Alfred Hitchcock – The Graveyard Man

Alfred Hitchcock – The Graveyard Man (NEL, October 1968)

 

Josh Kirby

C. B. Gilford – The Cemetery Man
Clark Howard – Spook House
W. Sherwood Harman – Poltergeist
Robert Bloch – A Killing In The Market
C. B. Gilford – Never Marry A Witch
Avram Davidson – A Shot From The Dark Night
Henry Slesar – Murder Delayed
Lawrence Treat – Shoot A Friendly Bullet
William Link & Richard Levinson – The Man In The Lobby
Robert Edmon Alter – The Shunned House

Blurb:
“Some of the best and most eerie story material in the world can be found in the locale where I am pictured on the cover.’
So writes Alfred Hitchcock, King of Chills and Master of the Macabre, in the introduction to this latest unholy collection of tales.
And he backs up his claim by presenting herein for your delectation stories by such literary ghouls as

Robert Bloch
Avram Davidson
Lawrence Treat
Henry Slesar
and many more.
We suggest you check on your nerves before ven­turing into this domain of death.

At 96 pages all in, minimalist even by NEL standards and doubtless much of the material is more crime than horror-supernatural orientated, though where there are titles like The Cemetery Man and Poltergeist there is hope. i’ve heard only good things about Carney Kill author Robert Edmon Alter’s haunted house story and Clark Howard wrote the occasional horror short including the ghoulish The Keeper Of The Crypt, which enlivened a summer of love issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Columbo co-creators Link & Levinson contributed a minor ‘when seafood attacks’ effort to Fred Pickersgill’s And Graves Give Up Their Dead. Bloch’s is only one of three stories i didn’t write up from his Fear & Trembling collection, meaning it was either too complex or routine for me to desecrate.

Underwood & Miller – Kingdom Of Fear

Tim Underwood & Chuck Miller (eds.) – Kingdom Of Fear: The World Of Stephen King (New English Library, 1987)

There’s only one way to really understand fear ….

Eighteen unique insights into the fastest-selling authhor of horror today.

Essays by celebrated critics and master horror novelists on the leading writer of the 80s.

What ten things scare Stephen King The Most?

Who first found out Richard Bachman was really Stephen King?

Why does Andrew Greelry think King’s horror has a healing power?

Why has King sold more books than there are people in Britain?

KINGDOM OF FEAR

A fascinating, frightening and unforgettable collection of amazing facts about Stephen King.

Read it now. Before the nightmares come ….

Robert Bloch – The Scarf

Robert Bloch – The Scarf (Nel, 1972: originally Dial, USA, 1947)

Robert Bloch - The Scarf

Fame – of sorts – came early to Dan Morley.

So did temptation.

So did the easy money and the glittering women who thrust it on him, begging him to accept.

And so did murder.

All he needed was a soft maroon scarf, looped lightly around both wrists: and it was not just one victim or even two ….

Thanks to Justin Marriott of Paperback Fanatic for the cover scan.

Peter Haining – Beyond The Curtain Of The Dark

Peter Haining – Beyond The Curtain Of The Dark (Four Square, October, 1966: Nel, 1972)

Bruce Pennington

Foreword – Judith Merril
Introduction – Peter Haining

Robert Bloch – Lizzie Borden Took An Axe
Patricia Highsmith – The Snail Watcher
Ambrose Bierce – Chickamauga
Harry Harrison – At Last, The True Story Of Frankenstein
Guy De Maupassant – The Horla
Ray Bradbury – Fever Dream
Theodore Sturgeon – The Other Celia
Edgar Allan Poe – The Oval Portrait
W. C. Morrow – The Monster Maker
Frederic Brown – Come And Go Mad
H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth – The Survivor
H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth – The Ancestor
Mary Shelley – The Mortal Immortal
Nathaniel Hawthorne – Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment
Henry Kuttner – By These Presents
Henry Slesar – Whosits Disease
Edgar Allan Poe – King Pest
Harold Lawlor – Mayaya’s Little Green Men
F. Marion Crawford – For The Blood Is The Life
Edogawa Rampo – The Human Chair
J. S. Le Fanu – The Fortunes Of Sir Robert Ardagh
Robert Bloch – Return To The Sabbath
Clive Pemberton – The Will Of Luke Carlowe
Isaac Asimov – Eyes Do More Than See

I think the Haining legend really starts picking up momentum with this collection. Other early ones like the same years Where Nightmares Are and The Hell Of Mirrors relied too much upon those classics we all have a billion times over, but this looks like the work of a man who loves, and is widely read in the genre. This is where I first read Bierce’s decidedly non-escapist Chickamauga, a detached account of a war crime and one of the most horrible stories ever written. Maupassant’s The Horla is a coming race story of, literally, insane genius and Edogawa Rampo (say it fast) is kinky-cute in the extreme. Of the Frankenstein variations, W. C. Morrow’s ghastly The Monster Maker just shades it from Harrison’s short ‘n nasty effort.

Four Square edition, cover by Josh Kirby

Thanks to Nightreader for scanning the Four Square cover.

Raymond T. McNally – A Clutch of Vampires

Raymond T. McNally (ed.) – A Clutch of Vampires (NEL, 1974)

Introduction – Raymond T. McNally

Phlegon of Tralles – Philinnion
Philostratus – Menippus And Apollonius
Jan Jacob Maria de Groot – A Chinese Vampire
Walter Map – Vampire In A Knight’s Household
William Of Newburgh – Two Twelfth Century Vampires
Henry More – Sixteenth Century Vampire In Silisia
Erasmus Franciscus – Seventeenth-Century Vampire In An Austrian Province
Augustin Calmet – An Eighteenth-Century Look At Vampires
Letter by an Austrian Imperial Army Officer – Hungarian Antidote Against Vampires
John Polidori – The Vampyre
J. S. Le Fanu – Carmilla
Augustus Hare – Croglin Grange Vampire
New york World – Vampires In And Near Newport, Rhode Island
William Seabrook – Vampire From Brooklyn, N.Y.
Montague Summers – Vampires In Modern Greece
W. R. S. Ralston – A Russian Vampire
Madame Blavatsky – Another Russian Vampire
Ion Creanga & The Institute of Folklore, Bucharest – Five Romanian Vampires
Lawrence Durrell – Vampire In Venice
Robert Bloch – The Living Dead
Stephen Grendon (August Derleth) – The Drifting Snow
Richard Matheson – Drink My Red Blood
Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guest
Montague Summers – are Vampires Less Frequent Today?
Raymond T. McNally – A Contemporary Romanian Vampire

An unusual collection spanning fact, “fact”, folklore and out and out fiction, with many of the stories familiar from Peter Haining’s The Midnight People rubbing shoulders with Henry More, Augustin Calmet, Montague Summers and Philostratus.

It concludes with McNally telling us of his recent visit to Romania and an episode he witnessed at the funeral of a young girl who’d died by her own hand …