Weird Wednesday

Santa Cthulu by artist Robin Levy. Pinched off somebody's blog and I've forgotten whose. Fun though, eh? There's nothing like a Lovecraftian Christmas.

Wordy Thursday - The perfection of the hideous

H P Lovecraft's imagination and total commitment to his own mythology have made him arguably the most influential horror writer of the 20th century (along with M R James). Alas, his prose can be patchy: overly baroque, dense and pretentious. But here's an example of him at his best, an evocation of the New England backwaters that inspired so much of his work. It's from one of his more subtle stand-alone short stories, The Picture in the House, written in 1920.

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountains are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands.

But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness and ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous.

Most horrible of all sights are the little, unpainted wooden houses remote from travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp, grassy slope or leaning against some gigantic outcropping of rock. Two hundred years or more they have leaned or squatted there, while the vines have crawled and the trees have swelled or spread. They are almost hidden now in lawless luxurience of green and guardian shrouds of shadow; but the small-paned windows still stare shockingly, as if blinking through a lethal stupor which wards off madness by dulling the memory of unutterable things.

In such houses have lived generations of strange people, whose like the world has never seen. Seized with a gloomy and fanatical belief which exiled them from their kind, their ancestors sought the wilderness for freedom. There the scions of a conquering race indeed flourished free from the restrictions of their fellows, but cowered in an appalling slavery to the dismal phantasms of their own minds. Divorced from the enlightenment of civilisation, the strength of these Puritans turned into singular channels; and in their isolation, morbid self-repression, and struggle for life with relentless Nature, there came to them dark, furtive traits from the prehistoric depths of their cold Northern heritage.

By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folks were not beautiful in their sins. Erring as all mortals must, they were forced by their rigid code to seek concealment above all else; so that they came to use less and less taste in what they concealed. Only the silent, sleepy, staring houses in the backwoods can tell all that has lain hidden since the early days, and they are not communicative, being loath to shake off the drowsiness which helps them forget. Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses for they must often dream.

Weird Wednesday

Well. Has-this-ever-happened-to-you? You find yourself an interesting book full of striking illustrations by a celebrated artist, in this case Charles Keeping. It's an ex-library copy and well-thumbed but what the hell. So you take it home. You flick through the book, enjoying the many illustrations you've not previously seen. And then you come to the last illo in the book.

And you find some kid's drawn a big cock on it. In red felt tip pen. And he's added the word 'Wanker' just to finish it off. Bloody hell.

Oh well, it was only 50p. It's a book from 1973 called Weirdies, a collection of macabre tales (and a few H P Lovecraft poems) selected by one Helen Hoke as being suitable for young readers. Charles Keeping is in my opinion one of the very best book illustrators of the second half of the 20th century, and since I have presented him here defaced (or becocked), I think I'll put up another of his pictures on Monstrous Monday. Incidentally, the illustration with added nob was for Theodore Sturgeon's classic tale of the reanimated dead, 'It'.

Oh OK, I should have used Google

Clever Mr Parker discovered the identity of my 'mystery' artist in an embarrasing short period of time, thanks to the power of Google. It is an Ian Miller, who is still prolific and showcases his work on his website, ian-miller.org I hope Mr Miller won't mind me reproducing one of his paintings here. It appears to be a (presumably later) version of the image he created for the cover of another H P Lovecraft Panther title, The Haunter of the Dark (my copy published in 1974). I guess I first wondered about the idenity of this artist in the pre-internet days - which wasn't that long ago, amazing though that now seems (I got the net in 99, I think). Anyway, it's a pleasure to have that question answered. Cheers, Porks!

Weird Wednesday

Two Panther paperbacks of classic weird literature, by William Hope Hodgson and H P Lovecraft respectively. The House On The Borderland dates from 1972 and Charles Dexter Ward from 1973.

But who is the artist? This guy was used by panther for all their Lovecrafts and I'm guessing most of their other weird/horror literature covers, too. It would be interesting to have a list of which titles' covers he illustrated. But it would be even more interesting to know who he or she was. What else did he or she do? I've looked for a signature but can't find one and there's no credit inside any of the books I have bearing this distinctive, elaborate and insane artwork.

I know it's highly unlikely (considering I have 5 followers!) but it would be great if someone one day finds out and lets me know!

Spooky Sunday

It's a pleasant spring day outside but I'm horribly hungover and therefore my throbbing brain turns to thoughts of gloom and gruesomeness - as it so often does. I think I'll make every Sunday Spooky Sunday, digging up something unpleasant from my ever-growing archive of the uncanny (cue creaking coffin lid FX and demoniacal laughter).

The above picture is a chapter heading from one of the many, many books by Elliott O'Donnell, a rather fey Irishman who was either the world's greatest ghost-hunter of the world's biggest fibber. He certainly wasn't afraid of writing down some of the most grotesque, bizarre and dramatic 'true' ghost accounts on record, while placing himself Dr Who-like in the midst of the action. Too often his yarns are unsupported by witness names and precise locations ('to protect the innocent' etc) but in the case accompanied by this Lovecraftian image (by an uncredited artist) he states that he was joined on his investigation by a member of the Society of Psychical Research, Bill Terry, who went mad during it, such was the horror they encountered. I wonder how verifiable that is?

Anyway, 'The Ghostly Horrors of Rainford Hall' appeared in a 1959 book called simply Ghosts and refers to an ancient manor house in Warwickshire. Here, claims O'Donnell, the built-up evil of a former owner manifested itself as a hideous, demonic presence in giant insect form, 'a huge, black, shadowy, scaly thing with long, cockroachy legs', that crept up the staircase towards them. A serious brown-trouser moment, I'm sure you'll agree.

Incidentally, for more ghost stories from Britain, check out my other blog (becoming sadly neglected) at http://www.uncannyuk.com/.