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Post by Knygathin on Oct 25, 2012 17:26:31 GMT
Sorry, I couldn't help it.
I wouldn't put it that drastic, but, well . . . perhaps something along in that direction, or vaguely related to it.
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Post by Knygathin on Oct 25, 2012 17:32:58 GMT
I was hideously precocious, I'm afraid - reading before I was two. Hang on, I'll patch in a bit of bio... "...sitting on the sofa in the front room of that small house in suburban Liverpool while my mother read aloud to me from a Rupert Bear annual. These weren’t comics in the usual sense, because the images didn’t include speech balloons or captions; instead a paragraph of narrative was printed at the foot of the page, while each drawing was accompanied by a simpler version in verse for the less literate. My mother’s small forefinger – I suspect it must have been tanned with nicotine – underlined each word she read. For some years I remembered the moment at which I grasped how the symbols she was indicating related to her speech. Either immediately or at the next session I began to read the book aloud to her. I believe I wasn’t yet two years old." That is like H. P. Lovecraft. The training to success starts early.
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Post by Knygathin on Oct 25, 2012 17:40:19 GMT
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Post by Knygathin on Oct 25, 2012 18:00:39 GMT
Sorry, I couldn't help it. I wouldn't put it that drastic, but, well . . . perhaps something along in that direction, or vaguely related to it. I mean it can be very different, but still family related. For example seeing a conflict between one's parents, a divorce, and the fear of abandonment. The spectrum is pretty wide, and commonplace, but emotionally related.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Oct 25, 2012 18:52:08 GMT
How about Manly Wellman's "Where Angels Fear"? That's a good one. Some of Wellman's other stories would work, too, including "The Undying Horror" and "The Pineys." "Call First" would nicely fit the EC Comics theme, as well.
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Post by ramseycampbell on Oct 25, 2012 20:07:43 GMT
Pretty early start by any standards. I must admit I've never read 'Digging Deep', an ommission I'll have to rectify, but as a sucker for twisted punchlines that's an absolute beauty. Rupert the Bear was on my agenda too. Loved these little picture stories - the vocabulary was of a mighty high level by today's standards. I didn't mention that "Rupert's Christmas Tree" was the first tale to give me night terrors!
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Oct 26, 2012 11:25:18 GMT
Pretty early start by any standards. I must admit I've never read 'Digging Deep', an ommission I'll have to rectify, but as a sucker for twisted punchlines that's an absolute beauty. Rupert the Bear was on my agenda too. Loved these little picture stories - the vocabulary was of a mighty high level by today's standards. I didn't mention that "Rupert's Christmas Tree" was the first tale to give me night terrors! Fascinating. My first remembered nightmares were of being pursued by witches. The fear came from secondhand tales of the witch in the kids' programme 'Twizzle' which had utterly terrified my older brothers. I never even saw the programme (being about four) but my brothers made damned sure I shared the fear... The first book I have been unable to trace. It was a stand alone childrens' tale of a woodsman who lived in a small house in a forest. Wolves ate his wife but he I think managed to kill the wolves with the axe. Unfortunately as a child, I didn't have an axe.
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Post by Dr Strange on Oct 26, 2012 12:08:28 GMT
I too have very early memories of Rupert Bear annuals. I also seem to remember being slightly, well - 'disturbed' is too strong a word - 'confused' maybe, by these strange human-animal hybrids and the weird stuff they got up to...
Witches, on the other hand, never bothered me. I grew up in a very rural area of northern Scotland, and heard all sorts of old folk tales and local legends - including having old abandoned croft houses where 'a witch' once lived pointed out to me. I used to go and play around in these places in the hope of turning up something spooky - but never did. My favourite story (going back more than 150 years, I reckon) was of a house where the entire family simply up and left (leaving furniture, etc. behind) because of some (unspecified) 'supernatural occurence' - apparently their stuff just sat there untouched until eventually the roof fell in and everything just rotted away, because nobody wanted to go in and take anything or live there.
And a woodsman killing wolves with an axe would almost certainly have reduced me to tears - my sympathies would have been entirely with the wolves.
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Post by mattofthespurs on Oct 26, 2012 13:25:11 GMT
Oh there is no doubt that Rupert The Bear annuals are just Dr Moreau books for children. ;D
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Post by Knygathin on Oct 31, 2012 16:41:33 GMT
I can imagine that this story strikes a personal note in some people, perhaps a stirring of emotional memory, and who therefore find it especially unpleasant. So you are saying it could be I feel this way about the story because my parents were trying to kill me all the time, in various inventive, but ultimately unsuccessful, ways? Interesting! I had never made the connection. Was it wrong of me to laugh at Jojo Lapin X's reply? Well, I did say I was sorry. Besides, I did not laugh at Jojo Lapin X, I laughed at what he said. A distinct difference. He caught me unawares. When writing the above post, my imagination had a faint thought of the thing Jojo said, but not so that I thought of it seriously, and I did not expect anyone to comment like that. That's why I laughed out loud in surprize. It was not aimed at Jojo Lapin X the person.
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Post by billdemo2 on Nov 18, 2012 3:52:06 GMT
A lot of good suggestions here. I came up with a few more:
Ramsey Campbell - Apples Richard Matheson - Big Surprise Manly Wade Wellman - Where Angels Fear David H Keller - Thing in the Cellar John Collier - Thus I Refute Beezly Arthur Conan Doyle - The Silver Hatchet Waif Wander - The White Maniac Robert E Howard's Pigeons From Hell (Well, the first part of it anyway)
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