TALES OF THE DARK GOAT O' PENN'S WOODS, DAY ONE

15

MIDNIGHT!

(Well, it must be midnight SOMEwhere)


Iä! Shub-Niggurath!!

The goat with 31 stories!

– (Hey, is there a CENTER command in the Meh formatting commands?) –

Gather 'round, me goaties! The equinox is passed, Samhain approaches, ye coffee houses are filled with ye pumpkin spice - 'tis time to sip ye cider and cuddle by ye fireplace for gas of a different sort - dark tales of the misfortunes of others! (For dark tales of your OWN misfortunes, submit to the Blame Thread.)
[[PIC]]

I have had a fondness for horror stories since I was a child IN the '60s, thrilling to the wonderful (to me at the time) Alfred Hitchcock’s Haunted Houseful, Robert Arthur’s story collections, and moving up from Marvel’s Amazing Tales and DC’s House of Mystery to the (not-code-approved) Warren comic books Eerie and Creepy. Later I discovered Lovecraft and the Weird Tales stable in 7th grade, and moved on to the contemporary, hem, kings of horror. I DO like a lot of modern horror, particularly Ramsey Campbell and the Preston & Child books, but even Steven King has gotten off a few good ones.

Heh heh heh - I WAS going to inflict some of my OWN horror tales on you - but there’s only so much space in a post, and anyway, uh, I didn’t get any finished. Somehow August got away from me and September went nuts and here we are. I blame me!

Anyway, I still love those wonderful, out-of-copyright horror tales of a bygone age - Poe, Stoker, Hodgson, Chambers, ESPECIALLY Lovecraft, M.R. James, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; honorable mention to Algernon Blackwood, Oliver Onions, and Walter de la Mare. So to cut to what chase there is, I hope to surprise you with a couple authors you may not know, or a couple of stories you don’t know by authors you do, and maybe throw in a couple pastiches to keep it interesting.

And so, without further ado, here is a link to one of my favorite story collections from my 2nd favorite out-of-copyright horror author of all time:

Montague Rhodes James

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8486/pg8486-images.html