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Rod Serling’s Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves
Twelve horrifying tales for the demon in you collected by the man who wrote Stories from the Twilight Zone
ROD SERLING’S FAVORITE STORIES—
THE WITCH—there was the little girl who always wanted to be a witch. She tried everything she could think of but she never made it until she learned to hate everybody—including herself...
AND THE WARLOCK WHO WAITED AND WAITED
“It was a wonderful attack, Captain. Nothing human could have lived through it—nothing human did. We were deep underground where they buried us long ago—the stakes through our hearts. Your fire burned the stakes away—” The warlock waved a scaly hand at the waiting shadows. They came down relentlessly.
AND THE WEREWOLF
Early morning at the zoo, and the naked man behind the bars was sound asleep. Suddenly, his eyes flickered and his right hand smashed down at the flies that buzzed on the bone he’d been gnawing last night. The flies left, but the naked man stayed immobile, his eyes on his hand. Outside the cage a sign read,
LOBO,
TIMBER WOLF,
Canis occidentalis.
AND NINE MORE STORIES ABOUT WITCHES, WARLOCKS AND WEREWOLVES ALL HERE IN ROD SERLING’S TRIPLE W
ROD SERLING’S FAVORITE STORIES—
THE WITCH—there was the little girl who always wanted to be a witch. She tried everything she could think of but she never made it until she learned to hate everybody—including herself...
AND THE WARLOCK WHO WAITED AND WAITED
“It was a wonderful attack, Captain. Nothing human could have lived through it—nothing human did. We were deep underground where they buried us long ago—the stakes through our hearts. Your fire burned the stakes away—” The warlock waved a scaly hand at the waiting shadows. They came down relentlessly.
AND THE WEREWOLF
Early morning at the zoo, and the naked man behind the bars was sound asleep. Suddenly, his eyes flickered and his right hand smashed down at the flies that buzzed on the bone he’d been gnawing last night. The flies left, but the naked man stayed immobile, his eyes on his hand. Outside the cage a sign read,
LOBO,
TIMBER WOLF,
Canis occidentalis.
AND NINE MORE STORIES ABOUT WITCHES, WARLOCKS AND WEREWOLVES ALL HERE IN ROD SERLING’S TRIPLE W
260 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1963
27 people are currently reading
310 people want to read
About the author
Rod Serling
136 books373 followersRodman Edward "Rod" Serling (December 25, 1924–June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter and television producer, best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 23, 2012
before i talk about any individual stories, i have to say this anthology suffers under the same terrible naming convention that many of the hitchcock anthologies i have do: the title is just stupid. seven of the twelve stories are about witches (though i guess you could argue some background characters were probably warlocks in a few, and in one a guy seemed to become a warlock without realizing it and can look forward to a witch harem), three were about werewolves -- sort of, one was about vampires (?!) and then the last story isn't a story at all but rather an excerpt that debunked popular notions about the salem witch trials from charles mackay's 1841 history Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds - The Original Classic Edition. had the stories been better this perhaps wouldn't have riled me up so much but i kept muttering about three Ws my ass, when i was reading this puppy.
classics like "the mark of the beast" by rudyard kipling are always rewarding no matter how many times i've read them, and while young goodman brown by hawthorne might be a little on the nose, it's also a helluva story. of the others unfamiliar to me, i liked "the story of sidi nonman" by anonymous. i'd like to know more about the story itself but there's not much on the interweb. it is much like a tale in the arabian nights, or the decameron, and in tone it also reminded me of the golden ass by apuleius. i had had high hopes for the story by charles g. finney, "the black retriever" and while i liked it more than some of the other stories, the ending was a little flat for me. most of the stories seems trite and predictable to me. it could be that i've just read too much in this vein. perhaps 2.5 stars is generous but it seems too weird to give kipling and hawthorne anything less.
classics like "the mark of the beast" by rudyard kipling are always rewarding no matter how many times i've read them, and while young goodman brown by hawthorne might be a little on the nose, it's also a helluva story. of the others unfamiliar to me, i liked "the story of sidi nonman" by anonymous. i'd like to know more about the story itself but there's not much on the interweb. it is much like a tale in the arabian nights, or the decameron, and in tone it also reminded me of the golden ass by apuleius. i had had high hopes for the story by charles g. finney, "the black retriever" and while i liked it more than some of the other stories, the ending was a little flat for me. most of the stories seems trite and predictable to me. it could be that i've just read too much in this vein. perhaps 2.5 stars is generous but it seems too weird to give kipling and hawthorne anything less.
June 28, 2020
As I mention elsewhere, Sects and Violence in the Ancient World, I grew up watching The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling was kind of a father figure to me, and he was never afraid of the spooky stories he introduced. Rod Serling’s Triple W: Witches, Warlocks and Werewolves is not one of the books he wrote. As editor he collected these stories, all of which had been previously published. As the title says, they deal with witches, warlocks, and werewolves.
Most of the stories deal with witches/warlocks. They are “The Amulet” by Gordon R. Dickson, the anonymous “Story of Sidi Nonman,” “The Final Ingredient” by Jack Sharkey, “Blind Alley” by Malcolm Jameson, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” “The Chestnut Beads” by Jane Roberts, “Hatchery of Dreams” by Fritz Leiber, “The Mark of the Beast” by Rudyard Kipling, “And Not Quite Human” by Joe L. Hensley, “Wolves Don’t Cry” by Bruce Elliott, and “The Black Retriever” by Charles G. Finney. The collection, oddly, ends with the historical essay “Witch Trials and the Law” by Charles Mackay. The werewolf stories are those by Kipling, Elliott, and Finney. Most of these are more fun than scary, and they are a bit dated, having all been published earlier than 1962.
Ending the book with a historical note about witches is a bit of a downer, but Serling had a strong social conscience. He knew that witch stories could be fun but he wanted to remind readers that thousands of people had died because people really did believe in witches up into the modern period. This casts the collection into the form of cautionary tales. Some of these writers became famous and others were new to me. Together, despite the clunky title, they work as a nice collection of the weird in a world of endless possibilities. Not quite The Twilight Zone, but you can see the signpost from here.
Most of the stories deal with witches/warlocks. They are “The Amulet” by Gordon R. Dickson, the anonymous “Story of Sidi Nonman,” “The Final Ingredient” by Jack Sharkey, “Blind Alley” by Malcolm Jameson, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” “The Chestnut Beads” by Jane Roberts, “Hatchery of Dreams” by Fritz Leiber, “The Mark of the Beast” by Rudyard Kipling, “And Not Quite Human” by Joe L. Hensley, “Wolves Don’t Cry” by Bruce Elliott, and “The Black Retriever” by Charles G. Finney. The collection, oddly, ends with the historical essay “Witch Trials and the Law” by Charles Mackay. The werewolf stories are those by Kipling, Elliott, and Finney. Most of these are more fun than scary, and they are a bit dated, having all been published earlier than 1962.
Ending the book with a historical note about witches is a bit of a downer, but Serling had a strong social conscience. He knew that witch stories could be fun but he wanted to remind readers that thousands of people had died because people really did believe in witches up into the modern period. This casts the collection into the form of cautionary tales. Some of these writers became famous and others were new to me. Together, despite the clunky title, they work as a nice collection of the weird in a world of endless possibilities. Not quite The Twilight Zone, but you can see the signpost from here.
March 18, 2018
Wow!! So very not impressed. Each of these stories either did not make sense or were just plain dull. And the front cover picture??...............It was good for a laugh.
June 2, 2018
This book had twelve stories about mainly Witches and Werewolves I liked them all. I really liked the last story it centered around witch trials in Scotland mainly some in Germany, I find those kind of stories about witch trials rather fascinating.
January 8, 2023
Some of the stories were better than others, my favorite was the one where aliens tried to take over the Earth, but the vampires got them.
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September 21, 2010At least, I THINK this is the one I read. The only story I'm sure of is "Wolves Don't Cry", about a wolf-were--a wolf that accidentally gets turned into a human. He gets back (phew!), but there are consequences...
I remember reading this as a teenager, and that my first response was "They don't? Sure they do. DOGS cry, and what are wolves but dogs?" But I suppose I grudgingly accepted that they don't cry actual tears. Anyway, it's an interesting story, that could be better developed.
I remember reading this as a teenager, and that my first response was "They don't? Sure they do. DOGS cry, and what are wolves but dogs?" But I suppose I grudgingly accepted that they don't cry actual tears. Anyway, it's an interesting story, that could be better developed.
July 5, 2015
Serling's stuff is always fun. Like O'Henry, Serling loves to write about irony. Irony is a major theme in these short stories.
October 30, 2019
Oddly enough, one of the highlights of this uneven collection is a lengthy account of 17th and 18th century witch trials in England, Europe, and America by Charles Mackay. It's almost like a laundry list, but it also affords a nice birds-eye portrait of the witch hunt phenomenon, shows lots of notions of satan antics in various places, and includes lycanthropy.
The big problem with Rod Serling's collection is that it's from the same time Serling was popular, so lots of stories of that time are present and they are bogged down with the various earmarks of 50s and 60s writing (this is 63, so basically the end of the 50s, culturally speaking). Jane Roberts' “The Chestnut Beads” starts off like Sidney Lumet's “The Group” and then becomes this sour bit about a witch cult designed to survive a nuclear apocalypse. I stopped reading that one and jumped ahead to Fritz Leiber's equally dated but much better “Hatchery of Dreams” in which familiars are cute plush animals hatched from eggs.
Highlights include Nathaniel Hawthorne and Rudyard Kipling, plus the unexpected “The Story of Sidi Nonman” about a witch who hangs out with ghouls and turns her husband into a dog. “Blind Alley” by Malcolm Jameson has an old business man enlisting Satan's help to go back to the “good old days”, 1902, and finding it isn't as nice as he'd remembered it.
“The Final Ingredient” by Jack Sharkey is amusing enough, but it has the same hangup of being a drawn-out history that “The Chestnut Beads” has. Joe L. Hensley's “And Not Quite Human” has an alien race that has expunged emotion destroying the human race and then being puzzled by the “survivors” who seem to be causing hysteria aboard the alien ship, and it's probably the best “Twilight Zone” style story in here.
Bruce Elliot's “Wolves Don't Cry” has a wolf in a zoo suddenly turn human and have to figure out to change back, and loses any chance at humor with weird animal emotion and an obsession with pregnancy. Gordon R. Dickson's “The Amulet” has a murderous hobo getting caught in a rivalry between two rural witches, and works well enough. Charles G. Finney's “The Black Retreiver” is a suburban werewolf thing about neighbors banding together to deal with the thing killing their pets, which I'm sure was very timely for the post-war set, but isn't that memorable.
If they'd all been like “Young Goodman Brown” I would have had more fun with the collection. There is some quality stuff here, especially “Blind Alley” and “The Hatchery of Dreams”, but it's got the same disease as most collections, even though it is bookended far better than most of them. Rod Serling at last didn't fall into the vaudeville trap that most of them do.
The big problem with Rod Serling's collection is that it's from the same time Serling was popular, so lots of stories of that time are present and they are bogged down with the various earmarks of 50s and 60s writing (this is 63, so basically the end of the 50s, culturally speaking). Jane Roberts' “The Chestnut Beads” starts off like Sidney Lumet's “The Group” and then becomes this sour bit about a witch cult designed to survive a nuclear apocalypse. I stopped reading that one and jumped ahead to Fritz Leiber's equally dated but much better “Hatchery of Dreams” in which familiars are cute plush animals hatched from eggs.
Highlights include Nathaniel Hawthorne and Rudyard Kipling, plus the unexpected “The Story of Sidi Nonman” about a witch who hangs out with ghouls and turns her husband into a dog. “Blind Alley” by Malcolm Jameson has an old business man enlisting Satan's help to go back to the “good old days”, 1902, and finding it isn't as nice as he'd remembered it.
“The Final Ingredient” by Jack Sharkey is amusing enough, but it has the same hangup of being a drawn-out history that “The Chestnut Beads” has. Joe L. Hensley's “And Not Quite Human” has an alien race that has expunged emotion destroying the human race and then being puzzled by the “survivors” who seem to be causing hysteria aboard the alien ship, and it's probably the best “Twilight Zone” style story in here.
Bruce Elliot's “Wolves Don't Cry” has a wolf in a zoo suddenly turn human and have to figure out to change back, and loses any chance at humor with weird animal emotion and an obsession with pregnancy. Gordon R. Dickson's “The Amulet” has a murderous hobo getting caught in a rivalry between two rural witches, and works well enough. Charles G. Finney's “The Black Retreiver” is a suburban werewolf thing about neighbors banding together to deal with the thing killing their pets, which I'm sure was very timely for the post-war set, but isn't that memorable.
If they'd all been like “Young Goodman Brown” I would have had more fun with the collection. There is some quality stuff here, especially “Blind Alley” and “The Hatchery of Dreams”, but it's got the same disease as most collections, even though it is bookended far better than most of them. Rod Serling at last didn't fall into the vaudeville trap that most of them do.
September 17, 2020
This was a good book and the stories went in order of the title-first there were stories of witches. Then warlocks, then werewolves. I was not fond of the werewolf stories and the witches ones were very interesting. The thing is, this was written awhile ago, so it’s not in compliance with all the pc-isms of now. It is nice to read tho.
February 18, 2023
Read this multiple times in my early teens. Would love to find a copy today! The story 'The Chestnut Beads' haunted and horrified me, and has stuck with me all these years later. I was looking up who wrote it - imagine my surprise to find out - which lead me here. So I figured I would add it to my list.
December 30, 2023
Most of these stories were pretty good and I could see why Rod Serling liked them. I especially enjoyed Wolves Don't Cry by Bruce Elliott, The Black Retriever by Charles G. Finney, Hatchery of Dreams by Fritz Leiber, The Final Ingredient by Jack Sharkey, The Blind Alley by Malcolm Jameson, and And Not Quite Human by Joe L. Hensley
February 26, 2018
Decent short story collection, though the title made me think Rod Serling had written these stories, not just selected them for the anthology. Some classics in here, others that feel very much of their time.
August 21, 2017
Great collection of scary stories!
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December 1, 2020Full review: https://monsterbookclub.com/2020/12/0...
May 11, 2023
Read:
The Chestnut Beads by Jane Roberts - 4/5
The Chestnut Beads by Jane Roberts - 4/5
October 29, 2016
The best thing here is "Blind Alley"...although it spends too much time on the setup and not enough when the guy finally gets catapulted back to his hometown (it's as though it might have been a novel, or something near it). The Twilight Zone adaptation is quite a bit superior, I thought--particularly with the inclusion of the janitor guy "of the top 3 floors" (leading to that nice switcheroo titty twister at the end). Have no idea what that thing at the end about the witchhunts was doing in there (I guess it was just to pad things out).
June 6, 2024
So so stories . . . .
There were three stories in the book that I would consider as being good.
The remainder of this book I managed to get through. Personally, I would not recommend this book! ! I was disappointed!
There were three stories in the book that I would consider as being good.
The remainder of this book I managed to get through. Personally, I would not recommend this book! ! I was disappointed!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews