Richard & Hugh Lamb [eds] - Things That Wait In The Dark

[dem bones]

Richard Lamb & Hugh Lamb [eds] - Things That Wait In The Dark (Kingsbrook, Oct. 2022)

Richard Lamb

Richard Lamb - Introduction

Philip Murray - The Patch
J. D. Beresford - A Case of Prevision
Marjorie Bowen - They Found My Grave
Zita Inez Ponder - His Wife
S. Baring-Gould - The Boggart of Hellen-Pot
Frederick Cowles - The Bell
Howard Pease - By the Shrine of Saint Cuthbert
John Buchan - At the Article of Death
Ella D'Arcy - The Villa Lucienne
Anonymous - Nelly Devitt's Ghost
J. H. Pearce - Friend or Foe?
Mrs. Molesworth - Lady Farquhar's Old Lady
Morgan Robertson - Through the Deadlight
James Grant - The Spectre Hand
Rosa Mulholland - The Ghost at the Rath
Amyas Northcote - The Picture
Thomas Heaphy - Mr H's Own Narrative
G. R. Sims - Ha! Ha!
Nancy Harward - The Red Woman of the Hills
Guy Thorne - The Christmas Violin

About the Editors

Blurb:

The thing hiding under the bed.
A mocking voice from beyond the grave.
Something left behind in the deserted villa.
One man’s terrible penance before death.

Things That Wait in the Dark brings you 20 vintage tales of horrors both natural and supernatural, drawn from the Victorian and Edwardian heyday of macabre short fiction.

This brand new collection was compiled from the archives of the late anthologist Hugh Lamb, and from discoveries made by his son, Richard. You'll find a host of lesser known stories as well as some not seen in an anthology since their original publication.

Things That Wait in the Dark is a treat for those who love to peer into the darkness of antiquity and see what might be peering back.
Delve, if you dare, into this unique age of ghosts, monsters, murder and gaslit chills.

Just arrived. This time the stories are primarily Richard's choices. Includes at least three of Hugh Lamb's selections for Maynard & Sims' Enigmatic Tales & Darkness Rising series' (See Mr. Happy's listing here).

[dem bones]

Philip Murray - The Patch: (Charles Lloyd [Birkin], [ed.], Shudders, 1932). Don't look under the four-poster or you may start imagining you're imagining things ...

J. D. Beresford - A Case of Prevision: (Nineteen Impressions, 1918). Holidaying in St. Ives, Jessopt, who has recently suffered impaired vision, believes the cliff face at Man's Head Rock has collapsed into the sea. His friend, a fellow architect, demonstrates otherwise, but Jessop is too terrified to take another step forward.

Marjorie Bowen - They Found My Grave: (Orange Blossoms, 1938: As by 'Joseph Shearing'). Concerned that a friend has fallen victim to phony spiritualists, Ada Trimble attends several séances at Madam Astra Destiny's Bloomsbury-based Temple of Eastern Psycho-Physiological Studies. Ada's determination to expose the medium and her extraordinary manifestations becomes an expensive and, ultimately, tragic obsession.

Zita Inez Ponder - His Wife: (Christine Campbell Thomson [ed.], You'll Need A Nightlight, 1927: Vault Advent Calendar, 2011). An out of work carpenter, sleeping rough in the vicinity of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead, is offered shelter by a mad-eyed kindly stranger. On learning the young man's profession, the host, a former surgeon of note, offers him paid work; "My wife needs a large chest ... a big one to keep her things together in." A classic Not At Night original.

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S. Baring-Gould - The Boggart of Hellen-Pot: (Once a Week, March 1867). A phantom polygamist roams Penigent on the Yorkshire Moors, luring lone hikers to their doom. The serial wife-taker broke his neck and both legs in a plunge down a pothole while fleeing the law. He cannot rest until his bones are recovered and granted Christian burial. A second spectre, that of wife #2, carries a lantern with which to guide his would-be victims to safety.

Frederick Cowles - The Bell: (The Horror of Abbot's Grange & Other Stories, 1936). A dream holiday at Pastwick on the Norfolk coast for John Landon, archaeologist, combines golf and foraging in the ruins of a fourteenth century monastery. Thomas de Morton, founder of the Order, and four of his followers were executed late 1324 for practising devil worship and human sacrifice. It's claimed The Thomasist's raised a demon from the skeleton of a murdered imbecile, but then these medievalists were a very credulous people.

Howard Pease - By the Shrine of Saint Cuthbert: (Border Ghost Stories, 1919). Vignette. The narrator wonders what can have so terrified a parishioner at evensong that he battered on the church wall to be let out.

John Buchan - At the Article of Death: (The Yellow Book January 1897). Last hours of a pious moorland shepherd who faces death knowing he's lived true to his beliefs, been the best man he could be. Will his God reward him?

[andydecker]

Oct 16, 2022 16:18:14 GMT dem bones said:

Frederick Cowles - The Bell: (The Horror of Abbot's Grange & Other Stories, 1936). A dream holiday at Pastwick on the Norfolk coast for John Landon, archaeologist, combines golf and foraging in the ruins of a fourteenth century monastery. Thomas de Morton, founder of the Order, and four of his followers were executed late 1324 for practising devil worship and human sacrifice. It's claimed The Thomasist's raised a demon from the skeleton of a murdered imbecile, but then these medievalists were a very credulous people.

I read this story. It is a bit by the numbers, but as always with Cowles it fascinates me how he - how do I say it - distills down the concepts of a Jamesian story? Sometimes he didn't benefit from this. It reads a bit like a comics adaption. Still, while the elements may be over familiar, it is very entertaining. And very modern. Cowles doesn't seem to age.

[dem bones]

Oct 16, 2022 19:03:48 GMT andydecker said:

I read this story. It is a bit by the numbers, but as always with Cowles it fascinates me how he - how do I say it - distills down the concepts of a Jamesian story? Sometimes he didn't benefit from this. It reads a bit like a comics adaption. Still, while the elements may be over familiar, it is very entertaining. And very modern. Cowles doesn't seem to age.

The Bell and They Found My Grave - neither of which I'd previously read - plus the gloriously ghoulish His Wife are personal picks to date. If the selections are predominantly Lamb jnr.'s, they might just as well be his fathers, as the book has so many authors in common with Hugh's 'seventies anthologies.

Ella D'Arcy - The Villa Lucienne: (The Yellow Book, July 1896). Madame de M — and all-female entourage view a furnished villa on the French Riviera with a view to taking a lease, though the gruff gardener who grudgingly gives them a tour does his best to dissuade them. All are morbidly affected by the property, but, dog aside, it's only the little girl sees the ghost of a murdered woman sat in the drawing room.

Anonymous - Nelly Devitt's Ghost: (Argosy, March 1898). The narrator takes a five-year lease on the old Devitt place, Wyndhurst, locally shunned as a "haunted house." The ghost is believed to be that of Nelly, the most beautiful girl on the Cornish coast, who fell with child by a local aristocrat. Abandoned by the randy rake and jeered by her community, Nelly went insane. Her father, a man with no compassion, shut her away in a room with barred windows where, to this day, she is said to scratch at the brickwork and wail in the night ... Wonderfully melodramatic, this one.

J. H. Pearce - Friend or Foe?: (Drolls From Shadowland, 1893). Grave decision for odious Sir Edward. Either he accompanies the Devil direct to Hell, or serve the initial period of his punishment tramping London's East End.

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Mrs. Molesworth - Lady Farquhar's Old Lady: A True Ghost Story: (Tinsley's Magazine, Dec. 1873: Four Ghost Stories, 1888). Back in the mid-fifties, Margaret Farquhar and sister spend the winter at Fitzgerald's ancestral home in Ballyreina, a quiet coastal village in South West Ireland. It's haunted by the ghost of one of three old spinsters driven to rent out the property when they could no longer afford its upkeep.

Morgan Robertson - Through The Deadlight: (The Three Laws and the Golden Rule, 1898). Captain Bill Edwards, 40, is recently married to a woman half his age. In his own chaste way, Bill has adored Miss Mary Warner ever since she was a little girl and he rescued her dolly from drowning under his schooner. To this day it is the only time a female has assured him that he is a good man. Heading home from the West Indies, Bill spots a lifeboat struggling in the storm and takes aboard it's three exhausted occupants. One of the men, Williams, is so grateful, he shares the secret of his success with women. Take, for example, this cute, lisping girl, Mary, whose fiancé was away at sea ...

James Grant - The Phantom Hand : (London Society, Christmas 1871: Strange Secrets Told by A. Conan Doyle & Others, 1889). Captain Carl Holberg of the Danish Guard pledges eternal love to Thyra, the beautiful, "charmingly round" young woman who bandages his wounds following a German ambush in a graveyard. Awakening on the bloodied battleground, Holberg learns that he has exchanged vows with the ghost of the girl whose funeral was in progress when the enemy opened fire.

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Rosa Mulholland - The Ghost at the Rath: (All The Year Round, April 1866). Spectre of Madeline, Lady Thunder returns to her Dublin country estate to confess a murder to the present Captain Thunder and right a terrible wrong. Episode devoted to the phantom re-enactment of a grand ball is beautifully drawn, but this otherwise cracking ghost story is ultimately scuppered by an insufferably twee rosy ending.

Amyas Northcote - The Picture: (In Ghostly Company, 1922). Sad story of Anna Pavlinski who, besotted by a portrait in the castle gallery, is ultimately lured to a claustrophobic demise by the skeleton of the subject, a wicked Hungarian Count sworn to destroy her family.

Thomas Heaphy - Mr H's Own Narrative: (All the Year Round, 5 Oct. 1868). True ghost story, sadistically long-winded in the telling. An artist shares a railway carriage with a chatty young woman who assures him they'll meet again - and they do, so often, and in such unlikely locations, that he grows uncomfortable. How can she know which part of the country his work will take him at any given time? Mr. H's rough sketches of the mystery girl — she claims it would be impossible to sit for a painting — are to prove invaluable to a certain Mr. Lute, whose mind has snapped in grief at the tragic loss of a daughter.

G. R. Sims - Ha! Ha!: (The Ring 'o Bells, 1894). Charley Peyton, a popular young comedian, is tormented beyond endurance by a phantom heckler.

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Nancy Harward - The Red Woman of the Hills: (London Society, Sept. & Oct. 1898: as by 'Winston Kendrick'). Strong personal best of book contender. Mhurrinee, a small Himalayan village. The Red woman, a gifted clairvoyant, is distraught when daughter Luchmie falls for a handsome English soldier, knowing the relationship will end in tragedy. So it proves when Alec Forbes jilts Luchmie for Lena Drummond, the Colonel's daughter. Luchmie sickens and dies to the sound of her rival's wedding bells, whereupon her mother lures Forbes to view her mutilated corpse and again reminds him of horrors to come.

Guy Thorne - The Christmas Violin: (Brisbane Courier, 20 Dec. 1918: World News, Dec. 21, 1918). Famous violinist Charles Maxon's act of kindness to a destitute stranger is handsomely repaid when the pair take to the streets to entertain the poor. The stranger, an accomplished player in his own right, leads him to a girls school where a lonely maidservant is spending a miserable holiday alone. As the stranger strikes up the melody Maxon wrote for his lost love, the maidservant opens the front door, ending story and anthology on an upbeat note.