The Pale Man, a Weird Tale

The Pale Man by Julius Long (1934)

Tuesday’s Weird Tale   October  2,  2018

 

This story first appeared in Weird Tales. Our narrator is on leave from his university job and stays at a dreary hotel. He sees a rather pale man in the hotel who is quite mysterious.  The pale man is staying in Room 212 but changes rooms, and, each time he gets a room closer to our narrator’s room. Eerie and queer, this is vintage Halloween style with a dash of Poe going on and a tidy suggestion to choose your lodgings carefully. A quick black-and-white read full of shadows for October story time.

 

Read it at American Literature: https://americanliterature.com/author/julius-long/short-story/the-pale-man

Listen to the 10-minute audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvsEZMeGDSc

 

Few people know about author Julius Long (1907-1955), a short story writer of detective and supernatural fiction: The Dead Man’s Story, Nightcap of Terror, Death’s Dancing Master, Merely Murder, Over Many Dead Bodies to name a few. All his stories are in the public domain for free reading. Long was a lawyer, lived in Ohio, and was a collector of guns.

 

 

Watch for lots of ghost stories for Halloween posts this month of October

here at Reading Fiction Blog!

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

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Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

 

Kirkus Mystery & Thrillers Reviews

Books & Such    Bibliophilica   NewYorkerFictionOnline

 Lovecraft Ezine   Parlor of Horror

HorrorNews.net   Fangoria.com   

Slattery’s Art of Horror Magazine   Chuck Windig’s Terrible Minds

HorrorAddicts.net     Horror Novel Reviews    HorrorSociety.com     

Monster Librarian      HorrorTalk.com 

 Rob Around Books      The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Zuvembies and the Voo-Doo Man

Pigeons From Hell    by Robert E. Howard  (1938 Weird Tales)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror  January 26, 2015

 

Come to the old south, to Blassenville Manor. Who doesn’t love a Southern Gothic horror story?  Blassenville Manor is long abandoned when two young men stumble upon this decaying mansion and decide to spend the night.

‘The old deserted house stimulated their imagination with its suggestion of antebellum splendor and ultimate decay. They left the automobile beside the rutty road, and as they went up the winding walk of crumbling bricks, almost lost in the tangle of rank growth, pigeons rose from the balustrades in a fluttering, feathery crowd and swept away with a low thunder of beating wings.

 ‘The oaken door sagged on broken hinges. Dust lay thick on the floor of the wide, dim hallway, on the broad steps of the stair that mounted up from the hall. They turned into a door opposite the landing, and entered a large room, empty, dusty, with cobwebs shining thickly in the corners.’

 

I won’t ruin the suspense (and this story is truly high suspense), but  I will say the story includes a secret room, People of Damballah, and yes, a hatchet-stroke in the dark.

 

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King’s nonfiction book about the horror genre, he writes that, Robert E. Howard’s Pigeons from Hell, is “one of the finest horror stories of our century.” See if you agree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Robert E. Howard fans favor his stories about explorer Solomon Kane and Conan the Barbarian. Weird Magazine fans revere him as one of the best in weird and fantasy fiction. At the age of thirty in 1936, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

 

 

 

 

Read the short story (three parts) at Gutenberg.net.au.

Listen to the audio (1:19 hours) on YouTube.com

Watch the 50-minute film (adaptation), Boris Karloff’s Thriller Theater on YouTube.com

Visit the Robert E. Howard Foundation.

 

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror.

 This is a compendium of over 160 short stories by over 100 master storytellers of mystery,  supernatural, horror, and ghost stories.

 Join me in reading one short story every week!

 Comments are welcome.

 

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

PulpFiction.com

Books & Such   Bibliophilica    Lovecraft Ezine     HorrorAddicts.net  

Horror Novel Reviews    HorrorSociety.com

Monster Librarian     HorrorNews.net     HorrorTalk.com

 Rob Around Books      The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

February is Women in Horror Month.  Stop by for shorts stories by women authors for the entire month. And not just horror but mystery, supernatural, fantasy too.

Enoch says, “Get the Hatchet!”

Enoch by Robert Bloch  (1946)

Tuesday Tale of Terror  June 16, 2015

 Illustration by Dan Foley at Spizwackle blogspot.

 

This is a nightmare tale, little bit of black humor, and a lot of creepy business. Seth is a young man with a serious problem. A creature lives on top of his head. No one can see this creature. No one can hear him. No one can catch him. His name is Enoch. And while Enoch spends a lot of time sleeping on Seth’s head, during Enoch’s wake time he orders Seth to kill people. “Get the hatchet!”  Hmmmm, yes, this story is not only weird, but demonstrates a macabre justice with a hefty slice of gluttony.

 

 

 

 

 

Read the short story  Enoch with illustrations in Weird Magazine at UNZ.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roberts Bloch was part of the Lovecraft circle and was heavily influence by him. Today most of us know Robert Bloch from  his novel Psycho, which inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous horror film of the same name.

 

Read Psycho online at English-e-books.net  (Download on the yellow box “Read Online Now.”)

 

 

Listen to another of Robert Bloch’s short stories, audio (30 minutes) of The Hell-bound Train, published in 1958 and won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in Fantasy:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GybC7BBrg2s

Other novels by Robert Bloch:

 

 

 

 

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Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Bibliophilica       Lovecraft Ezine     HorrorAddicts.net  

Horror Novel Reviews    Hell Horror    HorrorPalace

HorrorSociety.com        Sirens Call Publications

 Monster Librarian   Tales to Terrify       Spooky Reads

HorrorNews.net     HorrorTalk.com

 Rob Around Books     The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror classic authors.