COMMENTARY CLUB VALENTINES SPECIAL - The House That Dripped Blood

For our traditional inappropriate Valentine's Day special, a classic anthology horror from Amicus - The House That Dripped Blood - a movie that delivers four tales of terror and features an all-star cast - Peter Cushing, Denholm Elliot, Christopher Lee, Ingrid Pitt and Jon Pertwee.

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HYPNOGORIA 203 - Not At Night

In this episode Mr Jim delves into the history of the horror anthology and discovered how  several pioneering ladies of literature curated ground-breaking collections of weird fiction!

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BEFORE YOU BLOW OUT THE CANDLE

As regular listeners know, I do occasional like to spin a spooky yarn or two, a little while ago I was asked if I would like to contribute a tale to a new collection of horror stories. Naturally I jumped at the chance, and now the book is finally in the shops! 

It is entitled Before You Blow Out The Candle, and this new anthology of horror tales was edited by  Marc Damian Lawler. It is available in paperback or ebook  

It features mostly work by new writers but also including a couple of old masters in there too - in particular I'm am delighted to see Adrian Cole's classic British Cthulhu Mythos tale get a long overdue reprinting here! The full contents list is as follows - 

• Grave Warnings by Marc Damian Lawler
• Red Eye to Nightfolk   by A.P. Sessler
• Fear Makes Good Materialists by Lamuel Caleb Gonzalez
• Chiaroscuro  by Brad C. Hodson
• They Say You Should Never Go Back by David Little
• A Troublesome History by Jim Moon
• Steepe Holm  by Vince Stadon
• A Hard Day's Fright by Marc Damian Lawler
• The Trial for Murder  by Charles Dickens
• The Horror Under Penmire by Adrian Cole

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COMMENTARY CLUB Wedding Special - Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965)

Welcome to a special Commentary Club in which we are indulging ourselves something rotten with a joint favorite film - the classic Dr Terror's House of Horrors, the first anthology horror movie from Amicus! Five tales of terror starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Donald Sutherland, Roy Castle, Alan 'Fluff' Freeman and many many more!

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GREAT GHOSTS OF THE SHELVES #17 - The Midnight People ed. Peter Haining

Another collection of vampire fiction! And one which oddly enough has a cover that seems to echo the cover of a contemporary paperback anthology also devoted to tales of the vampire, The Undead edited by James Dickie. And as the two volumes surprisingly one share on tale in common - When It Was Moonlight by Manly Wade Wellman - they made a very pleasing complimentary pair on my bookshelves. 

Now The Midnight People was one of the many anthologies edited by the late great Peter Haining. First published in hardback by Leslie Frewlin in 1968, this collection of tales of blood drinkers has had several paperback editions down the years from Popular Library in 1970, Ensign in 1974, and the above incarnation from Everest Books in 1975. Furthermore it has been also published in the US as Vampires at Midnight in 1970 by Grosset & Dunlop, and more recently surfaced under the same title in 1993 from Warner Book with a new introduction by Sir Christopher Lee. 

Now the indefatigable Haining often used to arrange his anthologies by theme, and this one was part of a series of collections, each tackling a different aspect of the macabre - so while The Midnight People dealt with vampires, The Evil People (1968) served up tales of black magic and witchcraft, and The Unspeakable People (1969) purported to bring together the most horrible tales ever written. And more on those tomes another day...

...But back to The Midnight People. Much like Mr Dickie's collection which came a few years later, in his introduction Haining explains that he endeavored to create a collection of vampire fiction that didn't overlap with other volumes. And for my money, I think he succeeded admirably, with only the extract from Dracula being  and the MR James tale 'An Episode of Cathedral History' being likely to being already known to most readers. In the present age, we could add the extract from Varney the Vampire but at the time this collection was published reprints of this seminal penny dreadful were few and far between. Additionally the passing years have revealed that it is likely that James Malcolm Rymer actually penned this Victorian vampire epic rather than Thomas Preskett Prest. And while on the subject of names and titles, "Stephen Grendon" was actually a pseudonym for August Derleth, while Matheson's tale 'Drink My Blood' has also appeared under the alternative title 'Blood Son'.

The full contents are as follows -  

Fritz Haarmann ‘The Hanover Vampire’ by Montague Summers
The Vampire of Croglin Grange by Augustus Hare
The Vampyre by John Polidori
The Storm Visitor (an extract from Varney the Vampire) by Thomas Preskett Prest
Three Young Ladies (an extract from Dracula) by Bram Stoker
An Episode of Cathedral History by M. R. James
Bat’s Belfry by August Derleth
‘And No Bird Sings’ by E. F. Benson
The Believer by Sydney Horler
The Drifting Snow by Stephen Grendon
When It Was Moonlight by Manly Wade Wellman
Over the River by P. Schuyler Miller
Drink My Blood by Richard Matheson
Pillar of Fire by Ray Bradbury
Dr Porthos by Basil Copper
The Living Dead by Robert Bloch
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes by Fritz Leiber
Postcript by Montague Summers

This volume is bookend with pieces by the noted vampire scholar Montague Summers, and we open with his account of the ghoulish crimes of a real life 'vampire' killer. W then follow it up with another alleged true story - 'The Vampire of Croglin Grange'. Now oddly enough when I investigated the Croglin case, having being fascinated for many years by the account here, I discovered a strange link to Varney the Vampire, and more curious still, the every section reprinted under the title 'The Storm Visitor' in this volume! Full details of this investigation can be found in Hypnobobs  #91 and Hypnobobs #92. 

Anyhow we then take a more or less chronological tour through vampire fiction through the ages. And refreshingly we have a wide variety of species of vampire on show here. Yes, there are the traditional blood-drinkers such as Dr Porthos, but we have plenty of unusual takes on the familiar fiend here. The Grendon/Derleth tale brings us a snow vampire, Bloch and Leiber explore in different ways the vampiric aspects of celebrity, Manly Wellman has the great Edgar Allan Poe meeting the undead, while Bradbury and Miller tell us tales from the vampire's point of view. And stranger things await too - there is little of the suave gentleman of the night, or even of the remotely human in EF Benson's 'And No Bird Sings', while some have questioned whether the thing unleashed in James' 'An Episode of Cathedral History' is actually a vampire at all - but whatever the creature is it certain fits in well here.

This book entranced me when I first got the hardback edition out of the library as a kid, and indeed I borrowed it several times to revisit its fine selection of tales. And while it was many years later that I saw a copy for sale, I was delighted to find it and bought it instantly. It is still a superlative selection of vampire tales and one can see why it has been reprinted so many times - essential reading for all lovers of the undead. 

GREAT GHOSTS OF THE SHELVES #15 - Christopher Lee's Great Villains AKA Omnibus of Evil

I know, I know! That is one of the worst covers you're ever likely to see... And no, I'm not getting my columns mixed up and this isn't a stray from Cover Art-rocities. As it happens, when this tome was originally published in hardback by WH Allen back in 1978, it had a rather nice dust-jacket showing  a sinister top hatted and cloaked figure stalking a Victorian street by moonlight. And it also had the catchier title Christopher Lee's Great Villains, with Omnibus of Evil being relegated to a mere subtitle.  

However when it surfaced in paperback from Mayflower in 1980, for some reason some maniac in the Art Department decided that the most terrifying thing in the world would be wobbly letters and day-glo colours. Actually on the latter they may have had a point, but I digress... However in fairness, I think its a fitting tribute to the late Sir Chris that the publishers felt his name alone was a big enough draw to lure readers in. 

And indeed Lee was no stranger to the role of anthology host either. Great Villains was actually his fifth foray in fronting collections of weird tales. The first came back in 1966 when Lee lent his name to paperback collection of comic strip adaptations of classic macabre tales, Christopher Lee's Treasure of Terror (Pyramid Books 1966), a handsome little volume produced by the talent ghouls at Warren who gave the world marvelous horror comics such as Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella. In 1974 he teamed up with legendary editor Peter Haining, to give us Christopher Lee's New Chamber of Horrors (Souvenir 1974)* which featured his favourite horror tales as well as some writing on his career in horror movies and a selection of photographs from Lee's private collection.   

The mid-Seventies saw three further volumes hosted by Sir Chris, now working with another legend of the horror anthology game Mr Micheal Parry. Christopher Lee's X Certificate (Star Books 1975) collected tales related to roles Lee had played on the screen, while Christopher Lee's Archives of Evil (Mayflower 1977) featured a selection of stories exploring different type of horror monsters. And Great Villains was the last of these collaborations, with as I'm sure you'll have guessed, a menu of macabre tales about some of the great fiends of literature.  The full rogues gallery is listed below - 

Professor Moriarty - The Final Problem by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle

Jack The Ripper - In The Fourth Ward by Theodora Benson
Mr Hyde - Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (extract) by Robert Louis Stevenson
Mr Hyde - Sagittarius by Ray Russell
Dr Fu Manchu - The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu (extract) by Sax Rohmer
Carmilla - Carmilla by JS. Le Fanu
Count Dracula - Dracula (extract) by Bram Stoker
Frankenstein - At Last, The True Story Of Frankenstein by Harry Harrison
Sawney Bean - Sawney Beane (traditional)
Marquis de Sade -The Skull Of the Marquis de Sade by  Robert Bloch
The Devil - The Demon King by JB Priestley

Now obviously, lovers of fantastic fiction will be very familiar with half the contents of this volume, the extracts from the classics and oft-anthologies works like Carmilla, The Final Problem and the account of Sawney Beane. But overlapping tales is a common feature in any anthology, and what makes the difference is the choice of unfamiliar material, and fortunately here we have some crackers. Ray Russell's Sagittarius  is an excellent story that serves as a sequel to Stevenson's original, while Harry Harrison has a lot of fun with the Frankenstein legend, with the Doctor and his monster turning up in a carnival show in Florida, and telling a young reporter what he's been up too all these years. In The Demon King, JB Priestley may well have his tongue in his cheek but still delivers a top notch tale.

The Skull Of the Marquis de Sade is one of my favourite tales from Robert Bloch, and even inspired an Amicus movie The Skull starring Lee and Peter Cushing (which I chat about at length here). However the real treat here is In The Fourth Ward by Theodora Benson, a story I have found nowhere else, that seemingly sees old Saucy Jack bringing bloody mayhem to old New York. And as related in the introduction, this tale is based on an actual theory as to what happened to Jack the Ripper, and the macabre events recounted were drawn from a real murder case.  

And speaking of the introduction and linking material, often in the case of these hosted anthologies, the titular big name in question often just pockets a handsome fee and allows the real editor to ghost write the necessary blurbs. However in this case, it would appear that Sir Chris, being the consummate professional he was, would not brook such literary chicanery, for one can not only clearly hear his distinctive speaking style in the text pieces, but also those of us who have heard the great man in interviews over the years will recognize some of the observances and anecdotes he relates while talking about the stories and the roles he played relating to these great villains. 

It's a refreshing change for the hosted anthology genre, and makes this book a double delight. Not only do you get a fine selection of tales but get to hang out with Lee himself for while. Well worth hunting down for all fans of classic horror, but I would recommend trying to find the hardback with the nicer cover... 

* - later printed in two volumes in paperback as Christopher Lee's New Chamber of Horrors (Mayflower 1974) and  More of Christopher Lee's New Chamber of Horrors (Mayflower 1976) 

GREAT GHOSTS OF THE SHELVES #10 - The Devil's Children ed. Michael Parry

In the late '60s, there had been something of an occult revival, with all manner of mysticism, witchcraft and black magic finding its way into pop culture, as the new generation explored a host of alternative beliefs and ideas. However in 1973 things hit a peak with the release of William Friedkin's adaptation of William Peter Blatty's  novel The Exorcist. The novel became a global bestseller and the movie was a worldwide box office smash, making The Devil not only hip, but very good business too. 

Naturally there was a whole wave of similarly Satanic themed books and movies following not only after. At the time in the UK, publishers were still doing good business with legions of horror anthologies, and naturally in the Exorcist boom years a good few were produced in a demonic vein. And one such anthology was The Devil's Children, assembled by one of the legends of horror anthologies the late great Mr Michael Parry. 

Parry, who sadly passed away last year, was one of the holy trinity of editors alongside Peter Haining and Richard Davis, names I soon learned and indeed loved in my early years as a weird fiction fan. He curated many excellent collections of weird fiction, but The Devil's Children has a special place in my heart as the first of his anthologies I ever read. And nostalgia aside it's still a cracking round-up of tales about demons and exorcists - see for yourself! 

Enoch by Robert Bloch
Father Meuron’s Tale by R. H. Benson
Vacant Possession by Ramsey Campbell
The Horla by Guy De Maupassant
The Thing on the Doorstep by H. P. Lovecraft
Saunder’s Little Friend by August Derleth
A Porta Inferi by 'Roger Pater' (Dom Gilbert Roger Hudlestone)
The Lips by Henry S. Whitehead
From Shadowed Places by Richard Matheson
The Unspeakable Betrothal by Robert Bloch
Isabo by J. A. Cuddon
The Possession of Angela Bradshaw by John Collier

There's no doubt about it, we have some of the brightest and the best here, along side a few surprises. The likes of Lovecraft, Bloch and Matheson surely need no introduction, and while back when this book was published he was still a young writer making ripples in the horror pond, Ramsey Campbell is now a big fish too. John Collier is a big name too, and while not known for his macabre fiction, he is widely recognised as one of the masters of the short tale. Weird fiction fans will also recognize August Derleth, Henry S Whitehead and RH Benson. Whitehead's The Lips is regarded as one of his finest stories, as is Father Meuron's Tale by RH Benson, brother of noted ghost story writers EF Benson and AC Benson. Maupassant's The Horla of course is a bona fide classic, and while it is more commonly thought of a vampiric tale, in truth it works just as well as a story of demonic invasion. 

Aside from a top flight selection of tales and writers, what makes The Devil's Children such fun is the diversity in the tales. Of course we have the traditional confrontations between priests and the possessed as you would expect, but Parry serves up a wide menu of demoniac terrors. Good old Robert Bloch gives us a tale of backwoods American witchcraft in Enoch, and then later gives us a far stranger tale of  unholy pacts with otherworldly powers in The Unspeakable Betrothal which plays with hints from the Cthulhu Mythos but without being the usual Mythos tale. Whitehead and Matheson bring us tales not of Christian devils but of the more exotic sorceries of voodoo and juju, while Ramsey Campbell gives us a hallucinatory nightmare of woodland witchcraft and elemental possession. JA Cuddon's Isabo is horrific but rich in jet black humour and John Collier ends the collection with his tongue in his cheek and a knowing devilish wink. 

While there have been many short story collections themed around witchcraft, possession and black magic, there are few as rich and varied as The Devil's Children, and fewer still that featured such a talented roster of writers. It's a great introduction to the anthologies of Michael Parry, and one any armchair discipline of the dark arts should have their shelves.

GREAT GHOSTS OF THE SHELVES #8 - Dark Companions by Ramsey Campbell

A few weeks ago on Great Ghosts of the Shelves, I covered one of my early encounters with Ramsey Campbell, the anthology The Gruesome Book. Now in that little write-up I did mention that his bleak and horrible tale Calling Card in that tome had resolved in my mind that I really needed to read more by him. Therefore his name joined a mental list, one that at that time included Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch and Richard Matheson, of authors I was looking out for when browsing various anthologies of fantastic fiction. And naturally I was keeping an eye out for his own books. And as it turned out, it wasn't too long before whichever angel that is set above secondhand book stores looked in my direction...

For one day in town, I had a sudden impulse to swing by the secondhand paperback stall on the market. Now this was one of those places whose stock didn't dramatically alter from week to week, but there were gems to be found for those willing to flip through the battered long unsold paperbacks, passing through the familiar same creased covers. And to this day I wonder if they ever did shift that dog-eared copy of The Devil's Coach-horse by Richard Lewis... But I digress...

And I'm sure it is no surprise to seasoned book hunters, but that this particular impulse turned out to be a golden one, as such sudden impulses often are. Yes, the angel of battered paperbacks was smiling at me, for there, amid the tatty Kings and Herberts, was a pristine copy of Dark Companions, whose cover (miraculously still rather pristine after all these years) you can see above. Yes, the condition was good, the price was even better, and I was already reading the introduction on the bus home.

Issued by Fontana in 1982, Dark Companions was the fourth collection of short fiction from Mr Campbell, and thanks to my somewhat excitable interpretation of the back blurb, for a good while I was thought it was a kind of best of collection spiced up with some new tales. Well, on the back it did say -

Dark Companions is a collection of some of his best stories. Most have not been published in this country before and some have never been published before.

In fact, it wasn't until I hunted down copies of his second and third short story collections - Demons By Daylight (1973) and The Height of the Scream (1976) - that I realised my error. So then, were the folks at Fontana being a bit naughty with their blurb?

Well, not really. First up, I'd have to say that really there's no such thing as a bad short story collection from Campbell - and I should know having being addicted to them ever since I picked up this volume. However as it turns out, this collection could well be legitimately considered a best of, for by a weird twist of fate it does contain a great many stories that have turned up in bona fide cream of Campbell collections - sharing nine tales with the 1987 best of Dark Feasts: The World of Ramsey Campbell and thirteen with Alone With The Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell 1961-1991. So as it goes, my initial misreading of the back cover has ended up being not that far off the mark.

The full contents list is as follows  -

• The Chimney
• Down There
• Above the World
• Napier Court
• Out of Copyright
• The Depths
• The Man in the Underpass
• Vacant Possession
• The Little Voice
• Drawing In
• The Trick
• Heading Home
• The Show Goes On
• The Change
• Calling Card
• Baby
• In the Bag
• Conversion
• Mackintosh Willy
• Call First
• The Companion

And if you know your Campbell, you''ll see that there are some of his most famous short tales in this collection, such as award winners like Mackintosh Willy, The Chimney and In The Bag. While in stories such as Out of Copyright or The Trick you can see why later critics would hail Campbell as the modern day heir to MR James, Campbell's terrors are very much his own, with tales like The Companion and Down There coming as close as one can to capturing the essence of  nightmares in print. 

And the collection showcases nicely the diversity of Campbell's short fiction. We have old school ghost stories with a modern twist and exercises in urban horror and alienation, but there's some fun homages to old horrors too. There's a sprinkling of tales that Campbell wrote to honour the infamous EC Comics, some fun takes on well-known horror tropes (Conversion and Vacant Possession), while others put interesting and entertaining spins on classic monsters, with Drawing In being one of my all-time favourite takes on bringing a certain gothic horror icon into the 20th century. 

After being out of print for many years, Dark Companions has been recently reissued in hardcover, paperback and e-book. The new edition has seen some slight changes to the running order with some stories swapped out for different ones, but given that any Campbell tale is usually a treat that's not a real problem. Dark Companions, in either incarnation, is still a fantastic introduction to Ramsey Campbell's short fiction and it's very good to have it back haunting the shelves once more. 

GREAT GHOSTS OF THE SHELVES #6 - Ghosts, Spooks and Spectres ed. Charles Molin

Yes, another influential tome from my childhood! At my junior school, as well as a proper school library, every class had its own mini-library from which we were encouraged to borrow books. Needless to say many were rather dull learn-to-read style textbooks and assorted battered encyclopedias, however in my third year our new class room had a huge selection of exciting looking books including a great many classic novels of firm favourites such as The Hobbit, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, The Water Babies and  Call of the Wild.

However the hot favourite, and the book that there was an unofficial waiting list for, was this anthology of spooky tales. For, according to those who had stumbled upon it first, it contained real ghost stories for grown-ups and was PROPER SCARY!!! And while like many anthologies of ghost stories aimed at young readers published at that time, Mr Molin includes some not very frightening retold folk tales and a few comedy stories, there actually were some genuine skin-freezers in there, as you can see...

The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde
Teeny-Tiny by Anonymous
The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens
The Strange Visitor by Anonymous
Madam Crowl's Ghost by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
A Ghostly Wife by Anonymous
Legend of Hamilton Tighe by Richard Barham
The Phantom Ship by Captain Marryat
The Brown Hand by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Ghost-Brahman by Anonymous
The Ghost-ship by Richard Middleton
The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall by John Kendrick Bangs
The Inexperienced Ghost by H.G. Wells
The Buggane and the Tailor by Dora Broome
Laura by Saki
The Betrayal of Nance by R. Blakeborough
The Ghost Who Was Afraid of Being Bagged by Anonymous
The Beast with Five Fingers by W.F. Harvey
The Night the Ghost Got In by James Thurber
The Story of Glam by Andrew Lang

And as is usual I've linked to podcasts containing my readings of these fine tales.

The cover design was by Philip Gough who also did this atmosphereic frontispiece

GREAT GHOSTS OF THE SHELVES #5 - The Undead ed. James Dickie

Back in the day before the internet, secondhand bookshops were rare and wonderful things. In those days, to get hold of out of print titles, the only way to find them was scouring every secondhand book shop in your local area and hoping the titles you were hunting would appear. Therefore when a new secondhand book operation opened for business, it was instantly added to every bibliophile's flightpath. 

Therefore as a young book lover with limited transport and even more limited pocket money, it was a huge delight when the local post office round the corner suddenly gained a secondhand book section alongside its other side lines of stationary, knitting supplies and assorted ornamental tat. The used book corner didn't last long, but for the year or two it was there it proved to be a real treasure trove. And one of the first tomes I picked from there - for the bargain price of 20p - was this somewhat battered paperback anthology of vampire tales. 

Now I know what you are thinking... What no Carmilla? No Berenice? No Horla? How can this be vampire classics Mr Dickie! Well, as our genial editor explains in the lavish and informative introduction he chose to leave out several well known tales to avoid over-lapping with another volume. the publisher of this tome, Neville Spearman/Pan, had issued another undead anthology The Vampire curated by Roger Vadim in 1963, and hence for this 1971 collection Mr Dicky courteously avoided any overlap with the preceding volume. It was a gentlemanly and ultimate canny move, for Vadim's The Vampire promptly went on my To Buy list and we shall look at that volume another day! 

However as you will see, despite Vadim have the first pick of the crop, nevertheless Mr Dickie has assembled a rather fine selection of tales here for some of the true masters of weird fiction  - 

The Undead (verse) by Richard Wilbur

Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker 

For The Blood Is The Life by F. Marion Crawford

The End Of The Story by Clark Ashton Smith 

The Death Of Ilalotha by Clark Ashton Smith 

The Tomb Of Sarah by F. G. Loring 

Revelations In Black by Carl Jacobi

The Room In The Tower by E. F. Benson

The Death Of Halpin Frayser by Ambrose Bierce

A True Story Of A Vampire by Eric, Count Stenbock

The Hound - H. P. Lovecraft

When It Was Moonlight - Manly Wade Wellman

The Canal by Everil Worrell

The Old Man's Story by Walter Starkie

The Undead is a highly entertaining collection of vampire tales, delivering a fine roster of literary bloodsuckers, and giving me my first taste of Lovecraft, Bierce and Clark Ashton Smith into the bargain. And while Vadim might have bagged some of the heavy hitters, in the long run I feel Dickie's tome has come out the winner. For in not overlapping with the earlier collection, this book also has managed to avoid overlapping with countless later volumes of vampire tales too while still delivering plenty of classics - which makes it an essential tome to track down for any fan of vampire lore! 

GREAT GHOSTS OF THE SHELVES #3 - Deadly Nightshade ed. Peter Haining

Peter Haining (2nd April 1940 – 19th November 2007) was one of the all-time great anthologists of weird fiction, editing dozens of collections of genre fiction. This little anthology, in a paperback edition from Beaver Books, first appeared in 1979 and was one of several collections from Mr Haining aimed at younger readers. Each tale received a short but informative introduction, telling us a little about the next story and its author. And hence the book as a whole is very much a who's who of great weird fiction authors - certainly it provided me with tasters of a whole range of writers whose works I would go on to seek out. The full contents are as follows - 

Lost Hearts by M. R. James 

The Doll's Ghost by F. Marion Crawford 

Nurses Tale by H. R. Wakefield 

The Attic by Algernon Blackwood 

The Thing In The Cellar by David H. Keller 

The Dabblers by W. F. Harvey 

The Tortoise-Shell Cat by Greye La Spina

The Looking Glass Tree by Joan Aiken 

The Human Angle by William Tenn

Gabriel-Ernest by Saki 

Sweets To The Sweet by Robert Bloch

The Witch Of Ramoth by Mark Van Doren 

Twilight Play by August Derleth 

Mr. Lupescu by Anthony Boucher

Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken 

Midnight Express by Alfred Noyes

The October Game by Ray Bradbury

Like all good anthologies there is a good mix of famous and obscure tales in there, and the late Mr Haining was a master at such compiling selections - always enough famous stories and top draw authors to draw your attention but equally always enough unfamiliar names and titles to not overlap with other anthologies. And so, after reading this book, as well as picking up any tome with tales by authors I'd enjoyed in this volume such James, Bloch, Bradbury or Blackwood, I was also on the look out by anything edited by Peter Haining. 

Needless to say this tome was a huge influence on me as a child, and unsurprisingly perhaps I have read several of these now well-loved tales on my podcast over the years (links to the shows provided in the contents list above). 

GREAT GHOSTS OF THE SHELVES #02 - Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker

A paperback edition from 1966 from Arrow Books of a collection of weird tales by Bram Stoker, first published in 1914. Stoker is of course best remembered as the creator of Dracula, but he also wrote several other novels and a great many cracking short tales. This volume of strange thrills features some of the best, collecting together several tales that had previously appeared in magazines alongside some that  had never been published before. It includes -

Dracula's Guest (1914)
The Judge's House (1891)
The Squaw (1893)
The Secret of the Growing Gold (1892)
A Gipsy Prophecy (1914)
The Coming of Abel Behenna (1914)
The Burial of the Rats (1914)
A Dream of Red Hands (1894)
Crooken Sands (1894)

Dracula's Guest is famously a tale closely connected to his masterwork, indeed an eerie adventure for Jonathan Harker which was cut from the original novel. But there's more to this volume than just vampires, The Judge's House is a wonderfully sinister tale and The Squaw is a fantastic story about the infamous iron maiden, and both have appeared in many other anthologies. And there's many treasures in the lesser known stories here too, with The Burial of the Rats being my top tip for an undiscovered gem. 

A reading of Dracula's Guest by Mr Jim Moon can be found here

GREAT GHOSTS OF THE SHELVES #01 - The Armada Ghost Book ed. Christine Bernard

Cover art by Chris D'Achille

In 1967, this little anthology of spooky tales for younger readers, expertly assembled by Christine Bernard, was first published. And its mix of classic ghost stories, retellings of spooky folk tales, and new fictions penned by modern authors would prove to be a huge hit. Indeed The Armada Ghost Book would prove to be so successful that an entire series of Armada Ghost Books followed, with this initial book being reprinted many times to thrill and terrify several generations of children.

This volume included -

Sandy MacNeil and His Dog (1964) by Sorche Nic Leodhas
School for the Unspeakable (1937) by Manly Wade Wellman
The House of the Nightmare (1906) by Edward Lucas White
The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost (1902) by H. G. Wells
The Giant Bones (1964) by Sorche Nic Leodhas
Prince Godfrey Frees Mountain Dwellers and Little Shepherds from a Savage Werewolf and Witches (1946) by Halina Gorska
The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall (1891) by John Kendrick Bangs
The Red Room (1896) by H. G. Wells
Spooks of the Valley (1948) by Louis C. Jones
The Lads Who Met the Highwayman (1965) by Sorche Nic Leodhas
A Pair of Hands (1898) by Arthur Quiller-Couch [as by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

Linked entries will take you to assorted Hypnobobs podcasts containing reading of these tales.

THE PERFECT HOUSE

Mr Jim Moon take a look at the microbudget anthology horror The Perfect House

Step this way for a viewing of this property!

FREE GHOST STORIES FOR THIS CHRISTMAS

Christmas is the traditional time for telling ghost stories, and so on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, this collection from The Hypnogoria Press - Seven of Spectres is absolutely free!

From the fireside of the Great Library of Dreams, Mr Jim Moon calls up seven spectres; presenting a selection of classic ghost stories complete with introductions, commentary and annotations plus a full page plate illustrating every tale. Including stories from masters of the macabre such as MR James, Bram Stoker and WF Harvey

AMAZON UK
AMAZON US
AMAZON CA

CHRISTMAS GHOSTLY GIVEAWAY!

Tomorrow - 20th December - our first book Seven of Spectres will be FREE for download on Amazon!

From the fireside of the Great Library of Dreams, Mr Jim Moon calls up seven spectres; presenting a selection of classic ghost stories complete with introductions, commentary and annotations plus a full page plate illustrating every tale. Including stories from masters of the macabre such as MR James, Bram Stoker and WF Harvey

AMAZON UK
AMAZON US
AMAZON CA

LITTLE DEATHS (2013)

Mr Jim Moon takes a look at a new British anthology horror movie that explores sex and death...

READ MORE HERE

COMING SOON...

Coming very soon to an e-reader near you... 

SEVEN OF SPECTRES

 THE FIRST HYPNOGORIA BOOK OF UNCANNY TALES

A selection of classic tales of ghosts and hauntings selected and illustrated by Mr Jim Moon!