Best Halloween Horror–Episode 2: DUNBAR, BLOCH, HARDY, YEATS, & Many More
I bent me down to hear his sigh;
I shook with his gurgling moan,
And I trembled sore when they rode away,
And left him here alone.
—Paul Laurence Dunbar (The Haunted Oak)
Category: HWA
Halloween Horror Episode 1: Collection
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
—H.P. Lovecraft (Nemesis)
FAIRY TALE HORROR: Thomas Swafford’s “Showing Gratitude”
“Writhing, fighting with all he had left, Josef gasped out his question under the weight of the werewolf, “What do you mean?”–Thomas Swafford (Showing Gratitude: It’s Always Good to Demonstrate Appreciation)
The Skull & Bones Collection: Thomas Swafford’s “Rubbed The Wrong Way”
“It was like something out of an apocalyptic movie. The only cars to be seen were parked. The streets were completely empty, not a person was in sight. “Has there been a disaster?” she said out loud.”—Thomas Swafford (Rubbed the Wrong Way: Put Some Thought Into Your Wish)
Nightmare Horror Tales: Clark Ashton Smith’s “From the Crypts of Memory”
“And one by one we died and were lost in the dust of accumulated time. We knew the years as a passing of shadows, and death itself as the yielding of twilight unto night.”—Clark Ashton Smith (From the Crypts of Memory)
The Most Horrific Ghost Tales: Ambrose Bierce’s ‘The Stranger’
“The man repeated the names slowly and distinctly, as if to fix them in the memories of his audience, every member of which was now attentively observing him, but with a slackened apprehension regarding his possible companions somewhere in the darkness that seemed to enclose us like a black wall; in the manner of this volunteer historian was no suggestion of an unfriendly purpose.”—Ambrose Bierce (The Stranger)
The Most Horrific Haunted House Novel: Jeffrey LeBlanc’s “Hell’s Forge” (PROLOGUE)
Long were the mansion’s mysteries, horrendous were its horrors, and vague were the details of the missing and presumed dead across the mansion grounds. For the past, and the forgetful dead had now hidden much of the sinister, and fogged the memory of the evil that had scorched the manor with a more devious name—Hell’s Forge. Jeffrey LeBlanc (Hell’s Forge)
The Most Horrific Ghost Tales: George Thomas Spillman’s ‘Retribution’
Mighty is the storm that rages in the sky; but it is as nothing to the storm that rages in the heart of the murderer. —George Thomas Spillman (Retribution)
Greatest Sea Horror Tales: Robert E. Howard’s “Restless Waters”
It’s Dick Hansen, calling to me through the wind and the night and the black waters! Alive or dead, I’m his till I die! —Robert E. Howard (Restless Waters)
Funeral Horror Tales: Ambrose Bierce’s “John Mortonson’s Funeral”
The surviving members of the family came severally every few minutes to the casket and wept above the placid features beneath the glass. This did them no good; it did no good to John Mortonson; but in the presence of death reason and philosophy are silent.–Ambrose Bierce (John Mortonson’s Funeral)
Bigfoot Poetic Tale: Jeffrey LeBlanc’s “The Shadow on the Mountain”
“Thunder shook the ground and thunder shook my heart,
But no storm cloud was above to make the heavens part
Then I saw the nightmarish monstrosity–a creature stride cross my path
Lumbering as an oak, creaking as the pines with two legs it hath.”
—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Shadow on the Mountain)
Johnny Depp Special Dedication: “The Devil of Black Bayou–Comedic Short”
“Where’s…the…blood?!
The music—especially that fiery jazz, the cries of laughter, and the aroma of cloves and cayenne kicking up spicy foods, have kept the blood flowing in New Orleans for hundreds of years. For hundreds of years, the blood—the Life, has flowed down the mighty Mississippi into the dark rues, and alleys of the Quarter. And…on more than one occasion, in the city that never sleeps, a fool or the foolhardy has perished.”—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Devil of Black Bayou (Comedic Short)
Jack the Ripper Science Fiction Horror: Robert Bloch’s “A Most Unusual Murder”
“My name would mean nothing to you. As for the shop, let us say that it exists spatially and temporally as I do—when and where necessary for my purposes.”—Robert Bloch (A Most Unusual Murder)
Witchcraft Horror: Clark Ashton Smith’s “Mother of Toads”
“There was a deep soft thundering in his ears, a rosy dazzlement in his eyes. Somehow the hut appeared to expand, to change luminously about him. He hardly recognized its squalid furnishings, its litter of baleful oddments, on which a torrid splendor was shed by the black candles, tipped with ruddy fire, that towered and swelled gigantically into the softgloom His blood burned as with the throbbing flame of the candles.”—Clark Ashton Smith (Mother of Toads)
Hospital Horror: Joseph Payne Brennan’s “Who Was He?”
“Well, when he hopped over the fence, the bag caught on the top strand of wire and fell back in the parking lot. I picked it up later and what do you suppose I found inside?’
“I have no idea” I told him. “Don’t keep me in suspense!”
“Dirt!” He answered. “Just plain dirt. Earth dirt.”—Joseph Payne Brennan (Who Was He?)
Jeffrey LeBlanc 