The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten: Tales of the Supernatural, Strange, and Bizarre
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The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten: Tales of the Supernatural, Strange, and Bizarre
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Overview
These are the authors and tales that inspired modern masters like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Nic Pizzolatto—edited and introduced by leading occult author and scholar Judika Illes. These powerfully evocative stories—some of which have been forgotten over the years, like buried treasure—will thrill and chill readers to the bone.
During the dark, eerie hours, when the wind is blowing and the ghosts are roaming outside, these tales can fill a night with pleasant terror—as well as encouraging our minds to venture beyond the mundane into the realm of the fantastic.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781633410398 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 04/17/2020 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 312 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
A native Chicagoan, Jody Lynn Nye is a New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty books and 165 short stories. As a part of Bill Fawcett & Associates (she is the ‘ & Associates’ ), she has helped to edit more than two hundred books, including forty anthologies, with a few under her own name. She and Bill are the authors of Conventional Wisdom, another in the Million Dollar Writing series for Wordfire Press. Her solo work tends toward the humorous side of SF and fantasy. Along with her individual writing, Jody has collaborated with several notable professionals in the field, including Anne McCaffrey, Robert Asprin, John Ringo, and Piers Anthony. She collaborated with Robert Asprin on a number of his famous Myth-Adventures series, and has continued both that and his Dragons Wild series since his death in 2008. Jody runs the two-day intensive writers’ workshop at DragonCon, every Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, GA. She is also a judge for the Writers of the Future contest, the largest speculative fiction contest in the world. Jody lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, with her husband Bill Fawcett, a writer, game designer, military historian and book packager, and three feline overlords, Athena, Minx, and Marmalade. Check out her websites at www.jodylynnnye.com and mythadventures.net. She is on Facebook as Jody Lynn Nye and Twitter @JodyLynnNye.
M. R. James (1862–1936) is considered the father of the British ghost story. Before gaining fame as a fiction writer, James had a career as a respected scholar of the medieval period. With the release of his Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, James built a reputation in horror literature that has gone on to inspire greats such as H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Stephen King. James later became provost of Eton College from 1918 until his death in 1936. He is buried in Eton.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. Celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic for his wit, he is rumored to have informed a customs agent upon his arrival in America, “I have nothing to declare but my genius.” Wilde’s health and reputation were destroyed by his imprisonment for “gross indecency” in 1895, and he died in poverty a few years after his release. Today, his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, are recognized as masterpieces of English literature.
Robert W. Chambers (1865–1933) was an American author and painter best known for his short story collection The King in Yellow (1895). Born in Brooklyn, Chambers studied art in Paris and was a professional illustrator before he turned to writing. In addition to The King in Yellow, his supernatural tales include The Maker of Moons (1896) and The Mystery of Choice (1897). Later in his career, Chambers wrote bestselling romances and historical novels.
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was born in New England, a landscape that he turned into a stage of fiction. His stories inherited the tradition of gothic horror tales from authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, but Lovecraft set his own standards. His first stories appeared in Weird Tales, a pulp magazine. “The Call of Cthulhu” (1926), a short story about a monstrous deity that inhabits the Earth, is the base of the myths related to the Cthulhu Mythos, a genre of horror fiction launched by Lovecraft. In its world, populated by beings of other dimensions, the laws of humanity are worthless. But man is incapable of understanding its insignificance in the face of the magnitude of the cosmos.
An international celebrity during his lifetime, Charles Dickens (1812–1870) is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His classic works include A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and A Tale of Two Cities, one of the bestselling novels of all time. When Dickens was twelve years old, his father was sent to debtors’ prison, and the boy was forced to work in a boot-blacking factory to support his family. The experience greatly shaped both his fiction and his tireless advocacy for children’s rights and social reform.
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was an Irish poet, playwright, and author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923. Yeats published his first works in the mid-1880s while still a student; however, his most famous works, such as The Tower and Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems, were not published until after he received the Nobel. He teamed up with Lady Gregory to develop plays in Ireland and soon founded the Irish National Theatre Society. He has since inspired poets and playwrights around the world.
Arthur Machen (1863–1947) was a Welsh author and actor best known for his fantasy and horror fiction. He grew up with intentions of becoming a doctor, but followed a boyhood passion of the supernatural and occult and started to write. In 1890, Machen began publishing short stories in literary magazines. Four years later, he released his breakthrough work, The Great God Pan. Decried upon initial publication for its depictions of sex and violence, the tale has since become a horror classic and has been hailed as “maybe the best [horror story] in the English language” by Stephen King. Machen continued to publish supernatural novels but spent time as actor in a traveling player company after his wife’s death. His literary career revived once more with the publication of his works The House of Souls and The Hill of Dreams. During World War I, Machen became a full-time journalist. Though he rallied for republications of his works, Machen’s literary career ultimately diminished, and he lived much of his life in poor finances.
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE (1869–1951), was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist, and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, “His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer’s except Dunsany’s” and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) “may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century.”
Lord Dunsany (1878–1957), born Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, was the eighteenth Baron of Dunsany as well as a writer and dramatist. Most notably known for his fantasy writing, Dunsany published over sixty works, including short stories, poetry, plays, novels, and essays. He became a prominent figure in the Irish Literary Revival in the early twentieth century, during which he worked with fellow writer W. B. Yeats. Dunsany is best known for his collections Fifty-One Tales and The Gods of Pegana, as well as his novel The King of Elfland’s Daughter, each of which continues to influence fantasy writers today. Dunsany died from appendicitis at the age of seventy-nine.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was an American author and poet who profoundly influenced the mystery, horror, and science fiction genres. A master of the short story, Poe wrote many classic tales, including “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Masque of the Red Death.” His other enduring works include the poem “The Raven” and his only completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
Read an Excerpt
The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten
Tales of the Supernatutal, Strange, and Bizarre
By Judika Illes
Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
Copyright © 2016 Judika IllesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63341-039-8
CHAPTER 1
DRACULA'S GUEST
Bram Stoker
Abraham "Bram" Stoker (1847–1912) has earned worldwide renown as the author of Dracula, the pivotally influential 1897 novel. Dracula is not the earliest English-language vampire tale to be published: Varney the Vampire, or the Feast of Blood appeared in book form in the year of Stoker's birth, having first been serialized in penny dreadfuls two years earlier. It was Dracula, however, that would define the literary vampire genre, transforming the loathsome vampire of Central and Eastern European folklore into a suave and charismatic bloodsucker.
During his lifetime, Stoker was best known as the personal assistant of the great actor Henry Irving and the business manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre. Stoker ran in the same circles as the artist Pamela Colman Smith, now most famous for illustrating the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck. She also did illustrations for Stoker, including those for his 1911 horror novel, The Lair of the White Worm, published by William Rider and Son. Stoker's friends included his fellow Irishmen, William Butler Yeats and Oscar Wilde. All three are represented by stories in The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten.
"Dracula's Guest" was first published in 1914, two years after Stoker's death, in the book Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories. The unnamed narrator is generally assumed to be Jonathan Harker, on his way to see the Count. In the preface to the original edition, Florence, Stoker's widow, wrote: "To his original list of stories in this book, I have added an hitherto unpublished episode from Dracula. It was originally excised owing to the length of the book, and may prove of interest to the many readers of what is considered my husband's most remarkable work." That said, "Dracula's Guest" stands alone as an excellent tale of mystical suspense. It is not necessary to have read Stoker's novel nor have seen any of the over two hundred films inspired by it to enjoy it.
Dracula's Guest
When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about to depart, Herr Delbrück (the maître d'hôtel of the Quatre Saisons, where I was staying) came down, bareheaded, to the carriage and, after wishing me a pleasant drive, said to the coachman, still holding his hand on the handle of the carriage door: 'Remember you are back by nightfall. The sky looks bright but there is a shiver in the north wind that says there may be a sudden storm. But I am sure you will not be late.' Here he smiled, and added, 'for you know what night it is.'
Johann answered with an emphatic, 'Ja, mein Herr,' and, touching his hat, drove off quickly. When we had cleared the town, I said, after signalling to him to stop: 'Tell me, Johann, what is tonight?'
He crossed himself, as he answered laconically: 'Walpurgis nacht.' then he took out his watch, a great, old-fashioned German silver thing as big as a turnip, and looked at it, with his eyebrows gathered together and a little impatient shrug of his shoulders. I realised that this was his way of respectfully protesting against the unnecessary delay, and sank back in the carriage, merely motioning him to proceed. He started off rapidly, as if to make up for lost time. Every now and then the horses seemed to throw up their heads and sniffed the air suspiciously. On such occasions I often looked round in alarm. The road was pretty bleak, for we were traversing a sort of high, wind-swept plateau. As we drove, I saw a road that looked but little used, and which seemed to dip through a little, winding valley. It looked so inviting that, even at the risk of offending him, I called Johann to stop — and when he had pulled up, I told him I would like to drive down that road. He made all sorts of excuses, and frequently crossed himself as he spoke. This somewhat piqued my curiosity, so I asked him various questions. He answered fencingly, and repeatedly looked at his watch in protest. Finally I said:
'Well, Johann, I want to go down this road. I shall not ask you to come unless you like; but tell me why you do not like to go, that is all I ask.' For answer he seemed to throw himself off the box, so quickly did he reach the ground. Then he stretched out his hands appealingly to me, and implored me not to go. There was just enough of English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his talk. He seemed always just about to tell me something — the very idea of which evidently frightened him; but each time he pulled himself up, saying, as he crossed himself: 'Walpurgis-Nacht!'
I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when I did not know his language. The advantage certainly rested with him, for although he began to speak in English, of a very crude and broken kind, he always got excited and broke into his native tongue — and every time he did so, he looked at his watch. Then the horses became restless and sniffed the air. At this he grew very pale, and, looking around in a frightened way, he suddenly jumped forward, took them by the bridles and led them on some twenty feet. I followed, and asked why he had done this. For answer he crossed himself, pointed to the spot we had left and drew his carriage in the direction of the other road, indicating a cross, and said, first in German, then in English: 'Buried him — him what killed themselves.'
I remembered the old custom of burying suicides at cross-roads: 'Ah! I see, a suicide. How interesting!' but for the life of me I could not make out why the horses were frightened.
Whilst we were talking, we heard a sort of sound between a yelp and a bark. It was far away; but the horses got very restless, and it took Johann all his time to quiet them. He was pale, and said, 'It sounds like a wolf — but yet there are no wolves here now.'
'No?' I said, questioning him; 'isn't it long since the wolves were so near the city?'
'Long, long,' he answered, 'in the spring and summer; but with the snow the wolves have been here not so long.'
Whilst he was petting the horses and trying to quiet them, dark clouds drifted rapidly across the sky. The sunshine passed away, and a breath of cold wind seemed to drift past us. It was only a breath, however, and more in the nature of a warning than a fact, for the sun came out brightly again. Johann looked under his lifted hand at the horizon and said: 'The storm of snow, he comes before long time.' Then he looked at his watch again, and, straightway holding his reins firmly — for the horses were still pawing the ground restlessly and shaking their heads — he climbed to his box as though the time had come for proceeding on our journey.
I felt a little obstinate and did not at once get into the carriage.
'Tell me,' I said, 'about this place where the road leads,' and I pointed down.
Again he crossed himself and mumbled a prayer, before he answered, 'It is unholy.'
'What is unholy?' I enquired.
'The village.'
'Then there is a village?'
'No, no. No one lives there hundreds of years.' My curiosity was piqued, 'But you said there was a village.'
'There was.'
'Where is it now?'
Whereupon he burst out into a long story in German and English, so mixed up that I could not quite understand exactly what he said, but roughly I gathered that long ago, hundreds of years, men had died there and been buried in their graves; and sounds were heard under the clay, and when the graves were opened, men and women were found rosy with life, and their mouths red with blood. And so, in haste to save their lives (aye, and their souls! — and here he crossed himself) those who were left fled away to other places, where the living lived, and the dead were dead and not — not something. He was evidently afraid to speak the last words. As he proceeded with his narration, he grew more and more excited. It seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him, and he ended in a perfect paroxysm of fear — white-faced, perspiring, trembling and looking round him, as if expecting that some dreadful presence would manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the open plain. Finally, in an agony of desperation, he cried:
'Walpurgis nacht!' and pointed to the carriage for me to get in. All my English blood rose at this, and, standing back, I said:
'You are afraid, Johann — you are afraid. Go home; I shall return alone; the walk will do me good.' The carriage door was open. I took from the seat my oak walking-stick — which I always carry on my holiday excursions — and closed the door, pointing back to Munich, and said, 'Go home, Johann — Walpurgis-nacht doesn't concern Englishmen.'
The horses were now more restive than ever, and Johann was trying to hold them in, while excitedly imploring me not to do anything so foolish. I pitied the poor fellow, he was deeply in earnest; but all the same I could not help laughing. His English was quite gone now. In his anxiety he had forgotten that his only means of making me understand was to talk my language, so he jabbered away in his native German. It began to be a little tedious. After giving the direction, 'Home!' I turned to go down the cross-road into the valley.
With a despairing gesture, Johann turned his horses towards Munich. I leaned on my stick and looked after him. He went slowly along the road for a while: then there came over the crest of the hill a man tall and thin. I could see so much in the distance. When he drew near the horses, they began to jump and kick about, then to scream with terror. Johann could not hold them in; they bolted down the road, running away madly. I watched them out of sight, then looked for the stranger, but I found that he, too, was gone.
With a light heart I turned down the side road through the deepening valley to which Johann had objected. There was not the slightest reason, that I could see, for his objection; and I daresay I tramped for a couple of hours without thinking of time or distance, and certainly without seeing a person or a house. So far as the place was concerned, it was desolation, itself. But I did not notice this particularly till, on turning a bend in the road, I came upon a scattered fringe of wood; then I recognised that I had been impressed unconsciously by the desolation of the region through which I had passed.
I sat down to rest myself, and began to look around. It struck me that it was considerably colder than it had been at the commencement of my walk — a sort of sighing sound seemed to be around me, with, now and then, high overhead, a sort of muffled roar. Looking upwards I noticed that great thick clouds were drifting rapidly across the sky from North to South at a great height. There were signs of coming storm in some lofty stratum of the air. I was a little chilly, and, thinking that it was the sitting still after the exercise of walking, I resumed my journey.
The ground I passed over was now much more picturesque. There were no striking objects that the eye might single out; but in all there was a charm of beauty. I took little heed of time and it was only when the deepening twilight forced itself upon me that I began to think of how I should find my way home. The brightness of the day had gone. The air was cold, and the drifting of clouds high overhead was more marked. They were accompanied by a sort of far-away rushing sound, through which seemed to come at intervals that mysterious cry which the driver had said came from a wolf. For a while I hesitated. I had said I would see the deserted village, so on I went, and presently came on a wide stretch of open country, shut in by hills all around. Their sides were covered with trees which spread down to the plain, dotting, in clumps, the gentler slopes and hollows which showed here and there. I followed with my eye the winding of the road, and saw that it curved close to one of the densest of these clumps and was lost behind it.
As I looked there came a cold shiver in the air, and the snow began to fall. I thought of the miles and miles of bleak country I had passed, and then hurried on to seek the shelter of the wood in front. Darker and darker grew the sky, and faster and heavier fell the snow, till the earth before and around me was a glistening white carpet the further edge of which was lost in misty vagueness. The road was here but crude, and when on the level its boundaries were not so marked, as when it passed through the cuttings; and in a little while I found that I must have strayed from it, for I missed underfoot the hard surface, and my feet sank deeper in the grass and moss. Then the wind grew stronger and blew with ever increasing force, till I was fain to run before it. The air became icy-cold, and in spite of my exercise I began to suffer. The snow was now falling so thickly and whirling around me in such rapid eddies that I could hardly keep my eyes open. Every now and then the heavens were torn asunder by vivid lightning, and in the flashes I could see ahead of me a great mass of trees, chiefly yew and cypress all heavily coated with snow.
I was soon amongst the shelter of the trees, and there, in comparative silence, I could hear the rush of the wind high overhead. Presently the blackness of the storm had become merged in the darkness of the night. By-and-by the storm seemed to be passing away: it now only came in fierce puffs or blasts. At such moments the weird sound of the wolf appeared to be echoed by many similar sounds around me.
Now and again, through the black mass of drifting cloud, came a straggling ray of moonlight, which lit up the expanse, and showed me that I was at the edge of a dense mass of cypress and yew trees. As the snow had ceased to fall, I walked out from the shelter and began to investigate more closely. It appeared to me that, amongst so many old foundations as I had passed, there might be still standing a house in which, though in ruins, I could find some sort of shelter for a while. As I skirted the edge of the copse, I found that a low wall encircled it, and following this I presently found an opening. Here the cypresses formed an alley leading up to a square mass of some kind of building. Just as I caught sight of this, however, the drifting clouds obscured the moon, and I passed up the path in darkness. The wind must have grown colder, for I felt myself shiver as I walked; but there was hope of shelter, and I groped my way blindly on.
I stopped, for there was a sudden stillness. The storm had passed; and, perhaps in sympathy with nature's silence, my heart seemed to cease to beat. But this was only momentarily; for suddenly the moonlight broke through the clouds, showing me that I was in a graveyard, and that the square object before me was a great massive tomb of marble, as white as the snow that lay on and all around it. With the moonlight there came a fierce sigh of the storm, which appeared to resume its course with a long, low howl, as of many dogs or wolves. I was awed and shocked, and felt the cold perceptibly grow upon me till it seemed to grip me by the heart. Then while the flood of moonlight still fell on the marble tomb, the storm gave further evidence of renewing, as though it was returning on its track. Impelled by some sort of fascination, I approached the sepulchre to see what it was, and why such a thing stood alone in such a place. I walked around it, and read, over the Doric door, in German:
COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ IN STYRIA SOUGHT AND FOUND DEATH 1801
On the top of the tomb, seemingly driven through the solid marble — for the structure was composed of a few vast blocks of stone — was a great iron spike or stake. On going to the back I saw, graven in great Russian letters:
'The dead travel fast.'
There was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it gave me a turn and made me feel quite faint. I began to wish, for the first time, that I had taken Johann's advice. Here a thought struck me, which came under almost mysterious circumstances and with a terrible shock. This was Walpurgis Night!
Walpurgis Night, when, according to the belief of millions of people, the devil was abroad — when the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel. This very place the driver had specially shunned. This was the depopulated village of centuries ago. This was where the suicide lay; and this was the place where I was alone — unmanned, shivering with cold in a shroud of snow with a wild storm gathering again upon me! It took all my philosophy, all the religion I had been taught, all my courage, not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.
And now a perfect tornado burst upon me. The ground shook as though thousands of horses thundered across it; and this time the storm bore on its icy wings, not snow, but great hailstones which drove with such violence that they might have come from the thongs of Balearic slingers — hailstones that beat down leaf and branch and made the shelter of the cypresses of no more avail than though their stems were standing-corn. At the first I had rushed to the nearest tree; but I was soon fain to leave it and seek the only spot that seemed to afford refuge, the deep Doric doorway of the marble tomb. There, crouching against the massive bronze door, I gained a certain amount of protection from the beating of the hailstones, for now they only drove against me as they ricocheted from the ground and the side of the marble.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Weiser Book of the Fantastic and Forgotten by Judika Illes. Copyright © 2016 Judika Illes. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction, by JUDIKA ILLES,The Stories,
Dracula's Guest, by Bram Stoker,
A Water Witch, by H. D. everett,
The Ash Tree, by M. R. James,
The Canterville Ghost, by Oscar Wilde,
The Haunted Orchard, by Richard Le Gallienne,
The Yellow Sign, by Robert W. Chambers,
Dagon, by H. P. Lovecraft,
The Horror at Martin's Beach, by H. P. Lovecraft and Sonia H. Greene,
The Trial for Murder, by Charles Dickens,
The Twisting of the Rope, by W. B. Yeats,
The Inmost Light, by Arthur Machen,
Blood Lust, by Dion Fortune,
The Woman's Ghost Story, by Algernon Blackwood,
The Lady with the Carnations, by Marie Corelli,
The Guest, by Lord Dunsany,
The Oval Portrait, by Edgar Allan Poe,
The Spider, by Hanns Heinz Ewers,
The Monkey's PAW, by W. W. Jacobs,
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