New Horror, W.H. Hodgson, and Halloween Prep

Vol. 109: Free-for-all!

Upcoming Book Releases

Just a few new reads to make your Autumn a little creepier.

*July 16- I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

*July 16- Word Cloud Classics releases a six volume collection of classic horror: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Selected Works of Poe, The Brothers Grimm and Classic Horror Tales

*July 30- Ghost Camera by Darcy Coates

*Aug. 6- A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher

*Aug. 13- Hauntingly Good Spirits: New Orleans Cocktails To Die For by Sharon Keating and Christie Keating Sumich

*Aug. 20- Gothic Life: The Essential Guide to Macabre Style by Aurelio Voltaire

*Sept. 3- Pay the Piper by George A. Romero and Daniel Kraus. Kraus discovered an unfinished novel by the famed director while going through Romero’s papers at the University of Pittsburgh. This publication is sanctioned by Romero’s estate.

*Sept. 8- The Horrors of the House of Wills: A True Story of a Paranormal Investigator’s Most Terrifying Case by Daryl Marston

*Sept. 10- Cult Following: The Extreme Sects That Capture Our Imaginations and Take Over Our Lives by J.W. Ocker

*Sept. 24- Sinophagia: A Celebration of Chinese Horror

*Oct. 15- Phantom Phenomena: Tales of the World’s Most Terrifying and Supernatural Events by Darkness Prevails

Available @ Cracker Barrel

Drinkiepoo!

The Pumpkin Pie White Russian

2 tbs Torani pumpkin pie syrup

3 tbs coffee liqueur

¼ c vodka

1/3 c whole milk

Put all the ingredients in a chilled shaker and shake 20 seconds. Pour into an ice-filled rocks glass and sprinkle with pumpkin pie spice, if desired.

SPOOKY BOOKY

A Skeleton at the Helm, Edited by John Richard Stephens

Metro Books, 2008

Is your favorite part of a sea story when the pirates show up? Me too.

This collection of stories ratchets up the terror by introducing undead pirates, phantom ships, flesh-eating life forms, and many other things horrible things at sea that you’ve never thought of before and now you won’t be able to stop thinking about. The editor provides a thorough backstory to many of these legends in the introduction, and illustrations and engravings are suitably spooky.

The stories are by Poe, Doyle, Stoker, F. Marion Crawford, even one by a young Winston Churchill, but for me, the inclusion of three by William Hope Hodgson was a sign that the editor meant business. As if “The Voice in the Night” wasn’t chilling enough, you also get “The Thing in the Weeds” (in my Top Ten for story titles) and “The Derelict”. I’m certain that the screenwriters for The Blob read this one, it’s just too similar to be a coincidence. Scare Scale: 2.5

Read “The Derelict” at WordPress and tell us what you think.

Who’s A Handsome (Creepy) Boy?

Now is the perfect time to get up in William Hope Hodgson’s business, something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Let me just start by saying, “hubba-hubba”.

He was born in Essex County, England in 1877, the second of twelve children. His father was a reverend, but William was one of those rebellious little shits who cause their parents so much worry. He ran away from school at the age of twelve in an attempt to go to sea. He was caught, but his father allowed William to sign on as an apprenticed cabin boy when he was fourteen, a position that the boy’s family has to pay for. Hodgson’s father died during the four years he was at sea.

He was determined to move up the ranks, so he returned home to study, becoming certified as a Third Mate. He then went back to sea for a few more years, but it was no longer an adventure. He took up bodybuilding onboard because he was small and the other sailors bullied him. His strength helped make him a hero in 1898 when he saved the life of a sailor who had fallen all the way from the topmast into the water. This was a time when most sailors couldn’t swim. Hodgson received a medal for his actions, but he was done with sailing.

He opened the School of Physical Culture at just twenty-two years old, touting himself as the inventor of a new method for curing indigestion, but really, he was a gym owner and personal trainer in a time when few people wanted such things. The gym closed, so he wrote fitness articles, but that didn’t earn enough either.

In 1902, Hodgson had the chance to annoy Harry Houdini. Invited onstage to slap the handcuffs on the famous escape artist, Hodgson put them on so tightly that they injured Houdini’s wrists, making him really struggle to get free.

Hodgson made money a bodybuilding model, and he also gave a series of popular lectures about the misery of being a sailor, basically telling parents not to throw their money down a rat hole on apprenticeships. He seemed willing to try his hand at anything that paid, and this willingness led to his next career.

He enjoyed writing, so he chose a mentor whose work he enjoyed reading, Poe. He studied Poe’s style and decided to give it a shot himself. His first published story, “The Goddess of Death” appeared in Royal magazine in 1904, and was about a statue that may be a serial killer. This was followed by more horror stories and a series of paranormal detective stories featuring his investigator Thomas Carnecki. His novels consist of The House on the Borderland (1908), The Ghost Pirates (1909) and The Night Land (1912). There is also a novella version of The Night Land titled The Dream of X (1912). The House on the Borderland has remained one of his most influential works. It’s a sci-fi monster story, possibly the first instance of ‘cosmic horror’, that begins with two buddies on a fishing trip near a small Irish village. Feeling something is off about the area and the villagers, the two try to shake the feeling by exploring an old ruin, as you would. They find a diary written by the former resident, and this man’s tale of an invasion of human-like pigs from the underworld, becomes the crux of the story. The diary goes on to even weirder happenings involving the solar system and the crumbling home. H.P. Lovecraft was reading Hodgson during the 20s and the reader can see a direct line from Hodgson’s weird stories to Lovecraft’s. He was heavily influenced by what Hodgson was doing twenty years before.

Hodgson married a woman named Betty ‘Bessie’ Farnworth in 1912, having known her and her family most of their lives. In a prime example of someone going into marriage with his eyes wide open, Hodgson wrote to his sister about his new wife, telling her, “She’s not at all good-looking, but we are very happy.”

WWI began in 1914, and although he was thirty-six years old, Hodgson was likely in better shape than most. He enlisted and was sent to Europe, eventually gaining the rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. He was killed in April, 1918, when he took a direct hit in the Fourth Battle of Ypres in Belgium. He was 41 years old.

Bessie championed her husband’s writing for the next twenty-five years, keeping it in publication. The 1930s saw a rediscovery of Hodgson and his weird, paranormal tales.

I see something remarkably modern in Hodgson and his work. His blatant ambition was unusual for his time and place, and so is his choice of the horror genre. He was determined to prove that horror was for a larger audience, and he decided the way to build a fan base was to take the reader from an underground pigman invasion to outer space all in one novel. He brought unexplained phenomenon and contagions to his sea stories. He was breaking new ground in his plots, and reading his work now, you’ll see how often he sets up modern horror tropes. I detect an air of “you do you” about Hodgson.

Code Orange! Code Orange!

By now, everyone should be seeing Autumn and Halloween in the stores, if you know where to look. Joanne Fabrics, Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, Home Goods and At Home have begun stocking, and you’ll likely find Halloween creeping into your T.J. Maxx or Marshall’s. I’ve visited Cracker Barrel, where I found an It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown t-shirt, a book about haunted hotels and Sprecher’s Maple Root Beer.

Spooky Gardens!: It’s time to sow the seeds for your Autumn garden. Pumpkins and squash, black hollyhock and black pansies. Gold and rust colored sunflowers. Black nebula and purple dragon carrots, or plant a live tacca chantrieri, aka, the black bat flower.

A third reminder, because I’m full of them: Autumn Lives Here posts every Tuesday. Members of The Creep Club (paid subscribers) get every single post. Everyone else has access to the free-for-all posts, every other Tuesday. Easy-peasy.

Next Week: We’re checking into a very special hotel suite, downing a bewitching cocktail and digging through a forgotten disaster. This one is for the Creep Club, so why not join, ya creep?