100 Creepy Little Creatures

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H. P. Lovecraft - The Unnamable (Weird Tales, July 1925). Randolph Carter and School Principal Joel Manton malingering in Arkham Cemetery. The friends are debating whether an entity could be so unspeakably, hideously abominable as to defy description. Manton thinks not. Carter confides that his most recent exercise in "flagrant trashiness", The Attic Window (Whispers, Jan. 1922), is based on horrible fact!

Ben Belitt - Tzo-Lin’s Nightingales (Weird Tales, Feb-March 1931). Seriously ancient Oriental proprietor or fantastic junk shop insists that, on the night of the full moon, the supposedly "artificial" nightingales caged along the shelves will revive, as will his wife of three-hundred years. The narrator believes the old fool is gaga and very angrily says as much. Tzo-Lin invites him over for the night to see for himself.

Kirk Mashburn - The Toad Idol (Weird Tales, Sept. 1935). An archaeologist is given cause to repent his violation of the Temple of the Toad. The stone idol he thieved has a murderous streak. Pebble power.

Edmond Hamilton - The Seeds from Outside (Weird Tales, March 1937). Standifer the artist loses his heart to Plant girl who fell to earth inside a meteor. The fly in the ointment is Plant boy, who despises them both. A tragic love story.

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Anne Harris Hadley - Exhibit “A”: (Weird Tales , April 1924). A budget (and then some) The Horror Of The Heights. Aviation ace Captain Rodwell breaks the altitude record and keeps ascending until he passes out. The Captain cared for by hyper-intelligent, tentacled oyster-men "of a cloudy transparent substance." There is some dispute as to what to do with him, so he opts to escape. Rodwell either becomes the original Man who fell to Earth, or the Man who fell to the Moon; he doesn't get far enough with his journal to specify.

Of more recent vintage. These are far more accomplished stories than Exhibit A, if not quite as much fun.

Barry N. Malzberg - Indigestion: (Fantastic, Sept. 1977). Henry, 37, explains how the modern ghoul goes about his business (same as ever; defiling graves, eating dead people, etc.). Henry regards himself as a mobile village, the 256 brains of those he's devoured fighting for supremacy inside a single skull. A separate self, 'The Other' is bent on ending the madness.

William F. Nolan - Something Nasty : (Charles L. Grant [ed], The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror, 1983). Little Janey hates Uncle Gus and can't say as I blame her. Snide and spiteful, forever cadging from dad, his main joy in life is tormenting Janey with horrible stories. Like the one about the stinking great rat living inside her, fixing to eat its way out ...

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Artist uncredited

Anthony M. Rud - The Place Of Hairy Death: (Weird Tales, Feb. 1934). Young Americans Jim Coulter, twenty-eight, and twenty-one- year-old feeble disappointment to his father Lester Ainslee, try their luck at locating the legendary treasure vault 2,000 feet below the ancient temple of Croszchen Pahna. Their guide insists he'll accompany them only so far, if they want to fall foul of the giant blind albino tarantulas that is their look out. Lured by the prospect of riches unimaginable, the pair descend deeper into the mine until ... disaster! Jim falls through the pitted tunnel and is stuck fast from the waist down. A massive great hairy one goes for his face ....

Andrew Brosnatch

Harry Harrison Kroll - Fairy Gossamer: (Weird Tales, Dec. 1924). The legend goes that Israel Hicks, believing himself persecuted by demons, retreated to a cavern in the Kentucky Mountains to incubate spiders reasoning that they would trap any evil spirit in their silky webs. William Thompson, an arachnologist attached to a local college, descends deep into Hicks' lair in search of specimens. He finds a whole lot more. High on suspense and terror until undone by wretched happy ending.

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Simon MacCulloch - Dummy: My favourite of the moderns to date. Our narrator, one half of a decrepit stage act, is bored to despair rehashing the same tired material to an undemanding audience. It is time to part company with Fred, aka 'Mr. Fuck Off,' who he has come to loathe. Guy Fawkes night provides the perfect excuse for a private bonfire party.

H. F. Jamison - Seven Drops of Blood : (Weird Tales, May 1930). Stanton J. Eldon, "millionaire, dreamers and master of weird experiments" (i.e., rich, flaky, MAD SCIENTIST) is determined to prove to his fellow man - fools! - that Death can be conquered. To this end he acquires the fresh corpse of a murderer from the City morgue and subjects it to several thousand volts, a dose of snake venom, seven drops of virgin's blood and a relevant passage or two from the Bible. It works! The dead man revives, but flies into a furious rage at being denied his shot at redemption merely to satisfy the whim of a Victor Frankenstein wannabe!

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G. G. Pendarves - The Power of the Dog : (Weird Tales, Aug. 1927). Another for the were-beast file. White man's magic (e.g., a gun) proves impotent versus the power of cruel, hound-torturing Daouad, the worker of spells. The Arab's insist that Daouad is responsible for the disappearance of Adams the Englishman, but Benson, overseer of the mine at El Adrar, has no time for mumbo jumbo. His best bet is to humiliate this dangerous charlatan before the credulous natives, but the best laid plans have a habit of going horribly wrong.

Carl Jacobi - Mive: (The Minnesota Quarterly, Fall 1928: Weird Tales, Jan. 1932). A nature lover hiking across Carlings Marsh chances upon an oversized, ebony black butterfly. Powder from the creature's wing induces a nightmare vision of giant carnivorous lepidoptera routing a medieval army.

Garnett Radcliffe - The Beetle : (Weird Tales, Sept. 1953). Detective Scott and his men have traced a sadistic killer to the Roebuck Arms pub in London. Before they can arrest him, the cops are distracted by the antics of an unlikely gatecrasher - a mischievous monkey - and 'Captain Y' seemingly vanishes into thin air. Better for the Captain that he'd been arrested. His despicable behaviour in India has earned him the wrath of the great monkey God, Harathi Ram. As the little ape tortures a beetle over the fire, a man is mangled under a train at Crewe Street Tube.

Frances Arthur - A Problem of the Dark : (Weird Tales, Oct. 1927). When Bull Bayman, quarterback on the 'football' team, sustains a fatal injury mid-game, he dies in the mistaken belief that team mate Rob Denniston is in collusion with their opponents. Bull's hatred of the "traitor" transcends the grave. Rob comes under nightly attack from an invisible entity bent on throttling him. Dr. Hedges, photographer of dreams, intervenes on his behalf, and captures the elemental on camera.

Seabury Quinn - The Lesser Brethren Mourn: (Strange Stories, Oct. 1940). "There is no kind of beast on earth, no fowl that flieth with its wings, but the same is a people like unto you; then until their Lord shall they return." All creatures great and small come to pay their final respects to old Wash Kearney, who was kind to them. Inspired by a verse in the Koran. For a story narrated by a mortuary assistant and referencing Ambrose Bierce's John Mortenson's Funeral this one is disappointingly feelgood. Nice message though.

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Donald R. Burleson - Dark Brother: (Lemon Drops & Other Horrors, 1993). The entity - which takes the form of a tentacled mist - has lived here since long before the house was built and resents human intrusion. A pair of couch potatoes are duly disposed of with the minimum of fuss. Narrated by the cat who befriends it.

Mollie L. Burleson - That Only a Mother Could Love : Five years into their marriage and everything is sweetness and light for the O'Malley's - or would be, if only they had a child! They finally get lucky on holiday in Kilderry when Sally is lured into the woods and set upon by the little people.

Stephen M. Rainey - Deep Wood : (The Sterling Web , Summer 1990). The Starmont Corporation plan to clear the woods and erect a housing estate in their place. The trees bleed a disgusting brown sap in retaliation. The defilers die screaming.

Lafcadio Hearn - Jikininki : (Kwaidan, 1904). A priest who abused his position to rob the dead is spewed forth from the grave as a feaster on corpses.

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Oct 23, 2016 8:53:24 GMT ripper said:

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

The very same, Rip, though no Jeeves or Cthulhu involved in this bizarre tale of a modern day Circe.

Peter Cannon - Smudge Makes a New Best Friend: Paul's no-strings relationship with Fran would be absolutely perfect were it not for her mangy pet cat. 'Smudge' has a particularly gross underwear fetish which Fran indulges, blithely explaining that her beloved moggie's filthy habit is the legacy of a traumatic kittenhood. As Paul sucuumbs to his lover's spell, so he sympathises with Smudge's predilection ....

Edward Page Mitchell - The Devilish Rat: (The Sun, Jan. 27, 1878). "The most inhabitable room in the castle was that in the northwest tower, but it was already occupied by the Lady Adelaide Maria, eldest daughter of the Baron von Shotten, who was starved to death in the thirteenth century by her affectionate papa for refusing to wed a one-legged freebooter from over the river."

An experiment in metaphysics. Narrator builds himself a cage and hides away from the world in the hugely haunted, creepy crawly infested Schloss Schwinkenschwank, intent on emptying his puny soul that the vacancy might be filled by the wandering spirit of Socrates. To this end, he fasts to the point of starvation. His solitary distraction is a dirty great rat which keeps nightly vigil from the other side of the bars. How he detests the ugly rodent! How he would love to tear it apart with his bare hands!

The temptation proves too great. As he rips the rat to pieces, so he inherits its soul and embarks upon a path of murder and thorough beastliness for fun and profit (thirty pieces of silver a time).