Stephen Jones & David Sutton – Dark Terrors # 5

Stephen Jones & David Sutton (eds) – Dark Terrors # 5 (Gollancz, 2000)

Stephen Jones and David Sutton – Introduction

Christopher Fowler – At Home in the Pubs of Old London
Caitlín R. Kiernan – Valentia
Richard Christian Matheson – Barking Sands
Chaz Brenchley – Everything, in All the Wrong Order
James Van Pelt – Savannah is Six
Brian Hodge – Now Day Was Fled as the Worm Had Wished
David J. Schow – Why Rudy Can’t Read
Ramsey Campbell – No Story in It by
Graham Masterton – Witch-Compass
Nicholas Royle – The Proposal
C. Bruce Hunter – Changes
Tanith Lee – The Abortionist’s Horse (A Nightmare)
Michael Marshall Smith – The Handover
Roberta Lannes – Pearl
Eric Brown – Beauregard
Nancy Kilpatrick – Necromimicos
Joel Lane – The Bootleg Heart
Cherry Wilder – Saturday
Gregory Frost – The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray
Mary A. Turzillo – Bottle Babies
Kim Newman – Going to Series
Lisa Tuttle – Haunts
Dennis Etchison – My Present Wife
Melanie Tem – Alicia
Brian Stableford – The Haunted Bookshop
Mick Garris – Starfucker
Gwyneth Jones – Destroyer of Worlds
Peter Straub – The Geezers
William B. Trotter – Honeysuckle
Gahan Wilson – Final Departure
David Case – Pelican Cay

Stephen Jones – Dancing With The Dark

Stephen Jones (ed.) – Dancing With The Dark: True Encounters With The Paranormal By Masters Of The Macabre (Vista, 1997)

Cover by Splash: Photography by Simon Marsden

Stephen Jones – Introduction: Dancing with the Dark

Joan Aiken – My Feeling about Ghosts
Sarah Ash – Timeswitch
Mike Ashley – The Rustle in the Grass
Peter Atkins – Take Care of Grandma
Clive Barker – Life After Death
Stephen Baxter – The Cartographer
Robert Bloch – Not Quite So Pragmatic .
Ramsey Campbell – The Nearest to a Ghost
Hugh B. Cave – Haitian Mystères
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – One-Way Trip
A. E. Coppard – The Shock of the Macabre
Basil Copper – The Haunted Hotel
Peter Crowther – Safe Arrival
Jack Dann – A Gift of Eagles
Charles de Lint – The House on Spadina
Terry Dowling – Sharing with Strangers
Lionel Fanthorpe – Hands on the Wheel
Esther M. Friesner – That Old School Spirit
Gregory Frost – Twice Encountered
Neil Gaiman – The Flints of Memory Lane
Stephen Gallagher – In There
Ray Garton – Haunted in the Head
John Gordon – The House on the Brink
Ed Gorman – Riding the Nightwinds
Elizabeth Goudge – ESP
Simon R. Green – Death is a Lady
Peter Haining – The Smoke Ghost
Joe Haldeman – Never Say Die
James Herbert – Not Very Psychic
Brian Hodge – Confessions of a Born-Again Heathen
Nancy Holder – To Pine with Fear and Sorrow
M. R. James – A Ghostly Cry
Peter James – One Extra for Dinner
Mike Jefferies – A Face in the Crowd
Nancy Kilpatrick – Raggedy Ann
Stephen King – Uncle Clayton
Hugh Lamb – Go On, Open Your Eyes…
Terry Lamsley – Moving Houses
John Landis – Inspiration
Stephen Laws – Norfolk Nightmare
Samantha Lee – Not Funny
Barry B. Longyear – The Gray Ghost
H. P. Lovecraft – Witch House
Brian Lumley – The Challenge
Arthur Machen – World of the Senses
Graham Masterton – My Grandfather’s House
Richard Matheson – More Than We Appear To Be
Richard Christian Matheson – Visit to a Psychic Surgeon
Paul J. McAuley – The Fall of the Wires
Anne McCaffrey – Unto the Third Generation
Thomas F. Monteleone – Talkin’ Them Marble Orchard Blues
Mark Morris – A Shadow of Tomorrow
Yvonne Navarro – The House on Chadwell Drive
William F. Nolan – The Floating Table and the Jumping Violet
Edgar Allan Poe – Mesmeric Revelation
Vincent Price – In the Clouds
Alan Rodgers – Clinic-Modern
Nicholas Royle – Magical Thinking
Jay Russell – De Cold, Cold Décolletage
Adam Simon – The Darkness Between the Frames
Guy N. Smith – The Mist People
Michael Marshall Smith – Mr Cat
S. P. Somtow – In the Realm of the Spirits
Brian Stableford – Chacun sa Goule
Laurence Staig – The Spirit of M. R. James
Peter Tremayne – The Family Curse
H. R. Wakefield – The Red Lodge
Lawrence Watt-Evans – My Haunted Home
Cherry Wilder – The Ghost Hunters
Chet Williamson – A Place Where a Head Would Rest
Paul F. Wilson – The Glowing Hand
Douglas E. Winter – Finding My Religion
Gene Wolfe – Kid Sister

A Spectral vision …. The sound of phantom footsteps … An experiment in astral projection ….. A childhood premonition of disaster …. Possession by a voodoo god ….
An Ouija board that predicted death … A body kept alive by force of will ….. A cursed family name …

Such tales as these are more usually associated with horror books and movies. However, these anecdotes are absolutely true! They are ,just a sample of the real-life experiences recounted by some of the world’s most famous frighteners, from such bestselling authors as Stephen King and James Herbert, to actor Vincent Price and director John Landis.

Collected together for the very first time, many or the most successful and well-known exponents, along with rising stars of the horror field, relate their fascinating encounters with the supernatural, revealing how such unique experiences have affected their lives and influenced their works.

Even for the experts, when it comes to Unexplained phenomena, fact can be much more frightening than fiction …

See also Dancing With the Dark thread on Vault Of Evil

Thanks to Nightreader!

Richard Davis – Orbit Book Horror Stories

Richard Davis (ed.) – The First Orbit Book Of Horror Stories Ed. (Orbit, 1976) *

Richard Davis – Introduction

Harlan Ellison – The Whimper Of Whipped Dogs
J. Ramsey Campbell – The Man in The Underpass
T. E. D. Klein – S.F.
Clive Sinclair – Uncle Vlad
Brian M. Stableford – Judas Story
Brian Lumley – The House Of Cthulhu
Allan Weiss – Satanesque
Steve Chapman – Burger Creature
Tim Stout – Wake Up Dead
Bernard Taylor – Forget-Me-Not
Gregory Fitz Gerald – Halloween Story
Charles E. Fritch – Big, Wide, Wonderful World
Eddy C. Bertin – The Taste Of Your Love

* Published in the USA as The Years Best Horror Stories Series III

I’d imagine this one was considered cutting edge when first published and 30 years haven’t diminished the power of these stories. More-so than David Sutton, Davis introduces SF into the mix, not my thing but there are enough out-and-out horrors to keep the likes of me happy.

Taylor’s history of Dr. Crippen’s wallpaper and the prog rock nightmare, “Judas Story”, have been commented upon elsewhere. Ellison’s opener is horror with a social conscience, the authors angry response to the big city, broad daylight murder of Kitty Genovese while people stood around and watched. Campbell locates a demon in a subway, and has a child narrate the nasty things that ensue. Ellison aside (nothing is scarier than reality), Weiss’s black magic outing, “Satanesque”, is maybe the most frightening and gory of the bunch – a statue comes to violent life and it’s none too choosy about who it kills …

Bernard Taylor – Forget-Me-Not: New Yorker Sandra, 26, arrives in London on a one year teacher exchange programme. On the tube she meets a helpful young man who, by way of chit-chat indicates the former 10 Rillington Place, once home to mass-murderer Reginald Christie. Before long Sandra is obsessing over the killer, reading all she can find about him and even hanging his photo on the wall of her new flat. When she learns that his house is due for demolition, Sandra pays it a final visit and peels a small strip of wallpaper from above the fireplace as a souvenir which she later pastes next to his image. Gradually it spreads across the flat, draining her of all vitality as it does so. Maybe as innovative a variation on the hoary vampire theme as I’ve read.

Tim Stout – Wake Up Dead: Camber Fell Prison for the Criminally Insane. Dr. Kellin invites select colleagues along to witness the unveiling of his new invention, a machine that transmits dreams as though they were regular TV shows. His volunteer is mass-murderer John Vanner who has always maintained that he committed his crimes while asleep. Vanner endured the most traumatic childhood – his father killed his mother and then came looking for him – and has been a martyr to his nightmares ever since. Should be fun getting to see what so terrorises him then …

Eddy C. Bertin – The Taste Of Your Love: Riccione, near Rimini. A serial-killer with a long history of torture-murders behind him picks up his latest intended victim at a disco and takes her back to his lodgings for a night of passion. But the girl with ‘the finely drawn features and dark lonely eyes’ is every bit his match. Soon she has him pinned to the bed in a grip of steel. And then she flicks her hair aside to show him the left side of her face, deformed by what looks like something one of Marilyn Manson’s cheerleaders would paint on her cheek ….

Steve Chapman – Burger Creature: Trudy and Maureen find him lurking around the burger joint where they work as waitresses. He’s an animated mass of hamburger, fries, onion and ketchup with pickles for eyes. Otherwise he looks like a regular guy. Trudy, the looker of the pair, falls for him – she’s suddenly very keen for Maureen to knock off early – and keeps him hidden away in the freezer. Everything’s going nicely until their appalling manager discovers the Happy meal on legs and tries to kill him …

Clive Sinclair – Uncle Vlad: Wait a minute. The Clive Sinclair? Anyhow … A descendant of the infamous impaler – with all the family niceties off pat – initiates the far-from-unwilling Madelaine into the clan.

Charles E. Fritch – Big, Wide Wonderful World: Following the nuclear holocaust, everybody is on state prescribed hallucinogenic drugs to keep them from seeing just how ugly their world really is. Thrill-seekers Chuck, Bill and Len get their kicks from sharing a “nightmare” – deliberately not taking their fix at the appointed time and resisting from doing so for as long as they can endure it. Within a few minutes they’ve all gone to pieces and there’s even a fatality. The publication details given for this story are Magazine of Fantasy & SF, 1968, but it was written at least ten years earlier and appears in the Charles Beaumont edited The Fiend In You (Ballantine, 1962).

Stephen Jones – Best New Horror 7

Stephen Jones (ed.) – The Best New Horror: Volume #7 (Robinson, 1996)

Luis Rey

Introduction: Horror In 1995 – Stephen Jones

Ian R. MacLeod – Tirkiluk
Christopher Fowler – The Most Boring Woman In The World
Brian Hodge – Extinctions In Paradise
Lisa Tuttle – Food Man
Michael Marshall Smith – More Tomorrow
Ramsey Campbell – Going Under
Dave Smeds – Survivor
Patrick Thompson – The Stones
Cherry Wilder – Back of Beyond
Steve Rasnic Tem – A Hundred Wicked Little Witches
Manly Wade Wellman – The Finger Of Halugra
Terry Lamsley – The Toddler
Stephen Gallagher – Not Here, Not Now
Thomas Ligotti – The Bungalow House
Alan Brennert – Cradle
Jane Rice – The Sixth Dog
Terry Dowling – Scaring The Train
David Sutton – La Serenissima
Norman Partridge – The Bars On Satan’s Jailhouse
Jeff VanderMeer – The Bone-Carver’s Tale
Neil Gaiman – Queen Of Knives
Paul J. McAuley – The True History Of Doctor Pretorius
Graham Masterton – The Grey Madonna
Douglas E. Winter – Loop
Brian Stableford – The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires
Nicholas Royle – Lacuna

Stephen Jones & Kim Newman – Necrology: 1995

Chris Morgan – Dark Fantasies

Chris Morgan (ed.) – Dark Fantasies: New Tales Of Psychological And Supernatural Terror (Legend, 1989)

Introduction: No Slime, No Chainsaws – Chris Morgan

Brian Stableford – The Will
Gary Kilworth – Usurper
Stephen Gallagher – Life Line
A. L. Barker – Charley
R. M. Lamming – Candle Lies
Ian Watson – Tales From Weston Willow
David Langford – The Facts In The Case Of Micky Valdon
Freda Warrington – Shine For Me
Christopher Evans – Lifelines
John Brunner – Dropping Ghyll
Tanith Lee – Don’t Get Lost
Nicholas Royle – Archway
Ramsey Campbell – Being An Angel
Chris Morgan – Interesting Times
Lisa Tuttle – Skin Deep
Brian Aldiss – Three Degrees Over

Chances are, if you’re anything like me, when you read the title of Morgan’s introductory essay – No Slime, No Chainsaws – you’ll react with derisive sneers of “snob horror!” Don’t be deterred by the seemingly anti-splatterpunk stance, however, as this is an excellent Brit Horror anthology and, happily, far from free of bloody mayhem.

Brian Stableford – The Will: Helen returns to the sticks for her father’s funeral to be met with the inevitable barrage of veiled threats and abuse from her loathsome family. This turns to sheer hatred when the will is read and she is left “the remainder of my estate.” Why? All is revealed in a spectacularly unpleasant ending.

Gary Kilworth – Usurper: Franz Culper is upstaged by his shadow in everything it does. It is more efficient at his job, steals his friends, makes love to his wife and locks him out of his home. Driven to desperation, Franz decides on desperate measures to finally get one up on the usurper …

Stephen Gallagher – Life Line: Ryan is convinced he’s spoken to his dead fiance, Belinda, on a mysterious chat-line. His phone bill should be astronomical, but the calls haven’t been registered. He determines to discover the whereabouts of those who run the service and, of course, Belinda, a suicide whose “badly decomposed body washed up on a beach in Holland. The effects of the long immersion had been compounded by the attentions of various kinds of marine life and at least one encounter with a boat propeller.”
Scary and brilliant, and about as funny as a tale containing the lines “I’ve learned one thing. Everything you love, you lose. Everything” can be.

David Langford – The Facts In The Case Of Micky Valdon: Avowed skeptic disproves Valdon’s degeneration into “150 pounds of plump, artificially reared maggots”, as “two professional magicians can now duplicate this trick onstage.” Amongst his far from convincing evidence, he cites a former crony of the deceased’s “great merriment at a reminiscence of Valdon once dropping a wet fish down the front of an unpopular barmaid’s dress” to prove the man was nothing but a practical joker.

Ian Watson – Tales From Weston Willow: Three short stories narrated by Mrs. Prestige in “The Wheatsheaf Inn.” The first deals with cross-country runner, Charlie Fox, who sabotages the hunt and pays a heavy price for his sins. In the second story, Paul and Ruth won’t believe the former vicarage is the centre of the universe … until they’re given appalling proof. Finally, three villagers pretend to be deaf, dumb and/ or blind as they attempt to cheat their way to victory in the County inner-village quiz.

Nicholas Royle – Archway : From the day she moves into her North London flat, Bella is haunted by the scornful laughter of an old, grey faced tramp she’s see on the street. She is unfairly dismissed from her job, encounters the red-tape horrors of the DSS and faces eviction. Finally …

Tanith Lee – Don’t Get Lost: Sally and her boyfriend find it impossible to leave a council estate as the streets keep changing. They break into a house and the boyfriend discovers three headless corpses: it’s as if a giant spider has ensnared and then eaten its prey …

Chris Morgan – Interesting Times: Keith blows £95.50 when he answers an advertisement which promises to “let excitement into your life.” shortly afterward, he receives a note acknowledging receipt of his cheque and informing him he’s just been ripped off. He loses his job, wife, home (as do so many characters in Dark Fantasies) and is mugged, hospitalized, and framed for drug possession. There’s only one way to make it stop.