We had the pleasure of receiving a journal new to us last week – Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish Magazine, a beautiful thing unto itself – and felt inclined to say something about both the journal and the folklore behind the name. So we have, with mention of Fredrick Marryat, Neil Gaiman, sea shanties, irrelevant trivia and all. We’re like that – shameless.
SIDENOTE: We should say that this particular parish magazine is stylish, informative and relevant, and thus utterly unlike those produced by our own Yorkshire parish of St. Botolph-in-the-Wolds – do not confuse the two.
It’s always important to go backwards, and so we start with answering the question you didn’t ask: What the heck is Fiddler’s Green? Well, dear listener, it is either a mythical location or a state of mind, or both, but don’t be put off. We shall explain… Continue reading Fiddler’s Green→
Today, quick extracts from a raft of new greydog stories coming out this year -this site has been far too quiet recently. We blame Mr John Linwood Grant, who has been neglecting his duties in favour of writing and editing stuff. Pure selfishness. Where are the tales of lurchers leaping and other riters riting? Or even artists arting?
We’d better provide a catch-up. In our last episode, Nurse Imelda had discovered that Brett’s half-brother, Dirk, had cut through the brake cables of all three orthopaedic surgeons, and made it look like the work of Imelda’s twin sister Maureen, whose affair with the hospital administrator Susan had caused so many arguments among the junior X-Ray staff…
No, all right. It’s just been work. Endless deleting of apostrophes in other people’s stories, and adding them to greydog’s own. Boring, you say – how are the little donkeys? Well, Django and Chilli are happy but older. This means that Django is slightly stiff after he’s been laid in the same odd position for ages, and Chilli can’t be arsed to go out if she doesn’t like the look of the weather. Walks are regular, but a touch slower (which suits ancient greydog, if not Herself, the much fitter Editor-in-Chief).
ghost dog reads ghost stuff
When not lurching, there has been writing. Lots of writing. The much expanded edition of JLG’s collection A Persistence of Geraniums, is now available in print (an e-format is under construction). This includes additional stories, a brand new cover created by the award-winning artist Alan M Clark and an additional interior illustration by Yves Tourigny, as well as Paul Boswell’s original interiors. Tales of murder, madness and the supernatural – and sometimes all three.
“Grant brings to mind P.G.Wodehouse gone hopelessly mad and hiding in a cupboard with a long sharp knife. Oh, and by the by, have you met Edwin Dry? No? Then you’ve not yet encountered one of the most ghastly characters in modern strange fiction.”Matthew M Bartlett, author of Creeping Waves
“A series of supernatural tales distinguished both by their elegance and by their wit.” John Langan, author of The Fisherman
“What stands out throughout is John Linwood Grant’s skill of description and humour. With a minimum of words he makes these characters alive. A passing mention of one item of clothing or a small but telling personality trait and somehow their essence is captured. Tales with dark edges and at times a dark humour to match.”Jackie Taylor, Folk Horror Revival
The Chromatic Court anthology is also out now, edited by Pete Rawlik and including my novelette ‘Songs of the Burning Men’, a dark story of ochre fire and the Flanders trenches of the Great War.
So, here’s a taste of eight John Linwood Grant short stories and novelettes which should be coming soonish – details will follow, whether wanted or not. Hopefully the next greydogtales post will be about someone else…
THE YUGGOTH CLUB
No one talked about the Yuggoth Club. The club was tolerated as it didn’t get in anyone’s way or annoy the care home manager. Or cost anything. The Seaview Rest Home had a list of approved hobbies, which included crochet, knitting, and gin rummy. A book club wasn’t on the list.
It didn’t help that the group read little but works by H P Lovecraft, a name which the manager of the home regularly confused with pornographic movies from the seventies. “At their age,” she would mutter, before returning to her office to see which residents had the most ambiguous wills.
There were only three permanent members, and even they used the word ‘permanent’ with caution these days. There had been four of them up until a month ago, when Janet Fowles choked on a chicken nugget and had to be rushed up to Scarborough Hospital.
Janet, seventy eight years old, was not expected back, but the remaining members continued to meet twice a week in the old day room, a dumping ground with a cracked ceiling and one window blind hanging at a peculiar angle. All around lay a clutter of boxed incontinence pads, unfinished knitting and dead bees. They had comfy chairs which were no longer comfortable, and an orthopaedic seat which Marigold rather liked, despite the protruding bolts. “Frankenstein’s chair,” she would say repeatedly, and was ignored by all…
THOSE WHO STAY
The Langton Hotel is nowhere. Outdated and forgotten by most, it stands alone on a headland well away from the main roads, and its ornate, many-eyed face is set towards the North Sea, which does not care. There are no nearby services or delights for the tourists, no long sweet-sanded beaches, and the cliffs are stark, uninviting.
Even the bird-watchers avoid us. All we have here are gulls, grey-backed horrors which eye children and small dogs with the yellow gleam of hunger. They tear binoculars from people’s hands, stabbing at the leather straps with their beaks, and more appealing birds won’t come within the range of their patrols. The gulls have known the hotel for many generations, and it knows them, from the first fall of the egg out of an oily cloaca to the last flap of ragged wings.
Thus it was that the two women who appeared with the storms of autumn were unexpected. We hadn’t seen any new arrivals since Benedito, who was now our doorman, waiter and general factotum, came to us, at least a year ago…
ELK BOYS
Abbot’s Elk, when we arrived, was much as the gazeteer said – small and unimportant. I’d read up on it before I caught the train. It’s only oddity was the name, which had apparently been Abbot’s Encester until the seventeen eighties, when a number of carvings had been unearthed whilst a well was being dug. A few were crude stone figures – Neolithic – but some were carved from antlers and bone, and according to the book I had, rather fine examples. The Elk part had gradually replaced the Encester, the result of over-imaginative Victorian collectors. Those digging vicars have a lot to answer for.
Emilia was at the bar in the Grey Horse, which was old in a tired rather than historic way. When she saw me, she abandoned her gin and tonic to rush over and hug me.
“I have fragile ribs,” I said, and gave her a peck on the cheek.
“Let me get you a drink, Justin.”
I wanted to confirm the driver’s suspicions and have a campari, but I hated the stuff, so I paid him off and agreed to sample the wine list. The Puglian red turned out to be a surprise, in that they had it, and that it was drinkable. I’d expected the usual half-empty bottle of overpriced Nuits-Saint-Georges behind the pumps, so symbolic of the seventies.
“I think,” I said as we settled down in one corner of the room, “That you had better explain what this is all about.”
MARJORIE LEARNS TO FLY
The kitchen is so quiet now, with Kenneth and the others gone. So orderly. I play my fingers across the rack of spice jars, over the slight unevenness of the plastered walls, no longer marred by the clutter of calendars, photographs, and notes about the current contents of the freezer. Everything is as it should be, where it should be.
I think I shall make a cup of tea.
Warm the pot; switch off the kettle just before the water boils. Don’t want to drive all the oxygen out. Loose tea, never teabags. Oolong, woody but slightly sweet. Let it sit for seven or eight minutes, and then pour.
I add a dash of milk – not too much – and sip. Perfect.
This is how Marjorie likes it. She deserves this. She has plans, wonderful plans, and I am so very pleased to have her back…
THE WITCH OF PENDER
(Audio version)
“A long night coming,” said the Dark Man. He stood easy on the edge of a field, red earth between his toes as he sucked on a piece of sugarcane.
Mamma Lucy didn’t hold much with visions. And as visions went, this wasn’t greatly encouraging her. She didn’t recognize the place her left eye was seeing. A great field spread across the valley bottom, and that field was sown with fingers, knuckle-end in the deep soil. Most were black fingers, waving without a breeze, though here and there a white one grew. Some had cracked, hard-worked nails, and some had none at all. Near to where she stood, one finger had died where it was planted; a crow was tearing strips of rancid flesh from the small, pale bones.
“How long?”
The Dark Man pushed back his straw hat.
“Long as a mule kicks; long as cane is sweet.”
She reached across the floor of the lean-to shack and took up the largest candle, her grip marking the soft wax.
“Don’t you game me now, boy,” she said, a husky rattle in her throat. “This ain’t New Orleans, and I ain’t one of your mamaloi, Sant-eria ladies, liftin’ their skirts when you come callin’.”
mamma lucy, by yves tourigny
STRANGE PERFUMES OF A POLAR SUN
Now that the old water tank has gone, I have the whole attic space across two houses. Until the landlord who owns next door manages to sell it – or finds out that I’ve knocked through. I don’t expect either for a while. The housing market’s quite depressed, and these Victorian places need a lot of work.
The latest peaks have been difficult. I use Lovecraft’s book, of course, along with maps which I’ve annotated, and the satellite photos that Misha sends me. It’s getting more dangerous for her, she says. They’re talking about vetting the staff at the UN Antarctic Survey data-stream centre again, after someone leaked blurred footage of D732, the higher of the two most north-westerly mountains. UNAS is obsessed with secrecy.
Once I had downloaded Misha’s better definition photos of D732, I could see that there is surprisingly little erosion; the almost perfect clusters of stonework on the south face are astonishing, like cubes of sugars embedded near the tip of one of those old conical sugar-loaves. I used pumice stone to model the peak – I like the rough feel of pumice, the scrape against my skin. A hardened hacksaw blade and a set of files gave me reasonable results.
So that’s most of the north-west sector done. I think the Four are pleased…
RECORDS OF THE DEAD
Another fruitless morning.
In the afternoon, while my aunt sleeps, I go through the mail from the clipping agencies. An obituary covers the death of a man who once met the director Emile Casson, in California. That would be in nineteen twenty one, during Casson’s abortive attempt to get into the West Coast industry. I already have that documented. The Frenchman’s peripheral involvement in the communist movement, and his virtual blacklisting during the Red Scare, put paid to any plans. He came back to New York after three days.
The last envelope is from the Burgess Agency. It contains a photograph, and a handwritten note.
‘Mrs Westercott, this may interest you.’
The photograph shows a group of men in black suits, and a wreath of lilies in the background. A funeral, or a wake. I turn it over, and see names scrawled in pale ink. Teddy Fleming, Joseph Karowski, Manny Goldschein, and a couple I can’t read.
Joseph Karowski.
Oh my God.
IRON AND ANTHRACITE
With relief or with grumbles, the passengers went to find their places. For most, that meant the last car, a wooden affair with a cracked window and ‘Coloreds Only’ stenciled on the side. Mamma Lucy hitched herself up and sat with her carpet bag on her knees, opposite the father and daughter. The girl, maybe thirteen, smiled at her; the man nodded.
“You play?” Mamma Lucy tipped her head to the guitar case.
“My daddy showed me how to pick,” said the girl. “He’s a Piedmont bluesman.”
“Etta here’s a fine gee-tar girl. I’m no bluesman, jes’ a working man who can carry a tune.” He hesitated. “Boone Reid’s the name, ma’am.”
“Mamma Lucy does me well enough, Mr Boone Reid.”
He surveyed the faded floral dress, the moth-eaten carpet bag and the face in front of him. She knew that he was trying to look into her clouded left eye, make out the milk-and-honey strangeness of it, but without staring.
“You from Charlotte?” she asked.
“Used to be, once. Back to see kin, but we’re Virginia people these days.”
Mamma Lucy settled on the wooden seat, and closed her eyes. As the locomotive grabbed the rails to haul north, she took in the creak of the cars. She heard the guitar case open, and the first hesitant chords; the soft murmur of the young couple and the slow, heavy breath of the big man in the corner.
Her back was itching, and she had that feeling. Should have noticed before. Greensboro was a hundred miles along the track, and now she wondered if that was maybe a few miles too many…
And there’s been a lot of editing work. With the Hell’s Empire anthology delivered to the publisher, Ulthar, next urgent job is final touches for Their Coats All Red, from 18thWall. We’d decided to include some classic weird stories written in Empire times, to add historical contrast to the anthology, and we agreed those last month. Four less well-known stories which reflect the times, avoiding the more common jingoistic or dubious ones, and a couple at least may be surprises.
On the Occult Detective Quarterly front, we’re just putting together Issue Six, due out early Summer, and planning for issue Seven, due out in Autumn. Plus mending various hangovers from last year’s litany of disasters.
After that’s delivered, back to work on Sherlock Holmes & The Occult Detectives for Belanger Books – the stories are already coming in. Further along – Room Enough for Fear, plans for an anthology of classic haunted room tales, mentioned earlier in the year – some unmissable standards, of course, but also again some far less well-known inclusions.
Pity the poor writer/editor and his foolish ways.
NEXT TIME: Something completely different. Let’s get this show rolling again…
A ghost with a club-foot, a lost E F Benson tale, a pioneering female journalist, the writing Barr brothers, the not-quite-first Sherlock Holmes parody, plus other curiosities. Join us, dear listener, in another journey into the past of weird and horror fiction. We were excited to discover, last year, that the British Library had begun to release a whole new series of supernatural publications. Some of these volumes offer an introduction to the writing of various Gothic and horror writers; others are built around a theme, or present rare and largely forgotten stories, a number of which of which have never been anthologised before. Huzzah! There’s an outline schedule of planned releases at the end of this post, but today we visit their anhtology Glimpses of the Unknown, and we add some of our usual supernatural and detective trivia…
Glimpses of the Unknown: Lost Ghost Stories (British Library Tales of the Weird Book 3), is edited by that veteran anthologist Mike Ashley. This also seemed appropriate to cover because we had some contact with Mike last year, when we received his blessing to re-publish his landmark article from the seventies (revised in the nineties) ‘Fighters of Fear’ in the anthology Occult Detective Quarterly Presents (Ulthar Press). Here he turns his attention to lesser known supernatural short stories from the 1890s to the 1920s.
One of the tasks facing any anthologist of late Victorian and Edwardian supernatural fiction is that many, many such stories were churned out for the periodicals, and many of them were mundane, featherweight, and sometimes downright dreadful. The vast majority of stories slumber with the last archived copies of the periodical they were first published in – they were never printed again, either in collections or anthologies.
The hunt through such dusty archives is something we’ll be exploring in a later article on greydogtales, with anthologists Alastair Gunn, Tim Prasil and Johnny Mains, but along with the late Hugh Lamb, Mike Ashley has excellent credentials – he has a deep knowledge of the popular supernatural literature of the period, and extensive experience of delving deep. So Glimpses of the Unknown is a must-have for lovers of these sorts of tales. Not because these are all perfect stories, but because of the range of themes and tropes which have been included – there are a few gems thrown in there as well – and the rarity of the stories included. We’re going to pick out a few which particularly earn their keep, or have unusual elements…
Glimpses of the Unknown Examined
Let’s get E F Benson out of the way. He’s the most well-known author in the collection, these days, and has – to our mind – a chequered record in the ghost/horror area, with a few outstanding stories, yes, but quite a lot of minor pieces (his non-supernatural Mapp and Lucia tales are very entertaining, though). The only really unusual element here is that ‘The Woman in the Veil’ is a previously ‘lost’ Benson, which guarantees a look. It’s basically a period murder mystery with a veiled ghost hanging around outside a country hotel, leading to the reconstruction of what really happened, and a touch of justice. Benson completists and enthusiasts will want it, but it doesn’t linger greatly.
‘The Missing Word’ by Austin Philips is a far better story, a neat tale set in a telegraph office and referring back to something which happened fifteen years before. It’s well written and very atmospheric, which lifts it above some of the others. Oddly enough, the premise brings to mind a certain tale of the ‘clacks’ towers in Terry Pratchett. Philips had a post office background, and it shows, in a good way.
Eric Purves’ ‘The House of the Black Evil’ is a story which relates to the occult and summoning practices, and although its final explanation is tolerable, the circumstances themselves elevate the tale. An ordinary house is found to be completely dark inside. Not just dark, but dark dark – utter blackness which defies any attempt to illuminate it. When the postman discovers that letters disappear into the blackness beyond the letter box, a group of local gentlemen dare to investigate. A grisly and unexpected discovery awaits in the pitch black rooms within…
Philippa Forest’s ‘When Spirits Steal’ is a welcome inclusion for a number of reasons. ‘Philippa Forest’ was the pseudonym of journalist and women’s suffrage activist Marion Holmes, and this is one of her stories about a kind of occult detective/psychic investigator, Peter Carwell. He is described as a “Borderland expert” by the narrator, a nice term for someone with an interest in psychic matters. Here they share an effective, rather tragic tale, of a village inn, a sleep-walking maid – and vengeance.
Marion Holmes (née Milner, 1867-1943) is a fascinating character in her own right. She was born in New Wortley, Leeds, which is only a few miles from where the greydog kennels are situated, and grew up near Barnsley, where her earliest memories were of miners begging for food. She first became involved in suffrage activism, serving as first as President of her local WSPU and doing time in Holloway. She later became a member of the National Executive of the WFL and co-editor of The Vote, first with Cicely Hamilton, then with Mrs T.P.O’Connor. She was also a freelance journalist for 25 years, serving on the committee of the Society for Women Journalists. Pretty cool. (thesuffragettes.org)
Back to the book. An additional pleasure was to find a story which echoes the emergence of weird fiction in these decades. ‘Haunted’, by Jack Edwards. This is one of the most interesting in here – a man is haunted by what is at first a glimmer, then a vaguely humanoid presence, and then… The story seems at first to be a typical ghost story, but builds to an unexpected ending which is open to a number of interesting interpretations. An odd tale altogether, well worth the read, and of interest to those outside the ‘classic supernatural’ reader circles.
Two more are worth noting (yeah, it’s a matter of personal taste, as always). Lumley Deakin’s story ‘Ghosts’ is curious in that it include the presence of a repeat character of the author’s – the mysterious urbanite Cyrus Sabinette. Deakin wrote a number of Sabinette stories:
‘The Man Who Saw To-morrow’, The New Magazine (UK) Aug 1914
‘Jealousy’, The New Magazine (UK) Sep 1914
‘Ghosts’, The New Magazine (UK) Oct 1914
‘The Ghost Ship’,The New Magazine (UK) Nov 1914
‘Eyes’, The New Magazine (UK) Feb 1915
‘Confidences’, The New Magazine (UK) Mar 1915
‘The Vision of Abberly Neate’, The New Magazine (UK) Apr 1915
Quite who Sabinette is, and why he is, are not explained in ‘Ghosts’, which has a traditional ‘ghost vengeance’ twist, and yet is also the story of a man (the main character) who is a generous eligible bachelor at night and a grasping magnate running sweatshops by day. It acts as a pointed commentary on forced/indentured labour, which sadly still has a lot of relevance.
Also of some interest is ‘On the Embankment’ by Hugh E Wright, a tale of an empty bench in the part of the Embankment where the homeless and destitute huddle at night. The plot is slight, but the way the story unfolds makes it worth a read.
Finally, for Glimpses of the Unknown, to James Barr (1862-1923), who sometimes wrote as Angus Evan Abbott. He caught our attention because James was the younger brother of Robert Barr, who was a close friend of Jerome K Jerome and a force behind the ‘Idler’ magazine. On to Robert in a moment. James, a writer/journalist, wrote a number of strange stories, though he dallied more with early speculative fiction than with typical supernatural ones.
His stories included ‘The Last Englishman’ (July 1906 Monthly Story Blue Book Magazine), a Yellow Peril tale in which a worldwide Chinese hegemony proves hollow; ‘The World of the Vanishing Point’ (March 1922 Strand), a striking adventure in a microscopic world of Monsters, and ‘Lord Hagen’s Dress Suit’ (August 1911, The Red Magazine) where advancing Technology has a retrograde effect and forces people back into caves (ISFDB).
In this anthology, James Barr is represented by a sentimental but not cloying story which is most definitely supernatural, ‘The Soul of Maddalina Tonelli’. A violinist picks up a promising, though not perfectly toned, fiddle, and then begins to see a vision of a young woman in concert audiences – a young woman no one else can see. A historical mystery eventually unravels. Quite a nice tale.
In addition, James wrote the novel The Gods Give My Donkey Wings (1895), a wry tale of a young packman (selling items from his donkey pack) who finds himself in a sort of mountainside utopian community call the Thorp.
CROSSING THE BAR(R)
Now, on the subject of Barrs and anthologies, we’ve probably mentioned Stories In The Dark before. Stories In The Dark: Tales Of Terror by Jerome K. Jerome, Barry Pain, and Robert Barr, was compiled by Hugh Lamb, who sadly passed away recently, and published in 1989 in the excellent but short-lived Equation Chillers series. As with James Barr, Barry Pain wrote a number of SF type stories, including his own utopian strand in The New Gulliver and Other Stories (1913). Of Jerome, we have said many things before – see here, for example:
Stories in the Dark includes Robert Barr’s supernatural fiction, but he may be known to you as the creator of detective Eugene Valmont. His collection The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont is freely available, including from Project Gutenberg, and has some interest for both period fiction fans and detective fiction enthusiasts.
For the reader of supernatural tales, the Valmont tales even include ‘The Ghost with the Club-Foot’ (though as with many other such stories of the period, you will have guessed that the ghost is not a ghost).
“Lord Rantremly at that time was sixty-five years old. His countenance was dark, harsh, and imperious, and his language brutal. He indulged in frightful outbursts of temper, but he paid so well for service that there was no lack of it, as there has been since the ghost appeared some years ago. He was very tall, and of commanding appearance, but had a deformity in the shape of a club-foot, and walked with the halting step of those so afflicted. There were at that time servants in plenty at the castle, for although a tradition existed that the ghost of the founder of the house trod certain rooms, this ghost, it was said, never demonstrated its presence when the living representative of the family was a man with a club-foot.
“Tradition further affirmed that if this club-footed ghost allowed its halting footsteps to be heard while the reigning lord possessed a similar deformity, the conjunction foreshadowed the passing of title and estates to a stranger. The ghost haunted the castle only when it was occupied by a descendant whose two feet were normal. It seems that the founder of the house was a club-footed man, and this disagreeable peculiarity often missed one generation, and sometimes two, while at other times both father and son had club-feet, as was the case with the late Lord Rantremly and the young man at Oxford. I am not a believer in the supernatural, of course, but nevertheless it is strange that within the past few years everyone residing in the castle has heard the club-footed ghost, and now title and estates descend to a family that were utter strangers to the Rantremlys.”
The older Barr brother, Jerome and Pain were all acquaintances of Arthur Conan Doyle. Robert is often credited with the first Sherlock Holmes parody, but this is not quite correct. J M Barrie’s may be the first ‘legitimate’ parody – he wrote the amusing ‘My Evening with Sherlock Holmes’, where the narrator mocks the detective by showing his own abilities. This was published in November 1891. Conan Doyle apparently wrote (in an 1892 letter to his mother):
“I went in to the ‘Idlers’ dinner and met J. M. Barrie, Jerome K. Jerome, Barry Pain, Zangwill, Barr (‘Luke Sharp’), Robertson, and others. [ ] It was Barrie who wrote the skit on Holmes in The Speaker.”
robert barr on left, conan doyle in middle
Not long after Barrie, in 1892, Robert Barr provided his own masterful detective with Detective Stories Gone Wrong: The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs.
“I DROPPED in on my friend, Sherlaw Kombs, to hear what he had to say about the Pegram mystery, as it had come to be called in the newspapers. I found him playing the violin with a look of sweet peace and serenity on his face, which I never noticed on the countenances of those within hearing distance. I knew this expression of seraphic calm indicated that Kombs had been deeply annoyed about something. Such, indeed, proved to be the case, for one of the morning papers had contained an article eulogising the alertness and general competence of Scotland Yard. So great was Sherlaw Kombs’s contempt for Scotland Yard that he would never visit Scotland during his vacations, nor would he ever admit that a Scotchman was fit for anything but export.”
You can read more Kombs stories in the Eugene Valmont collection mentioned above, or online here:
After putting this piece together we looked up the links for Glimpses of the Unknown, and found that Multoghost, an informative website which holds much of interest to us, had also covered the volume. You might care to go there for Nina Zumel’s own summation and comments on Glimpses.
According to a kind soul at the British Library publishing department, the outline schedule is as follow, and we hope to cover a number of volumes during the year:
Autumn 2018:
From the Depths and Other Strange Tales of the Sea – edited by Mike Ashley
Haunted Houses: Two Novels by Charlotte Riddell – edited by Andrew Smith
Glimpses of the Unknown: Lost Ghost Stories – edited by Mike Ashley
Mortal Echoes: Encounters with the End – edited by Greg Buzwell
Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings – edited by Tanya Kirk
Spring 2019:
The Platform Edge: Uncanny Tales of the Railways – edited by Mike Ashley
The Face in the Glass: The Gothic Tales of Mary Elizabeth Braddon – edited by Greg Buzwell
The Weird Tales of William Hope Hodgson – edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes
Doorway to Dilemma: Bewildering Tales of Dark Fantasy – edited by Mike Ashley
Hardback series:
The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Tales – Edgar Allan Poe (with an introduction by Greg Buzwell)
The Ghost Stories of M.R. James – edited by Roger Luckhurst
The Gothic Tales of H.P. Lovecraft – edited by Xavier Aldana Reyes
If you enjoy greydogtales, why not help old greydog, John Linwood Grant, feed his hungry lurchers? Buy his latest novel The Assassin’s Coin today. It’s quite good, if you like that sort of thing…
Latest 5 Star Amazon Review: “A gripping, atmospheric tale from a fascinating period of British history, whose two main protagonists are equally fascinating. Chilling, humane, occasionally very moving, and highly recommended.”
The Cthulhu Mythos is a dark and twisted place in which unpronounceable deities scheme endlessly for dominion over the unsuspecting world of ordinary, everyday speech therapists. Ftaghns and Ia!s lurk in the depths of the earth, or brood inside distant stars, waiting to insert themselves into conversations about washing machines. And even when humans manage to get their tongues around the non-Euclidean terminology, who are these deities really?
H P Lovecraft didn’t know, because he made them up and then altered them as it suited him; Clark Ashton Smith had some spare letters in his Scrabble set, and added his own contributions. August Derleth, having worked in a canning factory, liked everything neatly packaged and labelled, so whilst he added his own beings, he also tried to sort the others into orderly groups which could be represented by elements, nature, and weight of contents when drained.
Hence his identification of Cthulhu as a water deity, despite Cthulhu’s known dislike of its enforced holiday in the oceanic depths. And Derleth’s creation of Cthulhu’s bad-tempered brother-in-law, Cthugha, when it was pointed out that he’d missed Fire out.
Writers continued to pile on long after Lovecraft, Ashton Smith and Derleth – Brian Lumley alone created eight hundred and seventy three Mythos deities, all of whom were surprisingly describable, and interactive. Ramsey Campbell attempted to stem the flow by developing a more modest number of well-characterised deities, most of these restraining themselves to British waterways and the less popular bus routes, but despite his brave efforts, things were getting out of hand.
not quite as real as the previous book
So we realised that we should shoulder some of the organisational burden, being uniquely placed to do so. We once read some Lovecraft stuff, we can spell (mostly), and we have a Scratch’n’Sniff copy of ‘The Li’l Old Ones Go To the Seaside’. But what could we add? Is there any real agreement as to how the Mythos gods should be organised, unionised, and provided with an adequate dental plan? Not really.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Real Cthulhu Mythos deities don’t care if you know what they’re called, or if you can pronounce them. Only their obsessive human enthusiasts bother with that stuff.
The current broad – if inadequate – hierarchy has emerged over decades:
A. THE OUTER GODS
Attended by the Lesser Outer Gods, the Really Unimportant Outer Gods, and an extremely bad woodwind section.
B. THE ELDER GODS
Less powerful than the Outer Gods, but less nuts, and occasionally willing to help out humanity in return for worship and spare change.
C. THE GREAT OLD ONES
Not quite as Great or as Old as the Outer Gods, and in a mood with the Elder Gods. Mostly locked in their bedrooms or on curfew, thus rather resentful when encountered at all.
D. THE GREAT ONES
Not terribly great. The deities of Earth’s Dreamland. Looked out for by some of the other gods, like you would keep an eye on a dim but earnest little brother.
E. THE DISPOSABLE ONES
Sundry entire populations of Mi-Go, Moon-beasts, Yithians, Deep Ones, Serpent People and others, all appearing, or being wiped out, as required.
F. THE YOUNG ONES
A British comedy series from the eighties.
Z. HUMANITY
Of limited value and interest to any of the above. Even more disposable than Deep Ones.
That Cthulhu Mythos
Undaunted, we spared no effort in our research, apart from the effort of doing much of it. And after months of painstaking work, examining mouldering, yellowed tomes, certain obscene woodcarvings, and inscribed metal sheets hauled from abyssal depths, we can offer you the first entries in our easy-to-use guide to some of the key Cthulhu Mythos deities:
AZATHOTH
The speech impediment at the heart of the cosmos, driven insane by living next door to an inconsiderate and talentless flute ensemble. Father of Nyarlathotep, hence latter painting his bedroom black and staying away from home as much as possible.
CTHUGHA
Highly irritated being stuck inside the star known as Fomalhaut. Offspring are vampires on fire, and are therefore also highly irritated at their situation.
CTHULHU
Asleep.
GLAAKI
A more ambitious slug than most of its kind, which – after an unexpected meteor ride – managed to get itself pimped with some rad spikes and extendable wing mirrors. Prone to make embarrassing revelations on lakeside visits.
HASTUR
The Unspeakable, Unknowable, Never to be Named. Bored with being a minor shepherd deity, he stole some tattered robes from a nearby washing-line, went mad and became amorphous. And very yellow. Often seen shopping for masks in Carcosa.
ITHAQUA
Father of a Thousand Refrigerators, and Lord of the Snow Day, with a tendency to pick people up and then drop them at the wrong destination. Suffers from perpetual wind and red eyes.
NODENS
Primal music-loving pensioner, whose sea-shell chariot is powered by legendary beats, he is served by hordes of nightstands. Often confused with the god of Celtic travelling salesmen.
NYARLATHOTEP
Like a black Hermes who has attitude, but with his face pulled off. The only Outer God who likes riding camels and visiting Luxor, with more air miles than most Mythos deities, and may thus be encountered in places where jazz musicians or Goths hang out.
SHUB-NIGGURATH
Dark Mother of Malevolent Shrubberies and dedicated goat fancier. Prone to having children when disturbed or invoked without sufficient warning, hence her Thousand Young and constant headache. Also major ingredient in Caribbean curries.
TSATHOGGUA
Either a bat who ate a toad or a toad who ate a bat. Spends most of his time trying to get his Formless Spawn to stay in their basins, and stop messing the place up, godammit.
UBBO-SATHLA
Oozing, grey primordial porridge, without salt or syrup, and thus relatively inedible. Doesn’t get out of its grotto much, due to its habit of shedding amoebae at parties. Goes by name of Abhoth when trying to gatecrash.
YIG
The sound a serpent makes when stepped on.
There. Now you know everything you need to know about the Chtulhu Mythos. Really. For unrepentant readers, John Linwood Grant, the greydog himself, writes the occasional bit of post-modern-neo-deconstructed Mythosian fiction. Or something like that. Weird stuff, anyway.
You can find such work in various odd corners, including:
‘Messages’, in Cthulhusattva, Martian Migraine Press 2016
‘With the Dark & Storm’, in Equal Opportunities Madness, Otter Libris 2017
‘Where All is Night, and Starless’, in Chthonic, Martian Migraine Press, 2018
‘Strange Perfumes of a Polar Sun’, in The Mountains of Madness Revealed, PS, 2019
The Mythosian tales ‘Songs of the Burning Men’ and ‘The Yuggoth Club’ are also on their way this year.
And before you run away shrieking, why not take our ‘What Kind of Cthulhu Are You?’ quiz, a firm family favourite.
1. The vibrations of a human submersible are detected close to R’lyeh, intruding on your realm. Do you:
a) Use unspeakable protoplasmic servants to investigate and update you on the level of technology that the humans have achieved, making careful notes on their propulsion and weaponry? b) Rise in majesty from the depths to tear the thin shell of the submersible asunder? c) Turn over on your hideously carved obsidian couch and let it go?
2. The fungoid hordes of the Mi-Go have gathered in the void beyond Earth, threatening to come to the planet in large numbers. Do you:
a) Tell the Deep Ones and any other followers of Mother Hydra and Father Dagon that the Mi-Go are delicious, especially fried lightly in butter? b) Thrash your tendrils violently and threaten the Mi-Go with immediate obliteration if they proceed? c) Write it off as another boring alien experiment with humanity and brain cases?
3. Some Massachusetts academics complain that your vile emanations are causing their more artistic students to descend into madness. Do you:
a) Suggest that their students apply for Arts Council grants and call their work ‘installations’? b) Obliterate the entire east coast of America with vast tidal waves? c) Sink back into slumber and try to emanate less?
4. Human writers are publishing an increasing number of stories about your malign and eldritch reality. Do you:
a) Encourage these amusing fictions in order to disguise your true purpose on Earth? b) Destroy their puny minds and leave them hollowed-out shells whose eyes reflect only the abyss? c) Read a couple of their stories and doze off halfway through?
5. Hastur rides the storm above your Dread House at R’lyeh, complaining that he is the true heir of Yog-Sothoth. Do you:
a) Calm him down by pointing out that he has Carcosa to himself, and at least his place isn’t under water and leaking badly? b) Invoke Azathoth, who blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of infinity, in order that Hastur be rended into vaporous nothing? c) Write it off as another of Hastur’s tantrums and go back to sleep?
Your Answers
Mostly a)s. You are an imaginative thinker with a good sense of delegation. Well done. You are a CREATIVE CTHULHU. Mostly b)s. You have spawning issues, and need to look into anger management therapy, as well as counting to ten before you act. You are a DESTRUCTIVE CTHULHU. Mostly c)s. You may have narcolepsy, vitamin deficiencies or a number of under-active thyroid glands, and should seek medical help. Or, you are just a LAZY CTHULHU.
Further Lovecraftian/Mythos articles can be found on greydogtales across the years, such:
