Ibanez – Kuttner

Vincente Blasco Ibanez – Man Overboard! (Sea Terror)

Hammond Innes – South Sea Bubble: A widower decides to sell up, invest in a boat, and live out his days on the ocean. Unfortunately for him, Samoa, (snapped up at the essential ludicrously low price) is haunted by an assassin with a winch. (Sea Terror)

Washington Irving – Governor Manco And The Soldier (Ghost 7)

Washington Irving – Guests From Gibbet Island (Ghost 19)

Margaret Irwin – The Earlier Service (Ghost 11)

Margaret Irwin – The Book: Mr. Corbett, a mild-mannered stockbroker, inherits his late uncle’s library. Among its contents, a hand-written Latin manuscript which, on translation, proves to be a DIY black magic manual. His career prospers even as he loses his grip, alienating his family and colleagues. As the book takes over, it demands more and more of him, to the point where it orders him to murder the baby. (Horror 2)

Margaret Irwin – Monsieur Seeks A Wife (Horror 12)

Shirley Jackson – The Lottery: On the morning of June 27th, the villagers assemble in the square where Mr. Summers will preside over the annual lottery. The lottery seems to have its roots in a nature offering, but that’s all forgotten now and there’s even talk among the crowd that some places have actually dispensed with the tradition altogether. Old Man Warner scowls at such an outrage: “Pack of crazy fools. Listening to young folk, nothin’s good enough for them.”
So, the head of each household takes their turn to draw a paper from the battered black box, hoping they’ll be lucky again this year. Because if they’re not … (Horror 5)

W. W. Jacobs – Jerry Bundler: The Boars Head, Torchester. A few nights before Christmas and the locals are putting the willies up the commercial travellers with their ghost stories. One old timer relates the tale of Jerry Bundler, highwayman and pickpocket, who, sixty years ago, hung himself in an upstairs room rather than fall into the clutches of the Bow Street Runners. Hirst, an amateur player in the dramatic society, decides to give one of the guests a late night fright … (Ghost 5)

W. W. Jacobs – The Three Sisters: Malletts Lodge, a dreary, desolate house on the marshes and home to Ursula, Tabitha and Eunice, three loveless spinsters living out their days in mutual misery. On the death-bed Ursula, the eldest, instructed Tabitha to leave her room untouched and lock it as she will want it when she returns to fetch she and Eunice at the moment of their own deaths. Tabitha wasn’t best pleased at her demands, less so when she learned the old coot had left her money to Eunice who promptly decided it would remain unspent until enough interest has been acquired to sponsor a children’s hospital!
The years pass and the lodge becomes ever more depressing. Encouraged by the faithful servant, Eunice decides to move out as Ursula’s presence seems to have infested the place and her weak heart can’t take the strain of waiting for her ghost to materialise. On the eve of her departure, however, a ghastly figure steals into her room …. (Ghost 14)

W. W. Jacobs – His Brother’s Keeper: Keller murders Martle in a moment of instantly-regretted anger. On the plus side, nobody knows that Martle was visiting him and he successfully conceals the body beneath a new rockery. But his guilt is a terribly thing and when the rockery is vandalised he starts coming apart. The vandal is himself: he’s taken to sleepwalking. (Horror 5)

W. W. Jacobs – The Well: Jem Benson is to marry the local beauty but his cousin Wilfred, facing ruination, is blackmailing him over some letters to a former lover. Wilfred disappears shortly after their argument and Jem begins to display a previously unremarked horror of the old well in the park where he and fiancee Alice conduct much of their courtship. When Alice loses her bracelet in the murky waters he has no option but to retrieve it. The following morning, with two of his trusted servants manning the ropes, he descends to the bottom …. (Horror 12)

Henry James – The Romance Of Certain Old Clothes (Horror 3)

M. R. James – Number 13 (Gaslight Terror)

M. R. James – A School Story (Ghost 4)

M. R. James – Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book (Ghost 16)

M. R. James – A View From A Hill (Horror 7)

Clodagh Gibson Jarvie – First-Foot: Hogmanay, and old Janet receives a New Year’s kiss from Robbie Mack, the man she’d dreamt of marrying, who visits her cottage for a drink. Dr. Bull calls after midnight to break the sad news. Robbie Mack died yesterday evening. (Ghost 12)

James Jauncey – The Veritable Verasco: The veteran magician is playing his annual monthly stint at the Empire Variety Theatre, the only time of the year the venue packs out and makes some money. Of the chorus girls competing to be his assistant, only two are in with a realistic shout – the beautiful, fiery Liza and cute, good-natured Rose. So you’ve guessed who wins and you’ve guessed who skulks off nursing a grudge.

Verasco’s latest prop is his Turkish box, an iron maiden by any other name except, of course, perfectly harmless. Unless somebody with revenge in their heart were to tamper with the safety mechanism … (Gaslight Terror)

Jerome K. Jerome – The Dancing Partner: Furtwangen, Black Forest. On hearing his daughter Olga and her friends complaining about the clumsiness of the local young men, Herr Geibel, a toymaker of genius is inspired to create his masterpiece: Lieutenant Fritz, the mechanical dancing partner. Annette, “a bright, saucy little girl fond of frolic” is the first to put Fritz through his paces and, were she still capable of submitting a report when their waltz is eventually terminated, it’s certain she’d have mentioned his one, fatal flaw. He doesn’t know when to stop … (Ghost 5)

Jerome K. Jerome – Christmas Eve In The Blue Chamber: … is the revenant of an evil man who murdered a carol singer with a lump of coal (a direct hit straight down the throat), a coronet player, an Italian organ-grinder, poets and sundry musical nuisances. He is quite the serial killer. Jerome befriends him. (Ghost 17)

Pamela Hansford Johnson – The Swan (Ghost 16)

Pamela Hansford Johnson – The Empty Schoolroom: Maud remains behind with M. Fournier and Marie during the school holidays and encounters the sobbing ghost of an ugly girl in a dunces cap. She had been mistreated and humiliated by the embittered headmistress and now it is time to exact revenge … (Ghost 18)

Mor Jokai – The Drop Of Blood: More psychological horror. Pseth. Rich landowner S walks into a surgery, insisting that if Dr. K. won’t remove the invisible carbuncle from his hand that is causing him excruciating pain, he will do so himself. K reluctantly complies, but it’s only a temporary reprieve. A letter from the doomed S reveals his guilty secret. (Horror 15)

Gwyn Jones – The Pit: Ystrad, Wales. Akerman, boarding with the Bendles at their charming cottage, has designs on his hostess, a fact that her husband seems unaware of. After what’s left of him finally emerges from the derelict mine he’s stubbornly insisted on investigating, however, it’s a fair bet that Mrs. Bendle won’t be the only woman to give him a wide berth from now on. (Horror 8 )

Glyn Jones – Cadi Hughes: Begins with the news that Ifan is literally dying by inches and goes on to describe the hideous damage gangrene is wreaking on his legs. The story then gives way to an appraisal of his devoted wife Cadi, a bossy, very practical woman who is already preparing his wake making particular note of her petty spite toward honest pit worker Ifan down the years. Finally, God turns up on the doorstep. I bet you didn’t know he was a card-carrying misogynist, did you? Truly bizarre. (Welsh Terror)

Gwyn Jones – Jordan: A giant of a man with a hideously scarred face and body hopping along on an iron leg, and he’s only interested in buying one thing – corpses. Jordan is clearly not a man to cheat, but that’s exactly what the narrator and his fellow con-merchant Danny try to do, the latter masquerading as a recently dug up body and scarpering once he’s been paid for. Come the day when, prayerbook in hand and singing his favourite funeral dirge, Jordan bears down on the tavern to claim what’s rightfully his … (Welsh Terror)

Marie Luise Kachnitz – Ghosts (European Terror)

Franz Kafka – In The Penal Settlement (European Terror)

Valentin Katayev – Our Father Who Art in Heaven: Odessa during WWII. A bitter winter, and the Nazi’s are rounding up Jews. A young mother realises that to be herded into the ghetto is death and decides to make a break for it with her little boy. Dodging the German patrols, she eventually arrives at Shevchenko Park where a figure half-covered in frost sits motionless on a bench. Mother and son join the man who has frozen to death. (European Terror)

John D. Keefauver – Kali: “Terrible things give me happiness ..”: Calcutta. An American tourist falls for a beautiful tour guide who lures him to the temple of her namesake. He finds himself possessed of an insatiable appetite for sacrificing goats to the Goddess, one a night for the rest of his life. (Oriental Terror)

Rick Kennett – Kindred Spirits (Ghost 18)

Rick Kennett – Drake’s Drum (Ghost 19)

Rick Kennett – The Roads Of Donnington (Ghost 20)

Gerald Kersh – Comrade Death (Horror 7)

Dorothy Kilmurry-Hall – Bert’s Resurrection: I’ve got my suspicions about Dorothy Kilmurry-Hall and her(?) Bert’s Resurrection. Perhaps I’m doing the author an injustice and it’s nothing more than them sharing a double-barrelled surname, but the laugh a millennium “comic” touch, lines like “When I goes, Maud, scatter me on my favourite vegetable plot, scatter me on them their ‘taters”, and Bert’s eventual reappearance as a half-man, half potato, tend to suggest Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes may be in no small way to blame for this abomination. (Horror 11)

Gary Kilworth – The Tryst (Ghost 19)

Garry Kilworth – Love Child: Colonialist Burnett pursues his estranged and pregnant lover, Siana, to a village in the Malay jungle. He’s informed that she is dead but its not all bad news – the local witchdoctor salvaged the foetus from her corpse and has used black sorcery to reanimate it as a logi. Regrettably, the magician is inexperienced and has lost control of the supernatural child, so would Burnett be so kind as to kill it for them? (Horror 15)

Francis King – The Doll : Reynolds, Sir Malcolm’s man-servant, is acting shifty following the abduction (and probable murder) of a pretty, mentally-handicapped girl, an article of whose blood-stained clothing is all that has been seen of her since she disappeared. Reynolds is convinced that he is the killer and even leads the police to the spot where her body is buried. But a bus conductor has already been apprehended and he’s confessed to the crime. (Horror 4)

Francis King – Mess (Horror 4)

Francis King – The Puppets (Oriental Terror)

Stephen King – The Reaper’s Image: An enchanted antique mirror that has claimed several lives , the victims simply vanishing once they’ve seen a black smudge on the glass which, on close inspection, is revealed to be the image of death. Spangler has to try it out for himself … (Ghost 17)

Rudyard Kipling – The Return Of Imray (Ghost 9)

Rudyard Kipling – At The End Of The Passage (Horror 3)

Rudyard Kipling – The Mark Of The Beast: Fleete, new to India, gets drunk with the Brit ex-pats on New Years Eve and, staggering home past the Temple of Hanuman defaces the image of the monkey god by stubbing his cigar out on its forehead. As his friends Strickland and the narrator try to placate the worshippers, a leper slips from a recess and lays his hand on Fleete’s chest. He rapidly degenerates into a were-leopard …. until his mates torture the leper until he lifts the spell. The narrator at least has the grace to admit “we have disgraced ourselves as Englishmen for ever.” (Oriental Terror)

Russell Kirk – Sorworth Place (Ghost 6)

Nigel Kneale – The Pond: An old man whose hobby is trapping and killing the frogs in his garden pond, which he then stuffs and fits out in elaborate constumes to display on his table. Finally, the frogs have had enough of it. Kneale in ghoulish EC comic mood – you can almost hear the Old Witch cackling her appreciation. (Horror 1)

Nigel Kneale – The Photograph: Mother is convinced that little Raymond is dying and arranges for him to leave his sick bed and travel into town to have his photograph taken. It doesn’t do his fever any good and in his delirium he’s tormented by the ghastly face in the picture threatening him that they will soon change places. (Horror 2)

Nigel Kneale – Chains: 1731. A slave trader inspects the wares of a gnarled old sea salt, winds up crushed beneath twenty fathoms of anchor chain. The old boy had served time as a galley slave … (Horror 4)

Manuel Komroff – So You Won’t Talk: Being a cop killer, Handsome Dan has little chance of escaping the death sentence but, as he points out to Captain Quill who is grilling him for the name of his accomplice, they can only kill him. Meanwhile Russian scientists are experimenting with a dog’s severed head and an artificial heart … (Horror 8 )

Manuel Komroff – Siamese Hands (Oriental Terror)

Tom Kristensen – The Vanished Faces (Oriental Terror)

Henry Kuttner – The Graveyard Rats: Salem. old Masson, the cemetery caretaker, supplements his income by robbing the dead of their gold teeth and jewellery. Comes the rainy night when he digs up a grave to find the rats have gnawed a hole in it and dragged the corpse off along one of they innumerable tunnels. He crawls in after them ..

An incredibly busy plot – Kuttner even drags an animated, festering corpse into the proceedings – in it’s day this was probably as ghastly a full-on horror story as had ever been written. (Horror 5)

Gaskell – Hunt

Mrs. Gaskell – The Old Nurses Story (Ghost 1)

Theophile Gautier – Clarimonde (Ghost 6)

G. B. S. – The Whittakers Ghost (Ghost 11)

William Gerhardi – The Man Who Came Back: Gentle ghost story of a dying old timer who can’t bear to think of being separated from his library and imagines the afterlife as an inexhaustible supply of great books and time enough to read them. (Ghost 3)

‘The Gibsons‘ – Justice: From my, admittedly limited, reading I gather that the short-short story is widely held to be the most difficult to pull off. In this grim 200-worder, Abel finds himself lost on an open moor with no idea how he got there. He’s not frightened as, being a God-fearing man, he knows that, if there’s any justice, the forces of evil can’t harm him … (Ghost 11)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman – The Yellow Wallpaper (Horror 9)

Jose Maria Gironella – The Death Of The Sea (Sea Terror)

Terry Gisbourne – The Quiet Man: Good-natured Northerner Jack Prince and his wife Elsie move into Gibbet Terrace in Chingford and set up a small business. All would be well were it not for loathsome neighbours the Witlows, who deliberately make their lives unbearable until Jack is obliged to pay them for some peace and quiet. When they begin taunting him by making farmyard noises at the top of their voices, Jack falls back on his professional skills to shut them up for good. (Frighteners)

Catherine Gleason – Friends: Brendon’s popularity amongst his work colleagues is due in no small part to his giving them the use of his flat to conduct their sex lives. He’s astonished – and delighted – when the office loner approaches him and requests use of it: Malochie rarely exchanges a word with anyone. Thinking him a shy introvert, Brendon invites him along to one of his parties where Malochie surprises everyone by chatting up young Mary who’d previously shown no liking for him whatsoever. The unlikely pair go missing, presumed eloped, some weeks later along with Brendon’s trunk. Then her dismembered body is found … (Frighteners 2)

Catherine Gleason – A Question Of Conscience: Pits an idealistic hippy student versus his rich, reactionary uncle, a man given to bullying and blood-sports. I think we’re supposed to sympathise with Mr. Flower Power in this one. (Horror 11)

John B. L. Goodwin – The Cocoon: Butterfly obsessive Danny Longwood, eleven, hides away in his room tending his smelly collection of caterpillars and pupae like a mad scientist. His father, a retired explorer of note and doesn’t he let everyone know it, neglects him and his mother ran off five years ago so he’s left to his own devices for the most part. When his father refuses to lend him his enormous cigar bowl, Danny has no alternative but to dispose of his prize find – a huge mutant moth with crab and mouth-like simulacra on its wings. But the cyanide jar fails to kill it …. (Horror 6)

Winston Graham – The Basket Chair: Convalescing after a heart attack, the invalid war hero Julien Whiteleaf moves in with his niece Agatha and her genial husband Roy. Whiteleaf has a reputation as a fair-minded, level headed spokesman for various paranormal investigation societies “with long names and short membership lists” and finds much of interest in a chair Agatha purchased from a grand old house down Swindon way. Agatha dutifully finds out what she can about the seemingly haunted chair’s origins and there is indeed a grim history. Captain Covent was hideously disfigured during the Battle of the Somme and, on learning of his wife’s infidelity, he tied her to a chair and watched her starve to death before cutting his throat. Whiteleaf notes in his diary: “I wonder if this chair, this basket chair was the one Captain Covent sat in? Or was it hers?” He doesn’t have long to wait to find out. But are things quite as they appear? (Horror 7)

Robert Graves – Earth To Earth: Brixham, South Devon during World War II. Elsie and Roland Hedges become disciples of Dr. Eugene Steinpilz who has developed a revolutionary bacteria to reduce even the most stubborn household waste to rich compost. They get a little carried away … (Horror 6)

Graham Greene – The End Of The Party (Horror 6)

Graham Greene – A Little Place Off The Edgware Road: North West London, 1939. Craven passes an afternoon in the decrepit little theatre in Culpar Road. Although there are no more than twenty people in the audience, a stranger takes the seat next to him and sporadically interrupts the film with a commentary on the Bayswater murder, a subject about which he seems worryingly well informed. When his hand brushes against Cravens it is wet and sticky. After the film, Craven telephones the police. They already have the killer in custody, but the victim has disappeared. (London Terror)

Stephen Grendon (August Derleth) – Mrs. Manifold (London Terror)

Alan Griff – The House Of Desolation (Ghost 11)

Jack Griffith – Black Goddess (Welsh Terror)

Davis Grubb – Where The Woodbine Twineth (Ghost 7)

Peter Hackett – The Woman In Black: Jeffrey Layne , commuting home from Fenchurch Street to Southend, awakens from his nap to find a waxwork-like woman in widows weeds sitting across from him in the carriage. Ruffled, he tries to engage his fellow passenger in conversation but the only words he gets from her are the hardly reassuring “He … lost …. his … head.” And then she vanishes.
Badly shaken, he abandons his journey at Chalkwell Station where the ticket collector offers tea, sympathy and the tragic history of Clara Bowman …
(Ghost 11)

Robert Haining – The Vigil (Horror 14)

John Halkin – Bobby: Brack is badly injured in a motorway accident having swerved to avoid the big, stupid child’s face that suddenly loomed up in the windshield. When he learns that others have suffered the same experience, Brack determines to find the boy. A variation on an urban legend, Halkin devises a clever explanation as to the how’s and why’s of the haunting. (Horror 11)

Willis Hall – Waking Or Sleeping (Horror 17)

Knut Hamsun – An Apparition (European Terror)

James Hanley – Fog (Sea Terror)

Roy Harrison – The Cockroaches: Occultist Borynski does away with his impossible neighbours the drunken, proto-chav O’Hallorans by unleashing an army of roaches on ‘em. What little is left of the couple is enough to make an experienced police officer throw up. (Frighteners 2)

Roy Harrison – The Frogwood Roundabout (Horror 11)

L. P. Hartley – The Travelling Grave: “So you didn’t know that I collected coffins.”

Dick Munt has recently returned home from abroad where he’s acquired the prize exhibit in his macabre collection – an animated coffin capable of hunting down a man and crushing him to nothingness. How can he put it to the test?

Munt invites three male guests to spend Sunday with him at Lowlands and engages them in a game of hide and seek. One of them, Hugh Curtis, he’s delighted to learn, is a man alone in the world and none but the other men know he’s here … (Ghost 1)

L. P. Hartley – Monkshood Manor: Among the guests at the weekend party, Mr. Victor Chisholm, a man with a morbid fear of fire who frequently roams the house at night, checking that they’re all extinguished. Gradually he learns that the Manor is haunted by a cowled figure. The ending is inevitable, but why Chisholm meets his grisly doom is left unexplained. A fine and horrible ghost story. (Ghost 10)

L. P. Hartley – Fall In At The Double: Philip Osgood buys a house in the West Country at an outrageously low price on account of it’s hard to let status. During WWII it was occupied by the army and there was some nasty business involving the martinet of a Lieutenant-Colonel, Alexander McCreeth, who drowned in the river. Local gossip has it that he was done in by his own men. When Alfred, his impossibly cheerful manservant, reports being disturbed by banging noises in the night and repeated cries of “fall in at the double”, the narrator realises that the incident is to be reenacted. Fortunately, Alfred is on his game and caps his marvellous performance with a killer kiss off line. (Ghost 14)

L. P. Hartley – The Two Vaynes: Vayne populates his garden with statues of gods, goddesses, nymphs, satyrs, dryads, oreads and a huge sculpture of himself dressed in trademark tweeds which he uses to surprise his guests. Sniggering behind a hedgerow, he gages the man on his reaction to the startling anomaly – he really is an odious old creep.
Vayne talks Hartley into acting as his accomplice in duping Fairclough, a first time visitor to the estate. Though Hartley is reluctant, he agrees to the ruse as Fairclough is perhaps a little too full of himself, so it’s decided that in the evening, these three shall play a game in the grounds.
Prior to this wizard jape Hartley and Fairclough get around to discussing their host. We learn that three years earlier Vayne had been forced to resign his chairmanship of the company under threat of exposure by Postgate. Vayne didn’t seem unduly bothered and even invited Postgate and the rest of his former colleagues to a “reconciliation party” to show there were no hard feelings on his side. Postgate hasn’t been seen since. It’s clear from their conversation that neither man thinks Vayne is entirely innocent in the matter of Vayne’s disappearance and perhaps he has a grudge against everybody connected with the firm. And isn’t it rumoured that he has rigged a bath so that it descends into the workshop where Vayne creates his masterpieces?
What follows is one of the most suspenseful games of hide and seek either men are likely to see in their lives … (Horror 1)

L. P. Hartley – The Killing Bottle (Horror 2)

L. P. Hartley – Someone In The Lift: The Maldons are spending Christmas at the Brompton Court Hotel and six year old Peter is insistent that he can see a man in the lift, a still figure in shadow whose features he can’t discern. oddly, the only times this mysterious individual is absent is when Peter tries to show him to his dad. His father tells him it must be Santa Claus.
On the 23rd the lift breaks down and the workmen go flat out to repair it. Peter is desperate for them to succeed but, come the big night, he has reason to wish they hadn’t. L. P. Hartley: a good man to have around if you want to celebrate a really gloomy Christmas. (London Terror)

W. F. Harvey – The Ankardyne Pew (Ghost 18)

William Fryer Harvey – The Beast With Five Fingers: “Eustace watched it grimly, as it hung from the cornice with three fingers and flicked thumb and forefinger at him in an expression of scornful derision.”
Shortly before his death, the blind Adrian Borlsover became prolific at automatic hand-writing, and the messages from the other side seemed to be directed at his cousin, Eustace. When Uncle Adrian died, the right hand used it’s skilled penmanship to fake a dying request from the old man – that it be severed from the corpse and sent to Eustace. The entity manipulating the hand – possibly a stray elemental or the spirit of someone Eustace has swindled – is not without a sense of fun and is even spotted sliding down the banister. But it also has a supremely vindictive streak and finally, stabbed, burnt, but refusing to lie down, it tires of toying with him … (Horror 2)

William Fryer Harvey – August Heat: James Withencroft, artist sketches the impression of a man he’s never met, ” … enormously fat. The flesh hung in rolls about his chin: it creased his huge, stumpy neck …He stood in the dock, his short, clumsy fingers gripping the rail, looking straight in front of him. The feeling that his expression conveyed was not so much one of horror as of utter, absolute collapse.”
Satisfied with his work, Withencroft goes for a stroll. It’s a sweltering day and lost in thought, he wanders into a stone-masons, to be confronted with the original of his picture. The mason seems genial enough, working on a gravestone he’s planning to enter for an exhibition. Withencroft reads the name he’s inscribed and asked how he came by it. The mason tells him it’s a funny thing, but he plucked it straight out of the air. It is, of course, Withencroft’s, with his exact date of birth to boot. (London Terror)

William Hauff – The Story Of The Haunted Ship (Sea Terror)

R. S. Hawker – The Botathen Ghost (Cornish Terror)

Brian Leonard Hayles – Heirs, or The Workshop Of Filthy Creation: 1882. Following in the footsteps of Byron and Shelley, the narrator, his wife Elizabeth and daughter Mary travel across Europe until they wind up at a remote Alpine Inn where they decide to remain for a few weeks until after Mary’s nineteenth birthday. The Inn is run by the ancient Hubert family, and, aside for their hospitality and culinary accomplishments, they are skilled puppeteers, putting on a unique show once a year which is as brilliant as it is horrifying. The star of the show is the black murderer: when he rises from the grave to commit his crimes it is almost as if the life-size victims bleed …

Mary who, like her father, has become obsessed with the Frankenstein novel during their stay, is to suffer the fate of the puppet show’s White Princess: she is abducted by the killer and becomes a mindless doll, having discovered the Huberts’ secret and their workshop of filthy creation … (Supernatural)

Dorothy K. Haynes – Dorothy Dean (Frighteners)

Dorothy K. Haynes – Fully Integrated (Frighteners 2)

Dorothy K. Haynes – Up, Like A Good Girl: There is trowling on the misery and there is Up, Like A Good Girl, which begins with a funeral at an Orphanage (the kids look upon it as if it were almost a treat) and works back through the grim series of events that led to it.

Angela-Marie is ostracized by the other girls on account of her nightly bed-wetting, so when the consumptive Barbara arrives she corrals her into being her “best friend.” But Barbara proves to be of inquisitive disposition – why does she allow Ma’am to strap her every morning? Why does she accept her daily dose of castor oil without a fight? – until Angela is completely unnerved by her. When Barbara is admitted to the infirmary, her friend rather wishes she’d die. When this doesn’t look likely, she speeds up the process. But it doesn’t end there … (Gaslight Terror)

Dorothy K. Haynes – Scots Wha Ha’e (Ghost 11)

Dorothy K. Haynes – Barleyriggs: Yet another desirable residence going at a giveaway price. If House-hunters read more ghost stories they could save themselves plenty of heartache. In the present instance, “Barleyriggs” is haunted by the ghost of an old girl who gassed herself. The children (and the dog) are the first to see her. Their parents have to wait until the anniversary of her death. (Ghost 12)

Dorothy K. Haynes – Help The Railway Mission (Ghost 17)

Dorothy K. Haynes – A Lady In The Night: A woman on the verge of childbirth hears the click of high heels in the street below and envisions a french prostitute visiting devout church-goer Mr. MacKenzie to give him a private Can-Can. Enter his wife. A fracas ensues, ending with the tart’s body being dumped in the quarry. of course, it’s all a drug-induced hallucination, but strange how the MacKenzie’s moved away so suddenly … (Ghost 20)

Dorothy K. Haynes – The Peculiar Case Of Mrs. Grimmond: One day the cat drags something in – a poodle-cum-devil that feeds on blood from the lonely widow’s wrist. Needless to say, babysitting such a ‘pet’ isn’t advisable. (Horror 8 )

Dorothy K. Haynes – King Of The Fair (Horror 12)

Dorothy K. Haynes – Oblige Me With A Loaf (Horror 16)

Dorothy K. Haynes – The Boorees: Angry, bat-like little demons who live in chimney stacks and come to life during the winter months. They particularly have it in for spoilt, middle-class children who provoke them, as the odious Dennis learns to his cost. Narrated by the nanny who discovers his scorched remains. (Horror 14)

Dorothy K. Haynes – The Head: A thief is tethered to the kirkyard wall by his neck, pelted with filth and left to bake in the sun until nightfall. One thoughtful fellow decides he might like some company – and impales the decapitated head of an Englishman on a spike directly before his line of vision. The dead head may have once belonged to an enemy, but when a fly lands on the bloodless face and begins crawling into the glazed eye, the thief is moved to compassion. Grimly effective and among my favourite of Haynes’ stories. (Scottish Terror)

Dorothy K. Haynes – Mrs. Jones: Fat Mrs. Jones wins all the local cookery competitions with ease. One day a crone asks for one of her yummy biscuits but Mrs. Jones rebuffs her with “I don’t bake for the likes of you” …. whereupon she’s spirited away to the fairy kitchen at the Cove to do just that for eternity. (Welsh Terror)

Lafcadio Hearn – The Story Of Ming-y (Oriental Terror)

Phillip C. Heath – Off The Deep End: Jeffrey, fishing at Bittercrest Lake, reels in the remains of a drowned man, one of two escaped lunatics who were killed in a boat chase when their launch exploded. (Ghost 18)

Phillip C. Heath – Creepogs: Invasion of the swamp crabs! They’re only titchy, but there are so many of them that they’ll soon have you stripped down to a skeleton.

Two things you shouldn’t do when encountered by a creepog army: the first is don’t make any loud noises (they don’t like them), the second, don’t turn on the light (it really gets them going). Lucille, covered in the pesky little blighters, is understandably screaming her head off but will her husband abide by golden rule number two? (Horror 16)

O. Henry – The Furnished Room : A young man prowls the decrepit slums of lower West Side desperately seeking aspiring actress Eloise, the woman he loves. His search brings him to a recently vacated room in Mrs. Purdy’s boarding house where a terrible tragedy took place the previous week …. A big favourite with Alice Cooper, apparently, and poignant, very poignant. (Ghost 10)

E. and H. Heron – The Story Of Medhans Lea (Ghost 16)

C. D. Herriot – The Trapdoor: John Staines takes the top room at The Fernaham Arms, Herts., as part as the get-away-from-it-all rest cure prescribed by his doctor. His twin-obsession with the sawn-off bolt that fastens the trapdoor and the man who died on the premises do not go down well with the monosyllabic landlady, Mrs. Palethorpe, although she is entirely guiltless in the drama. It transpires that the couple who owned the property before Mrs. Palethorpe converted it into a Pub had locked the old man away up there and starved him to death. Now his ghost beats on the trapdoor, imploring to be let out. (Horror 10)

Robert Hichens – How Love came to Professor Guildea (Ghost 2)

Roger Hicks – The Glove (Ghost 9)

Patricia Highsmith – The Quest For Blank Claveringi: Dr. Clavering has always dreamt of discovering a rare creature and bestowing his name on it, so when he hears rumours of a giant man-eating snail on the uninhabited island of Kuwa, he packs his safari suit and camera and hires a boat. The snail – ten yards long and fifteen high approx. – is certainly no figment, but he hadn’t counted on it having a mate. Lumbering and slow they may be, but his prey are possessed of fiendish cunning ….
(Horror 6)

Patricia Highsmith – Harry: A Ferret (Horror 17)

K B Hill – The Late Arrivals (Ghost 14)

Kenneth Hill – Beyond The Red Door: Two security guards are patrolling the burnt out shell of the computer room where three men were killed in an explosion. Nobody bothered to inform the dead men who carry on their Friday night shift regardless. (Ghost 16)

James Hogg – The Brownie Of The Black Haggs (Scottish Terror)

William Hope Hodgson – The Voice in The Night: “… a kind of grey lichenous fungus ….” In the darkness of the North Pacific a becalmed schooner encounters a survivor of the missing  Albatross. The man begs food for his sweetheart who is gravely ill on a nearby island but refuses to come aboard and fetch it and shies away from the light. Moved despite themselves, Will and George lower him provisions in a box whereupon he rows off thanking them profusely. As neither can sleep they wait up and three hours later they again hear his oars and thin, weedy cry. In return for their charity and by way of explanation for his behaviour he and his wife have decided to share their story of the appalling fate that has befallen they and the crew of The Albatross …..  (Ghost 1)

Robert P. Holdstock – Magic Man (Frighteners 2)

Thomas Hood – A Tale Of Terror: An aeronaut takes a volunteer up in his hot air balloon only to discover that his passenger is an escaped lunatic. Three pages of hysterical gothic melodrama ensue. (Horror 7)

R. Thurston Hopkins – The Glass Staircase (Gaslight Terror)

Tom Hopkinson – I Have Been Drowned (Sea Terror)

Holloway Horn – The Old Man: Martin ‘Knocker’ Thompson, turf bandit, meets an old man in the Charing Cross Road who presses a newspaper on him. The paper is dated July 29 1926 … and today is the 28th. Knocker turns to the racing results, gets his money on the winners – including a tasty 100-8 shot – and cleans up. On his way home from Garwick, he reads the rest of the newspaper. One headline is of particular significance … (London Terror)

Peter A. Hough – Master Of Hounds (Ghost 15)

Elizabeth Jane Howard – Three Miles Up: Clifford and John decide to spend a holiday on the canals despite neither of them having the least experience of boating. They soon find themselves hopelessly unsuited to life on the waterways and argue incessantly until one day they see a young girl asleep on the bank and decide to invite her along. She introduces herself as Sharon (they maybe should have asked how she spells her name) and proves to be “a friendly but uncommunicative creature”, ultra-efficient and not given to outbursts of temper. Both men fall for her but things improve between them until they arrive at a junction which branches into three tributaries, only two of which are shown on their map …

This first appeared in the We Are For The Dark collaboration with Robert Aickman and although he credits Three Miles Up as “mostly” Howards, there are some touches that seem to me to be recognisably his work. Not that it matters who wrote what. This is as good a ghost story I’ve ever read.  (Ghost 1)

Robert E Howard – The Man On The Ground (Ghost 14)

Fritz Hopman – The Bearer Of The Message (Ghost 15)

L. Ron Hubbard – The Devil’s Rescue (Sea Terror)

Hilda Hughes – The Birthright (Ghost 10)

Richard Hughes – The Stranger (Welsh Terror)

Robert Hunt – The Spectre Bridegroom (Cornish Terror)

Violet Hunt – The Telegram (Horror 4)

Dahl – ‘Ex-Private X’

Roald Dahl – William And Mary: William Pearl is dying of cancer when colleague Dr. Lanby approaches him with a macabre proposition. On his death, Lanby will swiftly remove his brain and one eye which, he believes, he can keep alive for at least a hundred years by means of an artificial heart and sundry tubes. William will even be able to communicate his thoughts via a variation on the seismograph. Initially horrified, William agrees and the soggy mass is soon sitting snug in a tray off blood.

Mary, having been suffocated all these years in a joyless marriage, finds the stripped down version of her husband far more attractive, especially as he no longer has the power to prevent her from doing all the things he forbade when he still had a body … (Horror 1)

Roald Dahl – Poison (Horror 3)

Roald Dahl – Georgy Porgy (Horror 5)

Roald Dahl – Royal Jelly: Albert and Mabel Taylor’s new born daughter isn’t doing well. She’s lost two pounds since birth and won’t take her bottle. Albert is a beekeeper by vocation and flicking through one of the trade magazines he hits on the solution: if he were to lace baby’s milk with Royal Jelly …
The baby thrives to the point that within a few days and several hefty doses she is twice the weight of a normal tot although her body is taking on an odd shape. Funnily enough, now Mabel comes to think about it, her husband has a bee-like quality about him too … (Horror 8 )

Mary Danby – Quid Pro Quo: “Sarah stared at the mirror, and a bloated, moulting, deformed creature, half woman, half budgerigar, stared back …”

The Potters are on holiday for a fortnight leaving the hired help, widow Sarah Smedley the run of the place bar their endless lists of do’s and don’ts. Their chief concern is that she feed Dicky the budgie, but when her lover Harry (married, three kids) asks her to spend four days with her at a Birmingham hotel she’s not going to let a little birdy stand in her way. (Horror 5)

Mary Danby – Party Pieces: Maggie and George throw one of their famous New Years Eve parties, and they will insist on treating their unlovely guests to a divertissement. Last year it was the “ghost” in the spare bedroom (dry ice and a tape recorder), this time, something altogether more complex for “Tonight is the night when the Bogeyman dies”. What follows is a variation on A. N. L. Munby’s A Christmas Game via Bradbury’s The October Game with just enough Danby to give it a further ghastly twist. (Horror 6)

Mary Danby – The Secret Ones: Adventures of three resilient rats – husband, wife and wife’s sister – who make home in the attic of a family mourning the death of their little daughter …
(Horror 7)

Mary Danby – Harvest Home: The inhabitants of Marna are the most beautiful, healthy and friendly race on earth. So what’s their dark and deadly secret? Much of it has to do with their drink of choice, Risoc. The rest … Tessa is about to discover the rest … (Horror 8 )

Mary Danby – The Natterjack: Sprightly sixty-year-old Celia buys Marsh cottage. The late occupant, another old girl, was considered a bit strange locally, on account of her morbid fear of toads. Celia doesn’t pay any attention to this silly gossip … until the day she finds a pumpkin-sized natterjack eying her from the back doorstep. Upset and strangely terrified , she confides her fears to old Jack, the simpleton Gardener with the warty wrists …. (Horror 9)

Mary Danby – Keeping In Touch: Alistair, recovering from a breakdown after his wife fled to Amsterdam with her lover, is invited to all the best Chelsea parties by friends keen to keep an eye on him. After one such gathering, he drives home drunk and knocks down a young man with an Afro. Seeing as the lad’s dead, there doesn’t seem much point in his hanging around just to get into trouble. At the next night’s gathering, he’s imposed upon to create a Frankenstein monster for a game of charades … (Horror 10)

Mary Danby – Nursery Tea: Olivia and Hugh avenge themselves on the despotic nanny who ruined their childhood by putting the old girl through the punishments she once so readily inflicted on them. (Horror 11)

Mary Danby – The Engelmayer Puppets: Doncaster. Gwendoline Porter-Grant lost her husband in the war and now all she has left of her family is a ghastly son, Sir William, an arrogant sixteen year old bully who will inherit the mausoleum of a house and the family fortune when he reaches twenty-one. His favourite threat is that he’ll cut her off without a penny.

At the Castle Fenton Annual Antique Fair, William acts his usual boorish self, upsetting traders and embarrassing his mother before they encounter Julius Von Bick who offers them an Austrian Puppet Theatre for the ludicrously tiny sum of one guinea. William buys it, thinking to sell it on at a massive profit. But not before he’s mauled the puppets around some and put on a show for his mother that she’ll never forget … (Horror 12)

Mary Danby – Woodman’s Knot: “Carneads: A nomadic European tribe which, in the belief that it could create a race of great physical strength weaned its children on the mother’s flesh. Their way of life took on a Religious significance …”

17 year old shop worker Sandra Morrison meets Daniel Carne at a funfair and quickly falls in love with this tall, brooding hunk. Evidently he feels the same way about her as a marriage proposal is not slow in coming and he whisks her off to live on the family commune, Woodman’s Knot. The massed ranks of his relatives are kindness itself, even if she finds some of their ways rather strange by her own standards. Then she falls pregnant …. (Horror 13)

Mary Danby – The Witness: Whitesea. Sylvia, down on her luck, gives uncle Arthur a helping shove toward his coffin so that she can get her hands on his house and convert it into a respectable hotel. She hasn’t accounted for Julius, the old boy’s tenacious cat, who’s taken that whole “nine lives” thing to heart. (Horror 14)

Mary Danby – Robbie: A well-meaning but mentally retarded eleven year old takes everything his long-suffering parents tell him way too literally. So when he wants to know what little boys are made of, it would be better not to rattle off “frogs and snails and puppy-dog’s tails.” And they certainly shouldn’t leave any sharp instruments within his reach …. (Horror 15)

Mary Danby – True Love: Jack and Vera Sprat have been wed for forty years and never a cross word. Now retired, he prides himself on his hand-crafted model village in the back garden while Vera is content dusting her fabulous collection of trinkets. Meanwhile, people continue to go missing in the immediate area: two paperboys, the door to door salesman from Kwik-O-Kleen, that rather plump woman looking for her cat. Cannibalism is the secret to a happy marriage. (Horror 17)

Mary Danby – Curlylocks: Rock House, Garthwaite. Nineteen year old Angela has realised that maybe it wasn’t such a shrewd move marrying Geoffrey after all. A wealthy solicitor, sixteen years her senior, Geoffrey won’t let her do a thing for herself and she’s doomed to a non-life of daytime TV with the occasional hour off for the joys of staring into space. When he refuses to allow her to cut her hair she rebels: isolated and resentful, she chances on a book about witchcraft in the local library and tries out some nasty anti-Geoffrey spells. Her dabbling in black sorcery is all too successful. (Horror 16)

Mary Danby – Lady Sybil, or The Phantom Of Black Gables: Dorking. The domineering Lady Sybil’s husband drowned himself in two feet of water, unable to take any more of his unlovely wife. After his death, Sybil and her two sons live as recluses if you discount the servants. Geoffrey is a doctor and Edward a failed composer given to boozing away his crippling frustration.

Now in her seventieth year, of late Sybil has been haunted by a shadowy figure in a cape and top hat whose slimy footprints can clearly be discerned leading to the house from the river. Has her husband returned from the grave to exact supernatural revenge or is perhaps Edward, easily led by his brother, masquerading as the ghost in order to drive the old girl insane?

We end on a note of terror with one party confined to an Asylum. (Supernatural)

Patrick Davis – Sally (Ghost 9)

Patrick Davis – The Tunnel: World War II. Constable Perkins, accompanied by two youths, on a late night errand of mercy inside the railway tunnel on the first anniversary of a train crash. Just as the old boy warned them, the tragedy is reenacted and they show commendable guts and compassion to complete their mission. (Ghost 12)

Richard Davis – A Day Out: A family so look forward to spending the day at the seaside home of their daughter’s intended, they come back from the grave to do so. A spectral seduction ensues. (Ghost 19)

Daniel Defoe – The Ghost of Dorothy Dingley (Ghost 14)

Walter De La Mare – Seaton’s Aunt (Ghost 1)

Walter De La Mare – Bad Company: The narrator is lured to a decrepit London residence by the spectre of an elderly gent who shared his carriage on the train. When, on impulse, he enters the house, our man discovers what he suspected he would – a decomposing corpse slumped in a corner. But the ghost’s main reason for luring there is to reveal his despicable behaviour toward his sisters as exposed in his last will and testament …   (Ghost 18)

August Derleth – The Adventure Of The Intarsia Box (Oriental Terror)

Monica Dickens – To Reach The Sea: Everyone comments on Jane Barlow’s beautiful wig, but unknown to her the hair was taken from a girl shorn for adultery prior to her suicide. History repeats. (Horror 5)

Monica Dickens – Activity Time: Widower Dicky experiences all the dubious delights of old age, hurtling from one calamitous humiliation to another until he finally comes to agree that maybe the suicides he’s disparaged as “cowards” probably had the right idea all along. Excellently crafted but as depressing as anything I’ve read in a horror collection. (Horror 15)

David Dixon – The Lodger In Room 16: “I believe that something is being wilfully and maliciously destroyed in there at night, sometimes as much as three times a week, sir. There seems to be a crank-handled device in there which sounds to me rusty, Mr. Moule, and the machine’s task involves a sound that I can only describe as that of crunching sticks …”

Mr. Feith is concerned at the habits of his unseen fellow boarder, but the landlord tetchily explains that the man is a cemetery worker who’s been at the lodgings for as long as anyone can recall and Feith shouldn’t go prying. A tall ask for our curious hero, who fatally encounters a horror not dissimilar to the leprous entity in Chambers’ The Yellow Sign. (Horror 15)

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle – Playing With Fire: “A seance where ordinary, intelligent people unleash a zany, evil force – with terrifying results …..” London. The small party at 17 Badderley Gardens will never again realise the same success they enjoyed the night M. Paul de Duc joined them for a seance. M de Duc believes that “when you imagine a thing you make a thing” – a terrifying concept when you think about it – and on this evidence he’s right. First, via medium Mrs. Delamere, a chatty spirit gives the assembled invaluable insight into the afterlife, then the Frenchman rather foolishly conducts his experiment … and materialises a unicorn. Which promptly goes berserk.
(Ghost 2)

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle – The Horror Of The Heights: “And then there was Myrtle’s head. Do you really believe – does anybody really believe – that a man’s head could be driven clean into his body by the force of a fall?”

Gallant aviator Joyce-Armstrong believes that the “mysterious” deaths of several pilots were caused by malevolent entities that haunt the skies 30,000 feet above Wiltshire. Taking to the air in his trusty monoplane, he seeks out the beauty and horror of the heights! Fortunately for us, Joyce-Armstrong belongs to that commendable breed who keep scribbling away in their journal right up to the moment of doom. His final entry is priceless. (Horror 7)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Brazilian Cat: Greylands, Clipton-On-The-Marshes, Suffolk. Amiable loafer Marshall King stands to gain a fortune and a title when his uncle, Lord Southerton, dies, but the old boy’s proving to be a tenacious bastard so he’s thinking of tapping up his wealthy cousin Everard who is not short of a few bob. Everard has just returned from Brazil with a wife and menagerie and is reputedly the most decent fellow on earth, so Marshall has little hesitation in accepting his invitation to stay with him in the country. Mrs. King proves to be a fly in the ointment, she’s openly hostile to Marshall from the first, but Everard – he really is a lovely bloke – explains that this is just another example of her obsessive jealousy. To make up for her rudeness, Everard treats him to a meeting with his pride and joy, Tommy the Brazilian cat, a puma-like monstrosity who, should it ever develop a taste for humans, will become “the most absolutely treacherous and bloodthirsty creature upon earth”. Thank goodness that Everard is such a wonderful fellow and not some psycho who’d lock you up with this beast to get his hands on Lord Southerton’s inheritance, eh? (Horror 10)

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle – Lot No. 249 (Horror 14)

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle – The Leather Funnel: Lionel Dacre is an occultist and collector of macabre artifacts, one of which is the inscribed funnel. To test his theory that one can divine in sleep something of the history of a given relic, he persuades the narrator to bed down with it. Our man duly witnesses the ordeal of a murderess who was put to the extraordinary question in a bid to get her to name accomplices. This involves her being tied to a wooden horse while gallons of water are poured down her throat. Unsurprisingly, the narrator wakes up screaming and his host comes rushing to his bed. On being told of his dreadful nightmare, Dacre enquires:
“Did you stand it to the end?”
“No, thank God. I awoke before it really began”
“Ah, it is just as well for you. I held out to the third bucket”.

Hugh Lamb has written of The Leather Funnel: ” … the torture of a 17th century woman is observed by the narrator in a dream, in a story almost pointless other than parading this cruelty.” Yes, it really is that good. (Horror 17)

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle – The Captain Of The “Polestar” (Sea Terror)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Silver Mirror: “What dire deed could it be that has left its impress there …?” : Told in diary form. An accountant working all hours on an important criminal case is disturbed by the drama being played out in his antique mirror. At first the only distinct figure is that of a beautiful woman in her mid-twenties, high forehead, chestnut hair, brown eyes ablaze with rage and horror. The next night the narrator can clearly discern another image, that of a man he doesn’t like the look of clinging to her skirt. And so it goes on until he bears witness to one of the most infamous murders in the annals of Scottish history. (Scottish Terror)

Daphne Du Maurier – Escort: World War II. Heading home for England, merchant ship The Ravenswing is intercepted by a U-Boat. It’s looking grim for stand-in skipper William Blunt and his men until the intervention of a ghost ship commandeered by a fellow with one eye and one arm. Patriotic supernatural fiction in the tradition of Machen’s The Bowmen. (Ghost 12)

Daphne Du Maurier – The Blue Lenses (Horror 5)

Daphne du Maurier – The Birds: (Kiss Me Again, Stranger, 1952). “Owing to the exceptional nature of the emergency, there will be no further transmission from any broadcasting station until 7a.m. tomorrow.

They played God Save The Queen. Nothing more happened.”

Cornish coast. On the morning of December 3rd, disabled World War II veteran Nat Hocken wakes to find that winter has arrived and the birds are acting strangely. During the night they attack he and his family in their cottage and the next day there are reports on the radio that the same situation has been played out across the British Isles. At first the BBC announcer treats the story as an amusing aside to the real news, but within days there have been several casualties and the air force are sent in – to no avail. When Nat calls in at the farm where he’s employed as a handyman, he finds the Trigg family slaughtered, literally pecked to pieces. Together with his wife, he gathers all the provisions he can, drives home with his well-stocked car (neatly avoiding the dead postman in the drive) and sets to boarding all his windows in readiness for the nights attack.

Published so soon after the war, the Luftwaffe’s bombing sprees were still fresh enough in the memory of those who’d lived through it for this creepy, doom-laden story to strike a haunting and frightening chord. The Birds was famously adapted by Alfred Hitchcock, although there was little left of Du Maurier in Evan Hunter’s screenplay and the action was relocated to Botany Bay. (Cornish Terror)

Ronald Duncan – Consanguinity (Scottish Terror)

Roger F. Dunkley – Cross Talk (Frighteners 2)

Roger F. Dunkley – The Method And Madness Of George Strode: Our hero’s increasingly desperate attempts to be rid of wife Emilia, all of which backfire, the snake-in-the-bed wheeze humiliatingly so. Will his luck change on their forthcoming trip to the seaside? (Frighteners 2)

Roger F. Dunkley – The Man Who Sold Ghosts (Ghost 11)

Roger F. Dunkley – Twisted Shadow (Ghost 12)

Roger F. Dunkley – The Ghost Machine: To test his magnificent invention, Professor Hamner advertises for a somebody who needs help to committing suicide. Unfortunately for him, the solitary response comes from Mr. Jeremiah Puddle, a desperate fellow who has already made several and varied attempts on his own life, each of them ending in abject failure. Puddle is trying to get away from his fearsome battleaxe of a wife. By the end of the story, so is the spectre-seeking Prof … (Ghost 13)

Roger F. Dunkley – Eye To Eye: Myers visits all the previous owners of his 1960 Daimler in an effort to fathom why he should always feel as though there’s someone with him when he’s driving. He unwittingly uncovers a murder and is pursued by the psychotic killer. (Ghost 18)

Roger F. Dunkley – Miss Brood’s Speciality: She has premonitions, always gloomy, never wrong. But when she dreams of a tall, dark stranger coming to her in the night she predicts a marriage proposal is imminent. At last, a happy vision! She’s wrong. (Horror 9)

Roger F. Dunkley – Surprise! Surprise! (Horror 11)

Lord Dunsany – Our Distant Cousins (Ghost 2)

Lord Dunsany – Thirteen At Table (Ghost 14)

Amelia B. Edwards – The Four-Fifteen Express: (Ghost 9)

Stanley Ellin – The Speciality Of The House: Laffler introduces his underling Costain to the delights of Shirro’s restaurant, the finest men-only meaterie one could ever wish to find, especially when “Lamb Amirstan” is on the menu …. (Horror 3)

A. E. Ellis – If Thy Right Hand Offends Thee … : St. Chrysostum’s College, 1925. A cowled skeleton walks abroad following an impromptu seance by four pupils at the nearby Hoecourt Ring. It terrifies several members of staff before it finally communicates to the medical officer what it requires of him. (Frighteners)

A. E. Ellis – The Haunted Haven (Ghost 8 )

A. E. Ellis – The Chapel Men (Ghost 10)

A. E. Ellis – Dead Man’s Barn (Ghost 17)

David Ely – The Academy: A place for parents to send their sons during their “difficult years” to drill all of that juvenile spirit out of them. Zombie farming. (Horror 3)

Caradoc Evans – Be This Her Memorial: Capel Sion: The tragic life and death of the deeply pious old Nanni who prays for death when the minister she raised from an infant announces that he’s moving on for pastures new. As RCH points out in his introduction, it’s a sly study of religious hypocrisy (notable in the pushy door-to-door Bible-salesman from Hell) and the ending is a killer. (Welsh Terror)

Barbara Joan Eyre – That Summer: Mimi Frost, 21, drowned in a dinghy accident, her boyfriend Phil swimming to safety to marry her best friend. Now Mimi’s ghost prowls the beach, looking to share the body of a suitable girl. (Ghost 12)

Barbara Joan Eyre – Siren Song (Ghost 14)

Barbara Joan Eyre – For Charity’s Sake: Grace is forever losing boyfriends to her flirtatious, self-centred younger sister, so when it looks as though Charity is shaping up to steal Roger she decides to teach her a lesson. By chance, Robin and Charity are bacteriologists working at the same Medical unit and prone to talking shop. Which is how Grace learns of the lethal culture for which they’ve yet to find an ante-dote.
Another full-blooded horror from the excellent #11, arguably the best in the series for original fiction. (Horror 11)

Barbara Joan Eyre – Anaesthetic: Samantha, 35, is in hospital for an operation and terrified. Her main concern is that she’ll choke to death when they put her under. When it’s all done, she wakes in the notorious Curie Ward with its unfeeling, sneering nurses and a room full of yellow women on drips. Everybody knows what happens to you in Curie Ward … (Horror 13)

‘Ex-Private X’ (A. M. Burrage) – The Sweeper: Tessa Winyard, 22, is engaged as female companion to eighty-year-old Miss Ludgate of Billingdon Abbots. The old lady has a reputation for meanness which makes her extravagant gestures toward passing tramps and beggars all the more inexplicable. Miss Ludgate has her reasons. Eighteen years earlier an emaciated man called at the Abbots and after castigating him as a workshy scrounger she set him to work clearing all the leaves from the path. After a few sweeps he fell to the ground and with his dying breath promised to complete the job and “I’ll come for you, my lady, and we’ll feast together. Only see as you’re ready to be fetched when I come”. Since then his spectre has returned each autumn and with each passing year he draws closer to the house … (Ghost 9)

‘Ex-Private X’ (A. M. Burrage) – ‘Smee’: At the Simpson’s Christmas party the twelve guests decide on a game of Smee (a superior variation of hide and seek) as the evening’s diversion. Mr. Simpson warns them to avoid the door leading to the back staircase as the descent is all but a sheer drop and eight years earlier young Brenda Ford broke her neck when she fell through in the dark. As the game gets underway it becomes clear that the group have been joined by an extra player … (Ghost 10)

‘Ex-Private X’ (A. M. Burrage) – The Running Tide: (Ghost 20)

Campbell – Crowe

Ramsey Campbell – The Ferries (Ghost 18)

Ramsey Campbell – Reply Guaranteed: Brichester. Recovering in hospital, Viv answers a lonely hearts ad. The address given, she later learns, is that of a house on Mercy Hill, once the domicile of a rapist. By the end of his days, this fellow was confined to a wheelchair thanks to his multiple venereal diseases. Viv encounters his bandaged ghost and the farcical climax is equal parts scary and laugh-out-loud funny. (Horror 17)

David Campton – Firstborn: Harry and Elaine are rescued from their debt Hell by his wealthy uncle who invites them to live with him at his magnificent Dorset home. Uncle has a mania for exotic plants and it is clear from the first that the chief reason for his charity is the close proximity of Elaine, though not for the reason Harry suspects. Uncle’s proudest possession – even more-so than the bone-crushing, man-eating monstrosity in the greenhouse – is the multi-tendrilled, touchy-feely demon flower in the cellar whose perfume acts as a powerful aphrodisiac – it certainly solves the couple’s bedroom problems. But when it molests Elaine and she falls pregnant, the lovers face an anxious wait to discover what she will give birth to … (Horror 17)

Truman Capote – Miriam (Horror 6)

William Carleton – Wildgoose Lodge (Irish Terror)

Robert W. Chambers – The Yellow Sign (Horror 17)

Mark Channing – The Feet: Uncle Harvey is a collector of Indian curios as was his father before him. His Bloomsbury studio houses his ‘Chamber of Horrors’ and the grimmest of the mementos is a pair of ankle bracelets with bells on. A previous occupant was a sadistic Nawab, exiled for his cruelty, whose disposition wasn’t improved any when he came to London. When one of his harem fell for an Englishman, he cut off her feet and sent them to her lover. His evil ghost walks the house.
There’s slightly more to it than that, but not much. (Horror 16)

William Charlton – Norton Camp: Build during World War II, the Army base in the Ogley Hills has had a bad history dating from 1941 when German bombers killed five-hundred plus in one raid. Now the 19th Regiment have been posted there and for Private Debenham in particular the experience convinces him that fighting in the leech-infested swamps of Malaysia is preferable to tracking phantoms. (Ghost 16)

William Charlton – Undesirable Guests: Berkshire: Seraphim Durness returns to England an “invalid” and married to an Indian girl, Mercedes. His old friends Matthew and Julia Brooks put the couple up at their country home, although not without misgivings. When the self-invited guests are out of earshot, Matthew asks his wife “What did you make of all that stuff they had in their car? It looked as if Seraphim was carrying his coffin around with him.” “I expect its the oxygen tent you were telling me about. His wife seemed very efficient at looking after him.”
Let’s hope she’s as efficient at looking after the Brooks’ three children as Matt and Julia are out for dinner at the Engleby’s. All is well until some fool blurts out the disturbing rumours he heard pertaining to Mercedes while on a recent trip to Bolivia … (Horror 13)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Bodmin Terror: Artist James is warned by his doctor that he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown and must avoid stress at all costs. Being married to Lydia, James knows just how tall an order that is, but decides to take them both away on holiday to Cornwall. En route to the Lizard, the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, sending Lydia into a spasm of rage. An extraordinarily sprightly crone ambles out of the mist and leads them back to her home which turns out to be a foul-smelling cave. But her Good Samaritan act is just that: she’s intent on serving up Lydia to Dunmore, the last of the Ice Age giants. (Cornish Terror)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Keep The Gaslight Burning : “Matilda, we are lonely. Come down to us … come ..” Young Maya enters service as personal companion to Mrs. Maxwell at a remote house on the Yorkshire moors. Her ladyship keeps a lamp burning throughout the night to fend off the ghosts of her husband and his lover, who are ever beckoning to her. What did she do to them? “Go to the window, part the curtains ever so slightly – and peer down into the garden.” Mayo obeys, and what she sees is far from pleasant … (Gaslight Terror)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Catamodo: ” … to the ordinary person, it’s a bit off-putting to know we cannot be hurt if we fall ever so far, or if something ever so heavy falls on us. They get very narky when they realise we don’t grow old, too … we sort of curl up and fade away at the age of a hundred and four.”

Martin certainly is among those who find it “off-putting” when wife Myra confesses to being a Catamodo. He’s after her insurance money and has already made several attempts on her life. Finally he decides to dismember her and bury the severed portions in a variety of locations. Those familiar with Robert Bloch’s Frozen Fear will know that this doesn’t necessarily have the desired effect …. (Frighteners)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Liberated Tiger: Roland … her Roland, was keeping true to form, but his ordinariness, his apparent simplicity, seemed to have sinister undertones. That thing that walked while he slept was as much part of him as the mild, compliant husband she had known for years

Roland is bedridden and dying. Mary, his devoted wife of fifty years, is doing her duty by him as one would expect – she’s always had his best interests at heart. But does he realise that all her nagging and ‘advice’ were for his own good? “While there is breath in my body, I will never reproach you”.
That’s hardly a great comfort in the circumstances, because whenever Roland lapses into unconsciousness, his doppelganger walks the house. He is the liberated Roland, the one who wanted children, the one who wanted to take a chance on that risky business venture, the one who wanted to do so many things that she wouldn’t allow. And this Roland hates her. (Ghost 9)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Non-Paying Passengers : Commuter nightmare. Percy Fortesque is stalked by the ghost of his despised late wife, Doris, and later, his in-laws, who are doomed to haunt the London Underground for all eternity. Percy has recently survived a brush with death and they’re intent to see that he’s not so lucky a second time. Another of R.C.H.’s meditations on the joys of wedlock: “Why did I marry you? Didn’t you ever ask yourself that question once in all those years? I’ll tell you. I thought that anyone so unattractive – I could use the word ugly – would always be grateful. I overlooked the undeniable fact that women only look into rose-tinted mirrors … Get back to hell, you ugly old cow.”
(Ghost 10)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Matthew And Luke: High-flying office worker Matthew Bayswater almost drowns in a swimming accident. Fortunately a passer by is on hand to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation, but the seven minutes he spent ‘dead’ are all it takes for his doppelganger to get up and haunting. ‘Luke’ is the spectre of Matthew’s dual self. As Matt went on to make something of his life, Matt screwed his up and finally committed suicide. The jokey tone – yet another know-it-all mother-in-law – takes an abrupt turn for the depressing in the final pages and a spook in swimming trunks is something of a novelty. (Ghost 11)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Cold Fingers: Young archaeology student Paul Etherington takes a room at the formidable Miss Partridges at a ridiculously low rent. But, in his bed at night, when he feels the ghostly grip on his windpipe, it’s all too clear to him why he’s the only current paying guest and why she’s insistent of feeding him up. More black sorcery jiggery pokery with ectoplasm. (Ghost 12)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – My Dear Wife: Henry’s eye for young women he’s not especially fond of drives wife Georgina to despair, not least because his main motivation for straying is the delight he takes in her torment. It doesn’t matter how many times she leaves him for the last time, they both know she’ll return. As will his latest plaything, Sheila. As will every woman who falls for him. (Ghost 13)

R Chetwynd Hayes – The Sad Ghost (Ghost 14)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Hanging Tree: Christmas with the Fortesque family and friends, and the young, romantically inclined Movita is busy spinning fantasies around the family ghost, that of a young man who killed his lover then hung himself from a tree in the garden during the previous century. Her insistence that she’s seen him has the household despairing for her sanity, all save Miss Mansfield who realised Movita is psychic and inadvisedly intervenes on her behalf. (Ghost 15)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes -She Walks On Dry Land: “Let a stranger spend but one night within the boundaries of this village, then, sir – she comes up from the sea and walks on dry land.”

So warns Elder Josiah Woodward in this companion piece to Markland The Hunter and he knows what he’s talking about. RCH and brevity were estranged for years but there’s not a word wasted in She Walks On Dry Land and the story is all the better for it. Set in Denham, East Anglia in 1810, it sees Charles Devereaux, Fourth Earl of Montcalm, blow in at The Limping Sailor with his manservant Patrick and demand rooms for the night. This upsets the locals, for reasons already specified, although the drowned girl is only a threat to outsiders. Should such a one see her face, than they run screaming to the sea and drown themselves. Charles is too stubborn to listen. (Ghost 16)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Which One? (Ghost 17)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Chair: The narrator, one of RCH’s least sympathetic, buys the antique from the proprietor of a second hand furniture shop who lets on that it “came from a house with an unfortunate history.” Sure enough, hardly has he got the chair home than a beautiful woman materialises on the seat, beckoning to him from across the room. Our man, a misogynist, throws an ornament at her and she vanishes, but immediately he regrets his actions and wishes her back. Her reappearances are fleeting and drive him to distraction until he returns to the furniture salesman demanding to know who his ghost was. At the Twilight Home for Distressed Ladies, he learns the tragic history of Miss Emily and Mr. Ascot of Bedford Park, but a further horrible revelation awaits. (Ghost 18)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Tomorrow’s Ghost: In the present day, young Roland Sinclair has inherited Clavering Grange though it’s a shadow of its former glory, long unattended and a favourite doss for tramps. Against the advice of solicitor Mr. Fortesque, he decides against selling up, moves in and begins tentative renovations. Almost at once, he’s made aware of the ghost of a young woman in period dress who seems as stunned by his presence in the old house as he is by hers.

Back in 1812, seventeen year old Cynthia is being forced to marry the odious Lord Cavendish, her father standing to gain financially from the union. Via the kitchen maid she’s heard the stories of a family ghost, and when she sees him with her own eyes, she realises that he’s the man she’s been waiting for. This decides her: However much Sir Danvers beats her, there’s no way she’ll wed that fat, sweaty lecher.

As the bizarre romance between his client and the long-dead Cynthia blossoms, Mr. Fortesque learns that Cynthia blew her brains out on the eve of her arranged marriage, for the love of a man she couldn’t have. Fortesque realises this must refer to Roland. Can they prevent the tragedy from being reenacted? (Ghost 19)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – My Very Best Friend: An orphan’s progress. Following the death of his parents in a car accident, the narrator is shunted from puritanical relative to puritanical relative, his constant companion a beautiful woman that others sometimes sense and fear but only he can see. She acts as his Guardian Angel, a malevolent one at that, prone to playing cruel pranks but invaluable for settling scores and maiming school bullies. On the minus side she’s fanatically possessive and won’t have him lusting after pretty Josie Bakewell when his hormones start kicking in. At the close of his teens he wants rid of his dark benefactor and approaches Clapham’s finest, Madam Orloff, Psychic Extraordinary (The Elemental, The Holstein Horror and Co.) to exorcise her. Now free to wed his childhood sweetheart, he gets Josie as far as the altar before the parson gets it into his head to give the ceremony a “forgive thy enemy” theme. Caught up in the moment, our man absolves his Fallen Angel who immediately marches down the aisle and karate chops his bride with the result that “I must be the only husband who was made a widower before the register was signed.” (Ghost 20)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Housebound: The ghost of bank-robber Charlie Wheatland was killed in a siege at the Coopers’ new house. Celia, fifty and fed up, develops the power to draw his ghost out of the woodwork. At first he appears as a black, vaguely human shape, but gradually Wheatland manifests in all his former glory and asks what she requires of him. Celia decides she wants him to murder Harold, her boring, selfish other half. “No, I cannot kill, only free your husband from his body. Order me to free your husband from his body.” Celia does, but what will become of Harold’s vacant body? (Horror 3)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Looking For Something To Suck: “It was all of thirty foot long, and perhaps a foot in circumference, a long snake, or more likely a worm: covered with a beautiful white, delicate skin, such as might grace a woman’s shoulder. In places there was a pale pink flush… “

A vampiric shadow enters the Wilton’s home in search of its feed – the psychic Jane. Despite Jane – and the dog’s – protestations, Jerry insists on switching out all the lights at bedtime. When he awakens it is to discover a scene of sheer horror as the shadow – having taken the form of something akin to one of E. F. Benson’s slug-like elementals – gorges on “all the goodness” inside his wife. As Jerry clutches the pile of bones in a skin bag that was once his partner, the worm dies an agonising death in the light, the only thing it’s vulnerable to.

Horrific and even frightening, this is certainly among the best stories Chetwynd-Hayes ever wrote. (Horror 4)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – The Monster: Uncle Jake and Auntie Mabs have selflessly concealed Caroline from the outside world for sixteen years, but when they catch her spying on the half-naked boy next door, they realise they did wrong in not handing her over to be sacrificed to Jehovah the moment her parents died. For she is an abomination among men.

Mortified now that her ugliness has been pointed out to her, Caroline escapes and runs off into the night. The villagers surround her with flaming torches and Jehovah’s will is done. Anyone who’s read Nigel Kneale’s Oh, Mirror, Mirror and the like will see the twist coming a mile off, but those who are only familiar with RCH in his William Kimber years might be surprised that he was capable of writing so unremittingly grim a story. (Horror 5)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – A Sin Of Omission: Putney. Mr. Faversham, 52, impossible wife, etc., is mithered by a middle aged man in a cloth cap who wants to borrow a fiver. When the stranger continues to pester with menaces – I know where you live: I only borrow from those as can afford it: “Ain’t you a Christian, Guv?” – Mr. Faversham decides discretion is the better form of valour and legs it, with the beggar in hot pursuit until … he keels over on the pavement. The wretch gasps for his digitalis pills, but Mr. Faversham slips away and leaves him to it. Later, he learns from the local newspaper that when Dr. Withers examined the body he was perplexed as to how the tattoo of the black snake coiled around the dead man’s torso has disappeared …. (Horror 10)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Growth: Inquisitive Henry Broadfield visits Clapham-based trance medium Mrs. Helen Watkins whose speciality is producing ectoplasm which assumes the shape of a dear departed. Henry unwisely nicks off a chunk of the stuff while Mrs. Watkins is under and feeds it worms. Its appetite is insatiable.
Another namecheck for Conrad Von Holstein’s Unnatural Enmities and Mrs. Watson might as well be Madam Orloff for all the difference in their characters. (Horror 15)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Markland the Hunter: Sara, the unhappy young wife of Elder Josiah Sullivan, spiritual leader of the local fishing community, wanders Cranston Point calling to the immortal Markland to free her from her misery. The corpse-like ghost walks out of the sea and unleashes his soul-stealing skeleton crew of the villagers, whose response is to burn Sara as a witch. A night of mayhem ensues before he returns to his watery grave. “Perhaps I only exist in fear-fevered imaginations. When the chain of bigotry and superstition are broken, possibly then I will die. It is conceivable that your God and I will die together.” (Sea Terror)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Shona And The Water Horse: “I will come for you and we will dream together beneath the loch.”

A man claiming to be the Water Horse of legend comes down from the moors to warn Reverend Angus Buchanan that the Devil is abroad and is heading for the village to claim the souls of the congregation. He must convince his flock to paint white crosses on their doors and shun all strangers. The Reverend wisely discards this obvious madman’s advice and throws him out, but not before that worthy has made a promise to his daughter, Shona.

That night, a beggar-woman arrives at the Kirk seeking shelter … (Scottish Terror)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Shipwreck: Starts well as a spaceship falls to earth, bringing with it Sarcan, a translucent blue formless mass who can drain every living thing of its essence and assume its identity. After experimenting with a tree and a hare, Sarcan encounters his first human being, South Londoner Sydney J. Beecham who is motorcycling home to wife Sylvia and her domineering mother, Mrs. Hatfield. Up until now, it’s been very enjoyable in a ‘fifties, The Blob-like way, but once he’s introduced the women, RCH gets stuck in another of his “aren’t mother-in-laws interfering old battle-axes?” ruts and the story fizzles out. (Terror From Outer Space)

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – Lord Dunwilliam And The Cwy Annwn: The arrogant Lord Dunwilliam, adrift in a snowstorm, chances upon a solitary cottage where live Evan ap Evans and his beautiful daughter, Silah. Dunwilliam is used to getting what he wants when he wants it and he’s decided Silah is going to be his by any means necessary. Evans spins him some cock and bull story about the girl having a fearsome lover, Annwn the Wild Huntsman whose pack are Hell-hounds, but as if an educated man would believe that … (Welsh Terror)

Agatha Christie – The Last Seance: Simone, the most gifted medium in Paris, is all seanced out. With each sitting she grows paler and thinner. Husband-to-be Raoul has reluctantly agreed that after today she can give it all up, but she has one last engagement with bereaved mother Madame Exe. Simone is uneasy; she dislikes, even fears Madame Exe although she’s had great success contacting her dead daughter Amelie. At the previous sitting, the ectoplasm materialised into a solid image of the child: Raoul could even touch it, but withdrew his hand when he saw how much pain it caused Simone. Now, for the last seance, Madame Exe insists that Raoul be tied to his chair to prevent any trickery …. (Ghost 8 )

Agatha Christie – The Lamp: Mr. Winburn, his widowed daughter Mrs. Lancaster and her little boy Geoff move into an old house in Weyminster reputedly haunted by the ghost of an abandoned child who starved to death. Soon Mr. Winburn hears the patter of its tiny footsteps, but it’s Geoff who actually sees and tries to befriend the dead infant who craves a playmate. Geoff falls gravely ill … (Ghost 17)

Agatha Christie – The Gypsy: From his infancy Dickie Carpenter has had a morbid fear of Gypsy women on account of their premonitions always coming true where he’s concerned. And then he’s warned by one of their number – a nurse – against having an operation on his gammy leg. He goes against her advice and – R.I.P. Dickie.

After his death, MacFarlane interviews the woman he wrongly believes to have foretold the tragedy. It transpires that gypsies only use their talent/ curse for benevolent reasons.

E. F. Bleiler has commented “Christie must have dashed this story off hastily”. It’s not particularly bad but neither is it horrific. (Horror 1)

Agatha Christie – The Hound Of Death (Horror 2)

John Christopher – A Cry Of Children (Welsh Terror)

Arthur C. Clarke – No Morning After (Terror From Outer Space)

Roger Clarke – So Typical Of Eleanor: “She was smiling a dreadful parody of a smile, green teeth showing through her parted and unnaturally red lips. Everything seemed to be getting wet ….”

Octavius detests his domineering older sister. Now, as he sets off for his secret camp near the old mill at Yafford, she invites herself along. As it turns out, the afternoon doesn’t go well with her and she drowns in the slimy water. Did she fall or was she pushed? (Horror 14)

Roger Clarke – Blackberries (Horror 16)

Mrs. Claxton – The Grey Cottage (Ghost 13)

Pamela Cleaver – Mother Love (Ghost 13)

Sir Hugh Clifford – The Ghoul (Horror 14)

Stuart Cloete – The Second Nail (Horror 9)

Adrian Cole – The Horror Under Penmire: Keen folklorist Roy Baxter disappears while investigating a mysterious village on Bodmin Moor. His friend, author Phil Dayton comes in search of him and, in a mist-shrouded valley which stinks of fish, encounters the most unfriendly pub this side of The Lough Inn (it’s so rotten, it doesn’t even have a name). He is taken prisoner by the Penmire villagers and chained up with his friend in a rat-infested crypt while above them the residents summon forth their God – Dagon. (Frighteners)

Adrian Cole – The Moon Web: Tobias, the solitary old gardener, hopes that the return of heiress Amelia from a Swiss finishing school won’t mean wholesale changes at the Manor house. His worries are well founded. Amelia alternates between tormenting him with her body and showing a keen interest in his closeness to the soil. During her time away, she’s developed a similar love of nature, and the village is rife with gossip about her peculiar fondness for spiders … (Horror 11)

John Collier – Back For Christmas: On the eve of his departure from Little Godwearing for a three month lecture tour in America, Dr. Carpenter rids himself of his insufferably pushy wife Hermoine by caving her head in with an iron bar, cutting her in pieces and burying them in the cellar. Will he get away with it? (Horror 6)

John Collier – De Mortuis: When Buck and Bud surprise Dr. Rankin at work with pick, trowel and cement in his cellar, they know what must have happened – he’s finally discovered he’s married to the town floozie and killed Irene! Well, you couldn’t say he wasn’t provoked and, him being a swell guy and all, they promise they won’t dob him in to the law.

Very Roald Dahl in Tales Of The Unexpected mode. (Horror 10)

Charles A. Collins & Charles Dickens – The Trial For Murder (London Terror)

William Wilkie Collins – Mad Monkton (Ghost 4)

Wilkie Collins – A Terribly Strange Bed (Horror 9)

John Connell – The House In The Glen (Scottish Terror)

Joseph Conrad – The Idiots (Horror 4)

R. C. Cook – Green Fingers: Old widow Bowen prides herself on being able to make “anything grow” in her garden. this seems to be true. Even tropical plants entirely unsuited to the climate flourish as do a piece of firewood, a tuft of her hair, a fingernail …
When a rabbit she buried grows back from a skeleton and runs off she begins to worry. she decides to chop down the tree but it resents any attempt at keeping it in check and she only succeeds in slicing off her finger with an axe. She plants the severed digit, too – and a replica widow Bowen shoots up from the soil. Comes the day with the fully-grown double uproots itself …

Shortly afterwards in the coppice, the body of an old woman is found chopped into pieces … (Horror 3)

Margaret Chilvers Cooper – January Ides (Ghost 12)

Margaret Chilvers Cooper – The Cape-Cod Poltergeist (Ghost 13)

Margaret Chilvers Cooper – The Primrose Connection (Ghost 15)
A. E. Coppard – Gone Away (Ghost 7)

Julio Cortazar – The Idol Of The Cyclades (European Terror)

Julio Cortazar – Letter To A Young Lady In Paris (Horror 6)

Mary Elizabeth Counselman – The Shot-Tower Ghost (Ghost 17)

Frederick Cowles – The Horror Of Abbot’s Grange: Seeking whom he may devour. God frustrate him always.

Ritton. Michael and wife Joan lease the Grange which has remained untenanted for so long that the present Lord Salton has it earmarked for demolition. Terms are agreed with the agent who is insistent on one point: should they wish to visit the chapel – closed these three hundred years – they must do so only during the day and on no account allow the door to be unlocked between dusk and daybreak.
It transpires that the chapel houses the tomb of William, the first Lord Salton (1501-97), a Cistercian monk who dabbled in black magic and was dismissed from the Abbey. He was given his title in return for informing against the Abbot and his holy brethren which saw seven of them executed, and there’s an impressive portrait of him hanging under the stairs. The artist was clearly a conscientious man: he’s even painted in the guy’s fangs.

Come the housewarming party and, of course, some fool just has to nose around the chapel. A blood-curdling laugh and – William Salton is free!

Child sacrifice, dead party-goers, a haunted portrait and a vampire with Tod Slaughter tendencies. This is Cowles at his most pulpy, cliched and unutterably entertaining. And, God help me, he even slips in some Jamesian touches.   (Horror 16)

Ralph Adams Cram – The Dead Valley (Ghost 7)

F. Marion Crawford – The Dead Smile (Ghost 13)

F. Marion Crawford – The Doll’s Ghost: Belgravia. Lady Gwendoline Lancaster-Douglas-Scroop disfigures Nina her favourite doll in a fall downstairs. Being a practical child she sets to digging her a grave but the under-nurse has other ideas and drops off the casualty at Mr. Pucker the doll doctor. The gentle old German performs a magnificent emergency salvage operation but grows so attached to Nina – she reminds him of his beloved daughter Else – that he finds parting with her too painful. Else is assigned the job of returning the doll to Cranston House but come midnight she’s still not returned home. Understandably distraught, Mr. Pucker scours the city for her, convinced that she’s been murdered. The doll’s ghost comes to his assistance …. (Ghost 14)

John Keir Cross – Esmerelda (Ghost 7)

John Keir Cross – ‘Happy Birthday, Dear Alex’: The narrator wishes to buy his medical student a human skeleton for his birthday. He should know better than to approach the “general dealer” operating from a Sloane Square shop who trades under the name of W. Hare. (London Terror)

John Keir Cross – The Lovers: Dunblane. James Gemmell adored his wife and when she died he couldn’t bring himself to have her buried in the local kirkyard. Eight years later, Andrew, a young electrician is working at the house. Gemmell is at first reluctant to allow him into the kitchen where a beautiful woman sits stock-still in a chair. All the time he’s there the woman neither talks or moves a hair and there’s an odd clinical smell in the room. Afterwards Andrew believes he’s seen a ghost – which is maybe just as well as the truth is far worse. (Scottish Terror)

Mrs Crowe – Round the Fire (Ghost 14)