My Favorite Horror Story

[dekadent666]

Hmm...so hard to choose
"The Repairer of Reputations" Robert W. Chambers
"The Horla" Guy De Maupassant
"The White People" by Arthur Machen
"Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen" by Robert Aickman
" The Man Whom The Trees Loved" by Algernon Blackwood
"Green Tea" by Sheridan LeFanu
"The Change"by Ramsey Campbell
"Our Temporary Supervisor" by Thomas Ligotti

And about two billion others.

[unknown]

"The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" and the Randolph Carter/Dream Quest series by HPL will always remain favorites of mine. And just about every story from the Teatro Grottesco cycle by TL

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson...love it

"Le Horla" by Maupassant

"Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl. What was great about Dahl, was he wrote these seemingly innocent stories that, deep down, were quite disturbing at the core.

[G. S. Carnivals]

Quote Originally Posted by unknown";p=&quot

"Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl. What was great about Dahl, was he wrote these seemingly innocent stories that, deep down, were quite disturbing at the core.

I agree completely with this assessment of Roald Dahl's work. I bought Dahl's collection Kiss Kiss at a flea market in the late 1970's. ".15" is discreetly written in ink on the cover of my 1961 Dell paperback. What a bargain. Unfortunately, "Lamb to the Slaughter" is not collected in the book. Dahl was married to actress Patricia Neal. "Klaatu barada nikto!"

Mention of Roald Dahl's name made me think immediately of Gerald Kersh, yet another writer whose work is hard to categorize as this thing or that thing or the other thing. Both Roald Dahl and Gerald Kersh deserve to be remembered.

This literary association session is over.

[bendk]

In the late 1950s Roald Dahl was hired to recommend twenty-four ghost stories that could be adapted for television. Mr. Dahl has stated that he read over seven hundred stories to come up with the required twenty-four. (M.R. James is conspicuously absent). The series got only as far as the pilot stage, because the show offended the producers and sponsors so much that they cancelled the entire project. The guilty story was "The Hanging of Alfred Wadham" by E.F. Benson. It involves a priest, a confessional, etc., enough to offend the tender religious sensibilities of 1950s American audiences.
Much later, Roald Dahl was asked to put together a book of ghost stories. He started with his choices for the television show, but was forced to pare down his selection to fourteen.

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

W.S. by L.P. Hartley (T.E.D. Klein reprinted this one for The Twilight Zone Magazine. Great story).
Harry by Rosemary Timperley
The Corner Shop by Cynthia Asquith
In the Tube by E.F. Benson
Christmas Meeting by Rosemary Timperley
Elias and the Draug by Jonas Lie
Playmates by A.M. Burrage
Ringing the Changes by Robert Aickman
The Telephone by Mary Treadgold
The Ghost of a Hand by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
The Sweeper by A.M. Burrage
Afterward by Edith Wharton
On the Brighton Road by Richard Middleton
The Upper Berth by F. Marion Crawford

[Nemonymous]

A very interesting selection! Its background was unknown to me.

As to its contents, I know them all except Jonas Lie and Mary Treadgold.

[G. S. Carnivals]

It has just dawned on me that much of what I personally consider to be horrifying concerns human transformation: deterioration, dehumanization, sinister manipulation, and various forms of reconstruction and evolution. My favorite horror film will always be The Wolf Man (1941). Larry Talbot's predicament is so poignant because he has no choice in the matter...

I list a few more favorites that suggest horror's ubiquity. In no order of preference:

"Evening Primrose" by John Collier
"I Live with You" by Carol Emshwiller
"Pretty Boy Crossover" by Pat Cadigan
"The Heat Death of the Universe" by Pamela Zoline
"Passengers" by Robert Silverberg
"Down Among the Dead Men" by William Tenn
"Blood Music" by Greg Bear
"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
"Flies" by Robert Silverberg

[Brian Richmond]

I know this is a strange confession to make in such a setting, but I am a bit of a sentimental old fool. One of the effects horror fiction can create - and that is often overlooked - is a frisson of sadness. At about 11 years old my introduction to horror was helped by various Alfred Hitchcock Anthologies, particularly the Monster Museum and the Ghostly Gallery. It was in the former, I think, that I read The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury. I remember the part when the mother tells the little boy - the only mortal among a family of vampires, shape-shifters and the like - that, when he is dead, she will come and tend his grave. At 11 years old, this was devastating. Of course, I'm now much older and more cynical but, catch me in the right mood and...no,no...I've just got some dust in my eye, that's all...
Not a particularly cool choice, I know but I'll have to crave your indulgence.
On a somewhat darker note, The Room in the Tower by EF Benson never fails to give me the willies, along with with the same author's The Caterpillars.

[enthusiast]

Here are some of my favorites:

"His Unconquerable Enemy" by W.C. Morrow- a fiendish tale by a neglected master of the macabre, set in India.

"Talking in the Dark" by Dennis Etchison-- an atmosphere of menace grows steadily in this short piece.

"The Shadow over Innsmouth" by H.P. Lovecraft-- a superb sense of place, exquisite descriptions of dilapidation and decay, and a monstrous yet strangely beautiful climax.

"Sardonicus" by Ray Russell-- the main character inspires both revulsion and sympathy- a man whose face is locked in a perpetual grin.

"The Skull of the Marquis De Sade" by Robert Bloch-- an interesting blend of history and fiction, definitely worth reading.

"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" by Edgar Allan Poe-- be sure to check out Vincent Price's interpretation of Valdemar in one segment of the movie Tales of Terror.

"Skeleton" by Ray Bradbury-- a story of a man afraid of his own skeleton.

"Lot No. 249" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-- features a reanimated mummy.

"The Cone" by H.G. Wells-- descriptions of the unique beauties of factories and industrialization can be found in this tale of psychological horror.

"The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne-- an excellent example of quiet horror and Hawthorne's obsession with the problem of sin.

[Karnos]

Quite a few, these are the ones that come to mind right not, but in no particular order

-The Ash tree, M.R. James
-Green Tea, J. S. Lefanu
-Carmila, J. S. Lefanu
-The Great God Pan, Arthur Machen
-A voice in the Night, William Hope Hodgson
-The Color out of Space, H. P. Lovecraft
-Netherscurial, TL, of course!
-Apartment 205, Mark Samuels
-An Abhorrence to al Flesh, Matt Cardin (When's the next anthology out, Matt?!)
-The Midnight Meat Train", Clive Barker
-partofit, Simon Logan (Not exactly horror, but eerie)
-The Pit and the Pendulum, E.A. Poe
-The Night, Guy de Maupassnt
-I have no mouth and I must scream, Harlan Ellison
-The Area, Stefan Grabinski
-The Spider, Hanns Heinz Ewers
-The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
-The Decapitated Chicken, Horacio Quiroga.


Plenty of stories by HPL ad TL… plenty

[Karnos]

Quote Originally Posted by bendk";p=&quot

The Hole of the Pit by Adrian Ross Selected by R.S. Hadji "An extraordinary historical fantasy, chronicling the seige of a seaside castle during the Englih Civil War by the "Fiend from the Pit," an amorphous mass of cold grey slime. Written in a graceful pastiche of seventeenth-century English, this novel boasts strong characterizations, a fine brooding atmosphere and several effectively horrific outbursts. It is that avis rara, a completely unknown masterpiece, rivaling the best of Hodgson."

I own the Spanish translation of this book (I'm told it is the only translation in any language other than the original English, that rare is that book supposed to be) but I am not that thrilled about it. Legend has it none other but Ramsey Campbell stumbled upon it, collecting dust in an old box he had stored somewhere in his attic... some actually think the book was penned by Campbell himself using the Adrian Ross pseudonym, although there are supposedly some historical records that claim M. R. James actually was a friend of Ross... so who knows.

Some of the material in that book is similar to what one could find in the works of William Hope Hodgson (Specifically in "The House at the Borderland" ) and even HPL, but most of the book is centered around other issues and the slimy grotesquerie is thrown on stage as a second rate attraction, or at least that's the way I perceived it.