Weird Reading from David M Morton

Some Weird Reading

I really got into weird fiction last Halloween season. The thing I really like about it is the freedom the writers had to explore the taboo without feeling the need to tone down their thoughts, however repulsive they may be. I have to warn those who are offended easily to try and embrace the vile in these stories. The extreme satanism and the occult will not be a shock to today's reader but the racism will be. A lot of these stories were written prior or during the 1920s. 

Here is a list of some of my favorite weird tales if you are one of the brave readers. They are wildernesses in comparison to the suburbia. Bring your knife.

Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” (1894) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/389

Stephen King has said of the story: “I think ‘Pan’ is as close as the horror genre comes to a great white whale.”

Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo” (1910) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10897

In the backwoods of Canada there’s a moose hunting expedition underway. Camping, psychoanalysis, roasting fish, tea, coffee and, maybe, an American Indian mythological beast.

Robert E. Howard’s “Pigeons from Hell” (1938) http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1793/pigeons-from-hell

Southern plantation, voodoo, zombies, snake, sadist sex, and pigeons from hell.

H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls” (1924) http://www.feedbooks.com/book/281/the-rats-in-the-walls

H. P. says it was rejected by Argosy because it was “too horrible for the tender sensibilities of a delicately nurtured publick.”

Ambrose Bierce’s “The Damned Thing” (1893) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23172/23172-h/23172-h.htm

ONE DOES NOT ALWAYS EAT WHAT IS ON THE TABLE.

William Wymark Jacobs’s “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12122

I try to read it every year. The nostalgia of having had it read to me in elementary school, along with the ghastly image of that moving paw, makes it my very favorite spook tale.