100 Creepy Little Creatures

[dem]

Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz & Martin H. Greenberg (eds.) - 100 Creepy Little Creatures (Barnes & Noble, 1994)

Kevin McGuinness

Stefan Dziemianowicz - Introduction

M. R. James - After Dark in the Playing Fields
Robert Leonard Russell - The Amulet of Hell
Arthur Conan Doyle - The American’s Tale
Edward Lucas White - Amina
Roy Wallace Davis - The Avenging Hand
R. Murray Gilchrist - The Basilisk
August Derleth - Baynter’s Imp
Willis Knapp Jones - The Beast of the Yungas
Garnett Radcliffe - The Beetle
Charles King - A Birthday Present for Tommy
Mildred Johnson - The Cactus
Ramsey Campbell - Call First
E. F. Benson - Caterpillars
H. P. Lovecraft - Dagon
Ambrose Bierce - The Damned Thing
Donald R. Burleson - Dark Brother
Stephen M. Rainey - Deep Wood
William Hope Hodgson - Demons of the Sea
August Derleth - The Deserted Garden
H. B. Marriott-Watson - The Devil of the Marsh
Edward Page Mitchell - The Devilish Rat
Joe R. Lansdale - Dog, Cat, and Baby
Simon MacCulloch - Dummy
Joe R. Lansdale - The Dump
R. Ernest Dupuy - The Edge of the Shadow
Anne Harris Hadley - Exhibit “A”
Harry Harrison Kroll - Fairy Gossamer
Robert M. Price - Familiar Face
Alvin Taylor & Len J. Moffatt - Father’s Vampire
Horacio Quiroga - The Feather Pillow
H. L. Thomson - The Fisherman’s Special
Granville S. Hoss - The Frog
Manly Wade Wellman - Frogfather
Tina L. Jens - The Gargoyle Sacrifice
J. B. S. Fullilove - Ghouls of the Sea
George MacDonald - The Gray Wolf
J. M. Alvey - The Green-and-Gold Bug
Dermot Chesson Spence - The House on the Rynek
Charles King - I’ll Be Glad When I’m Dead
Barry N. Malzberg - Indigestion
Rex Ernest - The Inn
Charles Garofalo - Itching for Action
Lafcadio Hearn - Jikininki
Ambrose Bierce - John Mortonson’s Funeral
Claude Farrère - The Keen Eyes and Ears of Kara Kedi
Manly Wade Wellman - The Kelpie
Hugh B. Cave - Ladies in Waiting
Saki - Laura
Edward E. Schiff - Left By the Tide
Seabury Quinn - The Lesser Brethren Mourn
Allison V. Harding - The Marmot
Edgar Allan Poe - Metzengerstein
Martin Pearson (Donald A. Wollheim) - Mimic
Carl Jacobi - Mive
Barry Pain - The Moon-Slave
Clark Ashton Smith - Monsters in the Night [aka “A Prophecy of Monsters”]
Guy de Maupassant - The Mother of Monsters
Clark Ashton Smith - Mother of Toads
Kelsey Percival Kitchel - Mummy
Henry Slesar - My Father, the Cat
Ingulphus ( Arthur Gray) - The Necromancer
Robert Weinberg - Night Shapes
Marc Schorer & August W. Derleth - The Owl on the Moor
A. W. Kapfer - The Phantom Drug
Anthony M. Rud - The Place of Hairy Death
R. G. Macready - The Plant-Thing
G. G. Pendarves - The Power of the Dog
Frances Arthur - A Problem of the Dark
Howard R. Garis - Professor Jonkin’s Cannibal Plant
J. Sheridan Le Fanu - The Quare Gander
Thomas Ligotti - The Real Wolf
Miroslaw Lipinski - The Sacrifice
Edmond Hamilton - The Seeds from Outside
Ramsey Campbell - Seeing the World
H. F. Jamison - Seven Drops of Blood
Darrell Schweitzer - Short and Nasty
Ralph Allen Lang - The Silver Knife
Peter Cannon - The Sky Garden
Thomas R. Jordan - Smoke Fantasy
Peter Cannon - Smudge Makes a New Best Friend
Will Murray - Snail Ghost
William F. Nolan - Something Nasty
William J. Wintle - The Specter Spiders
Émile Erckmann & Alexandre Chatrian - The Spider of Guyana
Steve Rasnic Tem - Spidertalk
Henry S. Whitehead - The Tabernacle
Hugh B. Cave - Take Me, For Instance
Mollie L. Burleson - That Only a Mother Could Love
Suzanne Pickett - There Was Soot on the Cat
Steve Rasnic Tem - There’s No Such Thing as Monsters
Orlin Frederick - The Throwback
Kirk Mashburn - The Toad Idol
Ben Belitt - Tzo-Lin’s Nightingales
H. P. Lovecraft - The Unnamable
Hume Nisbet - The Vampire Maid
Clifford Ball - The Werewolf Howls
Brooke Byrne - The Werewolf’s Howl
Manly Wade Wellman - The Werewolf Snarls
Feodor Sologub - The White Dog
Stefan Grabinski - The White Wyrak

So, after the closest shave with Chics Ahoy!, "sanity" prevailed, and I blew rest of Am*z*n gift card on this instead. Weird Tales heavy again (40+) stories, and the beauty is, they are largely of the non-"classic" variety, so chances of having previously experienced all of them are - for most of us - slim. Werewolves, triffid tribute acts, horrible hands, anti-social amphibians, scary spiders, a visit to the place of hairy death (via the playing fields after dark). This has winner written all over it.

[ripper]

I presume that Peter Cannon is the same author who penned the P.G. Wodehouse/H.P. Lovecraft parodies in 'Scream for Jeeves'.

This is another in the '100 Little...' series that has taken my fancy.

[dem]

Manly Wade Wellman - The Werewolf Snarls: (Weird Tales, March 1937). AKA Among Those Present. Bogus occultists the Worthers cultivate the acquaintance of bizarre individuals to enliven their social gatherings. Lola Worther takes great pride in showing off her latest find, Mr. Craw, who claims to be a werewolf.

Feodor Sologub - The White Dog: (Weird Tales, Feb 1926, previously The Old House and Other Tales, Secker, 1915). Alexandra Ivanovna, perma-grumpy seamstress, guards the darkest of secrets. On the night of a full moon she is transformed into a huge white poodle. But what will happen now that Tanecha the apprentice (curse the chubby baggage!) has outed her for what she is before the entire workforce? Worse is to follow when Alexandra's neighbour, the babushka Stepanida, a were-crow and living banshee, pronounces her very imminent doom. Sure enough, a werewolf-hunter and his nephew arrive in town.

Clifford Ball - The Werewolf Howls (Weird Tales, Nov. 1941), and Brooke Byrne - The Werewolf's Howl (Weird Tales, Dec. 1934). Read these but recently via the brilliant SFFAudio. The Werewolf' Howl plot was ancient even when the super-prolific Anon used it for The Severed Arm, or The Wehr-Wolf of Limousin (from something called Tales Of Superstition, published circa 1820, according to Peter Haining). Both great fun, mind, even if Manly's fantastic guess-what-came-to-the-party? romp tops both.

Thomas Ligotti - The Real Wolf: (Nocturne #1, 1988). One-sided dialogue between a misanthropic librarian, who believes himself to be a werewolf, and the moon, to whom he promises his first kill. Victim-to-be is a girl skating on the icebound lake. Brainy horror, open to several interpretations, and you are advised to consult them as this one doubtless miles wide of the mark. I liked it, though. Put me in mind of Thomas Tessier's sublime The Nightwalker[/i] in miniature.

Henry S. Whitehead - No Eye-Witnesses (Weird Tales, Aug. 1932). Another very tidy man-wolf outing, previously encountered in 100 Wild Little Weird Tales

Barry Pain - The Moon-Slave : (Stories in the Dark, Grant Richards, 1901). In the introduction, Stefan Dziemianowicz cites this as another werewolf yarn, though can't say I'm convinced. The Princess Viola, promised in marriage to a decent man she can never love, finds her release in dancing. One night she finds her way to the centre of the long forsaken Palace maze - at last, her very own secret ballroom floor! Viola calls upon the moon to provide musical accompaniment to her wild gyrations. It goes two better, supplying not only a phantom orchestra but flesh, blood and cloven-hoofed partner ...

Such a shame Messers. Weinberg, Dziemianowicz & Greenberg never got around to a pulp heavy 100 Lethal Little Lycanthrope Talesor what have you.

[dem]

Howard R. Garis - Professor Jonkin’s Cannibal Plant: (Argosy, August 1905). MAD BOTANIST takes to feeding his pet Brazilian pitcher plant raw beefsteak to see what happens. What happens is, the fly-trap grows, and grows, and grows, and .... . One day at feeding time, Jonkins falls from a ladder straight into its gaping maw. Can his smarmy pal, Bradley Adams, cut him free before he's fully digested?

Generic man-eating plant story (to be fair, they all are), its fatal flaw is complete lack of death-of-loveable-household-pet sequence. The basics, Mr. Garis. The basics.

A brief story with a real shudder

Rex Ernest - The Inn (Weird Tales, Nov. 1937). Lost in a storm while investigating the suspicious death of a colleague, Barlow chances upon a marshland inn. How uncanny - it is The Blind Crow, the very hostelry where Gough met his end! The landlord, proper surly, provides a meal, pours a very generous measure of the house ale, throws Barlow his room key, leaves him to it. Eventually Barlow realises that he has company in the form of a taciturn bloke sat beyond the fire-glow. After much prompting, Barlow engages him in conversation. Gough's death seems to be the stranger's specialist subject. He claims to know exactly what happened. Better still, he stages a dramatic reconstruction.

Charles Garofalo - Itching For Action . Original to this collection and for my money, easily the pick of this three. Joe Borden, who has a pathological hatred of pets, blames his overnight extreme flea infestation on an encounter with a junk-yard dog . His every moment is agony. God, how they bite. Two baths a day, regular dousing in repellent, even a bug-bomb fail to rid him of the bastards. Damnedest thing. The fleas show no interest in his wife, Arlene, or the guys at work. It's like somebody is using black magic to punish him for what he gets up to in in the forest.

[dem]

" .... there is always a breaking point - and today was it. He was going to revenge himself on a world loaded with fat enemies."

Boris Dolgov

Charles King - I'll Be Glad When I'm Dead: (Weird Tales, July 1946). Julius, henpecked and bullied on account of he's built like a spaghetti strand, has reached the conclusion that fatso's worldwide are in league versus himself. By means of several lines of hastily scrawled obscene anti-chubster graffiti, Julius inadvertently summons a very rude micro-demon in the form of a bug-eyed mite. Harangued to get a move on, Julius blurts out his wish. "I want to be a vampire!" Granted. Alas, his revenge on the corpulent ones doesn't go quite to plan.

Great title, sarky story in vein of Robert Bloch. Earned a grudging smirk from reader who never smiles, much as it breaks his heart to admit it.

Martin Pearson [Donald A. Wollheim] - Mimic: (Astonishing Stories, Dec. 1942). Many insects have a genius for camouflage, but they've nothing on the silent guy in the long black 'cloak,' ridiculed throughout the town for his pathological fear of women.

J. M. Alvey - The Green-and-Gold Bug: (Weird Tales, Nov 1924). "Dickie's got some low-down foreign plague." Richard and Josephine Blackton's honeymoon in China ends in horror after the former ill-advisedly insults a native magician. Dick arrives back in the states an aged, haggard shadow of his former self on account of said sorcerer's "curse." In truth the old boy cheated a bit by throwing a poisonous bug through the couple's bridal suite but its the result that matters. Madness, murder, suicide. Story also notable for bravura performance of Josephine's fanatically xenophobic uncle who swipes all the memorable dialogue.

[dem]

Oct 15, 2016 15:48:05 GMT bobby said:

    Be forewarned that the print in these Barnes & Noble "100 Little" anthologies is smaller than normal to squeeze 100 stories into an average-sized book. I had no problem reading them 20 years ago, but I think I would need reading glasses now.

Think this may have some bearing on the "tiny print" issue. The copies of 100 Wild Little Weird Tales and 100 Ghastly Little Ghosts consulted are hardbacks, that of 100 Creepy Little Creatures is the paperback edition and the print is significantly smaller (though not the titchiest I've endured). Can manage the hard-covers without glasses no trouble, but can't do the paperback without them.

Robert Leonard Russell - The Amulet of Hell: (Weird Tales , Oct. 1935). The good news for Jim Trellen is that G. Kodopolis, proprietor of supernatural fiction's equivalent of a pop-up antique shop (see Temptations, Ltd.) is NOT a vampire. The bad news is, the parchment faced, skull-headed old cadaver is Vrykolokas, who'll not only exanguinate you but feast on your corpse, too. Try as he might Jim can't get rid of the amulet Kodopolis planted upon his person when he ill-advisedly visited the shop. It's death by doom for him unless he can do so!

Manly Wade Wellman - The Kelpie : (Weird Tales , July 1936). "It's a little frog or toad - must have been gathered with the weeds and shipped all the way from Scotland." The tiny amphibian is not the only surprise free gift with the consignment. On transferring the kelp to an aquarium, a gold band drops to the bottom of the glass. Cannon slips it on his wedding finger. damn thing won't budge!

Cannon's lover calls around. The tiny creature spies from the tank as he and Lu canoodle. Overcome with insane jealousy, the 'frog' waits until Cannon leaves the room before emerging from behind the weeds and assuming it's full height and true form. The Kelpie, malicious water-sprite, is no looker. Spinach green, warty and malformed, it resembles a spiteful caricature of womankind. Poor Lu never stood a chance.

R. Ernest Dupuy - The Edge of the Shadow: (Weird Tales , July 1927). Another for the werewolf/ werehound file. An unnamed soldier, fighting with the allies at Romagne, inexplicably rises from the trench and walks toward certain death. Last words, in response to the anguished howl of a hound, "It's calling me." His colleagues recover the body the following day. It's not the German infantry that did for him but the dog - "if it was a dog" - which tore out his throat. A friend recalls the dead man's account of a passionate affair with a wild Russian beauty who, aged twelve, fell prey to an evil entity in the Carpathians. She could never be free of it's influence, and those close to her invariably died horribly.

[dem]

It was a present .... but it seemed to have horns..

Vincent Napoli

Mildred Johnston - The Cactus: (Weird Tales, Jan. 1950). No question 100 Creepy Little Creatures delivers with this cactii from outer space hate you classic.

Abbey Burden spots the cactii while driving through some lonesome spot, "about a hundered miles from Chihauhau" if that's any help. Whole rows of them, rising from a meteor crater. Husband Robert protests, but she takes home a cutting from one anyway. The cactus grows at an alarming rate. According to one critic, it looks like a sick goat with boils, and smells that way, too. Abbey is so thrilled, she mails a specimen to her best pal, Edith Porter, who, initially enthusiastic, starts to wonder what will happen when the plant outgrows her house. It's only when Robert Burden tries to destroy his wife's monstrosity on a bonfire, the cactii show their true, murderous colours.

J. B. S. Fullilove - Ghouls of the Sea : (Weird Tales, March 1934). And the hits just keep on coming! The freighter Kay Marie is blown hundreds of miles off course into uncharted, shark infested waters. Bad enough if the sharks were alive and hungry for human flesh, worse that they are all dead and spotted with pink slime.

Edward E. Schiff - Left By the Tide: (Weird Tales, March 1929). A corpse-like merman drags unwary bathers to their doom. Very short, but effective on its own terms as J. B. S. Fullilove's everyday tale of brain-eating jellyfish on the rampage.

Clark Ashton Smith - Monsters in the Night: (aka A Prophecy of Monsters, MF&SF,Oct. 1954). A 21st century werewolf stalks the countryside, an endangered species helpless but to follow his natural instinct. Killing to eat to survive. There are far worse monsters out there, tonight's intended victim being one such.

Orlin Frederick - The Throwback: (Weird Tales, Oct. 1926). Corporal Heinz is the undisputed champion sadist and #1 most terrifying man in the entire regiment. Every two months when the blood-lust comes upon him, a man or beast in the vicinity is gnawed and ripped to pieces. Heinz is never suspected of these outrages, but they cease when he is killed on the battlefield. For his kind, a terrible death is the ultimate ecstasy. He dies with a beaming smile on his face.

[dem]

A. R. Tilburne

Manly Wade Wellman - Frogfather: (Weird Tales, Nov 1946). Ranson Cuff, the meanest man on the swamp, is used to getting his way in all things. If he wants to dine on frogs legs, by God he will dine on frogs legs, and damn these stupid Injun superstitions! So it is the bullyboy defies all warning and takes a boat onto the sacred waters. Cuff is the most deservedly hated man in the community so no-one too displeased when Khongabassi, the Frogfather, rises from the depths to protect his children.

Will Murray - Snail Ghost: (Eldritch Tales #11, 1985). Goblin X, The Unknown, pioneering traveller of the undimensional spaces, assists a spectral gastropod mollusc in its suitably cosmic dilemma. Body swapping, soul theft, portals in space time, fear, panic, Sci-fi, etc.

George MacDonald - The Gray Wolf: (Works of Fancy and Imagination, 1871). A sad one. An English student, hiking through the Shetlands, becomes separated from his friends on the moors. A storm drives him to seek shelter in a cave. The floor is littered with bones! And then the girl walks in. Grubby, dressed in rags, strangely alluring yet repulsive all at once. She offers him a bed at her kindly mothers cottage. The mystery girl is, of course, the gray wolf of the title, but love at first sight has compromised her natural inclination to tear out the youth's throat and devour him. How can such torn desires not end in tragedy?

[dem]

Harold S. De Lay

Roy Wallace Davis - The Avenging Hand: (Weird Tales, Feb. 1926). A party of four white men arrive on the remote South Sea island of Corda intent on learning the secret of the natives' miracle medicine. The village community live in abject terror of a tribe of ferocious giant forest demons who prey upon them at will. Louis, the muscles of the team, refuses to be intimidated and takes the battle to the enemy, killing all but one of the hairy ghouls with his trusty knife. The lone survivor, father to the rest, declares war on everyone and everything, Louis in particular. After the bloodiest battle, the young brave-heart finally overcomes his monstrous adversary, but at cost of an arm. The natives' magic restorative - combined with their intuitive mastery of advanced surgical procedure - now comes into its own. Desperate to appease the spirit of the fallen forest demon, they lop off its huge arm and graft it to Louis' stump. The superb reasoning behind this? Not only are they preserving some semblance of the demon's vitality, but putting it within constant striking distance of its hated enemy! Needless to say, when Louis comes around from the operation he finds himself is in a terrible pickle.

Thomas R. Jordan - Smoke Fantasy: (Weird Tales, March 1939). Meet Mr. Sanderson, an author toiling late on his new story. Sanderson is struggling to depict the central character, of monster of sadistic evil unprecedented in the annals of history. The problem being, monsters of sadistic evil unprecedented in the annals of history are a staple of his fiction and could be he's finally exhausted his clichés. The vapours from his cigarette think "hey, maybe it's time we gave this stiff a break."

H. L. Thomson - The Fisherman's Special (Weird Tales, Aug 1939). What's this ear? Only another werewolf story is what, this time with a Swedish setting. Two brothers compete for the hand of the lovely Selena. The older, more stable of the two, takes her for his bride, the younger, jealous and morose, takes to the bottle. One night at the tavern he falls in with a stranger who claims that, each Christmas Eve, he becomes a Wolf-man and gallivants with those like him. The trick is easier than you might think. Our loser in love buys the secret for the price of a pint. Come December 24th, the pack attack the village.

August Derleth - Baynter’s Imp: (Weird Tales, Sept. 1943). Have met this tricky customer before on Not Long For This World thread. Another of A.D.'s rotters over-reaches himself, contrives own doom.

I've lost track of how much book left to go, but safe to say have already had more than my money's worth.

[bobby]

Oct 25, 2016 15:22:13 GMT dem said:

Oct 15, 2016 15:48:05 GMT bobby said:

    Be forewarned that the print in these Barnes & Noble "100 Little" anthologies is smaller than normal to squeeze 100 stories into an average-sized book. I had no problem reading them 20 years ago, but I think I would need reading glasses now.

Think this may have some bearing on the "tiny print" issue. The copies of 100 Wild Little Weird Tales and 100 Ghastly Little Ghosts consulted are hardbacks, that of 100 Creepy Little Creatures is the paperback edition and the print is significantly smaller (though not the titchiest I've endured). Can manage the hard-covers without glasses no trouble, but can't do the paperback without them.

    But all 9 volumes that I have are hardcovers, and all of them have the smaller print. All 9 also have the original Edward Gorey-ish dustjacket art (and I think all but 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories and 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories are first printings), so maybe they changed the print size when they changed the dustjacket art, as I speculated earlier.

[bobby]

Oct 25, 2016 15:22:13 GMT dem said:

Oct 15, 2016 15:48:05 GMT bobby said:

Manly Wade Wellman - The Kelpie : (Weird Tales , July 1936). "It's a little frog or toad - must have been gathered with the weeds and shipped all the way from Scotland." The tiny amphibian is not the only surprise free gift with the consignment. On transferring the kelp to an aquarium, a gold band drops to the bottom of the glass. Cannon slips it on his wedding finger. damn thing won't budge!

Cannon's lover calls around. The tiny creature spies from the tank as he and Lu canoodle. Overcome with insane jealousy, the 'frog' waits until Cannon leaves the room before emerging from behind the weeds and assuming it's full height and true form. The Kelpie, malicious water-sprite, is no looker. Spinach green, warty and malformed, it resembles a spiteful caricature of womankind. Poor Lu never stood a chance.

    According to the EC comics book Tales of Terror!, "The Kelpie" was the source material for "He Who Waits!" in Weird Fantasy #15. But the EC story is about a scientist discovering (and falling in love with) an eight-inch-tall woman he finds in his laboratory, and it's a romance with a sad ending (the tiny woman suddenly starts aging prematurely and dies), not a horror story.

[dem]

Ralph Allen Lang - The Silver Knife: (Weird Tales, Jan. 1932). Dahlgren, a wanted murderer, steals a sacred artefact from the native Americans and heads North. He's pursued across the Arctic wastes by a huge wolf of uncanny prowess. Immune to bullets, heedless of camp-fires, the wolf systematically picks off Dahlgren's huskies, tearing them apart over consecutive nights. Even in his final moments, Dahlgen retains the presence of mind to write in his diary. Ross Nagel, Mountie, submits this and the silver knife to his incredulous superiors.

Joe R. Lansdale - The Dump: (Twilight Zone, July 1981). The supervisor recalls the night his pal, Pearly, a career hobo, was swallowed whole by a tentacled monstrosity spawned of the compost heap. While you're here, meet Otto!

Robert Weinberg - Night Shapes: By day it's just another boring street scene, but at night the view from twelve-year-old Raymond's bedroom window is alive with terrible wonders. The clouds are scary faces in the sky. The oak tree in dark shadow becomes a dragon. And so on.

[dem]

Jon Arfstrom

Suzanne Pickett - There Was Soot On The Cat: (Weird Tales, July 1952). Diary of Jude Henson, who flatters himself that, in doing away with beastly seducer Fey Brandon, he has perpetuated the "perfect murder"! Weldon it was who stole Henson's three gals, one after the other, and destroyed them. It seems his power over women emanated from his hypnotic, cats eyes. There will be no more trouble on that score now that Jude has put a bullet through them!

Or will there ...?

Kelsey Percival Kitchel - Mummy: (Weird Tales, Nov. 1929). "And I had a notion to get a skull and have it made into a tobacco jar. You can tell by that how young I was." This is much more like it. A New Yorker toiling for a mining outfit in the Andes is set on taking home a relic. To this end he digs up a mummified corpse from the Indian burial ground at Chiu-Chiu and lops off the head ....

Steve Rasnic Tem - There’s No Such Thing as Monsters: (Fantasy & Terror #3, 1984). So father reassures the son he has just terrified witless with a ghastly bedtime story. When little infant eventually dozes off, Daddy undergoes his accursed transformation. Another for the werewolf scrapbook.

Hugh B. Cave - Take Me, For Instance: (Argosy, Feb. 1966). A small rural community is visited by invisible aliens from the planet Sutaurus. Theirs are a peaceable people who mean earthlings no harm, they just want one to take home to experiment upon. There is no question of abduction. The Sutaurans are only interested in a volunteer. Fenley Thompson, the insufferable snob of a local schoolteacher, says the wrong thing at the wrong time.

[dem]

Granville S. Hoss - The Frog : (Weird Tales, June 1930). Diary of Dr. John Illingham, MAD SCIENTIST, whose life work is the brain serum he believes will elevate the intelligence of lower life-forms to equal that of man. When Illingham injects an amphibian with a mild dose of the wonder drug, the results are amazing! Success! Let those fools laugh at me now! Unfortunately, genius spawns an unholy cunning, and when the clumsy doctor inadvertently cripples 'Mr. Frog' he earns the creature's murderous hatred ....

Charles King - A Birthday Present for Tommy: (Weird Tales, March 1945). Hyper brainy ugly tentacled monstrosities build a little girl to lure home their favourite food. Poor Tommy's seventh birthday ends in a feast!

M. R. James - After Dark in the Playing Fields: (College Days, June 1924). The downside of arranging the stories alphabetically is that you can wind up with an opener which would have been shown to better advantage further along in the book. M. R. J.'s conversation with a bolshy owl is amusing light fantasy for the most part. Just when you've given up hope, the jarring final paragraphs which would inspire Ramsey Campbell's full-on supernatural horror sequel The Burning.

Marc Schorer & August W. Derleth - The Owl on the Moor: (Weird Tales, Sept. 1928). Letter from Mr. Harcourt to a friend with a fascination for witchcraft, concerning his recent (May 1908) adventures on Egdon Heath. An old woman is avoided by the villagers as her arrival on the moor two years ago coincided with the first of several unexplained deaths, the faces of the victims all scarred as though by talons. Harcourt investigates unearthly cries emanating from within the hovel of this "witch" only to find it empty. A huge owl watches as, mystified, he heads home. The following night brings another attack on a lone traveller, but this time Harcourt is well prepared to intervene. Something this anthology is not short on is were-beast tales.

[dem]

Edward Lucas White - Amina: (The Bellman, June 1st 1907). Peril in Persia. Waldo, a know-it-all New Englander who laughs at native superstition, defies the instruction of his Consul to explore the local ruins. As we studies the broken memorials, he's waylaid by a woman of peculiar aspect who invites him home to take water and meet her children. Home is a vault, the children terrifying.

Willis Knapp Jones - The Beast of the Yungas : (Weird Tales , Sept. 1927). Miss Demming could never bring herself toi believe that fiancé Jimmy Kent was killed in the trenches, and now, through her chance attendance of a soiree, she learns the terrible truth. It wasn't the Hun that did for her Jimmy - though not through any lack of trying - he was scared to death by a dinosaur. A famous explorer home from Bolivia inadvertently reveals the circumstances surrounding a madman's demise in the jungle.

Ambrose Bierce - John Mortonson’s Funeral: (Cosmopolitan, March 1906). Solemn occasion, this. The great and the good gather to pay their final respects to poor Mr. Mortonson. God forbid but, should anything untoward happen on a day like this, at least we can feel confident that 'Bitter' Bierce won't revel in it.

The White and Bierce stories are first rate, Willis Knapp Jones' offering not quite so but it kept me interested.