In less than a week is Labor Day, traditionally the end of summer for many Americans, though the official end is not until Sept. 22nd, the date of the autumnal equinox. Time for fun in the sun is drawing to a close. I’d like to recommend some horror stories and nightmarish novels to give you some chills for the few hot days left in 2010.
Let’s start with some downloadable stories in audio form, and begin with some of the classics. These are all free (they’re in the public domain), and will remind you of some of the greatest monster movies ever made.
The first is “The Picture in the House”, a story by the influential horror author H. P. Lovecraft. With themes of cannibalism and insanity, it reminds me of Hannibal Lecter of Silence of the Lambs, of the mad clan in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the dementia found in the stories found in the stories of Lovecraft’s predecessor, Edgar Allan Poe. In fact, the ending was likely influenced by Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher.
Download a reading or save the text by clicking here.
Lovecraft’s stories and novels draw on New England traditions and locales. Similarly, author Manly Wade Wellman drew on Appalachian color and folklore for his horror and fantasy stories. Occasionally Wellman’s work seems touched by Lovecraft, as with Wellman’s “The Golgotha Dancers“, a story that originally appeared in Weird Tales magazine in 1937. As described by Project Gutenberg, it is a “curious and terrifying story about an artist who sold his soul that he might paint a living picture.” It’s number of pink, invertebrate humanoid beings from some unknown and malign plane of existence certainly seems inspired by the man Stephen King called “the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”
The Project Gutenberg e-text of The Golgotha Dancers can be read or downloaded here, or listened to as part of the Librivox Audio Short Horror and Ghost Collection #10. This is great collection of classic horror tales online, and is available as a zip file, or RSS feed, or as an iTunes subscription at this page, which also includes links to e-text copies of each individual story. (In case you take your laptop with you to the beach .)
Also found in this audio assortment are a number of superior scary stories: the ever-readable-but-overfamiliar Poe is present (“The Oval Portrait,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Metzengerstein,”), but so are Robert W. Chambers, Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, and Henry Kuttner, the prolific horror, sci-fi, and fanatasy writer that Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Roger Zelazny have all cited as an influence. Kuttner’s story, “The Secret of Kralitz”, is in the grand tradition of other stories first published in Weird Tales magazine, featuring strange locales, mysterious characters, and bizarre, other-worldly monsters.
Contemporary Horror
Noted splatterpunk author David J. Schow was asked for his recommendations, and he wrote to say, “Most overlooked is Gerald Kersh. Many of his best short stories can be found in the still-gettable MEN WITHOUT BONES, ON AN ODD NOTE, or NIGHTMARES & DAMNATIONS.” A number of eBook formats (including mobile) for Men Without Bones can be found at this page. Paperback copies of On an Odd Note can be ordered here.
Schow also suggested for FM readers “a whole book of beachside horror stories called TROPICAL CHILLS, ” an anthology edited by Tim Sullivan. If zombie horrors are more your style, no collection of zombie stories surpasses Schow’s funky, gory and witty Zombie Jam.
My Current Choices
Currently, I’m listening to volumes one and two of the Librivox “oddio” of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, by M.R. James. James is thought of as the one of the best authors of ghost stories in English literature, his tales contrasted quiet, rural settings with images of intense violence, and not only featured ghost but demons and other supernatural horrors. One of his most famous stories, Casting the Runes (found in “Ghost Stories of…”) was made into the classic horror film Curse of the Demon.
Life is full of coincidences, as much as in fiction, though usually not as fantastic or unsettling. Recently I was reading evaluations by fans of the 1942 minor classic monster movie, The Ghost of Frankenstein. I’d just mentioned the film’s “Ygorstein” Monster in a previous post here at Famous Monsters, and how Frankenstein’s “giant” (as ol’ Flat-top’s called by the little girl he befriends in the film) goes blind at the end. THEN I listened to The Spectre of Doom, (also in SH & GC #10) a haunting parable by Dracula author Bram Stoker, and it featured a blind giant!
Stoked about Stoker? A Librivox gathering of his short stories, Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Tales, can be found by clicking here. Other Stoker stories and novels can be downloaded for free at Horrormasters.com, which has a vast and varied horror library.
So while you still can in 2010, read some horror fiction outdoors in the bright sun–the best way to chill your blood without shivering!
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