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Post by helrunar on Jul 26, 2018 14:10:37 GMT
Lurvely, Kev. I needed an "extraordinary novelette," or at least a glimpse of one, for the morning of my 60th solar return. Loves come and go but pulp is eternal.
Otis Adelbert Kline... I wonder if anyone still reads him? I presume people do read Talbot Mundy since there seem to be masses of his novels available in electronic format.
"A queer little tale of San Francisco" ... by Armistead Maupin in a previous incarnation?
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Aug 2, 2018 7:04:26 GMT
"It's generally agreed that the worst issues of Weird Tales were the first twelve, edited by Edwin Baird" - Stefan Dziemianowicz , Scream Factory #10, Autumn 1992.
David R. Solomon - Fear: Showing how fear can drive a strong man to the edge of insanity. Coulter, a city-bred lawyer, has a morbid fear of snakes. When (what he takes to be) a Moccasin winds itself around his little daughter in the Southern swamp, he manfully attempts a rescue, only to be bitten. OK, so this one isn't especially good.
R. T. M. Scott - Nimba, the Cave Girl: An odd, fantastic little story of the Stone Age. Nimba decides it is time to take a mate. Oomba, the cruellest man in the tribe, tries to take her by force. She clubs his head to bloody pulp. A handsome young stranger has better luck.
Joseph Faus & James Bennett Wooding - Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni: An eccentric doctor creates a frightening living thing. Dr. Calgroni, the famous Viennese MAD SURGEON, moves to sleepy Belleville to perform his controversial experiment away from prying eyes. Tonight he will replace the brain of "Simple Will, the village half-wit," with that of Horace, a gorilla from Barber's World-famous 3-Ring Show! Know-all narrator - "I alone, of all the villagers, knew that this eminent surgeon's presence in Belleville boded ill," etc. - not so smart that he can prevent the inevitable tragedy.
Harold Ward - The Skull: A grim tale with a terrifying end. "The supremacy of the white man must be maintained for the common good of all." Poetic justice on the plantation as Kimball, an exceptionally sadistic slave driver, receives long overdue comeuppance. Head-hunters, man-eating ants, poison darts - a story that should be far more exciting than it is. Horribly racist, in case you'd not guessed. Christine Campbell Thomson would later revive Ward's WT originals, House Of The Living Dead and The Closed Door, in the 'Not At Night's.
Belated happy 60th, Steve (sorry it's late, not been around ....).
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Post by helrunar on Aug 2, 2018 14:25:27 GMT
Thanks, Kev. I'm all "vogue la galere and keep the aspidistra flying" about it.
Lurvely thread... The horror of "real life" keeps us from our goodies. I again had my recurrent dream last night that I was in a beautiful old bookshop examining the kinds of paperbacks whose scans I enjoy here. I'm re-reading (on my commute, to soothe my nerves) Pat Crowther's Witch Blood! published over here by "House of Collectibles," a 1970s NYC based firm--other titles listed on final page adverts include Lucky Seven Dream Book, True Vampires of History (by Count Donald Glut), Hidden Worlds of Hypnotism, Weird Ways of Witchcraft (which I do own--gorgeous hand-colored Baphomet cover), and Personality and Penmanship (always wonder what they'd say about my crazed scrawl). I believe this was the first of several autobiographies Pat has published over the years.
Gawd that was a long sentence in there.
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Aug 2, 2018 18:58:29 GMT
The horror of "real life" keeps us from our goodies. Ain't that the truth. I've not read any Pat Crowther. Don Glut's vampire non-fiction is almost as entertaining as his 'New Adventures of Frankenstein' novels and stories. Joel Townsley Rogers - Hark!The Rattle!: An uncommon tale that will cling to your memory for many a day. Tain Dirk, the famous young sculptor, is possessed by the spirit of a dead rattler. The were-snake roams New York nightclubs, sinking his lethal fangs into a succession of exotic dancers. Howard Ellis Davis - The Unknown Beast: An unusual tale of a terrifying monster. A gentle, half-witted, black hunchback with long arms and an enormous head is shanghaied by dope-smugglers. Some years later, Deputy Sheriff Ed Hardin investigates a series of gruesome deaths on the Bayou, the victims crushed and broken by creature unknown .... F. Georgia Stroup - The House of Death: The strange secret of a lonely woman. Mamie Judy is facing the rope for infanticide, but refuses to testify in her own defence. She's guilty for sure, but does murdering her daughter necessarily make her a bad mother? A tale of shame, fear and hereditary madness! |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 3, 2018 20:06:44 GMT
Hamilton Craigie - The Chain: Craigie is at his best here. Hubert "The Panther of Peacock Alley" Marston, President of Intervale Steel, has finally overstepped the mark and murdered a rival. Quarrier, a former boxer turned PI, is onto him. Somehow Marston must retrieve a sheaf of incriminating documents from Quarrier's impenetrable strongbox - but how? A turgid locked room mystery ensues. As Robert Weinberg wrote in The Weird Tales Story, "Many of the stories published in the first year of Weird Tales' existence would have benefited from a strong blue pencil policy," this "unusual novelette" being one of them. Dull and repetitive, the only thing "weird" about The Chain is that even an editor as indiscriminating as Baird saw fit to publish it. From the same author who wrote spry malevolent vegetation stormer, The Man Trap which makes it all the more disappointing. Capt. George Warburton Lewis - The Return of Paul Slavsky: A "creepy" tale that ends in a shuddering, breath-taking way. "He recalled that the last victim of Olga's brother, mutilated, headless and repellent, had been found in this same neighbourhood, if not in this same house." When Paul Slavsky, the leader of a Russian Nihlist cell is killed, Olga, his 'vampire' of a sister, takes over as lead Terrorist. Olga continues the reign of terror until finally taken into custody by American Criminal Intelligence officers. Olga has always believed her dead brother will return in times of crisis and so it proves - or seems to - when she's cuffed and bundled aboard a train by crime expert Joe Seagraves and Inspector Brandon, a man she despises with a passion. Seagraves can't help but wonder why she remains so confident of deliverance from such a desperate situation? In truth, the Captain's story is no less dreadful than majority of the rest but the gory pay off is outrageous.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 5, 2018 16:11:31 GMT
James B. M. Clark, Jr. - The Ape-Man: A jungle tale that is somehow "different." Harry Norton can tell there's something shifty about his love rival, Needham, because the fellow comes from South Africa and has a tiny head and elongated arms. Norton's suspicions prove correct when the fiendish "throwback" liberates a huge grey ape from the zoo and coaches it to murder him! A meticulous planner, Needham has discovered that baboons are most susceptible to auto-suggestion when blind drunk on whiskey. Elsie is as good as his!
Merlin Moore Taylor - The Place of Madness: What two hours in a prison "solitary" did to a man. When the prison comes under scrutiny following allegations of torture and inhumane confinement, Dr. Blalock volunteers to pass two hours in the "dark cell." He emerges from this "pocket edition of Hades," a broken, gibbering, white-haired travesty, eager to confess his darkest secret.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 7, 2018 12:56:45 GMT
Bryan Irvine - The Ghost Guard: A "spooky" tale with a grim background. "Hulsey was so anxious to get far away from Granite River Prison, and was so certain of his ability to do so if he could only be admitted to the hospital, that he had resorted to the old but effective expedient of soap eating."
Asa Shores, diligent prison warden, pursues the vendetta with his killer beyond the grave. Asa even has his own jingle.
"When I die and am buried deep
I'll return at night to take a peep
At those who hated me.
I'll ha'nt their homes and spoil their sleep
Chill their blood; the skin will creep
On those who hated me."
Meredith Davis - The Accusing Voice: The singular experience of Allen Defoe. "Did you know that of the other eleven jurors who convicted Bland only seven are living - still? Two of the surviving seven are in insane asylums; two of the four dead committed sui -"
Twelve years after he served as foreman of the jury that sentenced innocent Richard Bland to hang, Defoe is tormented to insanity and death by his chuckling "ghost."
W. H. Holmes - The Weaving Shadows: Chet Burke's strange adventures in a haunted house. Burke, detective, bookseller and student of the occult, investigates the haunting of a lonesome farmhouse in the woods. Hayden, who lives there with his sister and her young daughter, is persecuted by shadowy forms urging him to kill. it's got him so he sleeps with a loaded revolver. Spiritualism, phantom bloodstains, an unsolved double-murder ... Burke does his best to make sense of the strange goings on but sportingly fails to prevent tragedy.
Which just leaves the opening instalment of Kline's serial.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 9, 2018 15:14:33 GMT
Edwin Baird (ed.)- Weird Tales (Rural publishing, April, 1923)  R. M. MallySIXTEEN THRILLING SHORT STORIES
TWO COMPLETE NOVELETTES
TWO TWO-PART STORIES
INTERESTING, ODD AND WEIRD HAPPENINGS
Carl Rasmus - The Scar
Paul Suter - Beyond the Door
Roylston Markham - The Tortoise Shell Comb
Anton M. Oliver - The Living Nightmare
Hamilton Craigie - The Incubus
Harold Ward - The Bodymaster
Artemus Calloway - Jungle Death
Farnsworth Wright - The Snake Fiend
Anthony M. Rud - A Square of Canvas
Julian Kilman - The Affair of the Man in Scarlet
Victor Johns - The Hideous Face
Ray McGillivray - The Forty Jars
Myrtle Levy Gaylord - The Wish
Culpeper Chunn & Laurie McClintock - The Whispering Thing [Part 1]
Otis Adelbert Kline - The Thing of a Thousand Shapes [Part 2]
Ted Olson - The Conquering Will
Carroll F. Michener - Six Feet of Willow-Green
Francis D. Grierson - The Hall of the Dead
C. E. Howard - The Parlor Cemetery
Harry Irving Shumway - Golden Glow
Articles
Thrillers Make Audiences Warm
Paul Crumpler - A Photographic Phantasm
Send Photographs by Radio
Find Skull of Man Million Years Old
Did Solomon Give Queen of Sheba an Airship?
Has "Tut's" Tomb Really Been Found?
Murderous Sheik Flees to Forest
More About the Egyptians
The Eyrie
Letter from Anthony M. Rud "For every good story in those early issues there were dozens of terrible ones. " - Robert Weinberg (again). "The first issue had its share of inferior stories, but Volume 1 Number 2 is considerably worse" writes Marvin Kaye in The Best of Weird Tales 1923. Maybe, but there's not much to choose between them. Mr. Kaye plays safe in selecting J. Paul Suter's Beyond The Door (" A Short Story of Gripping Interest") to represent the issue. He's also complimentary about Anthony Rud's A Square Of Canvas ( " A Story of an Insane Artist"). Francis D. Grierson - The Hall of the Dead: An Occult Story of Ancient Egypt. Annette Grey goes undercover to investigate the disappearance of her sister, Beatrice Vane, while working as PA to Professor Julius March, the famous MAD EGYPTOLOGIST. A mummy case in the professor's private museum conceals a terrible secret. Artemus Calloway - Jungle Death. A Story in Which Crocodiles and Voodooism Play the Stellar Roles. Ulua river, Honduras. Plantation owner George Armstrong bribes a phoney "witch-doctor" to stir up trouble for Bart Condon's rival company. All goes to plan until the greedy confederate demands bonus hush money. Moral. "Voodooism loses its strength when it mixes up with white men"! Roylston Markham - The Tortoise Shell Comb: A Fantasy of a Mad Brain. The abandoned château in the woods of Is-Sur-Tille is haunted by the ghost of a young bride begging for someone to comb her hair. Captain Bott defies local superstition to spend a night there - his last! Narrated by the dead man's valet from the confines of the Army & Navy Insane Asylum. Hamilton Craigee - The Incubus: A Man's Frightful Adventure in an Ancient Tomb. Gerald Marston is lost in a pitch black catacomb beneath the hills with the restless, clammy corpse of his friend and love rival, Professor Pillsbury. Anton M. Oliver - The Living Nightmare: One 'Creepy' Night in a House of Death. With the Mitchell family not due to arrive back until the funeral, MacMillen is left to mind their grandmother's corpse. That first night, the fuses blow. A shriek in the dark ... C. E. Howard - The Parlor Cemetery: A Grisley Satire. A census taker calls on a serial widow. She treats him to a guided tour of her mortuary ornaments. Myrtle Levy Gaylord - The Wish: An Odd Fragment of Fiction. When Leonore was born, her mother wished that she would never know what it is like to feel grief. Consequently, Leonore has no feelings whatsoever. Donald takes his own life through unrequited love for her.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 10, 2018 8:49:10 GMT
Victor Johns - The Hideous Face: A Grim Tale of Frightful Revenge. Lawrence Bainridge the famous artist is terrified in cemeteries and all things death. To 'cure' him of his phobia, a Portuguese seadog pushes him into a grave and replaces the stone. Buried alive with a cold corpse! Driven to madness by the experience, Lawrence repays Pedro's good turn by painting his face - with nitric acid. The cruelly deformed sailor catches up with him in Marseilles ...
Farnsworth Wright - The Snake Fiend: A Tale of Diabolic Terror. Jack Crimi, slimy sadist, visits reptile revenge on Marjorie Bressi for taking Allen Jimerson as her husband rather than himself. Having first nailed shut the windows, Crimi deposits a sack-load of writhing rattlers over the sleeping couple. On the evidence of this and issue 1's The Closing Hand, the future editor specialised in magnificently overwrought, all-roads-lead-to-the-madhouse horror stories.
Ted Olson - The Conquering Will: Do the Dead Return to Life? Transmigration of the soul. Malcolm Rae perishes, crippled and starving, in remote Northwest Canada woodland. His disembodied spirit watches helpless as starving wolves devour the corpse. Rae has only one thought. To return home for a last glimpse of his fiancée. He is drawn to neighbouring house where his friend lies on his deathbed.
Carroll F. Michener - Six Feet of Willow-Green: The Strange Tale of a Yellow Man and His Beloved Reptile. "He cherishes a creeping creature that he swears was once his wife in a former life. He fears the fangs of her jealousy"
Ssu Yin believes his pet snake is animated by the soul of his late wife, "slain in an act of infidelity." When Allister jumps overboard to save the drowning serpent, the Cantonese figures he owes the American a debt of two lives. some years later their paths cross again when, fatally, a dissolute Allister blows into the Teahouse of Beatitudes - or Ssu Yin's opium den. Marvin Kaye notes this "turgid" story's "offensive ethnic stereotyping."
Lots of tales from the lunatic asylum in #2. Don't know about "best," but I've enjoyed most of these, particularly the stories by Victor Johns, Farnsworth Wright, Artemus Calloway, Francis D. Grierson and Roylston Markham.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 11, 2018 9:45:20 GMT
Carl Rasmus - The Scar: A Thrilling Novelette. A kidnapping goes wrong when the teenage victim, Ina Holden, falls sick. Dr. Herbert Carlson is abducted at gunpoint by a masked gang and driven to the crooks hideaway. "Boss" warns that any funny business will see him leave the premises in a couple of suitcases. An OK crime-suspense-romance melodrama but desperately lacking in weirdness. Topical reference to prohibition. Dr. Carlson is no fan. Harold Ward - The Bodymaster: An Amazing Novelette. Confession of an unnamed detective, who warns the reader that they will surely regard his testimony as the ravings of a madman! It began with the investigation into a baffling murder for which an innocent man is doomed to hang. A hunch leads the detective "the big house", a long derelict asylum recently acquired by Dr. Darius Lessman, the sainted philanthropist, brilliant theologian - and mind-controlling, soul-migrating fiend in human form! Dr. Lessman and glam accomplice Meta Vinetta have developed a hypnotic technique whereby they can oust the soul from the body and manipulate it to murder. To those unfortunate enough to witness these crimes, it is as though they were perpetuated by an invisible demon! Like so many before him, our hero falls under Meta's spell, but swiftly transfers his affections to Avis Rohmer, a helpless pawn in Darius Lessman's evil scheme. Romance blossoms. The detective is the only man who has been able to resist Lessman's will. Impressed, the scientist offers him a stark choice. Obey his every command and he will be wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. Refuse, and the Doctor will reduce Avis to a mindless vegetable! Convoluted for sure, but I much prefer this one to the same author's "of it's time" (trans: racist) The Skull in #1. The Bodymaster reads like an early take on his The House Of The Living Dead ( Weird Tales, March 1932) as selected by CCT for that same year's Grim DeathJulian Kilman - The Affair of the Man in Scarlet: A Weird Story of the Thirteenth Century. A deliciously spiteful conte cruel. Capeluche, the famous headsman, arrives in Peptonneau. His mission: to decapitate the Dauphin's favourite, Mlle. Bonacieux, eighteen, on ambiguous charges dreamt up by a spiteful Cardinal. The Comte de Mousqueton reminds the doomed beauty that, by ancient statute, her life will be spared if she can persuade Capeluche to marry her. The Headsman finds the proposal agreeable. Sweet deliverance is surely secured!
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Post by dem bones on Aug 13, 2018 16:10:15 GMT
Ray McGillivray - The Forty Jars: A Strange Story of the Orient. "They fixed me. Found out I was immune ... you know, leprosy. They all have it. Want everyone else to get it. But there are worse things." Desert adventure of Selwyn Roberts, archaeologist, whose two colleagues have been abducted and dragged to the caves of Bo-hai by the Yengi, a three hundred-strong leper tribe. Roberts saves the life of Bowen, recently escaped from the rotting "Chinkies" after years of torture. Armed to the teeth, the pair mount a daring rescue attempt. Why? Because they're white, damn it! Harry Irving Shumway - Golden Glow: A "Haunted House" Story with a Touch of Humor. Dr. William 'Hunky' Hunneker and narrator Edward Triteham explore what they've been lead to believe is a deserted farmhouse in the woods - only to be confronted by an evil-looking old woman with a shotgun. Turns out "she" is leader of the whiskey smuggling gang who recently derailed a train. Am guessing this may be one of the "terrible" stories we were warned against. Can only agree with Robert Weinberg that the first of the serials is no great shakes either. Otis Adelbert Kline - The Thing Of A Thousand Shapes: Don't start this story late at night. On the death of his guardian, William Aynsley travels to the dead man's farm at Peoria, Illinois. Jim Braddock was a much-travelled authority on the paranormal, noted in the field for his The Reality of Materialization Phenomena (Bulwer & Sons, n.d.). He left strict instructions that his corpse not be buried until decomposition has set in. William wonders if his benefactor had a morbid fear of premature burial. Call it a sixth sense, perhaps mere wishful thinking - it might even be the stream of "psychoplasm" streaming from Uncle Jim's nostril - but William is adamant that, all appearances and a death certificate to the contrary - the old man is only sleeping. That stormy night William is visited by multiple apparitions which disappear at the sound of his voice or, in the case of a bat, turn to sludge when pinioned with a poker. Meanwhile, those neighbours keeping vigil over the body either sicken or die. The panicked villagers draw their own terrible conclusion. Jim Braddock has returned a vampire! The corpse must be staked - with or without his nephew's consent! Part II William dreams that he is wandering a jungle among terrifying hybrid creatures. On waking, phantom hands drive him from the house where he's knocked down by a car driven by Professor Randall, Jim's bosom friend. Daughter Ruth tends William's broken ribs until a doctor arrives. She is the most beautiful creature ever to walk God's earth ... Using Ruth as a medium, the Professor contacts the spirit of Jim Braddock and it is just as William suspected. Uncle Jim is no blood-sucking fiend. He has fallen into a cataleptic trance! When suitably rested he will return to full health. But how to explain the mounting death toll? A seven-strong vigilante gang led by Glitch, whose wife was the first to die, burst through the door with rifles drawn! Aynsley and the Professor are frogmarched to a newly dug grave. The coffin is lowered. Glitch readies a huge steel stake .... ... which sets us up rosy for the inevitable crushingly underwhelming denouement.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 15, 2018 11:25:50 GMT
Edwin Baird (ed) - Weird Tales (Rural publishing, May 1923)  HeitmanNineteen Thrilling Short Stories Two Two-part Stories Two Complete Novelettes Interesting, Odd and Weird Happenings
Kenneth Duane Whipple - The Secret Fear
William P. Barron - Jungle Beasts
Julian Kilman - The Golden Caverns
Paul Ellsworth Triem - Vials of Insects
G. W. Crane - An Eye for an Eye
M. Humphreys - The Floor Above
Vincent Starrett - Penelope
Herman Sisk - The Purple Heart
Bruce Grant - Feline
E. Thayles Emmons - Two Hours of Death
Hamilton Craigie - Midnight Black
Bulwer Lytton - The Haunted and the Haunters; or, The House and the Brain
Culpeper Chunn & Laurie McClintock - The Whispering Thing [Part II]
F. K. Moss - The Death Cell
Wm. Merrit - The Finale
Lyle Wilson Holden - The Devil Plant
William Sanford - Hootch
F. Walter Wilson - The Thunder Voice
Mollie Frank Ellis - Case No. 27
______ ______ The Closed Cabinet Articles Woman Receives Poems from Spirit World
Man Captures Lion, Barehanded
Reads Story of Mankind on Egyptian Coffins
Almost Broke, Youth Falls Co-Heir to $12,000,000
Chicagoans to Live in the Air Fifty Years Hence
Neurotic Women Have Queer Mania
Mummies Made by Electricity
Woman's Spirit Is Photographed
Deaf and Blind Students Perform Miracles
Neighbors See "Sacred Heart" in Girl's Death Room
Hold "Petting Parties" in Morgue Third issue, "bedsheet" format, triple columns, and the first to feature interior illustrations, although this is not the cause for celebration it might otherwise have been. While only two are signed, all nine unimaginative sketches appear to be the work of cover artist William F. Heitman. Andrew Brosnatch has his detractors but for this reader he could not arrive in these pages soon enough. We've a small head start as Marvin Kaye selected two stories from the issue for Best Of Weird Tales 1923. Lyle Wilson Holden's The Devil Plant and Herman Sisk's The Purple Heart. Baird reprinted two oldies, the short version of Bulwer-Lytton's The House And The Brain and, for reasons known only to himself, the several pages of tedium that are The Closed Cabinet. William P. Barron's Jungle Beasts was reprinted in the March 1952 issue. Robert Weinberg singles out Two Hours of Death as being especially "terrible."  Heitman: A Short Story with a Horrifying Climax. "Old man, can you run down to see me for a few days? I'm afraid I'm in a bad way ----" In response to the above, Tom pays a mercy dash to friend Arthur Barker who he's not seen in a decade. Arthur has shut himself away from the world and his health has declined. Tom urges him to consult a physician but "Doctors can't help me now. Besides, I hate them. I'm afraid of them." Tom stays a month, finding each day more depressing than the last. His nights are disturbed by a commotion in the upper room, which Arthur assures him, can't be reached. When Tom eventually gains access he finds the dusty corpse of his friend. He died ten years ago hunched at a table writing him "Old man, can you run down to see me for a few days? I'm afraid I'm in a bad way ----" No less than H. P. Lovecraft was moved to write "congratulating" Baird on publishing The Floor Above and the previous issue's A. R. Rud shocker, A Square of Canvas. He forwarded five of his own compositions ..... E. Thayles Emmons - Two Hours Of Death: A Ghost Story. Manuscript found in a dead man's desk. "Thornton, in that glass of wine there was enough of the drug to render you temporarily dead for two hours ..." Felix Sayres, MAD SCIENTIST, formulates a wonder drug which releases "what I shall term 'mind atoms'" into the great hereafter. Sayres spikes love rival Thornton's drink with a view to dissecting his body. He takes a knife and sets to work. The horrified victim looks on, helpless, from the astral.  Heitman: Short Story. Her husband Ronald toiling late in the laboratory, Rita Daventry retires to bed. She is disturbed by an armed intruder. A terrified Rita recalls flirting with handsome devil Ronald Armitage at last night's party, him swearing to pay her a visit during the witching hour ... William Sanford - Hootch: Prohibition blues. Jim McCarthy's toxic home brew can do terrible things to a man's sanity. Bruce Grant - Feline: A Whimsical Storiette. Myra's obsession with abandoned kittens drives husband David crazy. It is almost as though he has married a cat in human form.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 16, 2018 12:14:10 GMT
 Artist uncredited, but illo dull enough to be Heitman's work. : Here's a Story So Unusual That You'll Want to Read It Twice. Lee Hin avenges the murder of his friend by a double-crossing opium runner. Masquerading as a laundryman, the inscrutable "Chinkie" gains access to the hotel where Burke is hiding out and looses a swarm of his pet mosquitoes in his room - having first treated them with Anthrax. William Merrit - The Finale: A Short Story. The court ruled that Mill owner Thornton Stowe killed Jim Lakeland, his hated business and love rival, in self defence. But why has he shut himself away from the world in a room where the walls, curtains and every stick of furniture are a matching ghastly green?  Ditto. : A Few Minutes in a Madhouse. Mrs. Howard, convinced she has murdered her husband, is confined to Dr. Maynard's Asylum. Following the tragic death of their two little daughters in a road accident, Mrs. Howard dosed herself with late mother's morphine pills to cope with the grief. When the bottle ran out, she cracked. Maynard explains to an old college pal that no "murder" took place, the husband is in rude health and seeking a divorce so he can remarry. |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 22, 2018 10:40:11 GMT
G. W. Crane - An Eye For An Eye: Short Story. Mr. Seaman, the town skinflint, who has a morbid fear of premature burial, is afflicted by a creeping paralysis. Consequently, he has a coffin readied and fitted with an air pipe while a large iron bell is erected above the grave so, in the event of any mistake, he can raise the alarm. Seaman's condition worsens until his every muscle locks. Meanwhile, the bereaved young schoolteacher he forced from her home, throws herself in the river, swearing revenge. I suspect CCT would have loved this one. Vincent Starrett - Penelope. Here's a Grotesque, Fantastic Tale. "Beware of Penelope when in perihelion." A jovial domestic sci-fi interlude. The son of brilliant astronomer "Mad Raymond," confides the incredible tale of how the star Penelope literally turned his world upside down. Friend Haswell tells him "you're drunk."
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Post by dem bones on Aug 31, 2018 9:40:02 GMT
There's no getting away from it, have found issue 3 an endurance test. Where's Nimba the Cave Girl got to?
Kenneth Duane Whipple - The Secret Fear: A "Creepy" Detective Story. Patrolman Tom Kenton and Jack Bowers of the Journal investigate the suspicious death of a seaman in Kellogg's warehouse. In other news, a gorilla has escaped from the local zoo. Could there be a connection? H. G. Well's The Red Room relocated to the waterfront.
F. Walter Wilson - The Thunder Voice: The Story of a Hairy Monster. Quebec. Bartien Dellox and wife visit a market sideshow where a showman is exhibiting a 'Wild Man.' The gorilla and Mrs. Dellox are smitten by one another. When, some months later, she gives birth, the child is a miniature version of the great ape. The Doctor diagnoses an extreme case of "pre-natal influence." Mrs. Dellox, who loves her baby dearly, hides it away from prying eyes. As the beast grows older, she allows it to leave the cellar to roam the night.
Some decades later, a howling monster brings terror to a small farming community. One night Margaret Kingsley walks out of her home never to return. Years later, two skeletons are found in a cave along with the mouldering notebook of the missing woman.
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