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Post by andydecker on Sept 1, 2021 19:32:56 GMT
Sometimes I wonder could we receive weird menace stories from Howard and Lovecraft if they were alive? My guess is they'd both consider weird menace too lowbrow an art form. I can't see Lovecraft explaining away Cthulhu as the Mayor wearing stilts and a suit fitted with rubber tentacles. I think you are right. Lovecraft never saw himself as writing for money and had his interests, he didn't try crime fiction either. Howard tried at least sports and some spicy stories, but this wasn't his field.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 2, 2021 9:03:06 GMT
Amos Sewell "We're not dead, Frank. And we're not at the bottom of the sea. We're further down than that. Under the bottom!"Frank Belknap Long - In the Lair of the Space Monsters: By what Strange Mischance Was the S-87 Immersed in the Impinging Other-World?. Jim Harvey and Frank Taylor, the sole survivors of a submarine's catastrophic plunge to the bottom of the Pacific, are taken captive by man-octopi hybrids. These malevolent monstrosities drag them through a weird below-sea forest to the deep cave they use for a larder, where they paste them to the wall with hideous octo-sputum. The floor is thick with the skeletons of several centuries worth of drowned and, presumably, devoured sailors. With both men painfully "trussed up like beetles in amber," the multi-tentacled ones seal the entrance. The captives watch appalled as a mound heaves and groans, finally to burst — and spew forth thousands of hungry maggots! If only FBL had left it there. The Cauldron: A meeting Place for Sorcerers and Apprentices. A selection of letters from the readers. Nothing especially spectacular but welcome all the same. Contributors include Charles W. Diffin (author of The Dog That Laughed; Forrest J Ackerman, who liked Dead Legs and The Smell but found Whitehead's The Moon Dial "uninteresting"; and "a British perspective," incorporating a lamentable attempt at verse, from Thomas McCurtin in Glasgow.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 9, 2021 18:27:12 GMT
Harry Bates [ed.] - Strange Tales , Jan. 1933 (Wildside Press, 2004) Human Embers Clark Ashton Smith - The Second Interment Powwows of John Hohman August W. Derleth - The Thing that Walked on the Wind The legend of Gogmagog's Leap Charles Willard Diffin - The Terror by Night Sophie Wenzel Ellis - White Lady Hugh B. Cave - Murgunstrumm Albertus Magnus Henry S. Whitehead - The Napier Limousine Headless Ghosts Robert E. Howard - The Cairn on the Headland
The CauldronAmos Sewell What would prove to be the final issue kicks off with an appropriately themed CAS horror. Clark Ashton Smith - The Second Interment: "Somewhere in That Descent There Came the Unknown, Incognizable Mercy of Nothingness." Three years on from the trauma of premature burial in the family vault, Sir Uther Magbane, understandably, a nervous wreck, lives in fear that, should he suffer another attack, the same thing will happen again. His morbid fixation has done for his relationship with fiancee, Alice Margreave, who now only looks upon him with horror and pity. Guy, the conniving brother, stands to inherit should anything unfortunate happen. He assures Uther there's nothing to worry about. Trust me, I've got your back! Besides, with a push-button electrical alarm fitted to the casket, even should the unthinkable happen, what's the problem? Uther will be able to summon help. The unthinkable happens. Rafael DeSoto August Derleth - The Thing That Walked on The Wind: "Where the Head Should Have Been There Were Two Gleaming Stars. Burning Bright — Like Eyes!"Testimony of John Dalhousie, Royal Mountie chief of Navissco camp, Manitoba into the disappearance of an entire community and other strange occurrences. The people of Stillwater worship a monstrous air elemental, the Wind-walker, to whom they pay tribute in human sacrifice. It's decided that the next offering will comprise Wentworth and MacDonald, two travellers staying at the local inn, and Irene Masitte, the landlord's daughter. Irene warns the strangers of the villagers' intentions and these three escape into the night. The Wind-walker claims the entire village population as punishment. Exactly a year later, Wentworth, MacDonald and Miss Masitte drop out of the sky. The girl, who appears to have been thrown down, is dead. The men are so inured to the cold that everyday temperatures prove fatal. They die raving about the wind-walker, 'lost Leng,' something called a 'Lovecraft,' and the Canadian writings of Algernon Blackwood (not least The Wendigo).
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Sept 9, 2021 18:42:27 GMT
Rafael DeSoto August Derleth - The Thing That Walked on The Wind: "Where the Head Should Have Been There Were Two Gleaming Stars. Burning Bright — Like Eyes!"Testimony of John Dalhousie, Royal Mountie chief of Navissco camp, Manitoba into the disappearance of an entire community and other strange occurrences. The people of Stillwater worship a monstrous air elemental, the Wind-walker, to whom they pay tribute in human sacrifice. It's decided that the next offering will comprise Wentworth and MacDonald, two travellers staying at the local inn, and Irene Masitte, the landlord's daughter. Irene warns the strangers of the villagers' intentions and these three escape into the night. The Wind-walker claims the entire village population as punishment. Exactly a year later, Wentworth, MacDonald and Miss Masitte drop out of the sky. The girl, who appears to have been thrown down, is dead. The men are so inured to the cold that everyday temperatures prove fatal. They die raving about the wind-walker, 'lost Leng,' something called a 'Lovecraft,' and the Canadian writings of Algernon Blackwood (not least The Wendigo). I've somehow never read this. I like the illustration, and I'm tempted to check out the story (despite Derleth spelling out his inspirations in giant letters).
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Post by helrunar on Sept 9, 2021 19:06:04 GMT
I also would like to read that Derleth tale. Presumably there's an allusion there to Blackwood's yarn "The Wendigo." (As Kev mentions in his excellent review notes!)
H.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 10, 2021 8:25:02 GMT
I've somehow never read this. I like the illustration, and I'm tempted to check out the story (despite Derleth spelling out his inspirations in giant letters). I also would like to read that Derleth tale. Presumably there's an allusion there to Blackwood's yarn "The Wendigo." (As Kev mentions in his excellent review notes!) H. Derleth doesn't identify The Wendigo by name, but he might just as well. In case anyone interested is unaware, at time of writing, hall seven issues are available to read/ download via Archive.org H. W. Wesso Charles Willard Diffin - The Terror by Night: Out of the Unknown Dark Whitmore Unwittingly Evokes a Thing of Horror. John Whitmore, architect, ignores the advice of the medium, Madame Zembla, and performs a seance at home with wife Elizabeth, assuring her it will be a hoot. It is that! Whitmore inadvertently calls down a malevolent elemental which promptly animates a rotting cadaver to molest Elizabeth. Worse is to follow. Human Embers: One page account of the death of Mrs. Grace Pett. A case of spontaneous human combustion in Ipswich.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 11, 2021 5:50:57 GMT
H. W. Wesso Sophie Wenzel Ellis - White Lady: In purest Love André Served His Weirdly Beautiful Flower — His White Lady of Passion, of Jealousy, of Hate.On a small Caribbean island, André Tournier, mad botanist, tends his garden of strange and beautiful mutations, his pride and joy the plant that bears an uncanny resemblance to a very beautiful, full-grown woman. This plant-girl creates music by scraping together her dagger-petal arms. She has no liking for Brynhild, André's bride-to-be, and the hostility is mutual. Tournier, a good man at heart but obsessed, very obsessed, is so sensitive to plant life that he can hear the scream of a lettuce leaf in the salad bowl. He gets by on a diet of gallons of fresh milk and a strange pink seed. He is fast withering before his fiancee's eyes. "He's doing something mysterious to make himself as much as possible as things that grow in the ground!" Brynhild, terrified and angry that she is losing her man to a glorified dandelion, arms herself with an axe for a winner-takes-all showdown .... As recently revived as one of Mike Ashley's Queens of the Abyss. Headless Ghosts: Examples include the Duchess of Queensbury at Drumlaurick castle; Anne Boleyn in Blickling Park, and her father, Sir Thomas, obliged to cross forty bridges to shake off the furies on his trail. Sir Jocelyn Percy at Beverly, Yorks. In most every instance, these apparitions are reported as riding in headless horse drawn carriages. Honourable exception is the Duchess, who crosses the castle grounds gamely pushing her severed skull before her in a wheelbarrow. Also the decidedly unwelcome Doneraile ghost and his basin of blood.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 11, 2021 12:30:59 GMT
Amos Sewell Hugh B. Cave - Murgunstrumm: Candle-Lit and Decayed is the Grey Toad Inn, Where Murgunstrumm Receives Each Lovely, Unsuspecting Guest (A Complete Novelette). Begins with escape of 23-year-old Paul Hill from the State Insane asylum where he's been confined this past seven months, since the night he and fiancee, Ruth, spent in Rehobeth village. Ruth, for her part is a patient at the Morrisdale mental hospital. As arranged Martin LeGeurn, Paul's prospective father-in-law, supplies the fugitive with clothes, cash, car and the use of his formidable valet, Matt Jeremy. The pair take a room at the Rehobeth Motel. Paul, impersonating Dr. von Heller ("the mightiest brain in medical circles; the man who understood what other men merely feared") , fires off urgent requests to Drs. Kermeff and Allenby to join him, these two being the men who had him committed. Then he and Jeremy set out to keep vigil over the unspeakably gloomy and sinister Gray Toad Inn, and it's creepy proprietor - the deformed, squamous ghoul, Murgunstrumm! Hiding in the long grass, the pair watch as a car pulls up and a man leads an ashen and clearly terrified girl across the threshold, into the domain of the undead. For Murgunstrumm's is a roadhouse for vampires, somewhere to bring their victims on a last night out. The twin puncture marks on the girl's throat confirm that she is beyond their aid. Kermeff and Allenby arrive the following day, suitably furious to have been summoned by an imposter. Paul and Jeremy pull their guns and, come nightfall, escort the gents to The Gray Toad Inn, having first sewn strips of cloth in the form of a cross on their shirts. Pleading a broken down car, Paul persuades the reluctant proprietor to prepare them a meal. Gradually, they are joined in the candle-lit gloom by fellow diners, one of whom transforms from a hideous bat into a fanged toff in the blink of an eye! Even Jeremy ("I'm getting out of here - this place ain't human!") is of a mind to leg it. While a third vampire leads a bewildered girl in white ermine stole through to an adjoining room, these two round on what they suspect will be easy prey .... First time I've read Cave's epic in a decade plus. I misremembered The Gray Toad inn as a thriving establishment, when the reality is it's sparsely attended this bloody night until the arrival of gatecrashers to join in the mayhem of the concluding chapters. Murgunstrumm is, to all intents and purposes, a human ghoul, who has thrown in his lot with the undead on the understanding he gets to dine on the corpses of their victims.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 12, 2021 4:48:44 GMT
Amos Sewell Henry S. Whitehead - The Napier Limousine: Out of the Light Comes the Hand of Sir Harry's Deliverance. Gerald Canevin and James Rand, Earl of Carruth, are stopped in the West End of London by the formidable Lady Evelyn Haversham, who prevails upon them to pay an urgent visit to her young charge, Sir Harry Dacre, in Portman Terrace. To stress the importance of their mission, her Ladyship places her chauffeur, footman and classic vintage limousine at their disposal. All three vanish when they reach their destination! Sir Harry is being blackmailed by theatre impresario 'Leighton Goddard,' over an innocent dalliance with 'The Princess Lillia,' a dancer in the Follies who happens to be Goddard's wife. Pay up or otherwise, the business will surely put paid to Harry's impending marriage to lovely Miss Grosvenor, her father being a rich, fanatical Evangelist. The arrival of Rand and Canevin at least prevents his suicide, and Rand hits on a plan to see off the odious Goddard. But how could Lady Evelyn have tipped them the nod when she, her chauffeur, footman and Limo were blown to pieces when a German bomb two days before the Armistice of 1918?
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Post by dem bones on Sept 12, 2021 11:50:56 GMT
Amos Sewell Robert E. Howard - The Cairn on the Headland: Terribly Plays the Northern Lights on Grimmin's Cairn. James O'Brien, accomplished Irish historian, is in thrawl to an American, Ortali, who is blackmailing him over the suspicious death of a tutor O'Brien was known to despise. Not content with fleecing him of his salary, Ortali demands O'Brien accompany to Dublin to excavate Grimm's Cairn, which, he insists is the burial place of a Sea King laid to rest among his worldly treasures. O'Brien disputes this: he believes it was erected in the aftermath of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, when King Brian Boru put what was left of the massacred Viking horde to flight and claimed Ireland for Christ. He gets so angry at Ortali's smugness that he picks up a rock, intent on beating his brains out. He resists - for now. A mystery woman approaches O'Brien from the graveyard beside the Cairn. Confirming that he is of the blood, she gifts him the priceless, centuries lost Cross of Saint Brandon for the ordeal to come when they enter the Cairn. That night O'Brien dreams of the battlefield at Clotarf, and his part in the routing of the Norseman. He was Red Cumal,an Irish warrior, slayer of a one-eyed Viking chieftain who, with his last breaths revealed himself as Odin taken human form to lead his men in conflict. Thinking Cumal an ally on account of his red beard, he instructs him to place a sprig of holly on his breast that he be released from his earthly shell. Cumal, obviously, does no such thing, instead piling stone upon stone over the corpse. Together with his colleagues, he erected the Cairm which has lain undisturbed for a century .... until tonight when, wearing a holly leaf on his lapel to mock O'Brien's weakness for mythological mumbo jumbo, Ortali descends into the tomb .... The Cauldron: Three issues old, the letters column, this time including contributions from August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith, was still finding its way when the end came. Much praise for Howard's People of the Dark, Hugh B. Cave's Stragella and Smith's The Nameless Offspring. John Y. Stapleton, of Ripple Road, Barking, requests more than one picture a story. Everyone seems really happy with everything - only the occasional Henry S. Whitehead slow burner divides opinion.
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Post by andydecker on Sept 12, 2021 12:17:13 GMT
Amos Sewell Robert E. Howard - The Cairn on the Headland: Terribly Plays the Northern Lights on Grimmin's Cairn. James O'Brien, accomplished Irish historian, is in thrawl to an American, Ortali, who is blackmailing him over the suspicious death of a tutor O'Brien was known to despise. Not content with fleecing him of his salary, Ortali demands O'Brien accompany to Dublin to excavate Grimm's Cairn, which, he insists is the burial place of a Sea King laid to rest among his worldly treasures. O'Brien disputes this: he believes it was erected in the aftermath of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, when King Brian Boru put what was left of the massacred Viking horde to flight and claimed Ireland for Christ. He gets so angry at Ortali's smugness that he picks up a rock, intent on beating his brains out. He resists - for now. A mystery woman approaches O'Brien from the graveyard beside the Cairn. Confirming that he is of the blood, she gifts him the priceless, centuries lost Cross of Saint Brandon for the ordeal to come when they enter the Cairn. That night O'Brien dreams of the battlefield at Clotarf, and his part in the routing of the Norseman. He was Red Cumal,an Irish warrior, slayer of a one-eyed Viking chieftain who, with his last breaths revealed himself as Odin taken human form to lead his men in conflict. Thinking Cumal an ally on account of his red beard, he instructs him to place a sprig of holly on his breast that he be released from his earthly shell. Cumal, obviously, does no such thing, instead piling stone upon stone over the corpse. Together with his colleagues, he erected the Cairm which has lain undisturbed for a century .... until tonight when, wearing a holly leaf on his lapel to mock O'Brien's weakness for mythological mumbo jumbo, Ortali descends into the tomb .... The Cauldron: Three issues old, the letters column, this time including contributions from August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith, was still finding its way when the end came. Much praise for Howard's People of the Dark, Hugh B. Cave's Stragella and Smith's The Nameless Offspring. John Y. Stapleton, of Ripple Road, Barking, requests more than one picture a story. Everyone seems really happy with everything - only the occasional Henry S. Whitehead slow burner divides opinion. Not my favorite Howard story, but not because it is badly told, but because it is neither fish nor fowl. It can't decide if it wants to be a thriller, a fantasy story or a horror story. It is terribly underdeveloped, there is enough plot for a novella, and its at the time (1933) novel ideas are basically wasted. Our hero resurrects fuc**g God Father Odin and sends him packing. But everything is dumbed down. The hero just van-helsings him, the Christians against Pagans theme is risingly simple in the vein of a sunday-sermon and the vision-thing has been done to death by Howard himself at the time. Howard's other version of the plot The Grey God Passes is much better realized; unfortunatly it remained unsold.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 29, 2021 20:43:55 GMT
Harry Bates [ed.] - Strange Tales, June 1932 (Wildside Press, 2017) Hugh B. Cave - Stragella The Sleep-Bringers of Weeng Paul Ernst - Dread Exile The Ghost of Agrippina Henry S. Whitehead - The Great Circle August W. Derleth & Mark Schorer - The House in the Magnolias Robert E. Howard - People of the Dark The Departing Soul Marion Brandon - The Emergency Call Aubrey Feist - The Golden Patio Superstitions Clark Ashton Smith - The Nameless Offspring
The Cauldron Another gorgeous Wildside reissue. Wesso's cover artwork is invariably striking, and this, for Cave's Stragella is my favourite. Have not long reread The Emergency Call, Dread Exile and The Golden Patio and vaguely remember the Cave, Howard and CAS stories from way back, though this will be first encounter with the Derleth-Schorer trad zombie novella. This was the issue that introduced The Cauldron.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 30, 2021 10:22:23 GMT
Rafael DeSoto August W. Derleth & Mark Schorer - The House in the Magnolias: ".... And the Curious Detail That the Graves Had Been Half Dug by Bare Fingers ....". Aunt Abby, a club-footed old fiend schooled in Haitian magic, re-enacts the 'Dead men working in the cane fields' set up on the outskirts of New Orleans. Her beautiful niece, Rosamunda Marsina, lives in constant terror of the woman until our narrator, John Stuard, artist, calls at the enchanting colonial house in the magnolias requesting he be allowed to paint it. Rosamunda quietly moves Stuard in on the ground floor while he completes his canvas, on condition he keeps out of sight, but there comes a night when his curiosity gets the better of him. Alerted by a scream, he goes walkabout on the plantation and learns the terrible truth. The zombies are eventually returned to their graves when Rosamunda sprinkles salt on their candy, but not before Matilda the maid has squared her account with evil Abby. Story is reprinted in Peter Haining's Zombies: Tales of the Living Dead.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 1, 2021 7:35:57 GMT
Amos Sewell Robert E. Howard - People of the Dark: out of the Past, in Dagon's Cave, there is Conan of the Reavers. John O'Brien, an American, follows Richard Brent and Eleanor Bland into Dagon's Cave, intent on doing the former, his love rival, to death. A blow on the head sets O'Brien to thinking back three thousand years and his incarnation as Conan on a similar rape and murder mission. On that occasion, Conan was obliged to join forces with Vertorix, the Briton he'd set out to kill, to rescue Tamera, the woman both loved, from a race of "dwarfish aborigines" bent on human sacrifice. The Little People have haunted the caves since they took refuge underground to escape the conquering Picts. History repeats.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 1, 2021 18:35:43 GMT
Hugh B. Cave - Stragella The Sleep-Bringers of Weeng Paul Ernst - Dread Exile The Ghost of Agrippina Henry S. Whitehead - The Great Circle August W. Derleth & Mark Schorer - The House in the Magnolias Robert E. Howard - People of the Dark The Departing Soul Marion Brandon - The Emergency Call Aubrey Feist - The Golden Patio Superstitions Clark Ashton Smith - The Nameless Offspring
The Cauldron Another gorgeous Wildside reissue. Wesso's cover artwork is invariably striking, and this, for Cave's Stragella is my favourite. Have not long reread The Emergency Call, Dread Exile and The Golden Patio and vaguely remember the Cave, Howard and CAS stories from way back, though this will be first encounter with the Derleth-Schorer trad zombie novella. This was the issue that introduced The Cauldron. Inspired by your post I put my Cave collection on the screen and re-read Stragella. Unfortunatly I don't like Murgunstrumm much, I think it too long and the first part too rambling. But Stragella is great. So many original ideas, great atmosphere and a wonderful sentence at the end. Also memorable title.
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