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Post by andydecker on Jul 10, 2021 13:03:41 GMT
"They believe that the sacrifice of a witch finder is the one that pleases Satan the most." Arthur Winston - Dance With The Devil: (Web Terror Stories [/i], April 1964). Their road across the witch-infested moors led straight into the jaws of doom! Summer, 1645. George and Elizabeth Darcy, and their serving girl, Amy Osborne, share a carriage journey to Bath with a dour Puritan stranger. Some folk are too garrulous for their own good, and questioned by Amy, the stranger admits to travelling on witch-finding business. As they cross Salisbury Plain, a thick fog descends, and the loss of a wheel decides the party to put up for the night at the nearest inn. The landlord is glad of their money but none too welcoming on account of his wife, Mogala, is "a high priestess of horror," who suspects poor George Darcy of extreme Matthew Hopkins tendencies. The Coven first abduct Amy, then lure the Darcy's to the stone circle for bloody sacrifice. Previous Web Terror Tales to have stayed with me - Victim Wanted - Female is a hoot - have invariably involved mild/ not so mild S&M action, cheap thrills for sure, but nothing to frighten the horses. Dance With The Devil is altogether nastier. [/quote] Considering how lukewarm most of this ill-fated and short revival of the good old shudder pulps was, this is a surprisingly good one.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 25, 2021 6:27:41 GMT
Hugh Rankin Arlton Eadie - Flames of Destiny: ( Weird Tales, March 1928). Back through the mists of time, to the days of Cromwell, rolled the years, and brought romance and high adventureNarrator Hadleigh is surprised to received a visit from an old college friend, occultist Adrian Dane, who can't possibly have known his current whereabouts. Dane, who looks ghastly, insists he used the Black Arts to trace him to this an out-of-the-way inn on the South Downs. He has come to requests Hadleigh's participation in a seance, as he intends to demonstrate beyond doubt the reality of the transmigration of the soul. Hadleigh agrees and falls into a trance. It is the 8th October 1645, and he is a Captain of Pikes in Cromwell's army. The weary foot soldiers have arrived in the Market Square at Winchester to witness a terrible sight. A young woman, Althea, is to be burnt at the stake, having been falsely accused of 'bewitching' a lech scorned, Nicholas Rowe. Something about the defiant young woman stirs Captain Hadleigh to action. As his loyal Pikesmen fight it out with the musketeers, he frees the girl from her chains. Alas, the rescue attempt is thwarted as both are fatally wounded. As they die, Althea snaps a blackened cross and gives half to him with the promise that they shall meet again .... Hadleigh awakens on the couch. No sign of Dane - he must have left in the night - but what's this? His man announces another visitor, the second in as many days. Much to his astonishment, this second visitor, a complete stranger, is the living image of the girl in the vision! She brings sad news that her brother, Adrian Dane, passed away some days ago. It was Adrian's dying wish that she deliver Hadleigh a set of documents. She hands him a sealed envelope. Their fingers touch. Romance, joy, happiness, etc.
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Post by ripper on Jul 26, 2021 11:55:04 GMT
In one issue of Horror Tales, a comic published by Eerie Publications in the late 60s/early 70s, there was a tale about the head of Charles I, beheaded after the war, and how possession of it brought bad luck down the years. I think I still have that issue so if I can find it I shall give the title and comic issue.
I believe it is in Ghost Abbey by Robert Westall that the ghost of a Civil War Cavalier appears, though it is not developed further.
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Post by helrunar on Jul 29, 2022 11:57:12 GMT
Great thread! Excellent stuff!
Ripper's instance of a Horror Tales yarn about the curse on the decapitated head of King Charles makes me wonder if any horror comic did a tale where the respective skulls of Charles and Cromwell somehow wind up under the same roof. I imagine savage, relentless, bloody mayhem would be the result.
Hel.
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Post by dem bones on May 29, 2023 16:08:14 GMT
Mary Williams - Haven't We Met Before: ( The Haunted Valley & Other Ghost Stories, 1978). A mirror in a Cornish mansion replays a dark episode in the the Civil war; the daughter of the house and her lover died in one anothers arms when the old wing was torched by Roundheads, Their ghosts prevent a tragedy in the present day. And here's one by Jessie Adelaide Middleton.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 11, 2023 13:11:55 GMT
The Old Inn in Wiltshire: A second Civil War haunting and much more from Jessie Adelaide Middleton's Another Grey Ghost Book, 1915, guest starring Cromwell, the Duke of Buckingham, and a phantom coffin.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 16, 2023 19:34:09 GMT
A Tatler reader recalls his chilling encounter with sparring Civil War spectres in this truly Queer Story.
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Post by sadako on Dec 18, 2023 14:35:43 GMT
Two more gorgeous editions of Witchbane…
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2023 19:58:03 GMT
Aiye verily he didith use us as he paide us mightily in gold coin. But alas he doth in tyme abandone us and did not harken to our warnings, and he paide for such arroganse with his heade on ye pole.
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Post by andydecker on Dec 19, 2023 16:08:27 GMT
Two more gorgeous editions of Witchbane… Nice ones, sadako. Even if the goat-man looks more like a shaggy dog than a goat :-)
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Post by humgoo on Jan 21, 2024 7:17:25 GMT
James Skipp Borlase - The Shrieking Skull; or, Haunted Wardley Hall: A Tale of Two Lancashire Christmas Eves: (Marylebone Mercury [London], 21 December 1901; Christopher Philippo [ed.], The Shrieking Skull & Other Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Valancourt, 2022). Lancashire. 1650. Sir Ralph Osbaldiston used to be an ideal son-in-law for Colonel Brierley, former Ironside. However, after the battle at Worcester, Osbaldiston fled to France in the company of Charles Prince of Wales, with his ancestral home confiscated by Cromwell and gifted to the widowed Colonel. The latter has already found a more fitting husband for eighteen-year-old Ruth in the form of Sir William Cunliffe, a Puritan who is much older than Ruth and has already buried two wives. At the risk of being captured, the young Cavalier returns to Lancashire for a tryst with his fiancée. The two are just about to fly when the Colonel and Cunliffe arrive to thwart their plan. Osbaldiston manages to escape to London, but Cunliffe, hell-bent on marrying Ruth, has him assassinated there. Having learned of her lover's demise and at the mercy of his father's whip every day, Ruth finally gives in. But a shrieking skull, which appears out of thin air on her wedding day, won't let her. M. R. James - The Uncommon Prayer-Book: (Atlantic Monthly, June 1921). Lady Sadleir had such a down on Cromwell she not only went up to London to dance on his grave, but also celebrated his birthday with Psalm 109 every year. Old habits die hard. John Dickson Carr - Persons or Things Unknown: (The Sketch, Christmas Number, 1938; Martin Edwards [ed.], A Surprise for Christmas and Other Seasonal Mysteries, British Library Crime Classics, 2020). "What astonishes us when we read these chronicles is the blunt directness, the violence, like a wind, or a pistol clapped to the head, with which people set about getting what they wanted." Told during a house-warming party in Sussex by the host, who has been lately fascinated by a diary kept by a certain Everard Poynter, in which is recorded an unsolved murder that occurred in 1660 in that very house: When Richard Oakley asks for the hands of his plucky daughter, Squire Radlow, then owner of the house, promptly agrees. Oakley is many years her senior and has his fair share of eccentricities, but seventeen-year-old Mary finds him good company and is happy enough to marry him. Then the flamboyant Royalist Gerald Vanning appears on the scene, setting his sights firmly on Mary. Vanning is counting on the rewards yet to be given him by the restored monarchy, while Oakley is worried that he may lose his estate, which was bought under the Commonwealth. As the tide seems to be turning, the Squire is ready to turn his coat. Oakley's property turns out to be legit, and not too many favours have been bestowed on Vanning by the new King. So Oakley remains the Squire's future son-in-law and the wedding arrangements go on as planned. But then rumours begin to make the rounds. "Who was Oakley? What did anybody know about him except that he had come here and bought land under Oliver? He had vast learning, and above a hundred books in his house; what need did he have of that? What had he been? A parson? A doctor of letters of physic? Or letters of a more unnatural kind? Why did he go for long walks in the wood, particularly after dusk?" A boy of weak intellect goes so far as saying that he saw something following Oakley through Gallows Copse one night: "it seemed human, but that he was not sure if it was alive." Things come to a head when one night Vanning, who claims he has been persecuted by some unseen presence lately, goes to the Squire's house to confront Oakley to ask him to "call off his dogs", and then Oakley is stabbed to death in a locked room by something no one can see.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 22, 2024 17:38:06 GMT
Kenneth Inns John Dickson Carr - Persons or Things Unknown: ( The Sketch, Christmas Number, 1938; Martin Edwards [ed.], A Surprise for Christmas and Other Seasonal Mysteries, British Library Crime Classics, 2020). "What astonishes us when we read these chronicles is the blunt directness, the violence, like a wind, or a pistol clapped to the head, with which people set about getting what they wanted." Thanks H., just read it. In case you've not seen it, the BNL copy of the Sketch Christmas number lacks several pages, but fortunately, these do not include the six devoted to Of Persons or Things Unknown, as very attractively illustrated by Kenneth Inns. DownloadOriginal magazine pagesText only
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Post by humgoo on Jan 23, 2024 2:00:12 GMT
Thanks for the PDF! I don't have access to the British Newspaper Archive, so I couldn't see the illustrations. Very lovely indeed (and there's a short bio of the artist on Steve Holland's site). I wonder if "Blind Man's Hood" (in the 1937 Christmas Number) is also illustrated?
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Post by dem bones on Jan 23, 2024 12:47:18 GMT
Thanks for the PDF! I don't have access to the British Newspaper Archive, so I couldn't see the illustrations. Very lovely indeed (and there's a short bio of the artist on Steve Holland's site). I wonder if "Blind Man's Hood" (in the 1937 Christmas Number) is also illustrated? I tried for Blind Man's Hood at the same time. Can confirm it is illustrated - by ILN regular, Stephen Spurrier - but I'm afraid what little remains of the BNL's copy doesn't include a single page of the story.
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