Skulls in the Stars

Every year since I’ve started this blog, I’ve published a few classic open access stories of horror for the Halloween season! In recent years, I’ve started to make a theme for each year.

This year, the theme is “revenants”: spirits who have returned from the dead because of unfinished business, often revenge. Without further ado, let’s look at some classics…

Afterward, by Edith Wharton (1910). “You won’t know till afterward. You won’t know till long, long afterward.” Ned and Mary Boyne, recently come into wealth due to Ned’s business dealings, are looking for a country home in England in which to retire. They are intrigued by one that is said to be haunted by a ghost — but you will not realize it is a ghost until long, long afterward. They laugh this story off, until its true meaning and implications come to haunt them — literally. This is simply one of the greatest ghost stories of all time and its premise and its execution are absolutely brilliant.

The Sweeper, by A.M. Burrage (1930). Tessa Winyard takes a job as a companion to old Miss Ludgate, but immediately finds her to be a curious woman. Though she seems to care not about donating to charities, she is unfailingly kind to individual beggars. Even more striking, however, is that Miss Ludgate is afraid of Autumn, and in particular of the leaves falling from the trees. Something is coming for her, slowly and inexorably, and if it does not claim her in one Autumn it will claim her in the next.

Herbert West– Reanimator, by H.P. Lovecraft (1921). A narrator recounts his work with the brilliant Herbert West, a doctor who is performing experiments in an attempt to bring corpses back to life. The experiments become increasingly extreme and lead to increasingly violent attacks, until finally West’s mob of living dead subjects decide to put an end to him. Lovecraft apparently meant for this to be a parody Shelley’s Frankenstein, though Lovecraft’s tale ends up having its own macabre power.

Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1818). Speaking of Frankenstein, I only recently got around to reading this classic tale of revenge, in which Frankenstein is haunted by the cruel being that he gave life to in his hubris.

The Screaming Skull, by F. Marion Crawford (1908). On a dark and stormy night, a retired sea captain tells a visitor about a human skull that resides in his house — a skull which has always returned when discarded, and which may be seeking vengeance.

The Confession of Charles Linkworth, by E.F. Benson (1912). Charles Linkworth is executed for the murder of his mother-in-law, though he protested his innocence throughout the trial. Dr. Teesdale was the doctor supervising the execution, and declared Linkworth dead. But was he really dead? Soon, Teesdale began receiving phone calls at night, from one who claimed to be Linkworth…

The Shadows on the Wall, by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman (1903). Simply one of the greatest ghost stories of all time. A family is thrown into turmoil and mourning when brother Edward dies suddenly of a mysterious malady. This leaves family business unsettled, as Edward had quarreled with his violent brother Henry just before his death. As the family comes to grip with the loss and its implications, they are shocked by the appearance of a shadow cast on the wall that appears to have no source.

The Colossus of Ylourgne, by Clark Ashton Smith (1934). A story set in a fictional medieval province, it starts with villagers noting that the corpses of the dead have begun to rise up and converge on the ruined castle of Ylourgne. There, a necromancer plans diabolical magics to wreak vengeance on the community that wronged him, and it is up to a student of the occult to stop him.

The Mezzotint, by M.R. James (1904). One of my favorite stories by one of the greatest writers of ghost stories of all time! A collector of antiquities acquires a mezzotint — a particular type of engraved image — of a seemingly uninteresting house. However, when colleagues notice that the scene in the image seems to be subtly changing, they all rush to document a dark story unfolding slowly before their eyes.

People of the Dark, by Robert E. Howard (1932). A story of supernatural revenge of a very different type! “I came to Dagon’s Cave to kill Richard Brent.” Our narrator plans murder out of jealousy, but in the surroundings of Dagon’s Cave he soon realizes that he has a greater destiny within their twisted walls. One of my favorite REH stories, and that’s saying a lot!

There were a lot of great stories available for this topic; I hope you enjoy the read! Happy Halloween!

Book 9 of my 26 books for 2024 goal! (If you notice that book 8 is missing on the list, that was a private review of an upcoming book for a publisher, which I’m counting, because I’m way behind!)

A lot of horror novels work by being unpredictable, and providing a lot of twists and turns that keeps the reader guessing — and shocked — throughout their run. Others, however, have a sense of doomed inevitability to them, where the reader knows with near certainty that doom is approaching, and the book is all about following that painful path to the horrific end. Joan Samson’s The Auctioneer is a book that is like that, where from the very first page you are inexorably ground down. I immediately thought of it as I finished reading The Abyss (1981) by Jere Cunningham, which has recently been reprinted by my friends at Valancourt Books.

The novel is set in the Appalachian hill town of Bethel, which has been in decline for years after the abrupt closure of M-19, the nearby coal shaft that is the deepest ever dug. The mine was closed after an accident, but the coal company is back to reopen it and bring employment and prosperity to the people of Bethel, who welcome it.