Charles Lloyd (ed) - Terrors!

[jamesdoig]

Not sure if this one's been done.


Another dust jacket from Facsimile Dust Jackets: www.facsimiledustjackets.com

Charles Lloyd (ed), Terrors!

Contents
Charles Lloyd, The Terror on Tobit
Daphne and Anne are holidaying in the Scilly Islands and decide to spend a night on deserted Tobit island, much to the shock and horror of the locals, there being numerous cases of sightseers disappearing without trace. Naturally, the girls won’t be swayed. Jean, one of the local boys, has taken a fancy to one of the sweet young things and tags along with them, parking himself a discrete distance away. During the night Daphne, frightened by a strange whistling noise, goes in search of him and finds a pool of slime next to his camp fire. Hearing Anne scream, she rushes back only to find another pool of slime where Anne had been sleeping. Off to the asylum with Daphne. Seems to be some species of giant flesh-eating sea slug.

Guy Preston, Thirty
Not a bad ghost story in which an antiques dealer is haunted by a certain person counting out his thirty pieces of silver.

Francis H. Sibson, The Westerdale’s Tow
Nautical horror where a greedy captain tows a derelict ship back to shore for the scrap metal. Unfortunately for him, the derelict is home to an awful species of flesh eating insect from New Guinea.

Andre de Lorde, Waxworks
Young Parisian takes a wager that he can’t spend the night of a nasty storm in a waxworks. He just about makes it.

Phyllis Stone, The Man With the Flayed Face
Young woman’s car breaks down during a storm and she seeks shelter at the home of a man whose head is swathed in bandages. He’s a nice chap who suffered horrific injuries during the war. By good fortune the woman’s brother is an expert plastic surgeon. As there is no photograph of the afflicted man, a photograph of his dead twin brother is used as a model. All goes well, except that the man’s dead brother happened to be a student of the occult…

Ursula Gwynne, The Muffler
Sad and pointless story about a man on death row who has strangled his crippled son.

Margery Lawrence, The Terror on Stranger Island
Adventurers investigate Stranger Island, where numerous people have disappeared without trace. They find that the culprit is a monster-sized cross between a scorpion, crab and spider.

Pamela James, Blue-Black Hair
Beautiful young woman tries to prove an ancient family curse has no basis in fact. Silly girl…

John Ratho, Arabella Goes North
Nice conte cruel that someone should resurrect – eccentric, aristocratic Arabella finds herself on a train to Edinburgh without Sister to help her. The other passengers are mean to her, including the young girl she shares a carriage with. Unfortunately for the girl, Arabella is as stark raving mad as you can get.

Phyllis Stone, Spider’s Web
Bizarre story about a mother and daughter trying to con a rich artist out of his money. Mother is 47 and daughter is a 27 year old dwarf, but somehow they are able to pass themselves off as 20 years’ younger. Dwarf falls in love with artist and kills herself, mother goes mad.

Elliott O’Donnell, The Mystery of Beechcroft Farm
Woman’s aunt goes missing on her way home from London. Conventional ghost story – replete with headless ghost - made interesting because the murderer, an attractive woman who owns a nearby farm, gets away with it.

[Craig Herbertson]

'Gibbering fear' looks great on the DJ

[jamesdoig]

Oct 8, 2012 7:20:48 GMT Craig Herbertson said:

'Gibbering fear' looks great on the DJ

Yes, a lot of gibbering goes on, with various bananas being carted off to the nut house.

[dem bones]

The man with the flayed face, how the passengers of the Westerdale died, the Fear on the lonely island, and the artist who was caught in the spider's web, make their first appearance - with other grisly tales - in this volume.

Wonderful, James! The Terror On Tobit is aka My Name Is Death, though I think maybe Birkin rewrote it for the Tandem paperback. I'm almost certain that Andre de Lorde is the Andre de Lorde, a prolific playwright who contributed scores of stories to the Paris Grand Guignol of which Sir Charles was, apparently, a massive fan. Birkin later revived Guy Preston's Thirty for The Tandem Book Of Horror Stories

[jamesdoig]

Oct 8, 2012 10:09:12 GMT dem bones said:

I'm almost certain that Andre de Lorde is the Andre de Lorde, a prolific playwright who contributed scores of stories to the Paris Grand Guignol of which Sir Charles was, apparently, a massive fan.

Dead right - Birkin provides an author biog for him after the story, which he doesn't do for any of the others.

[dem bones]

Many thanks, James. Another long-held suspicion confirmed. Would love to reproduce your original post on my rancid Creeps/ Not At Night occasional WordPress blog if that's OK by you?

Included a transcript of Andre's At The Telephone on the inaugural Vault Advent Calendar, (you can still download the pdf here). And that's him in action on the cover of Gregory Pendennis's "hard to find" Black Sorcery novel, The Man Who Collected Probert!

[jamesdoig]

Oct 9, 2012 9:57:04 GMT dem bones said:

Would love to reproduce your original post on my rancid Creeps/ Not At Night occasional WordPress blog if that's OK by you?

Fine with me, Dem.

[dem bones]

Thanks for giving Gruesome Cargoes a touch of class, class, Mr. Doig.

It's such a shame Birkin didn't provide biogs of all the authors. I think he was still using mostly professionals in 1933, but when he began accepting submissions from the readers - well, most are obscure ladies and gents to say the least.

[jamesdoig]

Oct 9, 2012 22:58:29 GMT dem bones said:

Thanks for giving Gruesome Cargoes a touch of class, class, Mr. Doig.

Dunno about that, but here's the biog, hopefully readable! Also, I just realised Terrors doesn't have an exclamation mark - don't know where I got that idea.