Literary trivia: Help me identify this 19th century (?) horror short please!
4I remember reading this horror short as a weeun and being unable to sleep with the light off for weeks. I’m pretty sure it’s mid-19th century vintage. I thought it was EAP or maybe Maupassant, but I’ve gone through the list of their horror shorts to no avail.
Synopsis (as best I can recall): A seedy boarding house in New York with a reputation to be haunted, or a gateway to another dimension. At the end of an evening of conversation (and opium use) with the other boarders on the topic of ghosts and the supernatural, the narrator retires to his room. After reading a bit, he puts out the lamp and tries to sleep. Shortly, something drops onto his chest and begins to strangle him. Pitch dark. He cannot see anything. He fights to fend off his attacker. Through the struggle he gets a sense of what he’s fighting and reveals details of what I guess could be described as a homunculus. Eventually the narrator manages to subdue his attacker, tying him up with a scarf or some such. When he puts the lamp on he is horrified to see… nothing at all. His attacker is invisible. But real.
The story goes on for a bit from there until eventually the creature dies (IIRC?).
Please help me identify the author and title!
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Any chance it’s Lovecraft? Or Bierce?
@sammydog01 I ran through the Lovecraft shorts. Well some of them. With 80-ish shorts Lovecraft was nearly as prolific as S. King so way too many to read synopsis of each one. I didn’t think about Bierce. I’ll try that approach. Thank you for the suggestion!
just from Google, but how about Algernon Blackwood, “Smith: An Episode in a Lodging-House” http://algernonblackwood.org/
@walarney He’s good too. This reminds me vaguely of something I’ve listened to on old time radio- maybe Lights Out?
@walarney Not quite the one I remember from my childhood, but that was a good story! Thanks for the linky!
How about this @ruouttaurmind?
https://www.oldstyletales.com/single-post/2019/03/21/fitz-james-obriens-what-was-it-a-two-minute-summary-and-analysis-of-the-classic-invisible
@sammydog01 I heard it on “The Weird Circle”.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/20imLI9uOTgnHESM73ux5S?si=ZBR-tJ2tQfOTVsS2Kgmi3g
Aired October, 1943
@sammydog01 YES! That’s exactly the one! Well, the “edited for radio” version. But that’s the story!
Here’s the full original text for anyone who wishes to read the story.
@ruouttaurmind I remember feeling sorry for the invisible thing when I heard it. MEANIES.
@sammydog01 Well, in fairness to the protagonist, it seemed like the creature was planning on making a meal of him. But I agree, dispatching the attacker swiftly would have been a more humane approach.
So if @sammydog01 were the protagonist, what would you have done in this situation? Release the attacker? Put an end to it? Turn it over to authorities (whoever that may be under the circumstances)? How would you have dealt?
@ruouttaurmind Well that guy smoked opium every night in a haunted house- maybe the creature just got sick of him. I probably wouldn’t have been there in the first place.
The version I’m familiar with is the Weird Circle one- they heard moaning and saw a rocking chair rocking and just grabbed the poor sad thing and tied it up.
@sammydog01 Ya, the original version is a bit different in that regard. The protagonist is lying in bed trying to sleep and suddenly feels this thing plop onto his chest and wrap it’s hands… er, paws… er whatever around his throat. It was definitely aiming to do no good.
@ruouttaurmind @sammydog01 Cool story! I would have used spray paint, though.
And maybe fed him ghoulash, with a snifter of spirits. No doubt he’d be goblin that down.
My 6th grade English class consisted mainly of “Here, go read this book.” There was one that I never got to finish and haven’t been able to find since. Most of the others were “classics” (All’s Quiet on the Western Front, etc.). So I imagine this one is too, but…
It’s about an orphan who “hides his intelligence like a secret weapon”. And there’s a man named Cobalt with OCD who beats his dog “because it will die soon and has to learn pain.” Or something like that.
I’ll probably feel like an idiot when you all tell me what it is.
@walarney General fiction?
@sammydog01 Yeah, I guess you’d call it “contemporary fiction” but it’s at least older than 1977.
@walarney I don’t think I can find it without more details and it rings no bells.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All this talk of high-flown literature makes me think of this Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon: https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2013/06/13
A teaser: “Demon Box! Thief of time! I forsake you!”