Mary Danby (ed.) – Realms of Darkness

[dem]

Mary Danby (ed.) – Realms of Darkness (Octopus, 1985)

Introduction – Christopher Lee

Martin Amis – Denton’s Death
Anon – In the Slaughteryard
Anon – The Dead Man of Varley Grange
Robert Arthur – Footsteps Invisible
Denys Val Baker – The Potter’s Art
E. F. Benson – The Thing in the Hall
Ambrose Bierce – The Boarded Window
Robert Bloch – The Mannikin
Anthony Boucher – They Bite
Elizabeth Bowen – The Demon Lover
Marjorie Bowen – The Crown Derby Plate
Christianna Brand – The Kite
John Dickson Carr – Blind Man’s Hood
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Door
Agatha Christie – The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael
Roger Clarke – Blackberries
Adrian Cole – The Moon Web
Frederick Cowles – The Horror of Abbot’s Grange
F. Marion Crawford – The Screaming Skull
Roald Dahl – Pig
Mary Danby – Robbie
August Derleth – The Extra Passenger
William Croft Dickinson – The Witch’s Bone
Amelia B. Edwards – The Four-Fifteen Express
A. E. Ellis – The Haunted Haven
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu – The Sexton’s Adventure
John Galt – The Black Ferry
Catherine Gleason – Friends
Winston Graham – The Circus
Davis Grubb – Where the Woodbine Twineth
Willis Hall – Waking or Sleeping
L. P. Hartley – Someone in the Lift
Dorothy K. Haynes – The Peculiar Case of Mrs. Grimmond
C. D. Heriot – The Trapdoor
Patricia Highsmith – The Day of Reckoning
George Hitchcock – An Invitation to the Hunt
Geoffrey Household – Taboo
Washington Irving – Guests from Gibbet Island
Margaret Irwin – The Book
W. W. Jacobs – The Three Sisters
M. R. James – The Haunted Dolls’ House.
Michael Joseph – The Yellow Cat
Stephen King – The Reaper’s Image
Sterling E. Lanier – Soldier Key
Kay Leith – The Sanguivites
L. A. Lewis – Hybrid
Frank Belknap Long – The Black Druid
F. G. Loring – The Tomb of Sarah
Agnes MacLeod – The Skeleton Hand
W. Somerset Maugham – The Man from Glasgow
Guy de Maupassant – The Hostelry
Edmund Mitchell – The Phantom of the Lake
Arthur Morrison – The Thing in the Upper Room
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart
J. B. Priestley – The Demon King
Bill Pronzini – Peekaboo
Tony Richards – The Black Lake
Flavia Richardson – The Red Turret
Agnes Short – Intercom
Henry Slesar – Examination Day
Barnard Stacey – The Devil’s Ape
Bram Stoker – The Judge’s House
Terry Tapp – Polish the Lid
Alan Temperley – Evening Flight
Paul Theroux – Dengué Fever
Christine Campbell Thomson – Message for Margie
Rosemary Timperley – Harry
H. Russell Wakefield – Lucky’s Grove
Hugh Walpole – Tarnhelm
Elizabeth Walter – The Tibetan Box
H. G. Wells – The Sea-Raiders
Simon West (August Derleth) – A Thin Gentleman with Gloves
Dennis Wheatley – The Case of the Haunted Chateau

Mar 8, 2015 11:04:20 GMT ripper said:

Does anyone know if the other anthos edited by Mary Danby such as Realm of Darkness, Chamber of Horrors etc also take stories from the Fontanas like the 65s do?

Finally got a copy after all these years. By my reckoning, its only 13 or 14 of these stories didn't feature in the Fontana ghost/ horror/ tales of terror series'.

[dem]

If ever a series could be said to give you your moneys worth, it's these 80's equivalents of the Century books.

William Croft Dickinson - The Witch’s Bone: Sutherland, Scottish Highlands. Michael Elliott is forever in dispute with bolshy fellow Antiquarian Society member, MacKenzie Grant. So when Grant pours scorn on his latest acquisition, an "authentic" witch's bone, Elliott puts its evil powers to the test. His nemesis dies horribly. Now Sir Stephen Rowandson, Honorary Curator of the local museum, requests to loan the grisly relic for a short exhibition ...

Winston Graham - The Circus: Twenty-five years after emigrating to Australia, Gareth Purdy, successful businessman, returns home to Sussex for a short holiday. A chance meeting with his estranged elder brother, Tom, now working as a gardener at Fontain Manor, provides opportunity to reminisce on their troubled childhood. Tom reveals the traumatic experience that shaped his life, notably, his unparalleled way with fertilizers and abhorrence of blondes. He's not spoken of it before, but, at the age of the twelve, Tom witnessed a murder on the Common where the travelling Circus had pitched tents. A tightrope man and a clown, both vying for affection of the very beautiful, if spiteful and manipulative, Tilly, the bareback rider, attacked one another with knives, the funny-man coming off worse. Tilly, who evidently found it all very entertaining, helped bury the corpse. It didn't matter to Tom, who was as madly in love with her as the dead guy. But prowling outside her caravan one night, the boy was grabbed by a dwarf, and Tilly had her own method for dealing with Peeping Toms ....

Bill Pronzini – Peekaboo: Whitehall, New England. Roper, a fugitive, is holed up in a house reputedly haunted by the ghost of a powerful Black Magician. In recent years there have been six gruesome, unsolved murders in the district, not that it bothers Roper. But tonight he has an uneasy feeling that he is not alone in the dark ...

Henry Slesar – Examination Day: On reaching his twelfth birthday, Dickie Jordan is required by law to take the intelligence test set by the Government Education Service. They prefer tomorrow's voter thick.

Agnes MacLeod - The Skeleton Hand: Jodziel, South Devon, 1805. Furious that lovely Miss Anne Ruston would dare spurn his distasteful advances, Captain Sinclair swears that, if he can't marry her, nobody will! Anne, totally unimpressed, duly wed's her dear cousin, Maurice Travers, but vanishes before they can set off on honeymoon, never to be seen alive! Thirty years later, a fierce storm causes a rock subsidence on the cliff, revealing the skeleton of a young woman dressed in her bridal finery. The bony hand, which has come detached from the rest, is placed in a glass case and openly displayed in 'The Blue Dragon' pub. One night, a ragged, half-crazed old seaman enters the premises .....

Martin Amis - Denton’s Death: Each night Denton awaits the arrival of the three hired killers and their infernal death-dealing contraption. Each night they arrive and complete their business. A never-ending nightmare.

[dem]

A shape-changing amorphous blob of slime, a prank gone horribly awry, a spiteful murder, and a randy widow who dies for her patronage of the arts.

Tony Richards – The Black Lake: Three buddies enjoying their annual hunting-and-fishing vacation. Douggie Endell is set on landing a catfish, and out here in Missouri they grow so big and vicious as to be blamed by locals for a series of child disappearances. Greg Cowley has an uneasy feeling about the hillside lake. There's something damn hungry down there in the black ooze, but it sure ain't no catfish.

Denys Val Baker - The Potter’s Art: Mrs Bartholomew is a very merry, very wealthy widow with an enviable collection of priceless objects d'art. Holidaying in a Cornish fishing village, she meets Pen, a quiet, denim-clad young potter. Mrs Bartholomew is so fascinated by his strong, skilful hands, she takes him as her lover and builds him a London studio, equip with a kiln far too big for his requirements. Pen, who is nothing but pragmatic, continues to sleep with her, while hiring Miranda, a gorgeous young student and kindred spirit, as his 'assistant' in a shared quest for the perfect glaze. When Mrs. Bartholemew catches them in bed, she furiously banishes Miranda from the premises. Pen takes this badly.

C. D. Heriot - The Trapdoor: Let's lock old Mr. Wright in the attic and starve him to death! (anti-reviewed in spoiler-heavy detail on the Fontana Horror 10 thread).

Barnard Stacey - The Devil's Ape: Let's prove to misery guts upstairs that so-called 'black magic'is a load of bunkum! (ditto.)

[dem]

This pair, both brilliantly horrible, were new to me.

Willis Hall - Waking or Sleeping: Every night, the same horrific dream. Reggie Wormald is a prisoner, crammed inside a metal cage suspended mere inches above the filthy, rat-infested dungeon floor. His one distraction from the monotony of excruciating, bone-crushing agony, the sporadic visits of the silent old crone who feeds him scraps and a mug of water which, more often than not, he spills. Wife Emily, concerned at the toll on his health, suggests he confide in Dr. Attercliffe. Eventually he agrees. The GP writes a prescription that will put paid to his troubles for good ....

Patricia Highsmith - The Day of Reckoning: Old Ernie Hanshawe's conversion to battery chicken farming lifts his business from the doldrums but at huge cost to a happy family home life. The poor, doomed chickens, crammed inside too-small individual cages, turn cannibal, so Ernie solves the crisis by blunting their beaks, causing them further distress. Wife Helen wishes they could return to doing things the hard way, sparing the birds their misery and terror. When her eight-year-old daughter is crushed to death in the machinery, Helen's mind finally gives out ...

[dem]

Agnes Short - Intercom: (James Hale [ed.] The After Midnight Ghost Book, Hutchinson, 1980). Margaret, a student with a passion for sixteenth-century poetry, babysits for the Adams family at The Chanonry, a house built on the site of a medieval monastery. With the children bedded down for the night, Margaret hears a soft voice singing "Farewell my deireste" to lute accompaniment via the intercom. Ending might pleasantly surprise those of grim disposition.

Edmund Mitchell - The Phantom of the Lake: (Argosy, 1886). Several generations ago, a member of the Armitage family drowned on the eve of his wedding when he fell through the ice while skating on the frozen lake. His ghost appears whenever one of his descendent is to die. A present day do-gooder spoils it all, but too late to prevent a final casualty.

Michael Joseph - The Yellow Cat: (Hutchinson's Mystery Story Magazine, June 1924). Described elsewhere. Received its first book publication in Charles Birkin's Monsters. There is speculation the story was ghosted by Eleanor Scott.

[dem]

Sterling E. Lanier - Soldier Key: (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1968). A Brigadier Donald Ffellowes Gentlemen's Club yarn - one of the most exciting crustacean carnage stories of all, and it predates Night Of The Crabs!

The setting is a small Caribbean island off Dominica in 1934. Ffellowes and Captain Joe Chapin first learn of Soldier's Key from a customs official who thinks it might just satisfy their thirst for adventure. The island was settled in 1881 by the Church of the New Revelation, a whites only, quasi-Doomsday cult who worship their own God. The population was last approximated at 500 but, as our men are soon to discover, it has since been decimated by at least half that number. When the Englishmen inform Maxton and Owald, their loyal Jamaican hands, of their intentions, the pair are horrified, but reluctantly set sail.

Chapin and Ffellowes get off on the wrong foot with Brother Poole, the self-proclaimed 'Opener of the Gate'. The Englishmen explain that they are only stopping on his island for as long as it takes to replenish their supplies. Poole, who clearly despises them on sight, agrees to trade provided they leave the island immediately afterwards. They walk with him to the village, where the entire colony are engaged in polishing a huge dome-life edifice made from turtle-shell. The Church, they discover, is a shrine to the "Soldiers" - oversized, aggressive hermit crabs with vicious purple and orange claws - from which the island takes it's name.

Chapin reckons it would be a wizard jape to wind up Brother Poole by mooring their schooner off the coast overnight . This is not a good idea. While standing guard on deck, Oswald is dragged into the sea by Poole's flock and carried back to the island. His three shipmates grab their guns and machetes and leap into the sea ("I tried not to think of sharks, which I dislike.") bent on rescuing their colleague from whatever appalling fate Poole has devised for him. Once ashore, the chants lead them to the fringe of a huge pit where a macabre ritual is reaching it's grisly conclusion ....

[ripper]

These Danby anthologies are a very convenient and cost-effective way of collecting a fair few of the stories found in the Fontanas. There seem to be quite a few available from on-line sources. Realms of Darkness is a huge collection and I have enjoyed each tale that I have so far read. I originally tried to read it in story order, but as usual for me with large collections, gave up and dipped into it as the fancy took me. I'm enjoying your summaries, Dem. I liked the melodrama of 'The Skeleton Hand' which is a story I had not heard of before. 'The Phantom of the Lake' was also a good tale and took me by surprise as it didn't pan out like I was expecting it to.

I have, I think, 3 of these collections as yet. The only one I am a little hesitant of buying is '65 Great Tales of Murder' as it sounds as if the Fontanas might not be a major source for its contents, though I could be wrong about that.

[dem]

Jul 8, 2015 11:42:15 GMT ripper said:

I have, I think, 3 of these collections as yet. The only one I am a little hesitant of buying is '65 Great Tales of Murder' as it sounds as if the Fontanas might not be a major source for its contents, though I could be wrong about that.

Here's the contents list, Mr Ripper!

65 Great Murder Mysteries.

Certainly far more for the supernatural/ horror fan than you might first imagine from the title, and a decent proportion of the stories are indeed recycled from the Fontana Ghosts, Horror and Frighteners books - there are even a few selections from the early Pan Books of Horror. I think Mary Danby may have borrowed a few from Peter Haining anthologies, too.

[ripper]

Hi Dem, many thanks for pointing me to the contents list. I can see that I had even acknowledged it back in 2013. I must be getting old as I just couldn't remember it was already on VoE :-). Looking through it, it is more supernatural/horror influenced than I expected, so it definitely is one I shall look to buy.

[dem]

Jul 8, 2015 15:33:22 GMT ripper said:

Hi Dem, many thanks for pointing me to the contents list. I can see that I had even acknowledged it back in 2013. I must be getting old as I just couldn't remember it was already on VoE :-).

If you think that's bad, I'd forgotten ever posting it and went searching on-line for the TOC before winding up back here.

Several stories included in Realms Of Darkness have been commented on by various contributors all across this forum, so have been concentrating on those we seem to have overlooked (Tony Richards' slime story appears the only original) or I need to brush up on. A case in point being the following creepy, vaguely surreal offering.

Roger Clarke - Blackberries: With father dead, Edward's mother has wasted little time in finding a new man. Edward's spiteful imaginary friend, Charles, torments him that his mother hates him, and no matter what he feels about the situation, this John character will be his new dad by Christmas (some imaginary friend he turned out to be). Mum, who hates seeing the kid happily playing with his soldiers, tells Edward to go blackberry picking in Barley Lane for tomorrow's dessert, because blackberries are John's favourite. Edward complains that he doesn't want to, but there's no getting out of it. He insists on picking them at the old quarry because, as well she knows, he's terrified of the five dead crows lynched from the gate of Barley farm. Knowing how susceptible he is, she taunts him that, if he doesn't do as he's told, the dead man of Dodpits, who feels like a slug and moves like a worm, will get him.

For years I had the author confused with Roy Clarke, creator of the, once seemingly omnipresent, sleepy old codger series, Last Of The Summer Wine! The 'About The Author' promo for A Natural History of Ghosts (Particular Books, 2012) put me straight, and he's an interesting chap!

Raised in a haunted house, Roger Clarke is best known as a film-writer for the Independent newspaper and more recently Sight & Sound. He was the youngest person ever to join the Society for Psychical Research in the 1980s and was getting his ghost stories published by the The Pan & Fontana series of horror books aged only 15, when Roald Dahl asked his agent to take him on as a client. A published poet, his libretto for The Man with the Footsoles of Wind was performed at the Almeida Theatre in London in 1993. This is the book he always wanted to write.

[dem]

Christianna Brand - The Kite: Miss Bellingham is determined to prove ornithologists wrong in their insistence that the majestic kite will not take meat from the human hand. Stubbornly refusing to leave her cottage before the village is snowbound, the old spinster sits out the freezing winter alone and ill, with a rapidly diminishing supply of provisions. But her lord of the air makes it all worthwhile, and, just as she suspected, the "experts" know nothing ...

Amelia B. Edwards - The Four-Fifteen Express: Mr. John Dwerrihowe, pompous windbag, bores an innocent fellow passenger to tears with incessant shop talk on a journey from London to Blackwater. But we shouldn't be too harsh on him, as Dwerrihowe is three months a dead man and, in his continued absence, has been accused of absconding with £75, 000 of company funds. When word of William Lanford's chance meeting with the disgraced director gets around, he is asked to report to the East Anglian Railway Company. Thanks to Langford's bizarre testimony, the under-secretary, Mr. Raikes is exposed as the real thief while Dwerrihowe's corpse is discovered in a quarry and his good name restored. Raikes, convicted of murder, hangs at the Old Bailey, having first been immortalised in wax, and displayed in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds!

Frederick Cowles - The Horror of Abbot’s Grange: Synopsised in some detail on own thread. Three centuries after his death, an evil vampire monk smashes his way out of the tomb to disrupt a house-warming. Reads like E. F. Benson's The Room In The Tower with everything turned up to eleven.

[dem]

Davis Grubb - Where The Woodbine Twineth. "You never believe me when I tell you things are real". When Eva's parents are killed, she's taken in by her Aunt Nell who has no patience with an imaginative five year old, forever chattering to imaginary friends who live under the Davernport and behind the Pianola. "When I was a little girl I never had time for such mischievous nonsense. I was far too busy doing the bidding of my fine God-fearing parents and learning to be useful in this world!" Eventually Aunt Nell scares off the fairy folk, but Mr. Peppercorn returns once to tell Eva she'll soon have a new friend, and if Nell takes her away, she can come and live with the little people where the woodbine twineth. Grandpa pays a visit. He's just back from New Orleans with a present for Eva, a beautiful black doll who she names Numa. It's all just as Mr. Peppercorn promised! Eva and Numa are such friends that sometimes they exchange places: Numa is the little girl, and Eva is the dolly in the box. Obviously, it doesn't take long before Nell is thoroughly fed up with this latest show of wilful defiance. The child will have to learn the hard way ...

Anon - In The Slaughteryard. How Horace Jeafferson of the Adventurers Club caught the Whitechapel monster! A full-blooded, late-Victorian ripping yarn, as previously exhumed by Michel Parry in his Jack The Knife collection. Michel had earlier resurrected Agnes McLeod's The Skeleton Hand in Reign Of Terror 4

Catherine Gleason - Friends: "My true talent lies in bringing people together, and match-making, or perhaps even organising clandestine associations in high places ... Nothing vulgar like orgies you understand, but discreetly throwing the right people together. That's my true vocation." Brendon makes his flat available to his work colleagues free of charge, allowing them to conduct their sex lives in privacy. He’s astonished - and delighted - when Malochie, the brooding, unpopular office loner, approaches him and requests in on the arrangement. Thinking him a shy introvert, Brendon invites his latest friend to a party where Malochie surprises everyone by copping off with Mary the office junior who’d previously shown no fondness for him whatsoever. Some weeks later, the unlikely couple go missing, presumed eloped, along with Brendon’s trunk. Then her dismembered body is found …

Kay Leigh - The Sanguivites: A young couple move into their dream cottage in the country, hiring doddery old Harry Gelder to clear away the brambles, a simple task he seems singularly reluctant to perform. Could it be that he doesn't want them to find the ancient altar at the bottom of the garden? Deserved revival of a minor gem first published in The 9th Fontana Book Of Great Horror Stories.

[dem]

John Galt - The Black Ferry: (c. 1833). Pushed into a marriage he didn't want, Ralph Norton spites Mary Blake, his non-blushing, heavily pregnant bride-to-be, by enlisting to fight in India. With his ship scheduled to depart on their wedding night, the happy couple spend the few short hours of their honeymoon trading insults until they reach the ferry. It is a dreadful, stormy night, but Norton is determined to join his regiment and against all advice, sets to sea with his protesting wife. On retiring to bed, Galt - or whoever is narrating the story - has a nightmare in which he witnesses Mary's murder, Norton caving in her skull and tossing the corpse overboard. For the next seven years, on the anniversary of that fatal night, Galt dreams of the soldier, be it in battle, convalescing, or boarding a ship home ....

Story also features prominent role for a brilliant German astrologer so famous Galt can't name him for fear of the reader disturbing his peaceful retirement.

F. Marion Crawford - The Screaming Skull: (Colliers, July 1908). "Please don't call it a 'confounded bugbear' - it doesn't like being called names."

The raving, brink-of-hysteria monologue of Captain Charles Braddock (retired), forever on his guard versus the horror in the hat-box lest it escape and do to him what it did to his best friend, Dr. Luke Pratt. Several years earlier, Braddock's grisly anecdote of extreme eardrum abuse inspired the accursed Pratt to try same on his wife. Now that Dr. Pratt, too, is dead, his neck savaged "by the hand or teeth of some person or animal unknown," Braddock has inherited the cottage in Tredcobe village, and with it the screaming skull of a woman bent on vengeance. "Confound it all, man, it had crossed the road alone, and had got up the doorstep, and had knocked to be let in ...."

Robert Bloch's The Skull Of The Marquis de Sade owes this one a huge debt.

[ripper]

Crawford's 'The Screaming Skull' is wonderfully creepy and worthy of its reputation as a classic of supernatural fiction imo.

[dem]

Jul 16, 2015 11:14:28 GMT ripper said:

Crawford's 'The Screaming Skull' is wonderfully creepy and worthy of its reputation as a classic of supernatural fiction imo.

A guy down the market was knocking out Wordsworth editions for £1 recently, so managed to plug a few gaps in my collection including this one.

F. Marion Crawford - The Witch Of Prague & Other Stories (Wordsworth Editions, 2008)

Des Knock BSc.

David Stuart Davies - Introduction
The Screaming Skull
For Blood is the Life
The Upper Berth
Man Overboard!
The Doll's Ghost
The Dead Smile
By The Waters Of Paradise
The King's Messanger
The Witch Of Prague

Blurb:
"As I fell the thing sprang across me and seemed to throw itself upon the captain. When I last saw him on his feet his face was white and his lips set. It seemed to me that he struck a violent blow at the dead being, and then he, too, fell forward upon his face, with an inarticulate cry of horror'.

This unique collection contains all the supernatural works of the prolific F. Marion Crawford (1854 - 1909), including his classic chillers 'For Blood is the Life', 'The Upper Berth' and 'The Screaming Skull' which was based on a true horror legend. Also included in this volume is the title story, his amazing novel The Witch of Prague which Dennis Wheatley described as a 'classic of occult fiction'. For a potent blend of horror, fantasy and fear Crawford's tales have rarely been surpassed. Most of these stories have long been out of print, so this collection is a special treat for all lovers of supernatural mysteries.

Must read The Dead Smile again as I've a feeling Seabury Quinn ripped it off for his The Jest Of Warburg Tantuval.