lucifer Society. i don't have a copy but, perhaps unfortunately, Singer's mania for recycling means i could possibly hack out a few lines on most of 'em.

[dem]

Relax, it's finally over, least until such times I feel inclined to get stuck into some "reviews" unless somebody else wishes to take up the challenge? if you can provide scans of the missing covers, would be mightily obliged!

Kurt Singer - Ghouls & Ghosts (W. H. Allen, 1972)

Bob Marchant

Preface - Kurt Singer

Seabury Quinn - Birthmark (Weird Tales, September 1941)
F. Marion Crawford - The Screaming Skull
Peter Phillips - Death's Boquet (Weird Tales, September 1948)
Henry James - Sir Edward Orme
Seabury Quinn - Vampire Kith And Kin (Weird Tales, May 1949)
Edmond Hamilton - The Valley Of The Assassins (Weird Tales, Nov. 1943)
Arlton Eadie - The Nameless Mummy (Weird Tales, May 1932)
Guy De Maupassant - The Horla
Robert Bloch - The Man Who Cried Wolf! (Weird Tales, May 1945)
Wilkie Collins - A Terribly Strange Bed
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch - The Seventh Man
Bram Stoker - The Judge's House
Richard Middleton - The Ghost Ship
Edith Wharton - Afterward
Seabury Quinn - Götterdämmerung (Weird Tales, May 1938)

Kurt Singer - The Satanic Omnibus (W. H. Allen, 1973)

Kurt Singer - Preface

Bassett Morgan - The Devils of Po Sung (Weird Tales, Dec 1927)
Denis Plimmer - The Green Invasion (Uncanny Tales, Apr 1942)
H. P. Lovecraft - The Shunned House (Weird Tales, October 1937)
E. Hoffmann Price - Spanish Vampire (Weird Tales, Sept 1939)
H. Warner Munn - The Werewolf of Ponkert (Weird Tales, July 1925)
Thorp McClusky - The Music from Infinity (Weird Tales, Sept 1941)
Seabury Quinn - Clair de Lune (Weird Tales, Nov 1947)
Frank Gruber - The Book of the Dead (Weird Tales, Nov 1941)
Robert Bloch - The Cheaters (Weird Tales, Nov 1947)
G. G. Pendarves - The Dark Star (Weird Tales, March 1937)
Douglas Leach - The Devil of Maniara (Short Stories, Feb 25, 1933. Weird Tales, May 1952)
Malcolm M. Ferguson - Mr. Hyde- and Seek (Weird Tales, May 1950)
Malcolm Jameson - Not According to Dante (Unknown Worlds, June 1941)
Harold Lawlor - Which's Witch? (Weird Tales, July 1952)
Len J. Moffatt & Alvin Taylor - Father's Vampire (Weird Tales, May 1952)

Ghouls & Ghosts and The Satanic Omnibus were combined as Shriek circa 1974. Thanks to James Doig for providing the cover for this undated Ure Smith edition (think there was another by an outfit called Eclipse which, according to Mike Ashley & Contento dropped one of the stories).

Finally , what appears to be the last of Singer's Weird Tales indebted collections, this oddity.

Kurt Singer They Are Possessed: Masterpieces of Exorcism (W. H. Allen, 1976)

Reverend Carl Vogl - Exorcism in a Convent
Carroll F. Michener - Six Feet of Willow-Green (Weird Tales, April 1923)
Ann Taylor - The Curse of Hamid (Kurt Singer’s Ghost Book, 1963)
Reverend Johannes Greber - Demons by the Dozen
Michael Ballantine - The Devil & Sharon Tate
Evangeline Walton - At the End of the Corridor (Weird Tales, May. 1950)
Jane Singer & Kurt Singer - The Exorcist—New York Style
Seabury Quinn - The Hand of Glory (Weird Tales, July 1933)
Stephan A. Hoeller - The Original Black Mass
Pierre Janet - Satan & Dr. Janet
D. H. Lawrence - Glad Ghosts (1926)
Carl Jacobi - Portrait in Moonlight (Weird Tales, Nov. 1947)
R. S. Lambert - The Amherst Mystery (Kurt Singer’s Ghost Book, 1963)

We also have threads of sorts for Horror Omnibus and other borrowings from Robert Lowndres' Magazine Of Horror, the rabid recyclings of the Target Book of Horror/ Box Of Horror]/ Star Bumper Book of Horrorseries' plus an attempt at a bibliography. The sensible thing would be to merge them, but that would mean editing all the links and .... who wants to be user friendly anyhow?

[andydecker]

I never realized that the Singer books did mostly Weird Tales. A few of them look really interesting.

[jamesdoig]

There was a Ure Smith companion volume to Shriek called Supernatural which I had as a kid - it has the stories in Weird Tales of the Supernatural and Tales of the Uncanny. From memory it has a nice photographic cover of a skull in a WWII helmet. It seems to have got quite scarce in recent times and I can't find it anywhere.

Mar 31, 2012 4:54:22 GMT dem said:

Ghouls & Ghosts and The Satanic Omnibus were combined as Shriek circa 1974. Thanks to James Doig for providing the cover for this undated Ure Smith edition (think there was another by an outfit called Eclipse which, according to Mike Ashley & Contento dropped one of the stories).

[dem]

Thanks for the added info, James. So this Ure Smith - did they publish much else we might have heard of?

Mar 31, 2012 9:05:20 GMT andydecker said:

I never realized that the Singer books did mostly Weird Tales. A few of them look really interesting.

Yeah, to greater or lesser degrees, all bar The Gothic Reader contain material reprinted from Weird Tales which came as quite a surprise to me too. Must admit, up 'til very recently, i considered these books as rather anaemic selections, thrown together from whatever three or four books and mags Singer happened to have on his desk at a given time, and there's possibly some truth in that. Three of only five stories from Magazine Of Horror # 31 make up for the bulk of Gothic Horror Book, for example, and certain issues of Weird Tales are hit time and again (maybe i should do one of my charts!). But they all have their moments, and Kurt has done us a service by giving home to much relatively obscure work from the less fashionable McIlwraith years. My big plan is to continue dipping in and out of these and the Brit Weird Tales editions throughout the year, provide some kind of commentary on the content, but if experience tells us anything it is that in ten minutes i'll have forgotten they ever existed.

While i'm around, in the interest of completism (?) we mustn't overlook:

Kurt Singer (ed.) - Ray Bradbury & Robert Bloch: Fever Dream & Other Fantasies (Sphere, 1970)

Robert Bloch - The Shadow From The Steeple Weird Tales, September 1950
Ray Bradbury - The Watchers Weird Tales, May 1945
Robert Bloch - The Grinning Ghoul Weird Tales, June, 1936.
Robert Bloch - Mannikins Of Horror Weird Tales, Dec, 1939
Ray Bradbury - Fever Dream Weird Tales, September 1948
Robert Bloch -The Druidic Doom Weird Tales, April 1936
Ray Bradbury - The Dead Man Weird Tales, July 1945
Robert Bloch -A Question Of Etiquette Weird Tales, September 1942
Ray Bradbury - The Handler Weird Tales, January 1947
Robert Bloch -The Man Who Cried Wolf! Weird Tales, May 1945

[dem]

Another pair from The Ghost Omnibus:

Vincent Napoli

Emil Petaja - The Insistent Ghost: Tessa Alder, dotty, 67-year old proprietoress of YE OLDE GHOSTE SHOPPE, amuses herself by inventing a new gothic romance for every customer who asks how the seaside gift store came by its name. But now it really is haunted, by her late husband, Herb, who proves as spiteful and vindictive in death as he was right up until the moment Tessa left a bottle of poison alongside his medicine. With the unwitting assistance of her lodger, Mr. Teufel, a struggling artist who has just made an extremely poor job of hanging himself, Tessa outwits the short-sighted old fool yet again, giving Mr. Teufel a helping hand over the edge in the process.

Frank Utpatel

August Derleth & Marc Schorer - They Shall Rise: "Not madness", I whispered guardedly. "Worse - sorcery. Black sorcery!"
A spate of medical lab disturbances at all points of the globe. Scores of students found dead in their dissecting rooms and no clue how they came to be that way. Connecting each incident, the arrival of a shabby elderly doctor carrying a green umbrella under his arm. Could it have anything to do with escaped lunatic Doctor Septimus Brock, committed to the Denham Asylum after his peers decided the pamphlets The Dead: How Shall We Regard Them?, A Treatise On The Horrors Of Dissection and When The Soul Has Gone Shall The Body Die? were the products of a deranged mind? Brock swore that he would conquer death, raise an army of corpses versus the living and become master of the earth! Is he about to make good on his promise?

Now the menace has reached the University of Wisconsin where narrator Velers and his friend Stan Elson are fourth year medics.

The naked dead rise from a vat of jelly, tongues are torn from mouths, and the man who saves the day is committed to the madhouse as a psychotic murderer. Bloody brilliant!

[rolnikov]

Apr 1, 2012 8:04:25 GMT dem said:

While i'm around, in the interest of completism (?) we mustn't overlook:

Kurt Singer (ed.) - Ray Bradbury & Robert Bloch: Fever Dream & Other Fantasies (Sphere, 1970)

I've got that one - always thought it odd the way it mixes two different authors, though I can't complain about the results. I don't think I have any other books that do that, except where the authors were collaborating on a series of stories (like The Collected Connoisseur), or Ace Doubles.

[monker]

Mar 31, 2012 21:51:30 GMT jamesdoig said:

There was a Ure Smith companion volume to Shriek called Supernatural which I had as a kid - it has the stories in Weird Tales of the Supernatural and Tales of the Uncanny. From memory it has a nice photographic cover of a skull in a WWII helmet. It seems to have got quite scarce in recent times and I can't find it anywhere.

Yes, I have a battered and falling to pieces copy right here. It's actually a pair of goggles and a rubber snake that the skull is wearing but lets not quibble.

[jamesdoig]

Apr 2, 2012 1:40:17 GMT monker said:

Yes, I have a battered and falling to pieces copy right here. It's actually a pair of goggles and a rubber snake that the skull is wearing but lets not quibble.

Ah, yes - accessories no self respecting skull should do without.

[Gaspard du Nord]

Apr 2, 2012 6:51:07 GMT jamesdoig said:

Apr 2, 2012 1:40:17 GMT monker said:

Yes, I have a battered and falling to pieces copy right here. It's actually a pair of goggles and a rubber snake that the skull is wearing but lets not quibble.

Ah, yes - accessories no self respecting skull should do without.

Wot? No piktcher? I know it's rather late, but I got here only a couple of days ago. So here it is, as described. The book is in fine condition, but like Monker's copy it's in danger of falling to pieces. The Aussie printers, Griffin Press, hadn't mastered paperback binding at the time it was produced, especially for the likes of a 600+ pages monster like this. Glue too brittle or something ... maybe the climate?

But the price of $1.95 made it an irresistible bargain back then, even if Singer's story picks mirrored those of Robert A. W. Lowndes' magazines of the late '60s. I suspect the pages are facsimiles of the pages of the two W. H. Allen hardbacks it reprinted, reduced to paperback size and given new folios (page numbers).

Singer did seem to favour the post-Farnsworth Wright WT for many of his anthologies, so there's nothing here in the dark or heroic fantasy vein that WT pioneered in the US pulps (e.g. with some of its Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard stories).

I'll also attach the jacket front of the 1965 W. H. Allen Kurt Singer's Ghost Omnibus. I've always wondered why Singer had to have his name on these anthologies, plus his copyright line on the reverse of the title pages. Like others, I suspect he personally didn't delve too deeply to make his story choices and there are no editorial introductions to them, let alone a book preface or even a list of acknowledgements that would have shown most of them coming from WT.

Attachments:

[dem]

Thanks, Gaspard!

Always loved the look of that guy, and was hoping somebody would post in a decent scan! Have now worked your MOH & SMS covers into their relevent threads too.

There's no question that R. A.W. L.'s name belongs on a number of the covers - at the very least, he should have been credited as technical director or similar important-sounding title - and can only assume he had some arrangement with Singer? Leo Marguiles four Weird Tales anthologies were reputedly entirely the work of Sam Moskowitz whose name is likewise noticeably absent from covers). Away from Lowndes' ... 'influence', Kurt gives a very good impersonation of somebody who grabbed the first available material came to hand, which worked out well for those of us with an interest in WT's less celebrated authors.

[dem]

Kurt Singer (ed.) - Tales From The Unknown (W. H. Allen, 1970)

Alan Burton

Introduction

Lord Lytton - The Haunted And The Haunters
Frank Stevens - Psychic Alert Saved Film Star
Princess Catherine Radziwill - Green Jewel Of Death
Amelia B. Edwards - The Phantom Coach
Pat Scholer - Ghosts Come To Hell
Mark Bartholomeusz - Wages Of Envy
Horace Leaf - I Am A Psychic Detective
Judge Marcus Kavanagh - The Man They Couldn't Hang
Clyde Clark - White Lady Of The Hohenzollerns
Jack London - The Shadow And The Flash
Kurt Singer - In The Footsteps of Svengali
Princess Marina Chavchavadze - Ghostly Steppes
Wilmon Menard - Murderous Night on Pinaki Atoll
Kurt Singer - A Publisher's Strange Experience
W. B. Seabrook - The Mountain Of Devil Worshippers
Ida Clyde Clark - Psychic Experiences Of Famous People
Washington Irving - The Spectre Bridegroom
Raymond Buckland, PH.D. - Witchcraft, the Religion
Harry Sauberli - The Truth About Voodoo

No great surprise that if we were going to overlook any of Singer's anthologies it would be one that makes even his World's Greatest Stories Of The Occult seem inspired, and at least that 'non-fiction' title had a decent cover. Half of Tales From The Unknown was recycled as The Second Star Bumper Horror Book and one of his Target Horror paperbacks (Vol III, I think). Special only in that it may be the least essential item ever mentioned on Vault.

[dem]

Tales of the Macabre?

The Vault site has received the following intriguing inquiry from Mr. Dan Bergeson.

I’m looking for a book I read in the second grade, in 1973, out of my grammar school library, here in the U.S. I thought I’d tracked it down in Kurt Singer’s “Tales of the Macabre”–I’m sure that was the anthology’s title, but I just got a (hard-to-locate, but finally found one on ebay) copy of Singer’s NEL publication, and it can’t be the one…the one I read had Keller’s story “The Thing in the Cellar” in it (as well as a really scary one near the beginning about nuns being hammered paper-thin by demons for three nights in a row.)

Is it possible that a more extensive version of Singer’s anthology was published in the U.S., with additional stories? Any familiarity with the “Tales of the Macabre” collection I’m talking about? It also had a juicy story near the end about a man who insensitively dashes a kitten’s brains out–then stupidly sits in an antique torture chair that succinctly removes ones eyes from their sockets. Momma Cat happens along at that moment and…

Sorry to be so graphic, but I can’t remember any names or titles associated with this impressive collection besides “Tales of the Macabre,” and that “The Thing in the Cellar” was included. I didn’t even have Keller’s name until a few moments ago. This is becoming a lifelong search, and any help would be appreciated!

The story about "a man who insensitively dashes a kitten’s brains out–then stupidly sits in an antique torture chair that succinctly removes ones eyes from their sockets" is most likely Bram Stoker's The Squaw, but as to one about the nuns ...?