You're afraid of your own son" she cried, struggling. "Let me go. I'm coming, Herbert, I'm coming!" As this was way before political correctness, story after story gives us psycho after psycho, chopping away at all and sundry. One thing sure to tip the most ordinary timid soul over into kitchen knife improvisation was sexual betrayal, and to their credit the authors give us hideous deaths of roving husbands just as much as faithless wives. And it's notable that in the world of the Pan Books there are no happy marriages. None at all. In the run-up to Halloween in October 2018, BBC Radio 4 broadcast Anita Sullivan's reinterpretations of five stories from the 1962 Second Pan Book Of Horror Stories as part of the station's 15 Minute Drama series. [5] Reception and influence [ edit ] Hand In Hand’ (M. S. Waddell). A man who has killed a woman and is dismembering the body is interrupted by callers at the door. Short, well written and enjoyable humorous horror piece that, for me, is only let down by its final sentence. I expected a bit more. The gloriously tasteless, lowbrow, prurient and sadistic Pan Books of Horror Stories were a formative influence in my youth, kind of balancing out the intellectual version of the same thing I got from Ingmar Bergman and Pasolini.

The story of a man who finds himself called to take on an unpleasant task as part of a computerised criminal justice system. This is an entertaining change of pace.The Nursery Club." Reminiscent of the overrated The Veldt (love Bradbury, hate that story), but nowhere near as good. The kids in this story are creepy, but instead of exploring how and why that is, the author takes their malevolence for granted and rushes to the gruesome, yet underwhelming, ending. The Bean-Nighe’ by Dorothy K. Haynes. A woman who lives a tough life runs into a hag-like apparition on her remote journey to work. Her domestic life (constant work, living in a small house with her mother, ill brother and sister who keeps her awake at nights) is every bit as horrific as the apparition she sees. This is a doom-laden tale from one of the most consistent writers in the genre. I have yet to read a bad story from her. The cover of my edition (a head in a hat-box) is clearly inspired by this one. In the night someone (Edward is too drunk to ascertain the gender) visits his room and treats him to an hour’s fun'n'games. Was this Edward’s wife, their handsome servant boy Ahmed, or someone else altogether? Gerald Kersh (1911-1968) was a British-born American writer of novels and short stories. His most famous novel is Night and the City (1938) which was the basis for the 1950 film directed by Jules Dassin. This is another story of something unspeakable lurking in the jungle, but with a difference. Finally are the stories that really hit home: A. L. Barker’s SUBMERGED, a simple story about an idyllic recreation spot, chilled me to the bone through eloquent language and late-term horror. Oscar Cook, my favourite ‘grotesque’ author despite the sparsity of his surviving stories (only half a dozen or so remain), delivers HIS BEAUTIFUL HANDS, a loathsome and disgusting read which has a great sense of time and place attached to it.

For although Kaufman does shy away from a full blow-by-blow account of the deed, he leaves us in no doubt Eliza went to her grave with a smile on her face for good reason. 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. THE LADY WHO DIDN’T WASTE WORDS is by Hamilton Macallister. It’s short and ambiguous, about a weird train passenger. Plenty of unusual stuff going on here. Chris Massie’s A FRAGMENT OF FACT is the usual spooky-house-on-the-moor stuff which has a few moments of excellence amid the typical ingredients. Flavia Richardson’s BEHIND THE YELLOW DOOR has a predictable plot but some gruelling surgical horror behind it that makes for extremely macabre reading. Angus Wilson’s RASPBERRY JAM is about a couple of grotesque old ladies and has a moment of inconsequential violence that turned my stomach more than anything in the rest of the book. Not one of my favourites. The central idea is good, but I thought it could have been presented a bit more powerfully. THE OTHER PASSENGER, by John Keir Cross: A man is haunted by his doppelganger. Very atypical and unusually written, but engaging with it. 3/5For the record, my 6 bottom of the barrels are – ‘My Dear How Dead You Look And Yet You Sweetly Sing’ by Priscilla Marron; ‘The Janissaries of Emilion’ by Basil Copper; ‘The Computer’ by Rene Morris; ‘Sugar And Spice’ by A. G. J. Rough; ‘The Most Precious’ by John D. Keefauver; and ‘Playtime’ also by A. G. J. Rough. When you have a short story beginning with the line “I like to burn children”, it is a fairly safe bet we are not looking at an O. Henry Prize contender. No, this one has the feel of Kaufman deliberately dumbing down in response to the New Brutalism seen in Pan12.