Horror & supernatural fiction in 'The Sketch'

[dem bones]

Dudley Hardy, The Flat on the Fourth Floor

Louise Heilgers - The House with the Crimson Creeper: (6 April 1910). Carden is amused to learn from an estate agent that the Grey House, Thorndyke, is reputedly haunted by the vengeful spectre of a young woman murdered by a much older partner. The prospective buyer is not to be deterred; "I think I'll risk it. I've no objection to a ghost myself, especially a young and pretty one."

H. T. W. Bousfield - At the Last Moment: (13 Dec. 1913). Much excitement on Mohilla as, uniquely, a rich white man faces the guillotine for the murder of a police chief. Fair to say Bousfield may have been familiar with a certain Ambrose Bierce masterpiece.

John Patrick - The Woman Who Wouldn’t Grow Old: (31 Aug. 1910). A wife persuades a specialist to perform the operation that will return sight to her artist husband after twelve years blind. Tonight the bandages are to be removed. Will he still find her beautiful? One for Maurice Level/ Charles Birkin ghouls.

J. S. Fletcher - The Flat on the Fourth Floor: (16 June 1909). Since the late Mr. Dysart pilfered an artefact from his place of work - the Egyptian Room of the British Museum - his Bury Street digs has been besieged by vicious cats. Another for the Mummy biblio.

J. Sackville Martin - The Death Nurse: (5 July 1911). A spectral night sister stalks the wards, throttling unattended patients as the house-surgeon romances Nurse Dean.

Desmond Coke - The Sport of Nemesis: (20 May 1908). Each year on the anniversary, Gideon Tranter visits the Chamber of Horrors to stand before a tableau depicting "the actual scene of the Carbury murders."

Louise Heilgers - Yvette's Ghost: (5 Jan. 1910). The Ghost of the young Squire of Fox Craft Manor dotes on the little girl living in the house where once lived the woman he was to marry. Modern reader may find elements of story creepy in a way the author hadn't intended.

Alphonse Courlander - The Graveyard: (6 March 1907). Peggy informs friends of her intention to defy silly superstition by plucking a flower from the burial ground on Halloween.

William Freeman - The Stream: (10 Nov. 1915). Those who fall under its spell are compelled to commit murder and/or suicide.

Owen Oliver - Black Magic: (11 Sept. 1907). John learns from the old trapper that Leslie, the girl he's loved since childhood, has inexplicably agreed to marry Black Morrell, a man of sinister reputation. Meanwhile, there's a sheep killer abroad leaving weird tracks in the snow ...

William Sharp - The Image-Maker (30 Jan. 1901). Master craftsman of mystery employs black magic to destroy any and all who cause him offence.

Alphonse Courlander - The Other Me: An Experience: (13 December 1905). The author is defeated in an epic struggle to break the influence of his evil doppelgänger.


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[jamesdoig]

Oct 11, 2023 21:32:22 GMT dem bones said:

H. T. W. Bousfield - At the Last Moment: (13 Dec. 1913). Much excitement on Mohilla as, uniquely, a rich white man faces the guillotine for the murder of a police chief. Fair to say Bousfield may have been familiar with a certain Ambrose Bierce masterpiece.

Interesting - Bousfield has a bit of a reputation for plagiarism - his story 'Death and the Duchess' is a close rip-off of Mary Braddon's 'Good Lady Ducayne.'

[scorpio]

As for plagiarism, the most blatant one was committed by M. P. Shiel by stealing the plot of the story by Bernard Capes.
I mean 'The Place of Pain" and "The Moon Stricken" respectively.

[dem bones]

Some more story notes;

William Freeman - The Bat: (3 May 1916). A rare specimen Professor Synfield procured in South America breaks hibernation to feast upon the life-breath of the closest available humans ...

J. Morton Lewis - The Unseen Hand: (25 Dec 1912). Four British soldiers are killed over successive June 27th's for their senseless desecration of a Buddhist Temple.

Edward H. Hooper - This House to Let: (23 Dec. 1908). Truly "affordable housing" in Hampton. Wood End proves an impossible let due to the resident ghost — that of a maniac who murdered his wife.

Maud S. Rawson - The Silver Pompadour: (2 June 1915). The Comtesse Zephyrine warns a German officer that those of bad conscience sleep in the ancestral bed at great personal risk.
Von Burgmüller is not one to believe in preposterous fairy stories.

Arthur Eckersley - Psychical Research: (30 Nov. 1910). Belingham has cause to reconsider his negative opinion of spiritualism, table-turning, mumbo jumbo ...

W. Douglas Newton - The Skin of the Mummy: (8 Sept. 1920). Non-genre. The Chelsea Set, trendy rich pseudo-'decadent' poseurs, take to frequenting town's most repulsive dive to pick up tips on how to be frightfully common and wicked.

Edward Cecil - The Whirlwind of Death: (10 Feb 1909). Jules Lemaître volunteers his own daughter to test-ride his greatest invention to date — a terrifying fairground ride. "There is no risk. The thing is safe. The car obeys the unalterable laws of mechanics."

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

The Phantoms illustration is an example of how the past was much more daring than we imagine. The film the Maniac I watched just recently has breasts on display and women wandering around in underwear and violently fighting, and was just Pre-Code USA. The relatively more recent past such as the 1950s was much more censored it seems. Britain was different in censorship.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Oscar Wilde published in The World. An example is The Sphinx Without a Secret in May 1887. Perhaps you could look there too.

[dem bones]

Oct 12, 2023 6:11:37 GMT jamesdoig said:

Oct 11, 2023 21:32:22 GMT dem bones said:

H. T. W. Bousfield - At the Last Moment: (13 Dec. 1913). Much excitement on Mohilla as, uniquely, a rich white man faces the guillotine for the murder of a police chief. Fair to say Bousfield may have been familiar with a certain Ambrose Bierce masterpiece.

Interesting - Bousfield has a bit of a reputation for plagiarism - his story 'Death and the Duchess' is a close rip-off of Mary Braddon's 'Good Lady Ducayne.'

I like At the Last Moment. While derivative (to say the least) of Bierce's story, it's no word-for-word steal.

Oct 12, 2023 19:03:29 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

Oscar Wilde published in The World. An example is The Sphinx Without a Secret in May 1887. Perhaps you could look there too.

Looks like The Sketch will keep me occupied for a while yet. I certainly hope so, anyhow.

Vol 2.

1. Edward H. Hooper - This House to Let: (23 Dec. 1908).
2. C. L. - The Mystery of Glamis: A 'True' Modern Ghost Story: (20 Sept. 1905)
3. Maud S. Rawson - The Silver Pompadour: (2 June 1915).
4. Clara Byrnes - The Star Trap: (18 July 1906).
5. William Freeman - The Bat: (3 May 1916).
6. Arthur Eckersley - Psychical Research: (30 Nov. 1910).
7. Edward Cecil - The Whirlwind of Death: (10 Feb 1909).
8. William Freeman - The Mirror: (29 Sept. 1915).
9. J. Morton Lewis - The Unseen Hand: (25 Dec 1912).
10.William Freeman - The Ghost That Couldn't: (3 March 1915).

MediaFire

Should anyone require them, the text only versions of vols 1 & 2 should be available over weekend.

Story notes;

Clara Byrnes - The Star Trap: (18 July 1906). A lovesick stage carpenter takes revenge on the spiteful trick-dancer who humiliated him before the fairy queen. Nastier than the Bram Stoker story of the same name and very similar storyline — which it possibly predates. In Midnight Tales, Peter Haining claims Stoker's story first appeared in Colliers (as "Death in the Wings") for Nov. 1888, but Bram Stoker.org, who, you'd imagine, make it their business to know such things, dispute this. "It was first published in 1908 in Stoker's second collection of short stories Snowbound: The Record of a Theatrical Touring Party, Collier & Co., London."

William Freeman - The Mirror: (29 Sept. 1915). Despite his friend, Sokura the antique dealer's dire warning of a curse, Chayton, a celebrated artist, simply must take home the four hundred-year-old looking glass. It is just the prop he's dreamt of for his portrait of Sir Ephraim's daughter!

William Freeman - The Ghost That Couldn't: (3 March 1915). A seventeenth century ghosts faces humiliation before the Grand Council of Spectres unless he can put the willies up the Squire's Christmas guest. Miss Verity Tonks proves insensitive to his presence. She's American.

[dem bones]

No frills text only versions:

Sketch Vol 1

sketch Vol 2

[dem bones]

Bram Stoker - A Dream of Red Hands: (11 July 1894). A moorland recluse, tormented to the grave by a guilty past.

J. Fitzgerald Molloy - Worser Than Death: (18 July 1894). A young barrister is murdered by marriage. Miserable as sin.

By the author of "The Green Carnation." [Robert Hichens?] - The Dead Man Laughed: (10 April 1895). With her despised husband gone to his grave, she's finally free to begin a new, happy life with her secret lover. But ....

Walter Ramal [Walter de la Mare] - Kismet: (7 Aug. 1895). A sailor returns home unannounced to surprise his loving wife. A gloomy cart driver offers him a ride to the village.

Morley Roberts - The Anticipator: (13 May 1896). Rival authors. Burford, the lesser talent, has the uncanny knack of telepathically absorbing Esplan's story ideas and rushing inferior versions to their publisher. An exasperated Esplan resolves to murder him.

L. G. Moberly - An Unpleasant Experience: (3 May 1899). Some months previously, a young bride was murdered in this hotel room. The killer has yet to be identified when our narrator awakes in the night to watch the mirror reflection of a mystery woman asleep in bed ...

Basil Tozer - The Vampire: (19 July 1899). A young playboy trades body and soul for a night in the arms of beautiful-repulsive Aphélie.

H. A. Hinkson - The King's Mask: (30 April 1902). As plague and smallpox decimate the land, His Majesty hosts a masque ball. Two young guests seek deliverance from forthcoming marriages to strangers. Poe meets Barbara Cartland.

R. E. Vernede - The Melodramist: (29 October 1902). A playwright is ashamed to earn a living from artifice. If only he could experience deadly crisis in the raw ....

Hill Rowan - The Ghost That Didn't: A Modern Tale: (27 December 1905). Mandatory "humorous" Christmas spooky tale. Bleakleigh Towers is to be sold, the young Duke lacking funds to maintain it. If only he could find the title deed! Enter the phantom in residence ...

Alice & Claude Askew - In an Omnibus: (8 April 1908) A bus passenger inexplicably enters the troubled mind of the girl sat beside him. A cheap holiday in someone else's misery.

Harold Blind - The Saw Sharpener: (10 April 1912). A British soldier fighting in Egypt is badly affected by a premonition that he'll not survive this damned desert. So it proves when he's set upon by the spectral lost army of Cambyses.

[andydecker]

Oct 16, 2023 9:25:52 GMT dem bones said:

Alluring in the midst of the spider web. Subtle. Wonderful artwork, though.

[dem bones]

The Merry Widow

Sketch Vol 3: Worser than Death Full blown facsimile edition.

MediaFire

No frills Text only 90 pager

MediaFire

Contents as previous post (Bram Stoker, A Dream of Red Hands, etc.) Kismet is apparently de la Mare's first published fiction (?); Dorothy L Sayers selected The Anticipator for Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror 1928. War poet R. E. Vernède is possibly best remembered by we morbid ones for The Finless Death as revived by Hugh Lamb in The Man Wolf & Others. Basil 'Pioneers of Pike's Peak' Tozer lets loose Aphélie The Vampire, "eyes of a Lesbia ... eyes of a Punk." Marriage proves hell for the bride in And the Dead Man Laughed, fatal for the groom in Worser than Death.

[dem bones]

Dudley Hardy Pixie in Pink, 1 Dec. 1908; Pantomime, 17 Dec, 1893.

Roy Compton - The Doctor's Dream: (5 July 1893). A claustrophobic vision guest-starring his bride-to-be. What can it possibly mean?

B. A. Clarke - A Knight of the Obvious: (22 March 1899). Chandos claims that the death toll in any tragedy is invariably inflated by man's inability to think straight in a crisis. He, being the supreme rationalist, will never know panic ...

C. Engelbach - Nemesis: (24 July 1895). Narrated by a dangerous inmate of X——— Asylum, so you can safely assume that the patient's attempt to reduce his love rival, Sir Edward Berkley, to gibbering lunacy, did not go as planned.

Alicia Ramsey - "An Image Made in Wax": (19 March 1902). Pathologically jealous Mrs "Ducksie" Hilary destroys the girl she wrongly believes her husband's fancy bit by sticking needles in a "Boozoo'd" dolly.

Clive R. Fenn - Le Revenant: (14 March 1906). The prodigal returns to his home village, where a funeral is in progress in the churchyard.

H Grahame Richards - "E. S., Died August 1897,": (1 May 1912). I swore then that should the Fates ever be so kind as to let that woman cross my path, I would devote my life to teaching her the agony others had suffered at her hands. The Fates have been kinder than I hoped.' An English millionairre's bloodless revenge on the Neapolitan beauty who mocked his disfigured brother to suicide.

Rachel Swete MacNamara - The Sword: (28 Nov. 1917). Her cousins persuade Daphne to lay a table for two in an empty room on Halloween night to reveal her future husband.

Charles T. C. James - The Legend of Cavent Garden: (30 Aug. 1893). Origins of the flower market lie in the denied passion of a reluctant nun.

W. L. Grant - The Riding Habit: (11 May 1898). Mrs. Trevor-Payne's plans for a night of amateur theatrics are thrown into disarray when her star performer, Miss Kathleen Gray, fails to return from her morning ride. Another for the fashion victim collection, as is —

Louise Heilgers - The Pink Sash: A Tale of Tangier: (17 Sept. 1913). Gentle ghost story of a love that endures beyond the grave.

Rosie M.M. Pitman Love's Letter, 8 August 1894;
Miss Blanche Vaudon in "The French Maid" at the Vaudeville Theatre, 22 June, 1898.

[dem bones]

Scene from Caesar and Cleopatra, 2 Jan 1907.
Dudley Hardy Will O The Wisp, 7 Feb. 1894.

Sketch vol 4: An Image Made in Wax

Cover: Pantomime number, 17 Dec, 1893. Illustration by Dudley Hardy
Roy Compton - The Doctor's Dream: (5 July 1893).
Alicia Ramsey - "An Image Made in Wax": (19 March 1902).
C. Engelbach - Nemesis: (24 July 1895).
W. L. Grant - The Riding Habit: (11 May 1898).
The Light Side of Nature: Will O The Wisp illustration by Dudley Hardy (7 Feb. 1894)
Clive R. Fenn - Le Revenant: (14 March 1906).
Spook Manufacture: Making a Ghost by Photography (10 April 1912)
H Grahame Richards - "E. S., Died August 1897,": (1 May 1912).
Rachel Swete MacNamara - The Sword: (28 Nov. 1917).
B. A. Clarke - A Knight of the Obvious: (22 March 1899).
The Fashionable Fairy: The Pixie in Pink illustration by Dudley Hardy (1 Dec. 1908).
Louise Heilgers - The Pink Sash: A Tale of Tangier: (17 Sept. 1913).
Miss Blanche Vaudon in "The French Maid" at the Vaudeville Theatre, 22 June 1898.


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Text only alternative (59 pages)

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Oct 16, 2023 9:25:52 GMT dem bones said:

By the author of "The Green Carnation." [Robert Hichens?] - The Dead Man Laughed: (10 April 1895). With her despised husband gone to his grave, she's finally free to begin a new, happy life with her secret lover. But ....

Robert Hitchens wrote a novel called The Dweller on the Threshold. It's interesting as this appears in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel Zanoni and Madame Blavatsky later helps herself to the name and incorporates it into her theosophical doctrine. Bulwer-Lytton was an occultist himself. Now pay attention: In Hitchens a clergyman tries to infuse part of his own will into a curate. In Bulwer-Lytton it is made up of the darkness people have built up in past lives. In theosophy it is the shell of the previous life of a materialistic person discarded by the higher ego that is attracted to that persons current incarnation. Hitchens must have had some knowledge of the Occult himself, one of the characters appears to be a psychical researcher. I wonder if he was into Theosophy.

[dem bones]

"The Tomb-Dweller of New York: The late Jonathan Reed who lived twelve years in his wife's tomb exhorting New York women to love their husbands," 20 September 1905
Bassano. A Photograph of the Family Ghost: In the Haunted Chamber, 25 December 1907.


Cecil Clare - Transmigration: (23 November 1898). A bad lot swaps bodies with the Good Samaritan who saved his life. Murder and manslaughter ensue. Terrific!

J. S. Fletcher - The Other Sense: (13 October 1909). His guardians commit our narrator to a private "Madhouse" after he rashly confides to seeing dead people and fairies. Dr. Shrieber proves refreshingly sympathetic, encouraging the patient to inform him should he encounter a ghost. This he does. Between them they discover a murder was committed on these very premises. Picked up by J. M. Parrish & John R. Crossland (eds.) for their The Mammoth Book Of Thrillers, Ghosts & Mysteries (Odhams, 1936)

Nora Chesson - The Marriage of Hugh O'Rouke: (18 February 1903). To lift the curse on his family, he weds the family Banshee. A blissful union, but a brief one.

William Freeman - In the Lane: (17 May 1911). Three murders in the woods near the private residence of Lady Arraby and her son, Harold, the noted inventor. Each brutal slaying is preceded by an ominous whirring noise. Had the author held this one back a decade, it could so easily have graced the Weird Tales launch issue alongside Nimba, the Cave Girl, The Scarlet Night and The Return of Paul Slavsky.

William Buckley - A Hanging Judge: (21 June 1899). On his death he stands trial before a Court of Angels and fiends. Late Victorian "dark fantasy."

Thomas Cobb - Keeping Dark: (4 May 1904). Social butterfly Colonel Durand has not been seen in public for months and his servants rebuff all enquiries with an unsatisfactory "he is not at home." Do you suppose they've done him in?

Harold Blind - The Dead General: (27 August 1913). The Ogboni League work grisly black magic against an English General who hung two priests for a ritual murder.

William Freeman - The Wraith of Uncle Samuel: (14 June 1916). The family ghost (murdered; 1671) takes umbrage at the present day Denbury's leasing of the Manor House to an American and his glamorous daughter gagging to live in a haunted house.

As It Is Not at Covent Garden: Fraulein Signe Vonne Rappe as Salome with the head of the Prophet, Mr. Clarence Whitehill, 21 December 1910.
L. R.: If Men were the size of Insects: Advancing on his prey - The human Fly caught in the Spider's Web, 4 Sept. 1907