Martin H. Greenberg - 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories

[Swampirella]

Might get this one too:

100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories


1.   The Adventure of My Grandfather - Washington Irving
2.    The Adventure of my Aunt - Washington Irving
3.    The Adventure of the German Student - Yes, Washington Irving again
4.    Ants - Chet Williamson
5.    The Assembly of the Dead - Chet Williamson
6.    At the Bureau - Steve Rasnic Tem
7.    Babylon: 70M - Donald A. Wollheim
8.    Berenice - Edgar Allen Poe
9.    Beyond the Wall - Ambrose Bierce
10.  The Boarded Window - Ambrose Bierce
11.  Boxes - Al Sarrantonio
12.  The Candidate - Henry Slesar
13.  Cemetery Dance - Richard T. Chizmar
14.  The Certificate - Avram Davidson
15.  Cheapskate - Gary Raisor
16.  The China Bowl - E. F. Benson
17.  The Cobweb - Saki
18.  Come to the Party - Frances Garfield
19.  A Curious Dream - Mark Twain
20.  Dark Wings - Phyllis Eisenstein
21.  Dead Call - William F. Nolan
22.  Different Kinds of Dead - Ed Gorman
23.  Displaced Person - Eric F. Russell
24.  The Disintegration of Alan - Melissa M. Hall
25.  Down By the Sea Near the Great Big Rock - Joe R. Lansdale
26.  Dragon Rock - Ruth Berman
27.  Duck Hunt - Joe R. Lansdale
28.  The Dust - Al Sarrantonio
29.  The Evil Clergyman - H. P. Lovecraft
30.  Examination Day - Henry Slesar
31.  The Faceless Thing - Edward D. Hoch
32.  The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar - E. Allen Poe
33.  Feeding Time - James Gunn
34.  Feeding Time - Robert Sheckley (No, not a mistake. Two different
      stories with the same title. Who knows why?)
35.  The Final Quest - William F. Nolan
36.  Fish Night - Joe R. Lansdale
37.  The Four-Fingered Hand - Barry Pain
38.  A Ghost Story - Mark Twain
39.  Give Her Hell - Donald A. Wollheim
40.  The Giveaway - Steve Rasnic Tem
41.  The Glove - Fritz Leiber
42.  The Grab - Richard Laymon
43.  The Haunted Mill or the Ruined Home - Jerome K. Jerome
44.  He Kilt It With A stick - William F. Nolan
45.  Heading Home - Ramsey Campbell
46.  The Hollow of the Three Hills - Nathaniel Hawthorne
47.  The Hollow Man - Norman Partridge
48.  Holly, Don't Tell - Juleen Brantingham
49.  The Hound - H. P. Lovecraft
50.  The Hour and the Man - Robert Barr
51.  The House At Evening -  Frances Garfield
52.  The Idea - Barry N. Malzberg
53.  Identity Crisis - Thomas F. Monteleone
54.  In The Corn - Robert Fox
55.  An Incident on Route 12 - James H. Schmitz
56.  Interview - Frank A. Javor
57.  The Jam - Henry Slesar
58.  The Kirk Spook - E.G. Swain
59.  Making Friends - Gary Raisor
60.  The Marble Hands -  Bernard Capes
61.  Mariana - Fritz Leiber
62.  Masque - Ed Gorman
63.  The Middle Toe of the Right Foot - Ambrose Bierce
64.  Moving Night - Nancy Holder
65.  Naples - Avram Davidson
66.  Night Visions - Jack Dann
67.  Night Deposits - Chet Williamson
68.  Nightshapes - Barry N. Malzberg
69.  No. 1 Branch Line, The Signalman - Charles Dickens
70.  The Old Black Hat - Gary Raisor
71.  Out of the Storm - William H. Hodgson
72.  Out of Africa - David Drake
73.  The Oval Portrait - E. Allen Poe
74.  Party Time - Mort Castle
75.  The Passenger - E. F. Benson
76.  Peekaboo - Bill Pronzini
77.  The Pitch - Dennis Etchison
78.  The Poor - Steve Rasnic Tem
79.  The Rag Thing - Donald A. Wolheim
80.  Rendezvous - Daniel Ransom
81.  The Same Old Grind - Bill Pronzini
82.  The Skeleton - Jerome K. Jerome
83.  Something There Is - Charles L. Grant
84.  Spring-Fingered Jack - Susan Caspar
85.  Sredni Vashtar - Saki
86.  The Statement of Randolph Carter - H. P. Lovecraft
87.  The Story of Muhammad Din - Rudyard Kipling
88.  The Thing in the Forest -  Bernard Capes
89.  Threshold - Sharon Webb
90.  Today's Special - Dennis Etchison
91.  Topsy - F. Paul Wilson
92.  Toy - Bill Pronzini
93.  Transfer - Barry N. Malzberg
94.  Treats - Norman Partridge
95.  Under My Bed - Al Sarrantonio
96.  Up Under the Roof - Manly W. Wellman
97.  The Upturned Face - Stephen Crane
98.  We Have Always Lived In the Forest - Nancy Holder
99.  Where Did She Wander? - Manly W. Wellman
100. Witness - Avram Davidson






 

[bobby]

    While I'm at it...

    Here's the dustjacket art that was used on the early printings:

[dem]

Strange thing. I've read a number of these only very recently while sampling Charles L. Grant's Shadows series. Seems like the editor's figured they'd given Weird Tales enough of a hammering and turned to Mr. Shadowpunk for material.

[dem]

Al Sarrantonio & Martin H. Greenberg (eds.) - 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories (Barnes & Noble, 1993).

Jack Eckstein

Correction. Selection heavily reliant on various Charles L. Grant and David Schiff anthologies.

Chet Williamson - Ants: (Twilight Zone, July 1987). Sports journalist Ben Piersall gets his kicks from stomping , torching or otherwise destroying ants nests. The ants decide it's time to show him who's boss.

Gary Raisor - Cheapskate: (Night Cry, Sum 1987). Eleven year old kid snaps photo of dad with his hand up the babysitter's blouse. He threatens to show Mom unless the old skinflint buys him a pair of roller-skates. Dad has no option to splash out, but he sure is a sore loser.

Donald A. Wollheim - Babylon: 70m: (Magazine of Horror, Aug 1963). Barry Kane discovers the nursery rhyme is true, you really can travel to Babylon by candle flame. The one-man welcome committee doesn't smell so good.

Ruth Berman - Dragon Sunday : (Charles L. Grant [ed.], Shadows 2, 1979). Either she's gone out of her mind or dragons have invaded L.A.

Thomas F. Monteleone - Identity Crisis: (Charles L. Grant [ed.], Terrors, 1982). A knife-man loose in the maternity ward and what drove him to his monstrous crime. Editor Grant describes Terrors as a selection of "nasty" stories. This one is.

Steve Rasnic Tem - The Poor : (Charles L. Grant [ed.], Terrors, 1982). No matter what he (presumably the President?) does for them, the poor just won't go away. Their numbers proliferate until every nook and cranny of his home is squatted by paupers. And still they come.

Nancy Holder - Moving Night: (Charles L. Grant [ed.], Shadows 9, 1985). Eight year old Petey comes under attack from the entire contents of his bedroom, including the gory, bloated corpse of murdered mum. Reads like an all action take on David H. Keller's The Thing In The Cellar.

Henry Slesar – Examination Day: The Jordans have dreaded this day since his birth. As a twelve-year-old, son Dickie must take the Government's strict intelligence test.

Gary Raisor - Making Friends: (The Horror Show, Summer 1985). Little Denny sneaks out trick-or-treating for the first time since he fell prey to a razorblade-in-the-candy-bar sicko and the other kids stopped talking to him. This, Cheapskate and Ants are personal picks of a good bunch so far.

Susan Casper – Spring-Fingered Jack: (Charles L. Grant [ed.], Fears, 1983). Another old favourite. Amusement arcade junkie will have to get in some practice if he's ever gonna crack this fiendish Ripper-themed video game.

[dem]

Eric Frank Russell - Displaced Person: (Weird Tales, Sept. 1948: Peter Haining [ed.], Weird Tales, 1976). A park bench encounter with the ultimate refugee.

David Grinnell [Donald A. Wollheim] - The Rag Thing: (MF&SF, Oct. 1951). Forgotten behind a radiator in Mrs. Lanch's lodging house, the filthy cloth takes on a murderous life of its own.

Daniel Ransom [Ed Gorman] - Rendezvous: (Hardboiled #1, 1985). Kim, a fifteen-year-old runaway finally thumbs a ride. Payton, a serial killer, finally spots a hitcher he likes the look of.

Avram Davidson - Witness: (Night Cry, Winter 1986). The compensation culture lends itself to a murderous duo's get-rich-quick scheme.

[dem]

William Hope Hodgson - Out Of The Storm: (1909). Delirium of a drowning man whose ship has been destroyed by something worse than God.

Bernard Capes - The Marble Hands: (The Fabulists, 1915). Graveyard ornaments, "sprouting like white celery," the whim of the vain and possibly evil woman who lies there. It is unwise to touch them.

Gary Raisor - The Old Black Hat: (Night Cry, Winter 1986). Little Sarah finds a "magic" shiny black top hat which, she insists, belongs to Frosty the Snowman. Meanwhile, Uncle Bill is laid out in a casket awaiting tomorrow's funeral. Suppose Sarah were to place Frosty's hat on his head .... ?

Robert Sheckley - Feeding Time: (Lester del Rey [ed.] Fantasy Magazine, March 1953). Treggis finds a copy of Care and Feeding of the Gryphon in a dusty second-hand bookshop. It even provides instructions on how to find one. And remember: "The sole diet of the Gryphon is young virgins."

William F. Nolan - The Final Quest: King Arthur has Death laid out at his mercy, but chivalry prevents his striking the fatal blow. Death returns to kill everyone. Told in verse. Next.

E. F. Benson - The China Bowl: The ghost of Lady Braithwaite drives the man who murdered her to squelchy suicide. See The Flint Knife: Further Spook Stories

Bill Pronzini - Toy: (Charles L. Grant [ed] Shadows 8, 1985). Twelve year old Jackey finds the strange grey box in the vacant lot behind the little league pitch. Inside, twelve random shaped pieces of extremely durable material. Being a bright kid, Jackey puts them together, and sets Earth on a fast track to Doomsday.

[dem]

Another batch. For me, Duck Hunt, Night Shapes and In The Corn are especially effective.

Joe R. Lansdale - Duck Hunt: (Charles L. Grant [ed.] After Midnight, 1986). At his boorish father's insistence, fifteen-year-old Freddie joins the Mud Creek Duck Hunt to prove his manhood. As a luckless vagrant learns to his cost, the Hunting Club has some peculiar traditions ...

Henry Slesar - Jam: (Playboy, Nov. 1958). Road hog Stukey and his junkie passenger come to grief while speeding through a tunnel. Hell is a traffic jam that endures from here to eternity.

Robert Fox (Al Sarrantonio) - In The Corn: As a three year old he was blinded when his eyes were impaled on stiff corn stalks during a wrestle with elder brother and their Nanny. He has spent nineteen years in therapy when the party responsible for his misfortune escapes from the Mental Institution.

James H. Schmitz - An Incident on Route 12: (If, Jan. 1962). Phil Garfield, bank robber and killer, picks the wrong four-door Sedan to hijack. Alien abduction, etc.

Ed Gorman - Masque: (Martin H. Greenberg [ed], Mummy Stories, 1990). 68 year old Mrs. Garth has idiot, mummified son whose pleasure is ripping girls apart. The doctors cover up his crimes as Ma has just paid for a new hospital.

Barry N. Malzberg - Nightshapes: (Bill Pronzini [ed.] Werewolf!, 1979). Told over a week's worth of journal entries. Eric, a retired London University professor, develops a formula he hopes will cure his twenty-four year old wife Clara of lycanthrope. Now relocated to a moorland village, Clara has picked up where she left off in the city, and with every butchered local, Eric knows it can only be a matter of time before she's caught. He spikes her tea and hopes for the best.

Bill Pronzini – Peekaboo: (Charles L. Grant [ed.] Nightmares, 1979). 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 ...

[dem]

Ramsey Campbell - Heading Home: (Whispers #11-12, Oct. 1978). Chez Frankenstein, in the wake of the Baron's decapitation by indignant villagers. What's that bump .... bumping it's way up the cellar steps?

Donald A. Wollheim - Give Her Hell: (Two Dozen Dragon Eggs, 1969). Appalling wife-beating, daughter-incarcerating misogynist strikes a Faustian pact to avenge himself on perceived enemies. A superiority complex on legs, he thinks he's being shrewd in demanding another incarnation before Satan claims his soul. The Devil plays fair after his own fashion.

Steve Rasnic Tem - At The Bureau: The Government official who haunted himself. See Shadows 3

Al Sarrantonio - Under My Bed: Abused kid is avenged on drunken father by the man who lives in the trapdoor. See Shadows 4

Ed Gorman - Different Kinds of Dead: (Frank D. McSherry, Jr., Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg [eds. Ghosts of the Heartland: Haunting, Spine-Chilling Stories from the American Midwest, 1990). "... there really was a beautiful, red-haired woman standing in the middle of the highway. She wore a trench coat and black high heeled shoes. She might have been one of the women on the covers of the private eye paperbacks he'd read back in the sixties."

Ralph Sheridan, 37, travelling computer salesman, picks up a phantom hitcher. Carlotta Stone, two years drowned by her gangster husband, requires a lift home to the cemetery having just shot dead her killer. Unlike the usual PH, she is very forthcoming. She also smokes French fashion (i.e., extremely cool). Good story. Found it very affecting. All kinds of sad.

[dem]

William F. Nolan - Dead Call: (Kirby McCauley [ed], Frights, 1976). A month after his suicide, Len Stiles phones old pal Frank to let him know how great things are on the other side. You really should join me, Frank.

Mort Castle - Party Time: (J. N. Williamson [ed.], Masques, 1984). Beast in the cellar larks as Mama lays on a special treat for geek son.

Richard T. Chizmar - Cemetery Dance: (Pete Crowther [ed.], Narrow Houses, 1992). On a freezing night with snow imminent, Elliott, pistol at the ready, breaks into the cemetery to speak with Kassie, the woman he loved and murdered when she rejected him. Somehow Kassie has sent him a letter of forgiveness, delivered to his pillow. All Elliott has to do is perform a paltry act of self-sacrifice and they can be together forever!

Bill Pronzini - The Same Old Grind: (Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Sept. 1978). It doesn't pay to get smart with old Giftholz, proprietor of the Viennese delicatessen, whose signature Hero sandwich is straight from the Mrs. Lovett cookbook.

Henry Slesar - The Candidate: (Charles Beaumont [ed.], The Fiend in You, 1961). You know you've made the big time when the Society For United Action seek you out. Mr. Grunzer, company exec, is suitably flattered by the attentions of an elite outfit whose raison d'être is cleansing society of those who "don't deserve to live" simply by collectively willing them out of existence. He can't wait to get started! (see 'Alfred Hitchcock' [Robert Arthur] (ed.) - Stories That Scared Even Me).

Edward D. Hoch - The Faceless Thing: (Magazine of Horror #2, Nov. 1963). Five decades on from the tragedy, Buddy returns to the farmhouse of his childhood and the tunnel where little sister met her doom. Does the thing from the black ooze still lurk within?

Frank A. Javor - Interview: (Analog, Nov. 1963). Lester V. Morrison, master of bereavement porn, is disgusted that his trademark, live-from-the-tragedy interviews are saddled with a disclaimer giving the lie to their alleged "authenticity."

Avram Davidson - The Certificate: (MFSF, March 1959). Fifty years after the Hedderans conquered the earth, Death is still outlawed. Those humans who've had enough must apply for special dispensation to end it all, or risk terrible punishment once their cells are repaired. Dr. Freeman join the queue each morning hoping this will be the day he's at least granted an interview with a Hedderan bureaucrat.

[dem]

Fritz Leiber - The Glove: (Whispers #6-7, June 1975). San Francisco. The rapist of 65-year-old Evelyn Mayne is betrayed by a pale grey leather glove which, having taken on a life of it's own, leaps from atop a wardrobe to denounce him to the police. Narrated by a neighbour of the pair, Jeff Winters, whose fledgling will-they, won't-they romance with Marcia provides the love interest.

James Gunn - Feeding Time: ( Astounding Science Fiction, Aug. 1955). Angela consults psychiatrist number seventeen over her deepest fears. She is being stalked by a hungry cannibal monster from outer space.

Bernard Capes - The Thing in the Forest: (The Fabulists, 1915). A bad trip for Little Red Riding Hood.

E. F. Benson - The Passenger: (Pearsons, March 1917). Supernatural goings-on aboard a London bus. A murderer is unmasked. See The Flint Knife: Further Spook Stories by E. F. Benson

These from Hugh Lamb's Stories In The Dark

Barry Pain - The Four-Fingered Hand: (Here and Hereafter, 1911). Brackley, the last of the line, defies the friendly family phantom to indulge in a game of cards.

Robert Barr - The Hour And The Man: (English Illustrated Magazine, Aug, 1894): A brigand chief, sentenced to death by decapitation, endures variation on the Torture of Hope.

Jerome K. Jerome - The Skeleton: (The Idler, Sept. 1892). The scientist procures a skeleton for the laboratory unaware of its provenance. It doesn't like him.

Jerome K. Jerome - The Haunted Mill: or, The Ruined Home: (Told After Supper, 1891). A seriously twisted ghost promises to help Joe Parkins locate a dead miser's treasure trove.

[dem]

Joe R. Lansdale - Down by the Sea Near the Great Big Rock: (J. N. Williamson [ed.], Masques , 1984). An evil meteorite entices a family on a camping holiday to butcher one another.

Barry N. Malzberg - The Idea: (In the Pocket and Other Stories, 1971). A TV exec pitches an idea for a new show. The pilot episode draws a huge audience, but everyone on the planet despises him for making it.

Joe R. Lansdale - Fish Night: (Bill Pronzini [ed.], Specter! , 1982). Weird scenes in the Navajo desert. A burnt out travelling salesman is transported back to a time before the first man crawled from the sea. Disillusioned with modern life, he's initially ecstatic ...

Manly Wade Wellman - Up Under the Roof: ( Weird Tales, Oct 1938). An alienated, abused youth realises there's something huge and terrible lives in the garret above his room. Eventually he plucks up the courage to face it head on. Reads like a "true" ghost story.

Stephen Crane -The Upturned Face: (Ainslee’s, 5th March 1900). As enemy bullets fly all about them, four terrified soldiers do their best to bury a dead colleague.

[dem]

Fritz Leiber - Mariana: (Fantastic Science Fiction, Feb. 1960). Everyone and everything is a hologram controlled by a radio panel. Mariana inadvertently switches off trees, house, stars, husband, herself, world ....

Juleen Brantingham - Holly Don't Tell: (Charles L. Grant [ed.] Shadows 2, 1979). "It's Pinky. I just saw someone pick the lock on your back door and sneak inside. Let me in quick! It's probably the sex maniac that escaped from the county jail!" A stage magician pulls a disappearing act to escape the clutches of his dreadful wife. Only daughter Holly, eleven, knows where he's hiding, and she's not telling. Meanwhile, Pinkie, the school clown, thinks he can take advantage of the timid little girl. She introduces him to Dad's bolt-hole, a fathomless expanse of nothingness inside the trunk he used for storing props.

Jack Dann - Night Visions: (Charles L. Grant [ed.] Shadows 2, 1979). Martin, a sex-obsessed hack novelist who's long realised he'll never get any while married to joyless Jennifer, resolves to end it all. He climbs into his coupé intent on going out in a violent motorway accident. The car thwarts him at every turn.

Frances Garfield - The House at Evening: (Whispers #15-16, March 1982). A vampire hooker invites two freshmen home to party with she and her previous victims.

Charming as they are, you would need to be almost preternaturally timid to find the following stories the least "hair-raising," let alone horrific.

Washington Irving - The Adventure of my Aunt: (Strange Stories by a Nervous Gentleman, 1824). A widow musters the servants to remove a portrait of her late husband when it has the effrontery to wink at her.

E. G. Swain - The Kirk Spook: (The Stoneground Ghost Tales: Compiled from the Recollections of the Reverend Roland Batchel, Vicar of the Parish, 1912). Caleb Dean, the parish clerk cum sexton in the days of William IV, encounters a ghost who claims to have been trapped inside the Church for 600 years, his Bishop having forbade him to pass under a pointed arch. Caleb suggests an alternative escape route.

[dem]

Edgar Allan Poe - The Oval Portrait: (Broadway Journal, 26 April 1845). Newly-weds. She loves him with a passion but, alas, he already has a bride in his art. She reluctantly agrees to pose for him. As he paints, his fervour drains the life from her and transfers it to the canvas. It is only on completion of the painting that he realises the model has not stirred from her seat in several days ...

Chet Williamson - The Assembly of the Dead: (George Hatch [ed.], Nøctulpa #4, March 1990). An American diplomat travels to an unidentified country to bring home the dismembered body parts of US national, Thomas Locke. The foot clearly belongs to a different corpse but Hutchinson finds it expedient to pay the ransom. Back on home soil, his own foot begins acting dead as though in sympathy with the victim.

[dem]

Manly Wade Wellman - Where Did She Wander?: (Whispers #23-24, Oct. 1987). Suspected witch Betty Til Hoppard was lynched by the people of Trudo in 1849. A song commemorating the event is considered unlucky by the mountain folk. Suitably intrigued, Silver John revives the taboo tune at a festival in the Ozarks, luring Becky's evil spirit into the open.

Washington Irving - The Adventure of My Grandfather: [aka, The Bold Dragoon]. Tales of a Traveller, 1824). After a busy night's carousing, the bold Dragoon beds down in the supposedly "haunted" chamber of a Flemish inn. A bagpipe-playing ghost in long flannel gown and nightcap sets all the furniture to jigging around the room.

Saki - The Cobweb: (Beasts and Super-Beasts, 1914). Emma and Jim Ladbruk bought the farmhouse unaware it includes a walking mummy among the fixtures and fittings. Worse, ninety-four-year-old Martha Mountjoy commandeers the kitchen night and day. Emma wishes rid but can't bring herself to tell the crusty old "cobweb" to pack her bags, so it comes as a relief when Mrs. Mountjoy confides her premonition of Death's approach ....

[cauldronbrewer]

Feb 10, 2019 11:20:52 GMT dem said:

Manly Wade Wellman - Where Did She Wander?: (Whispers #23-24, Oct. 1987). Suspected witch Betty Til Hoppard was lynched by the people of Trudo in 1849. A song commemorating the event is considered unlucky by the mountain folk. Suitably intrigued, Silver John revives the taboo tune at a festival in the Ozarks, luring Becky's evil spirit into the open.

This story had a big impact on me—it’s the one that made me a fan of Wellman in general and his mountain folk stories in particular.