Poe's "LIGEIA" - My Reading, Courtesy of Monster Island Resort

One thing I discovered about myself in the past year (among many) is that I really enjoy live readings. Perhaps it can be chalked up to the whole "being in love with the sound of my own voice" thing, or the fact that I was trained in rhetoric in high school (which, with the addition of $2.25, will currently get me on the subway), but I do get a kick out of public reading, particularly of great works of literature.

Another individual who enjoys this, and is also exceptionally good at it, is my West Coast brother Miguel Rodriguez. Not long ago, Miguel started a series on his acclaimed Monster Island Resort podcast, entitled "MIR Storytime". Using his impressive powers of enunciation, Miguel had been recording himself reading some legendary pieces of horror literature. Needless to say, I became intrigued. And once Miguel gave me permission to contribute to the series, I set about recording my version of "Ligeia"--a prototypical vampire/zombie tale which is one of, if not my very favorite, Edgar Allan Poe short story.

I'm honored that Mr. Rodriguez gave me an opportunity to do this, and was so thrilled to see it posted on his Monster Island Resort podcast homepage, that I asked his permission to repost it right here in The Vault of Horror. And so, dear Vault dwellers, I invite you to proceed directly to the following link, where you may tune in or download it for your macabre listening pleasure:

B-SOL READS EDGAR ALLAN POE'S "LIGEIA"

* The Vault would also like to wish a hearty congrats and attagirl to our very own sister blogger, BJ-C of Day of the Woman, who will be contributing to Yahoo! Movies in the very near future. Nice job, kid. That's how we do it on Team Vault.

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Love Meets Lovecraft! My Debut Short Story Is Now Available!

The day is finally here. As you might recall, some months back I announced that my first piece of fiction had been accepted for publication--and now it's finally out there. Midnight Echo, the official publication of the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA), unleashed its third issue today--and my very own story, "Hell Hath No Fury", is among those you will find on the pages within.

A love story with a Lovecraftian twist, "Hell Hath No Fury" took me a good six months to complete, and I'm pretty psyched that it's now out there in the world for people to enjoy. If anyone is interested in picking up their very own copy of Midnight Echo #3 and checking out my story, the AHWA is selling digital PDF copies for a mere $3.50 American--not too shabby for a mag boasting 133 pages of content and containing 41 short stories. If you're old-school like me, print copies are also available. Nothing like holding it in your hands (and no, that is not what she said, unfortunately).

This is a day I've dreamt of since I was six years old. I'm proud of my twisted little tale, and I hope you check it out and enjoy it. Hopefully, it will be the first of many. But for right now, I have some laurel-resting and rose-smelling to do.

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Horror Literature: Further Reading Suggestions

In the wake of the interest-piquing Horror Literature Top 30 from the Cyber-Horror Elite, I've been asked by a few people to make public the remaining novels, short stories and poems that did not make it onto either the main list itself, or the honorable mention list. And so, here it is, for your further edification!

So here are all the other works suggested by various members of the group, which didn't get enough quite enough votes to make the cut. Consider it a "Further Reading" list from your friends in the CHE...

NOVELS & NOVELLAS
1984 by George Orwell
American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
Cabal by Clive Barker
Carrie by Stephen King
Christine by Stephen King
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Communion by Whitley Strieber
Dark Carnival by Ray Bradbury
The Descent by Jeff Long
The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey
Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
Jaws by Peter Benchley
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite
Merrick by Anne Rice
The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
Ratman's Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
The Scream by John Skipp & Craig Spector
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
Slumber Party by Christopher Pike
The Small Assassin by Ray Bradbury
Song of Kali by Dan Simmons
The Stand by Stephen King
The Traveling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
Varney the Vampire by James Malcolm Rymer
War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

SHORT STORIES
"Berenice" by Edgar Allan Poe
"Bianca's Hands" by Theodore Sturgeon
"The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor
"La Horla" by Guy de Maupassant
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving
"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe
"Nightmare at 30,000 Feet" by Richard Matheson
"Pigeons from Hell" by Robert E. Howard
"The Relic" by Guy de Maupassant
"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" by H.P. Lovecraft
"The Thing on the Doorstep" by H.P. Lovecraft
"The White People" by Arthur Machen
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

POEMS
"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe
"Goblin Market" by Christina Rosetti
The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

OTHER
Macbeth by William Shakespeare (play)
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz (anthology)
The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks (parody)

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The Greatest Fright Fiction of All Time! The Cyber-Horror Elite Takes on Literature

Usually, when I do these "Cyber-Horror Elite" polls (it's self-deprecating sarcasm, people, relax), controversy seems to ensue once the final tally is released to the public. But this time, the controversy began during the actual voting process itself...

After gathering together the opinions of the best and brightest of the horror blogging world time and again to weigh in on horror films, it was suggested to me by my co-conspirator RayRay to direct the attention toward horror literature. This is something I had been unsure of doing in our sadly non-literary age, but I sure am glad I did.

My approach was simple: Reach out to the finest horror bloggers/writers on the web and ask them to list their personal top 10 list of horror-lit. The results would then be totaled using my patented point system, and boiled down to a master list of the best of the best.

Problem is, what do we consider for inclusion? I had decided early on that, in order to get the strongest results and not water them down, I would combine novels, short stories and poetry (and anything in between), rather than do three separate lists. I knew it might be difficult, in comparison to my movie lists, to get a significant number of results as it was, and I wanted to get the best possible responses. Call me a philistine, but I chose to combine all genres of style into one literary endeavor.

Not everyone agreed, feeling that short stories, novels and poetry (poetry??) all deserved their own lists. Ideally, I might agree. But realistically, I knew there are very few who'd be able to provide a strong list for each, particularly poetry. Plus, I wanted to optimize reader interest by condensing all three into one. In the end, I'm glad I did, and I'm very proud of this particular list.

And so, I hope you folks get a kick out of the end results--THE HORROR LITERATURE TOP 30:

1. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
3. "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
4. Salem’s Lot by Stephen King (1975)
5. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft (1931)
6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stephenson (1886)
7. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
8. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (1962)
9. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (1971)
10. "The Dunwich Horror" by H.P. Lovecraft (1928)
11. It by Stephen King (1986)
12. The Shining by Stephen King (1977)
13. "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe (1849)
14. "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)
15. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (1954)
16. Ghost Story by Peter Straub (1979)
17. Books of Blood by Clive Barker (1984-85)
18. "The Monkey’s Paw" by W.W. Jacobs (1902)
19. "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe (1846)
20. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898)
21. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)
22. Pet Sematary by Stephen King (1983)
23. "The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft (1927)
24. The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker (1986)
25. Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. (1938)
26. "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft (1928)
27. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe (1841)
28. Psycho by Robert Bloch (1959)
29. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
30. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)

As in the past, my system involves awarding 10 points for every #1 ranking, 9 points for #2, etc. That said, it should be pointed out that Stoker's Dracula was far and away the most dominant vote-getter of them all. It was included on nearly everyone's list, and almost always extremely high. Nothing else came close, not even Shelley's Frankenstein or Poe's "The Raven", which were by far the strongest of the rest of the bunch. Seems those are the three almost everyone could agree on...

Break-down by literary genre:
15 novels
8 short stories
5 novellas
1 poem
1 anthology

Authors who appear more than once:
Edgar Allan Poe - 5 entries
H.P. Lovecraft - 4 entries
Stephen King - 4 entries
Clive Barker - 2 entries
(these four writers make up a total of half the entries on the list)

Chronological breakdown:
18th century: 1
19th century: 11
20th century: 18
1900s: 1
1910s: 0
1920s: 3
1930s: 2
1940s: 0
1950s: 3
1960s: 1
1970s: 4
1980s: 4
1990s: 0
21st century: 0

Highest ranking 20th century work: Salem's Lot
Oldest ranked work: The Castle of Otranto
Most recent ranked works: The Hellbound Heart & It
(Nothing from the past 22 years received enough votes to make it, and nothing from the past 34 years made it into the top 10)

A few other noteworthy vote-getters:

• "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson (1948)
• "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats (1920)
• World War Z by Max Brooks (2006)
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft (1927)
• Crash by J.G. Ballard (1973)
• Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons (1990)
• Hell House by Richard Matheson (1971)
• Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice (1976)

Finally, time to give credit to those brave souls who took part in the ranking this time around. Profound thanks to all of them:

Maitland MacDonagh, film professor, critic & writer for NY Times & TV Guide
Kim Paffenroth, author of the Stoker-winning Gospel of the Living Dead
John Kenneth Muir, horror critic (Booklist Editor's Choice)
Iloz Zoc of Zombos' Closet of Horror, founder of LoTT-D
Pierre Fournier of Frankensteinia, Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Famer
Jeff Allard of Dinner with Max Jenke and Shock Till You Drop
Monster Scholar of Monster Land
Matthew House of Paracinema and Chuck Norris Ate My Baby
The Lightning Bug of The Lightning Bug's Lair
RayRay, Vault of Horror contributing writer
Unkle Lancifer of Kindertrauma
Christine Hadden of Fascination with Fear
Jon of Evil on Two Legs
Ryne Barber of The Moon Is a Dead World
The Divemistress of TheAvod
Ms. Harker of Musings Across a Continuum
Bill Courtney of The Uranium Cafe
Pax Romano of Billy Loves Stu
Mike McBeardo of McBeardo's Midnight Movies
And yours truly, of course.

There you have it. Digest. Discuss. Debate. Distribute.

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The CHE Weigh in on Horror Lit--Be Prepared, It's Coming

After having polled the best and brightest of the online horror blogging/writing community on a whole bunch of movie-related topics in the past, I have finally decided (at the suggestion of the Vault's own RayRay) to focus the spotlight at long last on the written word. That's right, here in The Vault of Horror we still value books--bold concept, wouldn't you say?

I currently have emails out to a vast array of online pundits, asking for their own personal lists of the finest horror novels, short stories and/or poems. There is still some time for all the submissions to come in, but even at this time I've already gotten responses from the likes of Fascination with Fear, Evil on Two Legs, The Moon Is a Dead World, John Muir's Reflections on Film and TV, Cinema Suicide, Musings Across a Continuum, Uranium Cafe, Billy Loves Stu, McBeardo's Midnight Movies, Zombos' Closet of Horror and Kim Paffenroth's Gospel of the Living Dead.

Deadline for submissions happens later this week, so hopefully I will be able to tally the results for your perusal during next week. So get ready for the "Cyber Horror Elite" to direct its attention to the likes of King, Poe, Lovecraft, Stoker, Rice and all the rest of the genre's greatest scribes. I'm hoping it will make for some interesting debate, and maybe even give you some ideas for future reading...

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The Horror of the Printed Page

[Tonight I bring you a special contribution from award-winning book blogger Katiebabs of Babbling About Books, and More. So let's shut off the DVD players for a minute and think about the books that really scare us, shall we?]

The horror! The horror! Quick, can anyone tell me where that line is from? And no, I’m not talking about one of the most famous movie lines muttered from Marlon Brando in the Francis Ford Coppola classic, Apocalypse Now.

It may seem unfortunate that most of the screams and thrills people find are in movies. I’m a true horror movie buff and I love having the ever loving shit scared out of me as I watch some poor sap die a horrible death from some maniac or supernatural monster. But it may come as a surprise that you can feel these same emotions in books. One of my favorite genres is horror. There has been many times where I have been sitting in my bedroom late at night all alone and scare myself to death by what I am reading.

There are hundreds of books I could recommend that can send chills up and down your spine but since I have limited space, I will give you some of my all time favorite tales of terror. You may find yourself surprised that these books will give you nightmares.

Many of the horror stories I have love are short tales of murder, mayhem and death. One of my all time favorite horror authors is Edgar Allen Poe. My appreciation for Poe began when I watched Vincent Price starring in many screen adaptations of Poe’s work. Two Poe stories that always give me the willies are The Tell-Tale Heart and The Masque of the Red Death. The Tell-Tale Heart is a chilling telling by the narrator as he tells about a murder he committed and how he got rid of the body. The police come to him to ask him questions about the missing person. They have no clue that he is the killer, and he is about to get away with the murder. But as the police interview him, he begins to hear a noise, a sound that won’t go away. The sound becomes louder to his ears, till he is near insanity, wanting it to stop:

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

The Masque of the Red Death takes place during a masquerade ball where the guests are murdered by some unknown killer. The question is, who is this killer and why is he targeting these people? The ways they die are very gruesome. But no one is safe because the Red Death is actually a terrible plague that has swept across the land.

Don’t Look Now by Daphne de Maurier is another short story that was made into a cult classic movie in 1973 with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. A married couple are on vacation, trying to get pass their grief over the death of their little girl who drowned. The husband begins to see a little blonde girl in a red coat everywhere. He starts to believe she is his daughter because his daughter had drowned in the same type of coat this strange little girl is wearing. When he finally catches up to the little girl, the twist will shock the ever loving crap out of you. The ending to the story gave me nightmares for weeks. And if you decide to see the movie, don’t be surprised if the last two minutes makes you piss your pants from fright.

The one type of creature, that makes me want to hide in a closet and pray for a quick death if they find me are zombies. I blame George Romero for that lifelong fear. But without Richard Matheson there would be no Night of the Living Dead. Matheson wrote a story in 1954 that has influenced many horror authors and Hollywood filmmakers. I Am Legend helped develop the vampire and zombie genre by building upon the idea of an apocalypse of disease that will destroy the world. This story is the reason Stephen King wanted to write horror and responsible for flesh eating zombies becoming such a cultural phenomenon in movies and literature. It is about the one soul survivor left on Earth after a virus has turned humans into undead mindless zombies. The reader goes through the experience alongside Robert as he tries not to go crazy because every night he is stalked by these creatures. Imagine if you were the last person on Earth with no where to turn to for help, only you own thoughts to keep you company as you try to stay alive or become food.

Speaking of Stephen King, he is my idol, my reason for reading and wanting to write like he does. He has shaped the horror, science fiction and fantasy genre alike. It is so hard to choose his best work. The three that come to mind are The Stand, It and The Shining. With The Shining, King is able to tap into a person’s inner demons and the eventual break down of a person’s mind because of those demons. Part psychological thriller, part ghost story, this is one of the finest books I have ever read. It gave me an intense dislike of clowns and the underground sewage system, and The Stand is my number one favorite book of all time. The Stand taps into the desolation and fear in people of what is right and wrong and how one would survive if an epidemic such as a virus wiping out the world did occur.

Many of the books I have listed are classics. There is one final book I would like to mention that was just released this year and you may come as a surprise because it is a Young Adult book written for the teen audience. The Forest of Hand and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is such a book that in my past twenty odd years of reading scared me to the point I was looking over my shoulder as I read, expecting the monsters from the book to be standing there. The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a cross between M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. This book has tapped deep into my fears and psyche. Imagine the world filled with zombies who want to eat you. You have no where to turn, for they are all around you, crying in hunger, waiting for the right moment to attack. Imagine the only thing that keeps you from being infected by them and becoming one of them or becoming zombie food is a fence that keeps them out. What if that fence was breached and they were able to come through? This is a book not for the faint of heart. There is death and destruction, filled with violence and fear. The fear is not surviving from the monsters whose only goal is to consume the living. But is this truly surviving? (For more on The Forest of Hands and Teeth, you can read my review here: http://kbgbabbles.blogspot.com/2009/03/forest-of-hands-and-teeth-book-review.html)

I thank B-Sol for giving me this opportunity to talk about my favorite horror reads. What are some of your favorite horror books or authors you can recommend to fellow horror fans?

Katiebabs from Babbling About Books and More! http://kbgbabbles.blogspot.com/ Twitter: @Katiebabs

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Retro Review: Howard Phillips Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space

H.P. Lovecraft is a minor passion of mine. While others may have finished reading his complete works, or know his various stories and lore more completely, I have a deep and abiding appreciation for his writing. His style, his influence, his prolixity are unmatched in horror fiction.

It appears to me our modern society does not appreciated him nearly enough, yet each time I think so I run into websites set up by such outfits like the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Such electronic encounters give me ease when it comes to Lovecraft's legacy.

My very first foray into Lovecraftian horror was fortunately also one of his best pieces, The Colour Out of Space. This science fiction-horror short story, written in 1927, was far ahead of its time, and after one reads it it is easy to see the tremendous influence it had. It is also, in my humble opinion, one of the few Lovecraft stories which would translate rather easily to film, if anyone had the intestinal fortitude to try it. Simply, it is the story of what happens to a quiet New England farm after a meteor falls on it.

Set in the dark, ancient, and inevitably creepy woods surrounding Lovecraft's fictional Arkham, Massachusetts, the story unfolds through the voice of a big-city surveyor recounting his adventure of seeking out the lay of the land for a future reservoir project, curious about what the few locals left in the tenebrous region name as the "blasted heath."

"Blasted heath" you say?

"There was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse, but only a fine grey dust or ash which no wind seemed ever to blow about. The trees near it were sickly and stunted, and many dead trunks stood or lay rotting at the rim. As I walked hurriedly by I saw the tumbled bricks and stones of an old chimney and cellar on my right, and the yawning black maw of an abandoned well whose stagnant vapours played strange tricks with the hues of the sunlight."

Our narrator is unable to get to the bottom of the cause of the blasted heath, beyond what appeared to have been some mysterious sequence of events some fifty years earlier. But alas, there was an old, some say crazy, man by the name of Ammi Pierce who could recount the tale in its entirety. And as a result of hearing old Ammi Pierce's tale, our narrator returned forthwith to Boston, resigned his position, and swore never to drink the water in Arkham under any circumstances. And that's just the first three pages.

What Ammi related to the unnamed narrator is that in June of 1882 a meteorite fell on his friend and neighbor's farm, a man by the name of Nahum Gardner. Up until that time the Gardner farm had been a series of fertile gardens and orchards. The object was studied by professors of the nearby Miskatonic University in Arkham, and found to be plastic in nature, and of a nearly indescribable colour to the eye. Tests revealed the meteor acted very strangely, never cooling, and displaying unknown colours when placed in a spectroscope.

While Lovecraft, as was ofttimes his wont, never revealed the precise nature of the meteor, suffice it to say that there was some sort of beforehand unknown alien life, the nature of which could not be understood by humans. Lovecraft had, for a layman, a rather good grasp of science, and understood that alien life would be so different as to likely be unrecognized by even the best scientific minds. This is what he gives us a taste of in "Colour."

Lovecraft writes at some length about the various tests performed on the mysterious object, including various acids and bases, and that the reactions are peculiar.

Lovecraft also understood, perhaps better than others at the time, the concepts of pollution and leeching, which are important to the story, as the residue of the meteor plays havoc with the Gardners' harvest in 1882. The leeching and poisoning of the earth and the water also has a far more insidious effect on the family themselves, in addition to the flora and fauna. Lovecraft had the inkling that objects from outer space might be unhealthful to the Earth.

The story progresses steadily with ominous overtones, from the high of Nahum's near celebrity for the rock to have fallen on his farm, to the failed harvest, to finding queer tracks in the snow that winter, to a neighbor shooting a woodchuck that was apparently terribly and indescribably deformed, to plants growing in monstrous shape and colour. This ever present, furtive, baleful atmosphere of dread is Lovecraft at his best, and builds to a terrifying crescendo. And the next spring and the following summer would be for the worst, at least for Nahum and the rest of the Gardners. Madness, decay, blasphemy and much worse lurked just behind the period at the end of each sentence.

Just about every insidious alien invasion movie, [as opposed to overt invasions, like Independence Day or V, which owe their inspiration H.G. Wells], from The Blob to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, from It Came From Outer Space to The Thing From Another World, from Lifeforce to The Thing, all owe their existence to The Colour Out of Space. Which says a lot, as it is a mere 15 or so pages, depending on the printing.

I strongly suggest to any lover of horror and science fiction to read and reread Lovecraft. And if you have never read any of his stories, I suggest that you make The Colour Out of Space your first. After that you will be inextricably hooked.

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First the Blogosphere, Now Fiction! The VoH Revolution Continues

I don't usually make The Vault of Horror about me--but dammit, this is a red letter date in B-Sol history. That's because yours truly has had his very first horror short story accepted for publication in an honest-to-goodness magazine!

The mag is Midnight Echo, and its published by the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA). My story, "Hell Hath No Fury", will be included in Issue #3, which I believe will be out in the fall.


To say I'm excited would be the understatement of the century. This is the culmination of years of aspiration to be a published fiction writer, and many months of work on this story alone. The word "vindication" scarcely does it justice.

I want to heap loads of thanks on to Ms. Harker of Musings Across a Continuum for pointing me in the direction of Midnight Echo in the first place, and of course, to the one and only BJ-C of Day of the Woman, my amazing protege, for taking the time out to look the story over and provide some very valuable feedback.

Check out the Midnight Echo website here. I'll be letting everyone know about issue availability once I know more.

Made it, Ma! Top of the world!

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Edgar Allen Poe: The Bicentennial

Much like the fabled "Poe Toaster", The Vault of Horror raises a glass of fine cognac to the memory of Edgar Allen Poe, father of the short story, founder of the mystery genre, and the greatest writer of horror literature in history.

Poe was born 200 years ago this day in Boston Massachusetts. In honor of this momentous occasion for literature and horror--two areas of great interest to me--I'd like to provide a bunch of very solid resources for looking further into the life and work of Edgar Allen Poe. There's no better way I can think of to while away this evening than wandering through Mr. Poe's gothic imagination...

• Poe at Project Gutenberg: Download Poe's works directly, in both text and audio forms.
• Poe at the Internet Archive: Scanned versions of actual, illustrated books.
• PoeStories.com: Summaries, quotes, and full text of Poe's short stories, plus a Poe timeline and image gallery.
• HouseofUsher.net: The premiere Poe fan site for 14 years, featuring a virtual library, plus criticism and info on the man himself.

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Stephen King and Marvel Make History

I'll admit that I fell off the Stephen King bandwagon a long time ago--somewhere around Four Past Midnight, if memory serves. Too many obsessively repeated catchphrases, too many dangling plot threads and fizzling climaxes. Yet the Boston Red Sox' most famous fan is up to something rather ingenious these days, which I thought I'd share with you guys.

King's newest short story anthology, Just After Sunset, hits bookstores November 11. One of the tales included is called "N", and is a very Lovecraftian little yarn about the thin veil between reality and...something else. In order to both promote the book and delve deeper into the story, King and Marvel Comics have teamed up to create something quite unique and interesting. It's a series of webisodes based on King's original story and illustrated by Alex Maleev, the guy who does all those nifty drawings seen on Heroes.

It's kind of a hybrid between an online comic and a series of short films. I'll let Mr. King explain it a little better:

Exclusive interview: Stephen King talks about “N.”


The series wrapped up at the end of last month, and because I'm such a nice guy, I'm making all the episodes available right here. Enjoy, if so inclined:



Marvel will also be producing a comic book limited series version of "N" printed on good old-fashioned paper, sometime next year. Maybe King is on the way back to the cutting edge of the genre, after all. This is definitely the coolest thing he's done since that time he bought the minivan that hit him and announced he would destroy it with a sledgehammer. I'm not the only that remember that, am I?

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Horror Writer Praised By Frankenstein's Daughter

Anyone who loves classic Universal horror (and if you don't, go read a recycling blog or something) is certain to get a kick out of the nifty little short story "A Shock to the System", written by British gothic artist and author Glenn James and published last June by California-based online newspaper Newsblaze. And you wouldn't be the only one either, because James' work has been noticed by none other than Sara Karloff, daughter of the Frankenstein Monster himself.

A speculative prequel of sorts to Frankenstein, the tale casts Boris Karloff in the role of the good doctor, and is an entertainment treat for Universal devotees (except maybe continuity freaks, it'll have them doing some serious mental gymnastics). James was inspired to write the story after seeing Dudley Castle, the same landmark which was an inspiration to fellow Englishman James Whale, director of the classic 1931 Frankenstein.

Earlier this month, James was thrilled to receive a letter of praise from Sara Karloff, who had discovered the story online.

“Getting the letter from Sara was like receiving a telegraph from the Queen,” Glenn told the Birmingham Mail. “I was astonished, as I never expected anything of the kind. Sara said she had enjoyed every word of my story, which meant so much to me.”

I encourage you to check out the story for yourself, as well as more of James' stories and artwork.

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A Plea to the Lovecraftians

OK, I have a bit of a dilemma going on. For a while now, H.P. Lovecraft had remained a great undiscovered country for me. While aware that he is the single most influential force in modern horror, I had only glimpsed bits and pieces of his actual writing--I had yet to really delve into it.

And now that I have, I've got a real problem to deal with. And that problem is the fact that H.P. Lovecraft was a passionate racist, white supremacist and anti-Semite, and his work readily reflects it.

My recent foray into HPL comes as a result of the essay submitted to The Vault of Horror some months ago by RayRay, a devout fan of the author since our days in high school together. And while I can't deny the raw and attractive power of his horror writing, I'm having a hard time with the aforementioned issue.

I plan to write a more deeply considered piece on the subject when I've read more of his work and can feel comfortable fully commenting on it. For now, I merely ask those who enjoy his work to help me out. Am I over-reacting?

See, my problem is complex. Yes, racism was more acceptable and rampant in Lovecraft's day, but his level of virulent hatred goes above and beyond even the acceptability such opinions enjoyed in a pre-Nazi world. Not only that, but it's all over the place in his fiction--you can't escape it. Richard Wagner may have been one of history's most famous Jew-haters, yet I can enjoy his music because he never wrote operas about it. But one need only browse through a handful of Lovecraft's pieces to come across his deep-seated hate for blacks, Jews, Asians and immigrants of all kinds. Don't even get me started on his private writings. Saying, "Well, that's how people thought back then," doesn't quite cover it.

So what do I do with this? I invite anyone with an opinion on the subject to leave a comment. Is it possible to enjoy Lovecraft in spite of his racism? Is it right to?

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The Lady Ligeia: Coming Soon to a Crypt Near You

Den of Geek (great name) has an in-depth interview up with Michael Staininger, the Austrian first-time director currently in post-production on Edgar Allen Poe's Ligeia, a modern-day adaptation of my personal favorite short story from the gothic horror master. Staininger gives a lot of fascinating insight into his work on Ligeia, including the differences between his film and Roger Corman's '60s classic The Tomb of Ligeia, the difficulties of adapting Poe to the screen, and the deficiencies in American horror films today. Of course, he also remarks, "I’m originally from Europe, from Austria, in Vienna, and anything with intellectual appeal immediately interested me." Well, excuse me, Mr. Fancy Pants European intellectual.

Poe's classic 1838 tale follows the story of a bizarre yet beatiful woman who finds a way to defeat death by sapping the life of her husband's second wife from beyond the grave, then possessing her body. Staininger's film is expected to be released sometime this fall. It features Wes Bentley of Ghost Rider fame, the great Michael Madsen, and yes, Eric Roberts. Newcomer Sofya Skya plays the title role. Despite the involvement of Eric Roberts, it sounds like it could actually be a cerebral, atmospheric, supernatural thriller. Fingers crossed.

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Howard Phillips Lovecraft – A Paean

For as long as this blog allows me to contribute, you will occasionally read statements by me extolling the virtues of H.P. Lovecraft. In fact, I will probably repeat myself many times on the subject. But for now, allow me to begin.

The importance of H.P. Lovecraft to the genres of horror and science fiction cannot be overstated. He is seminal. He is a pillar of all that came after. He was the first of many, and where he was not the first, he was most innovative.

His name – Lovecraft – innocuous sounding enough, is now synonym to both “macabre” and “lurking terror.” Without him there would be no King. No Barker. No Carpenter. No horror as we now know it. [Caveat: there has been a remarkable amount of scholarly writing about H. P. Lovecraft, of which only tidbits I have read. I do not proclaim to be an expert on the man, only that I have come to love his stories and have begun to understand his importance].

And the saddest thing about H.P. L. is that he was completely unappreciated in his lifetime. He was convinced he was a failure. He died penniless. He was forgotten. Yet the list of what was inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, even tangentially inspired, is simply vast. There are several board games, a role playing game, video games, and even two Metallica songs inspired by him.

My first exposure to Lovecraft was a paperback collection entitled “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” which was an anthology of several of his stories. I found it while rummaging in the basement at the tender age of about 10, looking for some packed away Lionel train accessories. A basement, dark, musty and cluttered is a rather poignant place to find your first Lovecraft. On the cover was a man in a back tuxedo and cape, similar to what Bela Lugosi’s Dracula was fond of wearing, but with a face not unlike a cross between a Nosferatu and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It scared the bejeezus out of me, and from that point on I associated “Lovecraft” with “scary.” [I was young, and didn’t use big words yet].

I tried to read it, as I liked trying to scare myself [I had already delved into Edgar Allen Poe, the direct precursor of Lovecraft, as well as Stephen King], but I couldn’t get around his dense, spiraling, verbose writing. It was too much vocabulary, too much atmosphere, and not enough action for my young sensibilities. So, “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” went back on the shelf.

Now, during the 80’s there were two movies I remember renting from Lynn TV, [the local video store], based on Lovecraft – “From Beyond” and the cult classic “Re-Animator.” I thought both of these movies were great; they were gory, violent, filled with nudity, and at least in the case of “From Beyond,” pretty freaking scary. The IMDB credits H.P. Lovecraft with some 71 films based, one way or another, on his writing. Yet none of these were in critical successes, and although a few were cult classics, most people, [myself included], have not seen them. One future project, “At the Mountains of Madness” is one that all horror fans should be looking forward to. [More on “ATMOM” below]. Therefore, these B movies would be my first official consumption of any H.P.L's material.

Years passed. I grew up, and went to the usual years of schooling. I read many books, and saw countless movies. I collected comics. I developed my tastes, which tend to the fantastical, at times weird, at times dark. I enjoyed visions of the future, both dystopian and utopian, far reaches of outer space, of Mars and Martians, of myths of Earth’s origins, of ancient times and creatures. I read King, Barker, Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Herbert, Tolkien, and others. Then one day, in my late 20’s, I again came across “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and began to read. It was fantastic. I loved it. The first story was “The Colour Out of Space,” a very creepy, yet simple story about what happens to the countryside when a meteorite falls from the sky, written in H.P.L’s anachronistic manner [notice the spelling of “Colour”]. I buried my nose in the book, next trying to get through “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” about a desolate New England town peopled by worshippers of an ancient and malevolent sea god. In the middle I lost the book, and couldn’t find another copy of it in my local used bookstores nor the local Barnes & Noble. Then I got lucky when I found another H.P.L. anthology with “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” in it. I picked it right back up, and devoured the whole thing, and then consumed the rest of the book.

At this point I was ravenous for more. I searched on-line and I found sites with his complete works [I am presently looking for a printed one for my bookshelf]. After-hours at my old office I would print out stories for my ride home on the subway, and in no time I went through them all.

A casual reading of H.P.L. finds that his themes repeat – madness; darkness; lurking; moldering decay; especially dark shadows; backward and decrepit people living in decrepit towns and countryside; orders of ancient and otherworldly beings and gods whose “magic” is more like science we cannot understand. His settings often repeat as well, and are mostly the back country of New England, usually centering on a town called Arkham, the Miskatonic University, and the denizens thereof. This last theme, of otherworldly beings and their super-science, would eventually be named by others the “Cthulu Mythos,” encompassing a series of loosely connected stories about these beings and their worshippers and victims. In my opinion they are the best of H.P.L., and certainly his most influential works.

And in creating this Mythos [though many others contributed to the Mythos, notably Robert Howard - creator of Conan, Solomon Kane, and Kull - and some crossover can be seen in the Conan stories], H.P.L. laid the foundation for modern horror. Unfortunately for him he would not live to see his work find the success he so longed for, due to his untimely demise in 1937.

With the Mythos came the Elder Ones, the Elder Gods, the Outer Gods, the Deep Ones, Cthulu and his Children. We get horrific entities with names like Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Dagon, Shub-Niggurath, Tsathoggua and creatures called shoggoths. We learn that the Elder Ones [another race of alien, interstellar primordial superbeings], Cthulu and his kind, and the Outer Gods vied for the Earth when it was young, and they are still lurking: some sleep below the sea in hidden cities; some dwell in hidden caves under the polar ice; some just beyond the gauzy fabric of this reality.

These things hailed from otherworldly parts known as Leng, R’lyeh, Ulthar, Skai, Kadeth, and Ib in the land of Mnar, and their deeds were memorialized in such volumes as the Necronomicon and the Pnapkotic Manuscripts, not to mention numerous horrific carvings, base reliefs, hieroglyphs, and totems. Pretty rich stuff from a writer making up canon on the fly, without ever working it out into a cohesive system.

Before H.P.L.’s influence took hold, horror was of the Victorian type: Dracula, Frankenstein, and the horror stories of old Europe: vampires, werewolves, and at the core of it, Satan. At times, instead of the devil being at the core, it was the acts of men: Jeckyl and Hyde, as well as the monster of Frankenstein – both examples of men trying to be God and the ramifications thereof. All in all, it was a very structured world, with God on one side, the Devil on the other, man in the middle, and in the end things would shake out. Man’s place in this order was assured.

It is after H.P.L. and the Cthulu Mythos took hold, when the madness and man’s uncertainty as to his place in the natural order, do we truly get modern horror as we know it. With this new paradigm, horror would eventually take new turns. We would encounter the backcountry cannibal families for the first time, waiting in their ramshackle farmhouses. We would experience stories that challenge our sensibilities as to our place in the universe. Killers were motivated [and would not die, or, stay dead] by forces that were wholly unexplained, and not attributable to either God or Satan, but rather unknown alien forces, or at times sheer, simple madness. Men would fall into fearful insanity at their powerlessness to act; at the realization of their insignificance; that the fate of man and the earth are already sealed and it is only a matter of time; that nothing can stop the inexorable march of evil to their doorstep. Man’s place in the universe was not only suspect, it was downright trivial when one became aware of the real forces at work. Some might say that his dreadful vision was influenced by the madness of the mindless slaughter of the First World War.

In my opinion H.P.L.’s magnum opus is the novella “At the Mountains of Madness,” which is probably his longest work. Simply, it’s about an Antarctic expedition [launched by the Miskatonic University] which goes horribly wrong, leading to death and insanity. It is the kind of story that grips you, steadily ratcheting up the tension until you cannot put the story down. It is credited for inspiring the novella “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, which in turn inspired “The Thing.” In “At the Mountains of Madness” we hear of a tale which ties together much of the Mythos, but leaving more than enough unexplained to fuel further wonder. We find out that our ideas of Earth’s origin, and its ultimate fate, is not what we would expect, or anywhere close to what we hoped for. But no such admonition to “Watch the skies” will ameliorate our collective doom.

H.P.L. can be found everywhere in the horror genre. Movies as disparate as Ghostbusters, The Thing, The Shining, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Pet Semetary, Hellraiser, Hellboy, The Fog, and Event Horizon all owe H.P.L. a great debt for the groundwork he laid, the concepts he pioneered, and the atmospheres – the general creepiness – he was the master of. The same goes for horror literature, as well as comic books. Hell, Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum came from somewhere. Stephen King is practically his latter day protégé, another New Englander publishing the terrible goings-on in the unseen corners of Massachusetts and Maine.

H.P.L. is, with respect to the genre of horror, almost like Shakespeare to the English language – his influence is so wide, so diffused, so constant, you don’t even notice it. It’s like asking a fish to notice the water he is swimming in. But there it is – he is the dark, creepy, lurking atmosphere we all breathe.

I would like to give a special thanks to the Big AB of the Northern Wastes for his assistance in this endeavor.

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Modern-Day "Heart" Transplant

Bloody Disgusting broke the news today that "The Tell-Tale Heart", Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story, will be brought to the silver screen in 2010. One of the Victorian horror master's finest works for my money, it's the story of a murderer driven mad by the imagined heartbeat of his victim emanating from the floorboards under which he buried him.
With Josh Lucas (American Psycho) in the lead, Tell-Tale will be a contemporary reimagining. Lucas plays a single father with a transplanted heart who must find the donor's killer before he is also killed.
Poe's tale has already been adapted multiple times over the past 75 years, including: 5 features, 3 TV versions, 9 short films, 3 animated shorts, and even one feature currently in production.

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