Yogg-Sothoth Neblod Zin! It's a Cultist!

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

This thread is for fiction featuring Cults. The wilder the better.

It differs from Secret Societies, but they can overlap. See other thread on Secret Societies.

Cultists are a staple of horror fiction, so place your tales containing these worshippers of the forbidden and the mad below.



I did think about making both cults and secret societies one thread, but I think there are enough differences to have two seperate ones.

This thread was suggested after reading some remarks by humgoo and pbsplatter.

Thinking about this I think there are too many to list, which might explain it was never tried before as a thread. But there must be some truly strange ones.

[pbsplatter]

Stephen King - Children of the Corn

Tony Richards - The Lords of Zero

Richard Matheson - Children of Noah

[pbsplatter]

Lawrence C Connolly- Circle of Lias: The “Circle of Lias” is a cult that thinks of life in terms of baking metaphors (“how’s your life loaf rising?”) and sweet honeybuns, which they bake in great quantities.

Gary Braunbeck - Union Dues: Union workers at a factory become bio mechanical as they worship the God of the Machine (not as good as it sounds)

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Though Lovecraft names often work, a general problem I find with fantasy is that the names and made up languages usually sound stupid. Tolkein works, because he was a linguist. I know we can't all be linguists, so it is tricky.
Robert E. Howard seems to lift his names from history, which is another way of doing it. He even uses Iroquoi names for Pictish places in his world.

[helrunar]

There was a belief in certain circles during the 19th century that one or more Indigenous American tribal languages were forms of Welsh. And I suppose that Robert E. Howard may have read a theory that the Iroquois were somehow a migrant group of Picts who made it to the New World.

Strange, I know, but there it is.

Great new threads, Helene!

cheers, Hel(runar)

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Well there is the legend of Madoc, so maybe that's where it comes from.

Edited to say there is also a claim St. Brendan sailed their too, and it was The Isle of the Blessed from his voyages.

 Getting off-topic here.

[dem bones]

Martin H. Greenberg & Charles G. Waugh [eds.] - Cults of Horror (Daw, 1990)

Jim Warren

Frank D. McSherry, Jr. - The Killer Cults

Robert Silverberg - The Feast of St. Dionysus
Arthur J. Burks - Devils in the Dust
Leslie Charteris - The Questing Tycoon
Gardner Dozois - The Peacemaker
Emily Katharine Harris - The Legend of Gray Mountain
Edward D. Hoch - Sword for a Sinner
Gerald Jonas - The Shaker Revival
Jack London - The Red One
Robert Louis Stevenson - The House of Eld
Karl Edward Wagner - Sticks
Edward Wellen - Overkill
H. G. Wells - In the Abyss
Theodore Sturgeon - Fear Is a Business

A companion volume to the earlier:

Martin H. Greenberg & Charles G. Waugh [eds.] - Cults!: An Anthology of Secret Societies, Sects, and the Supernatural (Beaufort, 1983)

Martin H. Greenberg & Charles G. Waugh - Cults: An Introduction

Frank Harris - The Miracle of the Stigmata
Leonard Kip - An Unincorporated Association
Edwin L. Sabin - The Devil of the Picuris
H. G. Wells - The Country of the Blind
Erle Stanley Gardner - Monkey Eyes
Cornell Woolrich - Music from the Big Dark
Edward D. Hoch - Village of the Dead
Kit Reed - The Wait
Donald Franson - The Time for Delusion
Stephen King - Children of the Corn
John Varley - The Persistence of Vision
William F. Temple - Forget-Me-Not
Katherine MacLean - Unhuman Sacrifice

Frank D. McSherry, Jr. & Charles G. Waugh - A Selective and Annotated Bibliography of Short Stories About Cults

Don't have either, but the Beaufort book can be read via Archive.org

[helrunar]

Very cool anthologies!

Erle Stanley Gardner--there's a name one doesn't expect to find showing up in a horror anthology. Of course I know nothing at all of his actual oeuvre beyond the inevitable Perry Mason. As a very small child, the ominous opening music of the TV show used to give me a bit of a shiver. And I think it was one of those moments where I started to realize that I liked that sensation.

H.