Herbert Van Thal – Pan Horror 8

Herbert Van Thal (ed.) – The Eighth Pan Book Of Horror Stories ed. Herbert Van Thal (Pan, 1967)

Raymond Williams – The Assassin
John D. Keefauver – The Most Precious
W. Baker-Evans – The Children
Ray Bradbury – The Illustrated Man
A.G. J Rough – Playtime
Maurice Sandoz – The Tsantsa
Dorothy K. Haynes – The Bean-Nighe
Raymond Harvey – The Tunnel
Bruce Lowery – The Growth
Frank Quinton – Lover’s Leap
Basil Copper – The Janissaries of Emilion
Raymond Williams – The Coffin Makers
Gerald Kersh – Sad Road to the Sea
Dulcie Gray – The Brindle Bull Terrier
AGJ Rough – Sugar and Spice
Rene Morris – The Computer
Martin Waddell – Suddenly – After a Good Supper
Walter Winward – The Benefactor
Charles Braunstone – Suitable Applicant
Priscilla Marron – My Dear How Dead You Look and Yet How Sweetly You Sing
See Also the Vault Of Evil Pan Horror 8 thread

Herbert Van Thal – Pan Horror 11

Herbert Van Thal (ed.) – The 11th Pan Book Of Horror Stories

David Case – The Cell
Bryan Lewis – A Question of Fear
Harry Turner – Hell’s Bells
Bryan Lewis – The Lift
Gerald Atkins – The Midnight Lover
Barry Martin – Case of Insanity
Robert Duncan – The Market-Gardeners
James Wade – Snow in the City
Stephen Grendon – Mrs Manifold
Barbara Benzinger – Dear Jeffy
Simon Jay – Spider Woman
Charles Birkin – Au Clair De Lune
Christine Trollope – Oysters
Nigel Kneale – Minuke
Barry Martin – The Easiest Thing in the World
Dulcie Gray – The Babysitter
Brian Middleton – Hand in Hand
Norman P Kaufman – Getting Rid
David A. Riley – The Lurkers in the Abyss
Martin Waddell – Fried Man
Gerald Atkins – The Scientist

David Case – The Cell: For one night every month the narrator locks himself away in the padded cell he’s had built in the basement. He’s a werewolf or at least, that’s what he’s desperately trying to convince anybody who finds his diary and, most of all, himself. How could such an upstanding citizen inspire banner headlines of the Sex Fiend Murder or Mangled Corpse In Lovers Lane variety? It’s preposterous! He even considers suing for libel …

Helen, the long-suffering wife he half patronises to death, entertains his bizarre behaviour out of fear but when she realises that he’s most likely the man the police are after, her curiosity gets the better of her: what happens to him when he’s in the cell ….?

If you can imagine The Beast In The Cellar as told from the point of view of the pathetic “monster” with maybe a dash of Carry on Psycho thrown in, then you’ve maybe some idea of what Case’s minor masterpiece of gallows humour is like. That it works has everything to do with Case’s deadpan delivery and his economic prose really suits – it makes a sixty pager read like twenty. As with Minuke, The Lurkers At The Abyss, Mrs. Manifold and probably even Case Of Insanity, it’s deserving of better company than it’s made to keep in this collection.

Brian Middleton – Hand In Hand: A huge warehouseman, friendless because his colleagues find his girth too imposing, is picked up by a pretty “filmstar-ish” girl in a coffee shop after his usual Saturday night alone at the cinema. As they walk in silence through the park, he takes her hand and gives it a friendly squeeze … This one doesn’t really warrant a spoiler warning because you’ve guessed what will happen long before it does.

Martin Waddell – Fried Man: More slapstick horror as old Bunting has the inspired misfortune to fall in the deep fryer during a ciggie raid on the Valentia Supper Saloon. The corpses pile up as the gang try to dispose of the body. Everybody frets about exposure in The News Of The World.

Barry Martin – Case Of Insanity: The narrator’s wife, Clara, is always on at him for not providing her with a child when Margaret and Tom down the road already have two! “You bloody ponce! … If you can’t do right by me why don’t you go out and get yourself some pretty, sweet queer to have your sex with? It would suit you down to the ground”. Doesn’t she know she’s in a Barry Martin story? Narrator duly hacks her to pieces and stuffs her in a suitcase before an inopportune car accident settles his hash. Probably the best of Martin’s Psycho rip-offs.

Gerald Atkins – The Midnight Lover: First person account of an insatiable mortuary groupie. I can’t make this out: he’s obviously not doing it for sex (“I have never actually had intercourse with any of them …”) so it isn’t the necrophilia story I wrongly remembered it as and what’s this stuff about people trying to stop him using “primitive means”? A stake perhaps?

Harry Turner – Hell’s Bells: As FM mentioned, this one is festooned with pop culture references. British Rail, Tesco’s, W. H. Smiths, Readers Digest, a camp Devil who says “Ducky” etc. Quite sobering to learn that as early as 1970 Tony Blackburn was already a standing joke. Personally, I always had Hell down as attending a Christopher Lee signing in a Dracula AD 1972 shirt while a Chas N’ Dave album loops for all eternity ….

Bryan Lewis – The Lift: Leonard Norton has some kind of hallucination in which he’s visited by the ghost of his dead son, a suicide. Norton ruined the boy’s life and now he wants his pound of flesh – in short, he wants the old man to cut off his own hand at the wrist.

Charles Birkin – Au Clair De Lune: Grisly poem in which Thelma tries to blackmail Rodney over their affair and is eaten by rats for her sins. Eventually she’s reduced to a fungus-ridden compost heap which the hero henceforth utilizes whenever he wishes to be rid of a troublesome woman.

Bryan Lewis – A Question Of Fear. The indominable Major Rupert Denny accepts a stranger’s wager that he won’t be able to remain the night at a secluded house without experiencing sheer terror. Turns out that the stranger is an electronics genius, and he’s rigged the place to ensure the Major endures his full share of psychological shocks. A tape-recorded message reveals his motive.

David A. Riley – The Lurker’s In The Abyss. Lovecraftian horror that dispenses with all the usual props – obscure tomes, references to Cthulhu, Miskatonic University, etc. – in favour of pitting the hero, downtrodden Ian Redfern, versus a bunch of high street thugs who are not what they seem.

Simon Jay – Spiderwoman: Maude Roxby is laid to rest in “the sodden little churchyard on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors”. The few mourners are not for her but her saintly husband Tom who survives her. Buxom Rose Hardcastle decides that Tom is the man for her and makes a successful play for him. But Maude refuses to take this lying down and takes the form of a monstrous arachnid. The dead witch pulps her rival, then turns her attentions to Tom, who poisoned her.

Herbert Van Thal – Pan Horror 14

Herbert Van Thal (ed.) – 14th Pan Book Of Horror Stories (1973)

Gaylord Sabatini – Vortex Of Horror
Conrad Hill – So Much Work
Harry Turner – Shwartz
Myc Harrison – The Rat Trap
Gerald Atkins – Patent Number
David Case – Strange Roots
Alex White – The Clinic
Myc Harrison – The Spider And The Fly
John Snellings – Change Of Heart
Gilbert Phelps – The Hook
Conrad Hill – The Man And The Boy
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – It Came To Dinner

Gaylord Sabatini – Vortex Of Horror: “The man just hung there quite still while this evil vegetable, in a series of thrusting movements, sawed all round his neck.” Driving through the Kalahari desert, Dr. Bloom enters a parallel world where cannibalistic, many tentacled plants rule the roost and humans are staked out and eaten, their severed heads worn as jewellery.

Alex White – The Clinic: And I thought Charles Birkin was the last word in nihilism! This time it’s Ellen’s turn to undergo the torments of Hell at the hands of her stepfather, stepsister and mother who all loathe her for … nothing, really. Step-dad Dr. Joubert tries to molest her and her new Sis Therese ceaselessly torments her until finally they decide she should take up a job at one of Joubert’s clinics. Or that’s what they tell her. In reality, Ellen is being sent there as a patient and, this being an Alex White story, you can tell that the “cure” for her behaviour will be somewhat extreme. Quite possibly the nastiest of AW’s stories … which is saying plenty.

R. Chetwynd-Hayes – It Came To Dinner: East Anglian fenland. Herbert, a tramp, comes in a house in a state of disrepair and, thinking it deserted, decides to spend the night there. He is wrong in his assumption that the old place is empty, but Stafford Carruthers will not hear of it him leaving and instead invites him to spend the night there with Lady Carruthers, daughter Helen, and their butler, Marvin. Herbert soon notices that the Carruthers’ enjoy their food – mostly meat dishes – to the point of gluttony, but he really starts feeling uneasy with the arrival at table – unannounced – of Sir Gore Carruthers …

Apparently, after It Came To Dinner, Van Thal was keen for him to write more in the same vein, but RCH reckoned he only did that as a one off – he wasn’t much taken with the all-out horror stories that Pan (and, most likely, the rest of us) wanted from him.

“Pan loved it and wanted me to do some more, but I told them, ‘No, I can’t do any more like that.’ I just proved to myself that I could write it.”

(Skeleton Crew, Sept. 1990).

Gilbert Phelps – The Hook: Why Mrs Rydal always countersigns her invitations with a “Don’t bring your own coat-hangers” request, and why there are no hooks to be found in her plush home on the Sussex Downs. It all has to do with her horrible brush with a village idiot in a South American graveyard during her childhood. Mr. Crittal, fresh over from Brazil, seems to know more than he should about the matter …

Conrad Hill – So Much Work: Martinet Mr Nesbit leads his poor wife a life of soul-crushing misery until the mysterious intervention of Herbert and Horace Croaker, “Creative Funeral Directors”, who also do for his infernal daschund, Heinz in an unfortunate late night hearse-mows-down-man-and-dog “accident.”

Gerald Atkins – Patent Number: Eddie Richardson has had so many transplants, valve and limb replacements that it’s no wonder a little girl asks him “Are you Frankenstein’s monster ?” The inscription on his grave says it all.

Herbert Van Thal – Pan Horror 5

Herbert Van Thal (ed.) – The 5th Pan Book Of Horror Stories  (1964)

William Sansom – The Man With The Moon In Him
Adobe James – I’ll Love You – Always
Martin Waddell – The Treat
Seabury Quinn – Clair De Lune
Christianna Brand – The Sins Of The Fathers
Christine Campbell Thomson – Message For Margie
John Keir Cross – The Other Passenger
Basil Copper – The Spider
Edward Lucas White – Lukundoo
Alex Hamilton – The Words Of The Dumb
Adobe James – The Revenge
E. F. Benson – The Confession Of Charles Linkworth
John D. Keefauver – Kali
Gerald Kersh – Men Without Bones
William F. Nolan – The Small World Of Lewis Stillman
Rene Morris – The Living Shadow
C. A. Cooper – Bonfire
Martin Waddell – Hand In Hand

Another classic cover, and another mixture of the old and the new. I’ve began rereading it because, despite remembering just how effective stories like the voodoo classic “Lukundoo” and “Bonfire” are, I can hardly recall a thing about the rest. I’m about halfway through and the stories that have most grabbed me so far include:

William Sansom – The Man With The Moon In Him William Sansom’s atmospheric story is a brave choice as opener (I know, I know. After all the griping about Pan#1 & co. I never said I was consistent). We follow a clearly unbalanced wretch as we handers around an underground station at night, waiting for the last train. It’s obvious this man is on the verge of doing somebody – a woman – serious harm, if not within the confines of the story, then shortly after it ends …

Christine Campbell Thomson – Message For Margie A semi-legitimate Psychic comes to grief in the great Christine Campbell “Not At Night” Thomson’s final horror story, according to Mike Ashley, her personal favourite.

C. A. Cooper – Bonfire Kent: A deranged headmaster, murderously jealous of a younger teacher, decides to be rid of him. Guy Fawkes night provides a perfect opportunity. Reminiscent of Richard Davis’ classic in #4, but still terrifying on it’s own very nasty terms.

John Keir Cross – The Other Passenger John Aubrey Spencer, concert pianist, is haunted to suicide by his doppelganger. Even when he strangles his persecutor and has the remains burnt as a guy, still the double returns. How much of all this is imagination and how much is real is never clearly defined, although a woman on a railway platform certainly witnesses the other passenger fall beneath the wheels of a train.

A lot can change in 13 years. I detested this story as pretentious drivel when I first read it. Second time around wasn’t much better. Third, and I snapped up a copy of his collection of the same name which I consider to be … a neglected classic! I think “Music When Soft Voices Die” was the turning point. Apparently, JCK also once tried to summon Satan on a live radio broadcast.

John D. Keefauver – Kali Calcutta is the setting for Keefauver’s story of a beautiful tour guide who is either an incarnation of the Goddess, or has merely taken her name. She leads the narrator to the temple where he witnesses the blood sacrifice of a goat, then back to her room where he drinks a strange liquid. Returning to San Francisco, he discovers the terrible legacy of his soujourn East.

Seabury Quinn – Clair De Lune Madelon Leroy, “The most wonderful actress in the world” visits Harrisonville on an American tour. Unfortunately for her, de Grandin notices straight away that she’s not aged a day since he saw her perform as ‘Madelon La Rue’ at the Theatre Francois in his youth, nor from her previous incarnation as nude dancer ‘Madelon La Rose’, the toast of Paris, during his grandfather’s.
Why are so many young women enraptured of her, and why does their health go into terminal decline?

William F. Nolan – The Small World Of Lewis Stillman.  Stillman, possibly the last man alive, is holed up in the sewers below LA, hiding from the tiny savages the aliens have left in charge of the planet following their effortless conquest. Stillman’s love of books proves his downfall – never take Ernest Hemingway to heart – and we end with a dramatic revelation.
Chetwynd-Hayes ripped the plot off wholesale for his short story The Brats!