Inspired by the continued appearances of Trebbor/Al Turda's ghost on these boards. I'm sure
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sheetsadam1 — 8 months ago(August 04, 2025 12:11 AM)
Oh yes! The White People. How did I forget that one? I actually first read it and a section from
The King in Yellow
in the same anthology (which prompted me to seek out the entire book):
The full table of contents includes:
Edgar Allan Poe, "MS. Found in a Bottle"
Bram Stoker, "The Squaw"
Ambrose Bierce, "Moxon's Master"
Ambrose Bierce, "The Damned Thing"
Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa"
R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations"
M. P. Shiel, "The House of Sounds"
Arthur Machen, "The White People"
Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows"
Henry James, "The Jolly Corner"
Walter de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt"
H. P. Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space"
It's really not a bad anthology at all for someone who wants to dip their toes into this era of horror storytelling. (Bierce is really excellent as well.)
Draft Barron Trump -
cryptoflovecraft — 8 months ago(August 04, 2025 12:02 AM)
Thomas Tryon: The Other, 1971
Never read that one (I have seen the film) but I have read Tryon's Harvest Home, an excellent Gothic horror novel that was made into a miniseries starring Bette Davis and Rosanna Arquette. -
Damien Thorn 666 — 8 months ago(August 04, 2025 03:16 AM)
If you're diving into horror, skip the surface-level shriek-fests and go for the stuff that lingers like guilt in a priest's confessional. The Fisherman by John Langan is a must — not just for the creeping dread, but for the way it weaves grief into Lovecraftian mythology like some eldritch therapy session.
For something more cerebral (and I mean that both metaphorically and viscerally), House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski will scramble your neurons and make you question whether the hallway behind you just got… longer. It's not for the faint of brain — which, ironically, rules out some folks here who treat Goosebumps like graduate literature.
Toss in some Laird Barron if you like your horror tangled in cosmic nihilism and tough-guy noir — perfect for those who think brooding aloud makes them deep. (It doesn’t, buddy. It just makes you sound like a haunted toolbox.)
Also, if you want horror that bites and winks, My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones skewers slasher tropes with both affection and a steak knife.
Anyway, read widely. Horror isn’t just about what goes bump in the night — sometimes, it’s the guy in the thread who bumps his keyboard trying to sound profound and ends up reviewing his own shadow.
“There are no atheists in foxholes, eh?”-Keith Jennings from the Omen. -
sheetsadam1 — 8 months ago(August 04, 2025 03:24 AM)
Laird Barron and Stephen Graham Jones
Along with Mariana Enríquez, they comprise my holy trinity of modern horror writers. Jones is, at heart, a Beat writer who watched too many scary movies as a kid (and is also, along with Tommy Orange, one of America's preeminent indigenous storytellers). Barron is the more enlightened heir to Lovecraft. And Enríquez uses the guise of horror fiction to examine the brutal realities of recent Argentinean history.
I've heard many great things about Langan and Danielewski, but have not yet read them.
Draft Barron Trump -