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Tagged as Dreams in the Witch House, Gothic Horror, Gothic thrillers, Haunter of the Dark, Lovecraft, music of Erich Zann, The Gothic Tales of HP Lovecraft, The Lurking Fear, The Moon-Bog, The Shunned House

July 24, 2024 · 8:38 am

The Tenants of Ladywell Manor, Willam Meikle, Author of the Month

The Tenants of Ladywell Manor William Meikle July Author of the Month

July 24, 2024

The Tenants of Ladywell Manor, a short story, weaves a thick dash of Lovecraftian fervor, set in 19th century Bath, England, with an ancient evil and supernatural music. The young lady Anne, Captain Wentworth of the Royal Navy, Lucy a very strange younger sister, and Lt. Barclay a mysterious officer, all create a highly suspenseful intrigue. The prose is magnificent with shadowy depths and delivers a trembling haunting on the reader.

Listen to the FREE audio (36 minutes) of The Tenants of Ladywell Manor here, scroll down to title (script included if you want to read along: https://www.williammeikle.com/freebies.html .

If you read a range of supernatural fiction and horror, you are probably familiar with William Meikle’s work. With over 300 short stories sold and some 30+ novels published in the horror, fantasy, mystery, sci-fi, and thriller genres, he is a giant in the literary industry.

His gift is creating intense atmospheric stories that not only haunt, but also float you into mysterious lands of the mind and otherworlds. Willie has fans worldwide. His narratives are inventive, weird, and strong with seductive prose. If you love deep dives into ghostly realms and monstrous powers, this is your guy.

Reviews

“One of the premier storytellers of our time.” — Famous Monsters of Filmland

“William Meikle is an entertaining writer with a knack for Lovecraftian fiction.” — Lovecraft eZine

“Willie Meikle has a gift for writing highly entertaining thrilling novels. A roller-coaster ride that will leave you breathless come the last page.” — Ginger Nuts of Horror

“Meikle’s stories are shining examples of what is missing in horror fiction today: atmospheric in style, old-school in character, with an intriguing story to be told.”—David Wynn, Mythos Books

Avid horror readers know his amazing Carnacki Books, his Derek Adams The Midnight Eye Files, and the Sherlock Holmes series.

Willie is a Scottish author, currently living in a small fishing town on the eastern side of Newfoundland on the Atlantic shore with whales, bald eagles, and icebergs. And he continues to be inspired to write. One of his recent publications is an anthology, An Unholy Triquetra, Celtic Fairy Tales, published by Crystal Lake Publishing.

In this book, malevolent supernatural beings lurk in these short stories full of adventure, heroism, and even romance. Stories-within-stories, wonderfully done by a threesome of seasoned authors. I reviewed this on Amazon and can say here that Willie’s story Summons has awesome characters, conflict, and a climax that is far more than a haunted house tale.

Here is a taste of Meikle’s writing from The Dark Island, published in Innsmouth in 2012.

The sun was closing in on the mountainside, laying layers of orange and red across the sky. The loch itself glowed gold like the whisky I was missing so much, a gold that was slowly turning blood-red.

You can read The Dark Island, free, here https://innsmouthfreepress.com/fiction-the-dark-island/

Interview with Willie, July 2024

Willie was kind enough to answer a couple of questions for me. I asked him . . .

1. What aspect of your storytelling is the most difficult for you to write? Any particular kinds of scenes that really make you struggle?

“I’m good with dialogue and action, less so with description. I sometimes think I’m leaving far too much work for the reader to do to fill in the blanks, but when I try to describe anything in detail it just feels clunky to me and I end up deleting it.”

Because Scotland is known as the most haunted country in the world, I asked him:

2. With your years and experience in writing supernatural and horror, have you ever had an encounter with a ghost, been haunted, or any kind of supernatural event?

“I’ve got several, from the wee green man who followed me around when I was a student in Glasgow, to the old woman in our townhouse in Stonehaven in NE Scotland that used to be a shop, who kept saying “That’ll be sixpence, please.” when we went into the dining room. I grew up with a grannie with strong second sight … some of it rubbed off…”

If you’d like to hear more about the ghosts haunting Willie, stop by this interview by Morgan Scorpion (3.51K subscribers). He talks about his books, his characters, and his writing (May 2024).

Click here: https://www.youtube.com/live/dFXPEZdNtnc?si=mnYvQQO44uzSwah4

And if you love Carnacki stories, here is an audio of Carnacki, The Hellfire Mirror:

You can view all his series books, in their order here:

William Meikle

His latest book is Haunted Scotland, which I am reading now. You will meet Derek Adams from The Midnight Eye Files in THE BROTHERHOOD. Young Arthur Conan Doyle in THE BODY FROM THE MOSS. And, a story about an old folk song when a musical group performs in a studio in a converted castle. If you’ve not read Willie Meikle, Haunted Scotland is a great introduction to his work.

Speaking of music, my favorite of Willlie’s is Dark Melodies—clever stories about the power of sinister music and getting lost in the dance. The Tenants of Ladywell Manor is included in this collection.

Visit Willie’s website: https://www.williammeikle.com

Visit his author Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/William-Meikle/author/B002BMOP0G

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Browse the INDEX OF AUTHORS’ TALES above for free short stories. This is a compendium of over 300 short fiction by more than 170 famous contemporary and classic storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, sci-fi, romance, horror and quiet-horror, fantasy, and mainstream fiction.

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Tagged as An Unholy Triquetra, beasts, Carnacki Hell Fire, Celtic Fairy Tales, Crystal Lake Publishing, Haunted Scotland, Island Life, Night of the Wendigo, Tenant of Ladywell Manor, The Ghost Club, The Midnight Eye Files, William Meikle

May 28, 2024 · 10:15 am

The Will of a Dead Sorcerer

Return of the Sorcerer by Clark Ashton Smith (1931)

Tuesday’s Horror Tale, May 28, 2024

This is a story packed with high-quality pacing, solid tension, is atmospheric and gloomy, and wonderfully Gothic.

Scholarly recluse John Carnby lives alone in a rather haunted house. He is in need of a secretary and our narrator, Mr. Ogden is hired and expected to live with John for a period of time in a . . .

“two-story house, overshaded by ancient oaks and dark with a mantling of unchecked ivy, among hedges of unpruned privet and shrubbery that had gone wild for many years. It was separated from its neighbors by a vacant, weed-grown lot on one side and a tangle of vines and trees on the other, surrounding the black ruins of a burnt mansion.”

John has made a life study of demonism and sorcery and the Necronomicon’s magical practices. It is here that we learn . . .

“The will of a dead sorcerer hath power upon his own body and can raise it up from the tomb and perform therewith whatever action was unfulfilled in life.”

Alone, two men in an old house and the Necronomicon! Lovecraft fans will love this one for its elements of Cthulhu cosmology. The talents of Clark Ashton Smith come alive in this classic haunting tale.

Return of the Sorcerer was also an episode of the television series Night Gallery—known for its magnificent melodrama—starring Vincent Price as John Carnby, and Bill Bixby (Noel as Ogden). Watch the episode at this link (27 minutes):

Read it here at Eldritchdark.com:

http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/183/the-return-of-the-sorcerer

Listen to the audio here:

Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) is a master storyteller of horror, fantasy, and scifi, self-educated, and considered himself a poet. His writing is greatly admired as phantasmagoric. His legacy in literature is still popular today. Smith was published alongside H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and E. Hoffmann Price.

“My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation.” —Clark Ashton Smith.

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Once a month, I feature a free short story (and audio too) by a famous contemporary or classic author. Browse the Index of Authors’ Tales above to find over 300 free short stories by over 150 famous authors. Also, don’t miss Author of the Week on Mondays once a month.

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Tagged as A Vintage from Atlantis: The Collected Fantasies, Clark Ashton Smith, Door to Saturn: The Collected Fantasies, Hunter From Beyond, Return of the Sorcerer, Strange Tales, The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies, The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies, weird tales, Zothique: The Final Cycle

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September 26, 2023 · 8:41 am

Dancing in a Circle of Skulls, African Magick

Pollock and the Porroh Man by H. G. Wells (1895)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror, September 26, 2023

“It was in a swampy village on the lagoon river behind the Turner Peninsula that Pollock’s first encounter with the Porroh man occurred.”

Our story opens with a stabbing and a shooting. In this adventurous tale of magick, horror, and fantasy, the suspense and action run high. Pollock is on an expedition in Africa where he attempts to prevent the Porroh man, a witch doctor, from stabbing a woman by shooting the Porroh in the hand. But, the powers of the Porroh are mighty, full of spells, nightmares, and devils.

When Pollock is haunted mercilessly by the Porroh in his dreams, he hires a native to kill the Porroh. And here is where the story leaps into horror. Pollock is now haunted by the the Porroh’s decapitated upside down head.

H. G. Wells is famous for writing stories that will unnerve you, even by today’s modern expectations. He is a master at mixing the supernatural with psychological fears and leaving his readers a little breathless at the end. Wells never won a Nobel Prize but was nominated four times.

Read the short story here at Telelib.com:

http://www.telelib.com/authors/W/WellsHerbertGeorge/prose/plattnerstory/pollock.html

Listen to the audio, dramatic reading by Edward E. French (30 minutes): Perfect for a Halloween night treat!

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Don’t forget to view the INDEX OF AUTHORS’ TALES above for more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of some 300 short stories by more than 160 famous contemporary and classic storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, sci-fi, romance, horror and ‘quiet horror,’ fantasy, and mainstream fiction.

Follow or sign up to join me in reading one short story every month.

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https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/delamarew-beststories/delamarew-beststories-00-h.html#Page_288

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Tagged as African magick, Audio Halloween stories, Halloween 2023, Halloween authors, Halloween Blog, Halloween bloggers, Halloween horror, Halloween Horror stories, HG Wells, Read stories for Halloween, The First Men in the Moon, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, witch doctors

October 30, 2022 · 4:17 pm

Dead Still Here on All Hallows Eve

All Hallows Walter de la Mare (1926)

Sunday’s Gothic Short Story, October 30, 2022

READING FICTION BLOG

Here is a perfect story to read aloud for Halloween. Walter de la Mare is a dazzling author famous for his ghost stories and psychological drama. This is a fast short story and absolutely classic. We have a traveler visiting a deserted cathedral. The cathedral is not just haunted.

“Devils are creatures made by God, and that for vengeance.”

Why would devils haunt a deserted cathedral?

“We then turned inward once more, ascending yet another spiral staircase. And now the intense darkness had thinned a little, the groined roof above us becoming faintly discernible. A fresher air softly fanned my cheek; and then trembling fingers groped over my breast, and, cold and bony, clutched my own.”

You got to read this one. Author de la Mare is one of the finest writers of the supernatural.

Walter de la Mare (1873 – 1956) was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem “The Listeners”, and for a highly acclaimed selection of subtle psychological horror stories, amongst them Seaton’s Aunt and The Return. He was considered one of modern literature’s chief exemplars of the romantic imagination.

Read All Hallows at Gutenberg.ca (page 288 in Table of Contents):

Listen to the audio at BBC Radio:

Don’t forget to view the INDEX OF AUTHORS’ TALES above for more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 250 short stories by more than 150 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, sci-fi, romance, ‘quiet horror,’ and mainstream fiction.

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Filed under book bloggers, Book Reviews, classic horror stories, dark fantasy, dark literature, fiction, fiction bloggers, free horror short stories online, free short stories, free short stories online, ghost stories, ghost story blogs, Gothic fiction, Gothic Horror, graveyards, Halloween, Halloween stories, haunted houses, Hauntings, historical ghost stories, horror, horror blogs, literary horror, literature, mysteries, occult, paranormal, phantoms, psychological horror, pulp fiction, quiet horror, Reading Fiction Blog, READING FICTION BLOG Paula Cappa, short stories, short stories online, short story blogs, soft horror, supernatural, supernatural fiction, supernatural mysteries, supernatural tales, supernatural thrillers, tales of terror

Tagged as All Hallows, All Hallows Eve, classic ghost stories, ghost stories, ghosts, Halloween, Halloween Horror stories, Halloween stories, Halloween2022, Horror authors, horror writers, Read for Halloween, Samhain, Samhain Gothic Horror, Samhain2022, Walter de la Mare

July 26, 2022 · 8:59 am

Bleeker Street Caper

Guy Walks Into a Bar by Lee Child (2009)

Tuesday’s Mystery Story (flash fiction) July 26, 2022

Take this quickie read for a spin about a sexy girl in a scruffy dive on Bleecker Street at 1:30 am. Moscow-style intrigue with a sassy twist. Author Lee Child at his finest!

SHE was about 19. No older. Maybe younger … She was blond and blue-eyed, but not American … She was probably Russian. She was rich.

Read it here at the New York Times:

Also available at Readsnovelonline.com

If you like Tom Cruise and bar fights, this one is cool, featuring military cop Jack Reacher. Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher is being challenged to a fight outside a bar. He tries to warn the group that they can and should still walk away but despite his warnings, they still want to fight. Three minutes of tough and gruff. So fun!

Lee Child, an multi-award winning author, is an English thriller novelist and an Anthony Award winner for the best first novel Killing Floor (1997). His novels are based on the adventures of Jack Reacher, a former American military policeman wandering the United States. He currently lives in New York.

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Click to access Hammett_Creeping_Siamese.pdf

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Tagged as Better Off Dead, Blue Moon, Die Trying, Echo Burning, espionage thrillers, Guy Walks Into a Bar, Jack Reacher, James Penney, Killing Floor, Lee Child, mens adventure fiction, military thrillers, One Shot, Running Blind

May 24, 2022 · 9:38 am

Dropped Dead

Creeping Siamese by Dashiell Hammett (1926)

Tuesday’s Detective Tale May 24, 2022

A man stumbles into the Continental Detective Agency. He drops dead on the floor. Stabbed in the left breast, the man’s wound is staunched with red silk—which seems to be a sarong.

If you love crime stories with ace detectives, then you must be a fan of Dashiell Hammett. This story is a cool little plot puzzle with imaginative clues. Good one!

“Hammett did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.” Raymond Chandler.

Read the short story here:

Listen to other short stories by Dashiell Hammett (Creeping Siamese is not available in audio).

We like to remember Dashiell Hammett as the inventor of hardboiled detective fiction with brutal realism and wry humor. Hammett worked for the Pinkerton Detective Agency for eight years before he began writing his stories. His first short story was published by The Black Mask in 1923.

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Tagged as Dashiell Hammett, famous detective fiction, murder mysteries, Noir Fiction, The Continental Op, The Creeping Siamese, The Farewell Murder, The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man

April 11, 2022 · 9:49 am

Author of the Week, Charles L. Grant, April 11

AUTHOR OF THE WEEK April 11

Charles L. Grant

American Author and Editor

(Short Stories and Novels: Quiet Horror and Dark Fantasy)

Grant was esteemed for building foreboding atmosphere, a slow burn of dramatic tension in his plots, settings, and characterization. His trademark is a story steeped in palpable dread with high suspense, yet without descriptive bloodshed or graphic violence. Thus, the beauty of quiet horror. Grant wrote 70 novels, 150 short stories, and edited two dozen anthologies. A master in this subgenre that is still popular.

Grant is revered by Stephen King as an “autumnal writer” because the reader closes his book with far more than a scare. We read his stories and receive a deep sense of awe, intelligence, and the imaginary that rises far above most other writers in the genre.

Charlie Grant will give you a story so memorable, you’ll want more.

“I like to set up as real a situation as possible, then twist it just enough and bring in whatever I want to bring in. It is more startling and entertaining to use real people with real-world problems.”

“The goal is not to scare people, just make them uncomfortable. I work to make you really, really nervous, so that it will take you a long time to get over it. I want to make you see shadows where there is no light to cast them.”

“If all the world’s a stage and all the people players, who in bloody hell hired the director?”

When asked why horror is so popular, he replied “It is a safe way of looking at death.”

Charles L. Grant (1942 – 2006) received the British Fantasy Society’s Special Award in 1987 for life achievement; and he was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association, Nebula Awards and three World Fantasy Awards.

The Shadow Series is ten anthologies, including short stories by Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Robert Bloch, and many others. The first five novels he wrote didn’t sell but he went on to achieve great success and admiration. In cinematic terms, Grant is thought to have more likeness with the horror film classics of Val Lewton and Roman Polanski—Grant’s work strong on hinting at madness and violence, a writer certainly gifted at suggestion and subtleties. He and his wife, editor and novelist Kathryn Ptacek, had lived in a 100-year-old haunted Victorian house in Sussex County, New Jersey.

SlipofthePen.com

Podcast about Charles L. Grant at LovecraftEzine.com

[Personal Note: Because almost all my published fiction is quiet horror, and I read so much of it, I have a special place for Charlie. I did a blog on him in September 2013, link below. Another favorite quiet horror author is Shirley Jackson The Haunting of Hill House. And I can add Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black.]

Quiet Horror, Still the Darling of the Horror Genre

Visit Charlie’s Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/Charles-Grant/e/B000AQ1O8G

Please join me in my reading nook and discover an author on Mondays once a month at Reading Fiction Blog!

Browse the Index of Authors’ Tales above to find over 250 free short stories by over 150 famous authors. Once a month I feature a FREE short story by contemporary or classic authors. Audios too.

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Tagged as A Quiet Night of Fear, Black Carousel, Charles L. Grant, Dialing The Wind, In a Dark Dream, Kathryn Ptacek, Oxrun Station, quiet horror, Shadows 10, soft horror, Tales from the Nightside, The Bloodwind, The Grave, The Hour of the Oxrun Dead, The Pet

March 14, 2022 · 11:19 am

Author of the Week, Algernon Blackwood, March 14

Author of the Week, March 14, Monday

Algernon Blackwood

(Short Story Writer and English Novelist of Mysteries and Supernatural)

“Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil.”

“But the wicked passions of men’s hearts alone seem strong enough to leave pictures that persist; the good are ever too lukewarm.”

“Ritual is the passage way of the soul into the Infinite.”

Algernon Blackwood (1869 to 1951) was one of the most prolific writers of ghost stories in the history of the genre. His two best known stories are The Willows and The Wendigo. His first book of short stories, The Empty House (1906) was when he became a full-time fiction writer. Later collections include John Silence (1908), stories about a detective sensitive to extrasensory phenomena, and Tales of the Uncanny and Supernatural (1949), 22 stories selected from his nine other books of short stories.

Today is Blackwood’s anniversary of his birth, March 14, 1869. As fiction readers we love to pay tribute to authors on the birth or death dates as a memoriam by reading their work. Blackwood’s mysterious tales and atmospheric ghostly stories bring our imaginations into other worlds. He is a master at going deep into the psychological elements of ghosts and the element of human fear and desire. His stories are a treat into vintage fiction!

On this blog, I have featured seven of Blackwood’s stories (In the Index of Authors’ Tales above). He is a worthy favorite of mine. You won’t be disappointed.

Interview with Andrew McQuade about Blackwood’s Fiction: http://satanicpandemonium.blogspot.com/2012/12/algernon-blackwood-interview-with.html

Audio of Algernon Blackwood Reading Pistol Against a Ghost. A quick story that will make you smile! (7 minutes):

And here is audio of The Wood of the Dead (35 minutes):

Visit Algernon Blackwood’s Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/Algernon-Blackwood/e/B001IO9NQO

There are a number of Blackwood’s stories free on Kindle.

Please join me in my reading nook and discover an author on Mondays once a month at Reading Fiction Blog!

Comments and Likes are welcome!

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1064/1064-h/1064-h.htm

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Tagged as Algernon Blackwood, Ancient Sorceries, The Empty House, The Promise of Air, The Willows, The Windigo, The Wood of the Dead

January 25, 2022 · 9:00 am

Dabbled in Blood, the Masked Figure

Tuesday’s Short Story, January 25, 2022

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe (1842)

This month of January is the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe (birth January 19, 1809). What better time to mark our appreciation of this great writer than to read one of his stories?

The Masque of the Red Death is fast 20-minute read for readers who love supernatural and mystery. I think this story has a timeliness during this Covid pandemic when we are all wearing masks and where many of us wish we could run away to our private abbeys to stay safe.

“The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.”

Prince Prospero summons his dominions to his castle, an abbey in the far hills. Here the ‘gay society’ is safe to enjoy themselves in the seven rooms of different colors—which have its own mystery. We are at a masked ball with music and dancing, but who arrives? An uninvited mysterious figure. In the seventh room that is draped in black velvet with blood red window panes, our tale goes deep with supernatural, psychological, and horrific elements in grand Poe style. This is soooooo Gothic!

Read the short story at Gutenberg.org

Listen to the audio read by Sir Christopher Lee:

Watch the film created at the University of Technology, Sydney for Media Arts and Production (15 minutes). Sweeping, baroque, and spooky.

Poe wrote in many genres. He was the first to include deep psychological and intuitive horror in his stories. His tales often reflect that the true monster of evil is within each person and what happens when that evil is acted upon. His most famous work is The Raven.

Don’t forget to view the INDEX OF AUTHORS’ TALES above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories (some with audio), by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, sci-fi, romance, ‘quiet horror,’ and mainstream fiction.

Follow or sign up to join me in reading one short story every month.

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Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Books & Such Bibliophilica NewYorkerFictionOnline

For Authors/Writers: The Writer Unboxed