The Pan Book of Horror Stories

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Not one of my favourites. The central idea is good, but I thought it could have been presented a bit more powerfully.

A man cannot tolerate his wife any more so he kills her in a spontaneous act of violence, but he underestimates his physical ability to dispose of her body. Not memorable, but short. In Mother's Loving Memory." Dime-a-dozen Psycho ripoff. Kinda like watching Don't Go in the House; the tin opener scene is notable though. The rather flannelly, waffley closing paragraph where the man recalls the swans they had had encountered earlier in the day perhaps holds some deeper Wild Swans at Coole type meaning, but if so it was lost on my simple mind.This is a genuinely creepy Lovecraftian tale. One dark night a man runs from a gang of louts and takes refuge in an abandoned building. There he encounters obscenely hideous beings.

Also, they must have had some bad experiences with horticulture because there are quite a few killer plant stories. Whether the man was a short-fused psycho all along and that the girl’s demise was in the post, or whether she precipitated it by her refusal of his proposal we shall never really know. I personally lean towards the former. Miss Fletcher's Plum Tree." Almost threw the book across the room at this point. The author is a decent writer, but the story can't decide if it wants to be shota spanking porno or a torture porn movie, and so it goes for both. W.S.’ by L.P. Hartley – An interesting little tale of a writer who is haunted by ‘someone’ sending postcards which are postmarked from locations that are getting nearer.The House of Horror’ features some now-classic horror themes – a demented old man, a secluded house and medical horror. Not bad. E. F. Benson (1867-1940) was a prolific English author of novels, short stories and non-fiction. He wrote the novels on which the British television series Mapp and Lucia (1985-6) was based. One of his most famous creepy stories was The Bus Conductor (1906) which was the basis for one of the segments in the classic horror film Dead of Night (1944) and was also adapted as a Twilight Zone episode in 1961. Here we have another of his ghost stories, this time dealing with an executed prisoner. It's a pretty straight forward spook story, but told with plenty of flair. CLAIR DE LUNE, by Seabury Quinn: Jules de Grandin investigates the case of a young girl who's dying from hunger. A bit of a routine adventure for the detective, with a weak villain and stolid writing; not up to Quinn's usual standard. 3/5 This story about a house which physically rebels against its inhabitants is well told, but I was expecting more given the author. Perhaps that is unfair. A man is haunted by the wife he killed and buried under his floorboards in this very short story written in a semi-poetic form which sometimes sounds like it was written by Yoda, e.g. “Light-hearted laughing days again he knew” and “Sang better than Wilbraham danced she did.” I wasn’t so keen on this one. I prefer straight storytelling to wordplay, though the wordplay was sort of clever here.

A couple who are market gardeners suffer a home invasion. A short piece of realism which hangs on the irony of a couple benefiting from the woman being raped. It adds variety without having strong appeal. This collection was published in 1970 so you know there's not gonna be much political correctness to be found! Prepare to be slightly offended... I feel that I’m cheating a little with this first review because I actually read the book some years ago and this is taken from my basic notes, but I will be reading from volume two onwards - now. Mareta’ (John D. Keefauver). Story of a serial husband murderer. Beautifully written with a strong hint of eroticism running throughout. Heavy on atmosphere and sense of impending doom. Like their Fontana counterparts, these volumes would attention grab from the shelves with their garish and ghoulish covers (my edition of volume one has a severed head lying amongst roots on an earthy floor). Again, like Fontana, they mix old with new stories, with later volumes concentrating more on the new. The Pan books don’t have the fine lengthy introductions of the Fontana books, but in the first ten books more than make up for it in quantity.

Series: Pan Books of Horror Stories

John Keir Cross (1914-1967) was a British author of young adult science fiction novels, adult horror stories and television adaptations of literary classics. This is a particularly unusual story, told from the point of view of someone who appears to be losing his mind. It suggests more than it really makes clear, but it has a poetry and a sense of probing into profound and forbidden thoughts that makes it quite unsettling. It’s something of a cliche in horror stories for someone to make a bet that they will spend the night in a scary mansion. This gives a slightly different take on it. A Major who claims never to have experienced fear in his life finds himself staying in a mansion with set up scares which are not actually dangerous. But after the challenger reveals his reason for wanting revenge on the him, he gives him the final scare. It’s something truly horrendous, but is it real this time? Fear itself can be a matter of life or death. Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale (1970) aka And Now the Screaming Starts (alternative title reflecting the film adaptation) I really liked this tale which begins with a guide on how to shrink a head the Jivaro Indian way and goes on to related the strange outcome of an unhealthy romantic attachment. A longer story which kept me riveted. The highlight of the collection would have to be the opening story 'The Hunter' by David Cass. As I read it, I could really picture this being made as an Amicus production in the 1960s with Cushing and Lee in the roles of Wetherby and Byron respectively.