Ancient Horror. Many of the New Testament Christian Era writers used or alluded to the book of Enoch (c. 300 BCE). And horrific influence much apocalyptic language has seeped into horror fiction. In the early days of film, the Hayes commission forced movies to mete punishment to all villanous acts shown on the movie screen – thus villains never won. Not so in real life, sad to say.
There is something magical about ink on paper, and seemingly more so ancient ink on parchment or papyrus. It’s not just us, but in fact, in everyday life saintly folks rolled tiny pieces of favorite scripture or sayings into a silver tube – a phylactery - and wore it as a necklace, around their head, or elsewhere.
The Denzel Washington movie Fallen (1998) features a fictional form of Azazael, and in this trailer the demonic presence plays mind games with Washington.
Below are some horrific sentiments from 1 Enoch.
1 Enoch: Book of Watchers
IX.1. And then Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel looked down from heaven and saw much blood being shed upon the earth, and all lawlessness being wrought upon the earth. … 8. And they have gone to the daughters of men upon the earth, and have slept with the women, and have defiled themselves, and revealed to them all kinds of sins. 9. And the women have borne giants, and the whole earth has thereby been filled with blood and unrighteousness. X. 4. And again the Lord said to Raphael: Bind Azâzêl hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert, which is in Dûdâêl, and cast him therein. 5. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there for ever, and cover his face that he may not see light. 6. And on the day of the great judgement he shall be cast into the fire. … 8. And the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azâzêl: to him ascribe all sin. 9. And to Gabriel said the Lord: Proceed against the bastards and the reprobates … cause them to go forth: send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle …
S. T. Joshi and Larry L. Roberts have been hard at work on Arcane Wisdom’s new mythos series called MODERN MYTHOS LIBRARY.
The first two titles in this series have already been contracted and more will be announced soon.
This series is dedicated to publishing the best new “Mythos” novels, novellas and collections being written in the genre today.
Our first book in the series is THE CULT OF CTHULHU: A Novel of Lovecraftian Obsession by Rick Dakan. This title will be announced in the next few months. Below is the fantastic cover art by Alex McVey.
Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting new series.
Peter Haining in his Zombie (1985) [Traget Books] lists several antiquarian Zombie precursors, among them the third story The Country Of The Comers-Back by Lafcadio Hearn. This was actually an 1889 story that led to the pre-Hays code movie White Zombie (1932) [screenplay by Garnett Weston, prod. Edward Halperin, dir. Victor Halperin, with Bela Lugosi See clip below.] – but which was not based on the Vivian Meik short story White Zombie (1933).
In fact Lafcadio had submitted articles to Harper’s in 1888, notably A Midsummer Trip To The West Indies [p. 327 ff, August 1888, Vol. LXXVII, No. CCCCLIX]. Lafcadio’s prose is at once lucid yet lurid, and one must read it to appreciate it.
And the fer-de-lance reigns absolute king over the mountains and the ravines; he is lord of the forests and the solitudes by day, aud by night he extends his dominion over the public roads, the familiar paths, the parks, the pleasure resorts. People must remain at home after dark unless they dwell in the city itself … Even in the brightest noon you cannot venture to enter the woods unescorted; you cannot trust your eyes to detect danger; at any moment a seeming branch, a knot of lianas, a pink or gray root, a clump of pendent yellow fruit, may suddenly take life, writhe, swell, stretch, spring, strike. Then you will need aid indeed, and most quickly; for within the space of a few heart-beats the stricken flesh chills, tumefies, softens, changes color, spots violaceously, and an icy coldness crawls through all the blood. If the physician or the pauseur arrives in time, and no artery or vein has been directly pierced, there is hope; but the danger is not passed when the life has been saved. Necrosis of the tissues begins; the flesh corrupts, tatters, tumbles from the bone; and the colors of its putrefaction are frightful mockeries of the hues of vegetable death, of forest decomposition, the ghastly pinks and grays and yellows of rotting trunks and roots melting back into the thick fetid clay that gave them birth. You moulder as the trees moulder; you crumble and dissolve as dissolves the substance of the balatas and the palms and the acomats: the Deathof-the-Woods has seized upon you!“
… the creature who fears the monster least is the brave cat. Seeing a snake, she at once carries her kittens to a place of safety, then boldly advances to the encounter. She will walk to the very limit of the serpent’s striking range, and begin to feint, teasing him, startling him, trying to draw his blow. How the emerald and the topaziue eyes glow then!— they are flames. A moment more, and the triangular head, hissing from the coil, flashes swift as if moved by wings. But swifter still the strong stroke of the armed paw that smites the horror aside, flinging it, mangled and gasping, in the dust. Nevertheless, pussy does not yet dare to spring; the enemy, still active, has almost instantly reformed his coil; but she is again in front of him, watching—vertical pupil against vertical pupil. Again the lashing- stroke; again the beautiful countering; the living death is hurled aside, the scaled skin is deeply torn, one eyesocket has ceased to flame. Once more the stroke of the serpent; once more the light, quick, cutting blow. But now the trigonocephalus is blind, is stupefied; before he can attempt to coil, Pussy has leaped upon him, nailing the horrible flat head fast to the ground with her two sinewy paws. Now let him lash, writhe, twine, strive to strangle her!—in vain! he will never lift his head: an instant more, and he lies still; the fine white teeth of the cat have severed the vertebrae just behind the triangular skull.”
This is mere preparatory for the next article La Verette and the Carnival in St. Pierre, Martinique, [p. 737ff, October 188, Vol. LXXVII, No. CCCCLXI].
It is in this article the word “Zombi” appears.
Every year, on the last day of the carnival, a droll ceremony used to take place called the “Burial of the Bois-bois”—the Bois-bois being a dummy, a guy/caricaturing the most unpopular thing in city life or in politics. This bois-bois, after having been paraded with mock solemnity through all the ways of St. Pierre, was either interred or “drowned”—flung into the sea. And yesterday the dancing societies had announced their intention to bury a bois-bois laverette — a ‘manikin that was to represent the plague. But this bois-bois does not make its appearance. La Verette is too terrible a visitor to be made fun of, my friends: you will not laugh at her, because you dare not. {And later} … About midnight the return of the Devil and his following arouses me from sleep. All are chanting a new refrain. “The Devil and the Zombis sleep anywhere and everywhere. (Diabe epi Zombi ka ddmi tout-pdtout.) The voices of the boys are still clear, shrill, fresh—clear as a chant of frogs. They still clap hands with a precision of rhythm that is simply wonderful, making each time a sound almost exactly like the bursting of a heavy wave.
Devil: “Diabe epi Zombi.”
Chorus: “Diabe 6pi Zombi ka domi tout-patout!”
Demi: “Diabe epi Zombi.”
Chorus: “Diabe epi Zombi ka domi tout-patout.”
Devil: “Diabe epi Zombi,” etc.
But perhaps the most frightening of all is the dream Lafcadio records:
I have written Mimi’s last dream from the child’s dictation:
“I saw a ball,” she says. “I was dreaming: I saw everybody dancing with masks on; I was looking at them. And all at once I saw that the folks who were dancing were all made of pasteboard. And I saw a commandeur: he asked me what I was doing there. I answered him, ‘Why, I saw a ball, and I came to look —what of it?’ He answered me: ‘Since you are so curious to come and look at other folks’ business, you will have to stop here and dance too!’ I said to him, ‘No! I won’t dance with people made of pasteboard; I am afraid of them!’ And I ran and ran and ran, I was so much afraid. And I ran into a big garden where I saw a big cherry-tree that had only leaves upon it; and I saw a man sitting under the cherry-tree. He asked me, ‘What are you doing here?’ I said to him, ‘I am trying to find my way out.’ He said, ‘You must stay here.’ I said, ’ No, no!’ and I said, in order to be able to get away, ‘Go up there! you will see a fine ball: all pasteboard people dancing there, and a pasteboard commandeur commanding them!’ And then I got so frightened that I awoke.”
“And why were you so afraid of them, Mimi ?” I ask.
“Pace yo te toutt vide endedans” answers Mimi. (Because they were all hollow inside!)
Many know that weird tale writer Whitley Streiber has admitted that he was often abducted and terrorized by “others”, and has had implants forced into his body with multiple surgeries to remove them. Has the same thing happened to Sammy Hagar?
Sammy Hagar believes his mind was taken over by aliens years before he played with Van Halen or Montrose. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer claims extra-terrestrials tapped into his consciousness in the California foothills. “I know there’s something out there,” he explained, “and someday they’ll come.”
Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock states, “I was lying in bed one night … dreaming. I saw a ship and two creatures inside of this ship. I couldn’t see their faces. I just knew that there were two intelligent creatures, sitting up in a craft in the Lytle Creek forest area about twelve miles away in the foothills above Fontana. And they were connected to me, tapped into my mind through some kind of mysterious wireless connection.”
One of only 100 signed and numbered hardcover copies. Cover and interior illustrations by Matthew Jaffe.
With SOME UNKNOWN GULF OF NIGHT, Wilum Pugmire continues his aesthetic exploration of the prose-poem and vignette sequence, many of which may be found in his last collection, THE TANGLED MUSE. With this new title from Arcane Wisdom Press we have a book-length sequence of semi-interconnected pieces, all of which are inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s superb sonnet sequence, FUNGI FROM YUGGOTH. Each numbered segment is an imaginative response to that numbered sonnet in Lovecraft’s sequence, and Pugmire’s Lovecraftian influence is the main force that drives this present work; yet other influences burrow from his fevered brain – Oscar Wilde, Edgar A. Poe, Baudelaire and the Decadents. Like some freakish soul who has lost his place in modern time, Pugmire’s style is like that from another era, and yet it too is tainted by his neoteric experience as a punk rock queen and street transvestite. Like his literary heroes such as H. P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti and Henry James, Pugmire strives to create what he does not hesitate to call “literary art” – prose pieces that are beautifully poetic and imaginatively deranged. This perverse concoction is best when sipped slowly, occasionally, and this is not a book to rush through in one sitting. Let it plant its poisoned fungi gradually upon your innocent brain, and thus blemish forever your paltry soul.
Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire began to write fiction while serving as a Mormon missionary in Omagh, Northern Ireland, under the inspiration of his friend and correspondent, Robert Bloch. When, upon returning to the States, he discovered Arkham House and the fiction and Selected Letters of H. P. Lovecraft, he became an obsessed Lovecraftian determined to join the ranks of modern Mythos writers, and to that end he has devoted himself as an author. After a brief stint as a male whore, he discovered punk rock, which saved his soul and gave him a new fictive voice. Thus his works are a conjoining of traditional Lovecraftian horror with up-ye-arse Decadence. His books include SESQUA VALLEY & OTHER HAUNTS, THE TANGLED MUSE, and, forthcoming, THE STRANGE DARK ONE—TALES OF NYARLATHOTEP. His next book will be a collection of mostly non-Lovecraftian prose-poems and vignettes, UNCOMMON PLACES, to be published at the death of this year by Hippocampus Press.
Wilum Pugmire discussing SOME UNKNOWN GULF OF NIGHT
First noticed and befriended by H. P. Lovecraft as a teenager, Robert Bloch quickly became a prolific writer. In those early days, fantasy novels were important but usually low volume sellers. Magazine articles were usually the bread and butter of supporting oneself as a writer, and Bloch proceeded to publish horror, scientifiction, crime fiction, and any other number of fantasy stories. Horror fiction tended to rank one of the lower forms of revenue for writers, but it was Bloch’s passion. Subtle humor was also Bloch’s trade mark frequently putting in odd punch lines, and over-the-top slap-stick in otherwise grim of serious fiction. A trademark character – Lefty Freep - was a frequent venting of this silly streak.
Bloch put quite a bit of time into radio work, and by 1943, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” had been published, and was subsequently adapted for radio twice giving him a wider recognition. This was enough to get him noticed for a collection. In 1945, Bloch published his first two collections of short stories: “Sea Kissed,” a slim collection of tales with Henry Kuttner saw print only in Great Britain. It was Derleth who came through for Bloch with “The Opener of the Way,” published by Arkham House in the U.S. No doubt there was not much money made by anyone on this, but it circulated and gave some needed promotion for Bloch.
1947 saw the publication of Bloch’s first novel, “The Scarf,” an examination of the mind of a psychopath with a penchant for murdering women. The progressive plot caused the fictional protagonist to select models and then become compelled to murder them with a scarf.
Bloch continued to churn out copious stories for various publications, and for a number of media – radio and Hollywood. Then in 1959, he hit upon an enhanced crime drama about a real life event, “Psycho”. Thats story is likely well known by most readers. However, Hitchcock’s obsession with creating a masterpiece nearly crushed the man who wrote it, and Bloch became quite embittered in the fall out as his novel nearly vanished to be trumped by the movie.
However, Derleth reached out and together a new assemblage of critically acclaimed stories were printed in “Pleasant Dreams – Nightmares” (1960). [Pleasant Dreams: Nightmares, 1960, Octavo, $4.00 cover, by Arkham House - but seen later discounted to $3.59 (* Forgotten Fantasy: Issue #4, April 1971, Douglas Menville, Robert Reginald) Black cloth binding, gold lettering, with dust cover]. Note that the book could not have been published any earlier as it contained his “Hellbound Train” after its first publication in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1958. It was much later picked up by London: Whiting & Wheaton, 1967 as Pleasant Dreams and Nightmares. More on the Jove edition, below.
Almost immediately, Belmont Books took Derleth’s conglomerate and spun it into two cheap paperbacks, the first arriving in mass production in 1961 as “Nightmares”. The next year, the other half of the anthology was released by Belmont as More Nightmares. Hopefully Bloch couped revenue from the mass seller paperbacks, and got revenge as he rode the coattails of Hitchcock’s movie despite the director’s intents.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich created their Jove paperbacks, and republished Pleasant Dreams with alterations in the early 1970′s.
The contents of the Arkham House edition of “Pleasant Dreams – Nightmares” are different from the contents of the Jove/HBJ edition.
Arkham House edition:
Sweets to the Sweet
The Dream-Makers
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
I Kiss Your Shadow
(A) Mr. Steinway
The Proper Spirit
(A) Catnip
The Cheaters
Hungarian Rhapsody
The Light-House
Sleeping Beauty (originally The Sleeping Redheads)
Sweet Sixteen (originally Spawn of the Dark One)
(A) That Hell-Bound Train
(A) Enoch
(A) The Hungry HouseJove/HBJ edition:
Sweets to the Sweet
The Dream-Makers
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
I Kiss Your Shadow
[Mr Steinway omitted]
The Proper Spirit
[Catnip omitted]
The Cheaters
Hungarian Rhapsody
The Light-House
(added for Jove) The Hungry House
Sleeping Beauty
Sweet Sixteen
[That Hellbound Train omitted]
[Enoch omitted]
[The Hungry House omitted]
(added for Jove) The Mandarin’s Canaries
(added for Jove)Return to the Sabbath
(added for Jove) One Way to Mars
There are two kinds of book lovers and they are as different as night and day, polar opposite as north and south. If you were to mix them in a bowl they would separate like oil and water.
On the one side we have what I would call the consumer booklovers, they are the carnivores in the book jungle. They gather for no other reason than to consume. They don’t care what edition they purchase, whether it’s a hardback or paperback, if it’s a first edition or the 100th printing. All they require to fill their book loving bellies is a copy, any copy. You will often see these folks using their paperback for a drink coaster when not being read, or bending over the pages to mark their spot. They will feel no remorse and no tick of pain when they pull back the hardcover boards until they snap and crack like an old man’s muscles doing his morning stretch. To these booklovers books are meant to be devoured, in whole and in parts if necessary. They will leave their books in cars, in an inflatable raft floating in the pool, or even as a doorstop.
I once remember seeing a women reading on a park bench who was tearing each page out of the book after finishing it. When I asked her why she was tearing out the pages her reply was simply, “I don’t have a bookmark”.
Now don’t get me wrong these aren’t bad folks, many of these people are our neighbors, our family and our friends. They see books as entertainment or educational and nothing more. Once the volumes have been read, and the entertainment or knowledge absorbed, there is little use for them; their purpose has been served.
On the opposite end of the spectrum we have the collector who sees books as all the things the consumer booklover sees but also sees them as works of art. To these bibliophiles books are a storehouse of knowledge and memories, they are history, and in some way, even before they open the cover, something to be admired for more than mere words. They want the closest thing that they can find to the author who created the work and in most cases that is the true first edition. For them, the true value lies with the first impression of the book produced for the public.
The collector booklover believes that books have an aesthetic quality not only to the eyes but also to the touch that, not unlike the lover of paintings, the collector feels merely from being in the presence of a great book. The experience enhances their quality of life.
These collectors tend to care for their books like they would anything else of value, with care and diligence. The books in the collector’s library are often seen as extensions of their heritage, beliefs, interests and passions. They are a reflection of themselves. A time capsule of sorts showing where they’ve been, what they’ve experienced what they believe and how they’ve come to those beliefs.
Now it’s not to hard to understand why then, to a collector, the condition of a book is so important, because quite simply it is a symbol of what they’ve come to treasure in life. To break it down to its core, the collector has moved from just hunter to the hunter and gatherer. The collectors want to ensure that they can enjoy the feast of reading the books in their collection more than once and even seeing those volumes on the shelf brings back the reminder of the pleasure had upon its first reading.
The purpose of the small press horror collector is a significant one. These written works will one day be seen as treasures by the masses rather than the few. And we, as collectors, are simply the caretakers of these treasures.
For example, society is just now starting to see the real influence that H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction had on American literature, film and art, a half century after his death. August Derleth’s passion for this genre took shape when he published some of the best dark fantasy in the world, with his Arkham House imprint. Yet even as the rest of the world is starting to realize the importance of “Weird Fiction” its influence has yet to be fully recognized.
I believe that the small press horror collector’s role in our world history will prove to be a significant one. We line our walls from floor to ceiling with these dark works of fiction because they teach us about the significance of life, its frailty and the ease with which it can be taken away. They afford us the opportunity to look at life as something very precious and worthy of our reverence. Without the collectors, most books would likely only be collected as rubbish by our local sanitation department and buried with yesterday’s dinner. Without these libraries we would likely lose some of our folklore, mores and folkways that are now written in between the pages of today’s small press horror literature. I believe that the importance of this genre hasn’t yet realized its influence on our “life ways,” but will, in retrospect, prove to be the reflection of the dark side of our nature through no less than five wars, concentration camps, occult suicides and school yard playground rampages to mention only a few. These works reflect our history and our lives over the past few centuries. Our genre reflects the darkness of our past and shines a light of promise and interpretation upon its future.
The next new horror event will most likely come from a new way of looking at things by a young writer desperate to be heard by an audience. There are numerous writers in independent horror with raw talent yearning to terrify us. All they need is encouragement and a chance. Here are a few examples from history of people who were once unknown, and subsequently terrified their generation – and beyond – with their stories.
Edgar Allan Poe. From out of nowhere, Poe smashed gothic conventions and created a new kind of supernatural horror.
H P Lovecraft. As a response to a request from an acquaintance, Lovecraft created Dagon which set him on a lifelong crusade to turn horror cosmic.
William Blatty. Mostly known as an assistant to Blake Edwards, he took a little known real life incident and created the Exorcist. It altered our thoughts about religion and the supernatural.
Robert Bloch. After writing hundreds of mostly unnoticed stories, Bloch saw a news article on a serial killer and reimagined it as Psycho.
Jeff Rice. Hammering away at a novel in the pre-Watergate era, Rice created a character almost as supernal as Sherlock Holmes: Karl Kolchak.
Mary Shelley. On a bet, she and Dr. Polidari were dared by Lord Byron to come up with a tale that would scare him. Polidari did sort of an OK vampire story, but – oh my – did she ever come up with a doozie.
Dante. Embroiled in local politics, the Florence child of fortune created a horrific satire that still stuns us in its elegance and drama. A lot of our images of Hell come from his work.
Robert Howard. Sitting at home in Texas, Howard wanted to be an adventurer. Instead, he wrote stories that even took the breath away from Clark Smith and Howard Lovecraft.
John Carpenter. Longing to make a movie in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Carpenter became a film student, entered the lower echelons of Hollywood, and with a $300,000 budget came up with a simple story plot involving horrific doings on Halloween. Movies were never the same afterwards.
Folk lore of olden days is now known as urban legends. Mostly this is of the odd type such as the ghostly hitchhiker chick who leaves a sweater behind, and when the hapless lad tried to relocate this hot girl, he finds she has been dead for years. Or maybe the hook, who enjoys attacking couples who are making out.
Sometimes these stories are more creative. The Hanged Man of Oz has been used in horror stories for a few decades. It’s said that in the video of Wizard of Oz (1939) in the background at the Tin Woodsman’s cabin, a stage hand hung himself and filming caught an unnoticed glimpse of this. DVD has effectively killed this illusion, as it is just a blur that some thought was a hanged man.
The odd scene of Oz - a blur? A hanging man?
Perhaps the most enduring legend is that the Eagles’ Hotel California song was a tribute to Anton LaVey. The legend goes that there are three elements to this, that the Hotel was LaVey’s sacred hangout, that “stabbing the beast with a steely knife” was a satanic ritual, and that on the cover, LaVey is peeking out of a window.
The band remains furious that their esoteric lyrics are thus interpreted, and that the song is a simple rendition of the extravagance of Los Angeles. The image on the cover was a staff member, “steely” was a reference to the band Steely Dan, and they disavow wholeheartedly any reference to LaVey.
Yet these and many other urban legends continue to haunt the pages of horror novels.
