John Canning (ed.) - 50 Great Horror Stories

[Swampirella]

This was the cover on my copy!

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John Canning - 50 Great Horror Stories (Bell 1971, originally Odhams 1969)

Doug Anderson

Acknowledgements
Editor's note

Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Ruff
Ronald Seth - The Werewolf of St-Claude
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Hand of Father Arrowsmith
J. Wentworth Day - The Man Who Turned into a Cat
J. Wentworth Day - The Dead Killed Him in His Own Grave
Ronald Seth - The Devil in the Flesh
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Bos'un's Body
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - A Warning to Skeptics
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - Double Damnation
J. Wentworth Day - The Tongueless Woman of Glamis Castle
Geoffrey Williamson - Trapped in a Flooded Tunnel
Ian Fellowes-Gordon - The Girl in the Flame-red Dress
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - With This Ring
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Vampire of Croglin
Ian Fellowes-Gordon - Donovan's Drop
J. Wentworth Day - The Beaked Horror which Sank a Ship
J. Wentworth Day - The Dog-Man Horror of the Valley
Geoffrey Williamson - They Ate Their Young Shipmate
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Mate of the Squando
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - Ripe Stilton
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Princess of Thebes
Vida Derry - Death Takes Vengeance
Vida Derry - A Date with a Spider
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - Ole Rockin' Chair
Vida Derry - The Frightened Corpse
J. Wentworth Day - The Vampire of Castle Furstenstein
Frank Usher - The Great White Bat
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - Let Sleeping Bones Lie
J. Wentworth Day - Sung to His Death by Dead Men
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Man Who Hated Cats
Geoffrey Williamson - Accusing Eyes of Vengeance
Frank Usher - The Walking Dead
Ronald Seth - Visit from a Vampire
Ronald Seth - The Exorcising of the Restless Monk
Ronald Seth - The Recluse of Kotka Veski
Ronald Seth - The Secret Agents and the Corpse
Frank Usher - The Bath of Acid
Ian Fellowes-Gordon - The Girl in the Train
Frank Usher - The Black Dahlia
Ronald Seth - Scent of Death
Ian Fellowes-Gordon - The Face of Mrs. Cartwright
Ian Fellowes-Gordon - The Events at Schloss Heidiger
Ian Fellowes-Gordon - The Birthday Gift
Ian Fellowes-Gordon - The Attic Room
Ronald Seth - Footprints in the Dust
Frank Usher - Amazonian Horrors
Vida Derry - The Image of Fear
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - Lullaby for the Dead
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - Rose: A Gothick Tale
Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Eyes of Thomas Bolter

Index

Blurb:

A story which has the power of evoking a sense of horror has always carried a strange fascination. By horror, as the editor points out, is meant not the horrible — the grisly detailing of gore and mayhem — but the horrific. And this embraces all those strange, unearthly events which since earliest times have surrounded man's life like a shadow, and which even in these enlightened. scientific days cannot always be convincingly dismissed.

Reaction to the horrific comprises a number of different elements; wonder, fear, intense interest, and a combination of attraction and revulsion. It is still as though there is an element of the witch-doctor’s acolyte in each of us.

The editor has brought together in this volume fifty of the strangest horror stories of this and other ages. Here is the werewolf set on its sinister course, the Cambridge scholar sung to his own death by his dead colleagues, a lethal Apazauca spider stalking its human prey; here too, is a vampire not to be denied, the mournful spirit of a walled-up monk, and the hideous cries of zombies suddenly realizing they are dead.

For all who still retain a sense of wonder about the strange, the weird, the hair-raising happenings which can never be satisfactorily explained, this book will prove irresistible.

A pair of fashion victims and a randy monk to begin with;

Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Ruff: The young, attractive only daughter of a wealthy merchant, would surely be among the most sought after of Antwerp's debutantes were she not a notorious, sadistic shrew. Anna's reputation precedes her far and wide until, much to her poor father's dismay, there is no eligible bachelor will touch her no matter how generous the dowry. This gives her an excuse to further abuse all comers. Furious that a costly new ruff has not been fitted to her liking, the abominable diva first beats her handmaid then calls on the Devil to put it right. A knock on the door. A handsome stranger offers his assistance ....

Ronald Seth - The Exorcising of the Restless Monk: Date unspecified. Brother Simeon is walled up alive with but seven days food and drink by order of the Abbot of Durham. His crime? Seducing a novice of Blanchlands convent, strangling the fruit of their sin and discarding it's tiny body in the Wear. Simeon dies in agony, again renouncing his faith, screaming his hatred of God and man.

In 1931, Canon Y and family move into a house that now stands on the site of the monastery and directly above the sealed room. Brother Simeon appreciates this development not at all.

Ian Fellowes-Gordon - The Girl in the Flame-red Dress: Wheldon House, Bucks, 1819. Furious that her beloved son, Giles, should defy her wishes and marry beneath his station, Lady Bartlett hits on a monstrous plan to be wed of this Teresa baggage for good. Feigning friendship, she welcomes home the newly-weds, insists on hosting a grand ball in their honour. Teresa, is lovelier than ever in a flowing silk frock; I was almost going to say that no other woman present could hold a candle to her, but that wouldn't be strictly true ....

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J. Wentworth Day - The Dog-Man Horror of the Valley: Or the were-man of Merioneth. While fishing a mountain lake, a university professor hooks a hybrid skull which he takes home to study. That night its owner lays siege to the tiny cottage.

Michael & Mollie Hardwick - Let Sleeping Bones Lie: Oakville. Georgia. An abandoned house on the Savannah. Resident ghosts include a floating head, disembodied hairy arm and a throat-clutching elemental, all of them hostile to ghost hunters, dogs and living things in general, though the phantom hand has a fondness for cats.

Ronald Seth - Footprints in the Dust: Valetta, Malta. House near the Grand harbour haunted by elegant woman long drowned.

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Ronald Seth - The Werewolf of St-Claude: Following the murder of a kinsman, the villagers give chase of the culprit who escaped in the wood. Cringing behind bushes, Perrenette Gandillon, a terrified, demented old woman .... with bloodied hands! Stripped of her rags to reveal the body of a curvaceous, gloriously beautiful girl, she breaks down and confesses that yes, she killed the man because "I am a werewolf." There really is nothing else for it but to tear her to pieces.

J. Wentworth Day - The Beaked Horror which Sank a Ship: A schooner comes off worse in an encounter with a giant squid off the Canary islands.

Ronald Seth - The Devil in the Flesh: Conviction of Mother Anne Ashby and four fellow Devil's concubines (Cranbrook chapter), hung at Maidstone in 1652 for fornicating with Satan, turning invisible, and so bewitching local loudmouth, James Kither, that he is unable to pass water "until he thinks he will burst."

Geoffrey Williamson - Trapped in a Flooded Tunnel: !2th January 1829. A cave in during the excavation of the Rotherhithe tunnel leaves seven men facing death by drowning in slimy sewage water.

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J. Wentworth Day - The Tongueless Woman of Glamis Castle: Is the barbarously mutilated charity case taking in at an Italian convent the former vampire of Glamis Castle?

Michael & Mollie Hardwick - Double Damnation: Glasgow, late eighteenth century. When sweet, innocent farm girl Jessy Janson falls pregnant with his child, Duncan Foulis, ambitious surgeon's apprentice, unceremoniously stabs her to death, disposing of corpse and murder weapon in the Clyde. His guilt materialises as a phantom double who helps retrieve her skeleton from the river, even as his living self attends church.

Michael & Mollie Hardwick - With This Ring: The sad story of the murdered bride will be familiar to fans of The Bloody Hand in Lord Halifax's Ghost Book. The Hardwicks are especially well suited to supernatural melodrama.

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Vida Derry - The Image of Fear: Fellow students challenge valiant-but-dim Wang-Foo to visit the temple at midnight, creep into the torture chamber, and retrieve the effigy of the terrible Judge of the Underworld. True to his nature, Wang-Foo accepts, with weird and macabre results for his wife's horrible face.

Michael & Mollie Hardwick - Lullaby for the Dead: Long distance railway journey from Carlisle to London. Colonel Eward awakens to find he is now sharing the carriage with a veiled woman nursing something in her arms ....

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Ian Fellowes-Gordon - The Attic Room: Kevin Donaldson, a young Aussie student at St. Andrews University, is adamant that there are no such things as ghosts. A college chum, Alastair Moncrieff, bets Donaldson £50 he wouldn't last a night in the haunted attic of Drumkattle, his Scottish ancestral home. The sceptic accepts, packing a pistol to guard against any funny business ... Plot owes a huge debt to a certain Michael Arlen classic. Can't fail.

Michael & Mollie Hardwick - Rose: A Gothick Tale: Another good one. Shortly after giving birth to her first child, beautiful young Rose Winterbourne of Maytree Cottage, Highgate village, suffers a heart attack. She is laid to rest in her husband's family vault in Highgate Cemetery. A pair of undertakers take note that she has been laid to rest wearing all her expensive jewellery ....

Some days later, a skeletal, bloody shrouded thing arrives at the garden gate of Maytree Cottage ...

Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Man Who Hated Cats: Lionel Earnshaw, bachelor of comfortable means, accepts an invitation from Jack Vaughan, an old friend from Cambridge days, to spend a weekend at his Eastbourne home. On his arrival, Lionel attracts the interest of Blackie the cat, who'll not leave him alone day or night. A faithful retelling of The Vampire Cat from Lord Halifax's Ghost Book.

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Ronald Seth - Scent of Death: Madame X turns to Mrs ———, medium, to banish the ghastliest stench emanating from the basement of her Marylebone home. Ghost of a forgotten plague victim, bones gnawed by rats and denied Christian burial.


Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Hand of Father Arrowsmith: A relic severed from the already mangled corpse of the Jesuit martyr, hung, drawn and quartered outside Lancaster Castle for refusing to take the oath of allegiance. In life, Father Arrowsmith was celebrated as a healer. In death, he turns his powers to avenging the murders of Squire Gerard and daughter by a grasping lawyer.

Michael & Mollie Hardwick - The Bos'un's Body: Did inoffensive sail-maker's apprentice Ambrose Gwinnett sleep murder and rob a kindly old sea-dog while sharing a room in a Deal boarding house? Five years after surviving the gallows, Ambrose finally learns the bizarre truth.

Can anyone identify the artist? Line illustrations would appear to be by same hand who provided drawings for Elliott O'Donnell's Great Ghost Stories compilation. I really like them.