Tonight, we bring back that master of horror and suspense, Robert Albert Bloch. Too many great horror writers owe this immortal their careers. More importantly for this writer, he’s a from-the-grave mentor.

Bloch was a fiction writer with a diverse array of stories in crime, horror, fantasy and science fiction. He is best known as the writer of “Psycho” that led to Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, many great tales on Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery”, Weird Tales, Strange Stories, and others. Our personal favorite is the Hammer horror film classic, “The House That Dripped Blood”.

Horror and comedy were his trademark. Robert Bloch’s fondness for humor in horror was evident in puns. It could be seen in the titles of his story collections such as “Tales in a Jugular Vein”, “Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of” and “Out of the Mouths of Graves”.

And of course, there’s the classic Bloch favorite line that tickles our funny bone, “I have the heart of a child. I keep it in a jar on my shelf.”

There are hundreds of Bloch short stories and over 30 novels.

Robert Bloch was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle. He corresponded often with H.P. Lovecraft and then began his professional writing career after high school graduation at the age of 17. He was a protege of H. P. Lovecraft who was the first to seriously encourage Bloch’s talent.

Robert Bloch won numerous awards in writing.  He won The Hugo Award (“That Hell-Bound Train”), The Bram Stoker Award, and The World Fantasy Award. Bloch served a term as president of The Mystery Writers of America (1970). He was a member of The Mystery Writers of America, Science Fiction Writers of America, The Writers Guild of America, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Most notably, the one society he probably still is an undead member of is–The Count Dracula Society.

Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunancies is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories written by Robert Bloch. The original short story, Flowers from the Moon, appeared in the 1939 magazine Strange Stories under Bloch’s pen name Tarleton Fiske. The subsequent collection appeared in Flowers from the Moon and Other Lunancies. It was published by Arkham House and released in 1998. This was the author’s third book.

Tonight, as the moon casts a ghostly glow, we present the title story from the collection.  Astronaut Edna Jackson and her father return from the moon. They bring home a few flowers…and possibly something more.

What could be the harm in a few flowers from the moon? Will their scent cause YOU…to howl at the moon?