Friday, May 12, 2023

The Mines of Falun by ETA Hoffmann

 



Ernst T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), one of the earliest progenitors of scary supernatural stories, wrote the excellent The Mines of Falun. I pegged it as #17 in the greatest ghost stories for the first half of the nineteenth century. It was first published in 1819 and is set in the storied mines of Falun, Sweden. Many scary stories link the mines to the supernatural and a rumored tunnel to the center of the earth.

While in my estimation this is Hoffmann's greatest ghost tale, it is not his most original. He admits in Die Serapion Bretheren, Vol. 1, of 1819, that it involves a "well-known thema of a miner at Falun." Regardless, it is the first ghost story I have found in a mine and is well written right to its horrific ending.

What ghost storied did I like better than The Mines of Falun? Read The Best Ghost Stories 1800-1849 and find out.


#MinesofFalun #BestGhostStories #GhostStories #MineGhostStories #ClassicGhostStories #ETAHoffmann

Saturday, April 15, 2023

Lydia Ashbaugh the Witch - A Witch Short Story of 1836 by William Darby

 

Lydia Ashbaugh the Witch

by William Darby

America's first great witch story.

--Andrew Barger

Available for preorder on Amazon Kindle now (Launching on Friday) is "Lydia Ashbaugh the Witch." It is a fantastic witch short story that I found when editing Witchcraft Classic: Best Witch Short Stories 1800-1849

This classic American witch story of 1836 is the sorrowful tale of how Lydia Ashbaugh became a witch. Set in the beautiful mountains of Pennsylvania, its storyline and plot twists place it in high regard. I give a length introduction at the start of the book, including about the author who published under a penname.

“Lydia Ashbaugh” was originally published in the Saturday Evening Post and shortly thereafter in Atkinson’s Casket. It appeared the year after Nathaniel Hawthorne published "Young Goodman Brown," and excels in every category over Hawthorne's most famous witch short story. Read "Lydia Ashbaugh" tonight.


#LydiaAshbaugh #witchstories #bestwitchstories #bestwitchshortstories #witchtales #classicwitchstory #williamdarby



Thursday, April 13, 2023

Ephemera on Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Scary Ghost Stories

 

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) is known in supernatural circles for penning one of the greatest ghost stories of the nineteenth century, "The Haunted and Haunters." It was published in 1857 and is included in Phantasms: Best Ghost Short Stories 1850-1899. H.P. Lovecraft called it "one of the best short haunted house tales ever." But enough about "The Haunted and Haunters."

Bulwer-Lytton's second best ghost story is Monos and Daimonos. It was published in 1830. The horror story involves a shipwreck, a murder and . . . well . . . a relentless ghost set out for revenge. I hope you enjoy it! The Best Ghost Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Ghost Anthology.



#EdwardBulwerLytton #hauntedhunters #hauntedandhunters #monosdaimonos #monosanddaimonos #bestghoststories #bestghostshortstories #ghoststories #ghostshortstories 

Sunday, April 2, 2023

Edgar Allan Poe Vampire Story - A Few Thoughts

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Edgar Allan Poe was the undisputed king of the early scary short story. He was ten when John Polidori published the first vampire story ("The Vampyre") in the English language. That groundbreaking story was followed a few months later by "The Black Vampyre," which was published anonymously by Robert Sands, valedictorian of Columbia University. Both caused quite a stir in the literary community and among readers at large due to their depraved horror. Many people thought Lord Byron wrote Polidori's tale. Lord Byron had to make a statement in the papers that he was not the author. Both of these vintage vampire stories, with detailed background information, in The Best Vampire Stories 1800-1849 They are a must read for vampire aficionados. The latter tale launched a vampire Wikipedia page on the story itself given its groundbreaking firsts in vampire lore.

But what about an Edgar Allan Poe vampire story? Surely Poe heard of these early stories and likely read one or both when he got older. Did he respond in kind with his own vampire tale? Sorry to disappoint, but from my research Poe does not appear to have penned a vampire story. If a reader has to stretch their imagination to determine if a character is a vampire, then it is likely not a vampire. After all, a vampire is what a vampire does.

Teeth play a telling role (as does the presence of blood) in many vampire tales. The ponderous Poe dissertations that seek to attribute the protagonist’s lust for teeth to a vampire fixation in “Berenice” have felt chompy. A tooth fixation is not a blood fixation. Still, a number of anthologist have placed Poe’s “Ligeia” in their collections with hopes that if the tale is included in a vampire anthology, it will somehow be transmogrified, shapeshifted if you will, into a vampire story. A Poe story listed in the Table of Contents for an anthology boosts sales. Nevertheless, in the case of vampire anthologies, Poe’s inclusion is misdirected. Yet what a out "Ligeia?"

**Spoiler Alert** When Ligeia dies and is subsequently brought back to life through Rowena’s body, the unnamed protagonist touches her and she moves away, again displaying no lust for blood. Before her death, Rowena is given a cup of reddish liquid that could easily be wine or a potion concocted by the protagonist. There is no evidence that anyone’s blood was spilt. The only other hint of vampirism comes when Rowena’s lips part on her deathbed to display a line of “pearly teeth.” If she was a vampire we would learn of long teeth or sharp teeth, but that is not the case.

Poe’s only passing references to vampires were in his poems. “Tamerlane” references a vampire-bat and “To Helen” calls out vampire-winged panels. Articles about the vampire motif in “The Fall of the House of Usher” have been disorganized and unconvincing. There is no hint that Roderick Usher was a vampire. Essays about a volitional vampire in “Morella” have . . . well . . . sucked. 


Yes, it would be nice for this fifty year period, this cradle of all vampire short stories in the English language, to include a vampire tale by Edgar Allan Poe. But the sad answer is that Poe never penned a vampire story. Read these important scary vampire tales in BlooDeath: The Best Vampire Short Stories 1800-1849.


#EdgarAllanPoeVampire #PoeVampireStory #Ligeia #PoeVampireTale #PoeVampireStory #BestVampireStories #DidPoeWriteAVampireStory #EdgarAllanPoeVampireStory #EdgarAllenPoeVampireStory

Saturday, March 25, 2023

New Witch Story Anthology is On Sale Now - Witchcraft Classics: Best Witch Short Stories 1800-1849

 

Witchcraft Classics: Best Witch Short Stories 1800-1849

My latest scary anthology is now live and available for download or purchase.

Hardback or Paperback Book

Stories Revealed!

These are the great witch stories I picked for the anthology.

*The Hollow of the Three Hills (1830) by Nathaniel Hawthorne

*The Marvelous Legend of Tom Connor’s Cat (1847) by Samuel Lover

*The Witch Caprusche (1845) by Elizabeth Ellet

*The Brownie of the Black Haggs (1827) by James Hogg

*Lydia Ashbaugh, the Witch (1836) by William Darby

*Young Goodman Brown (1835) by Nathaniel Hawthorne

*Viy (1835) by Nikolai Gogol

Buy: Witchcraft Classics: Best Witch Short Stories 1800-1849 today!



#BestWitchStories #ClassicWitchStories #BestWitchShortStories #ClassicWitchShortStories #WitchBook #NewWitchBook #WitchAnthology #WitchCollection #GreatestWitchStories #GreatestWitchShortStories #WitchcraftStories

Monday, March 6, 2023

Short Biography on Edgar Allan Poe and His Scary Life

 

Edgar Allan Poe: An Appreciation
by
William Heath Robinson


Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore–
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
       Of “never–never more!”

This stanza from “The Raven” was recommended by James Russell Lowell as an inscription upon the Baltimore monument which marks the resting place of Edgar Allan Poe, the most interesting and original figure in American letters. And, to signify that peculiar musical quality of Poe’s genius which inthralls every reader, Mr. Lowell suggested this additional verse, from the “Haunted Palace”:

And all with pearl and ruby glowing
   Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
   And sparkling ever more,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
   Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
   The wit and wisdom of their king.

Born in poverty at Boston, January 19 1809, dying under painful circumstances at Baltimore, October 7, 1849, his whole literary career of scarcely fifteen years a pitiful struggle for mere subsistence, his memory malignantly misrepresented by his earliest biographer, Griswold, how completely has truth at last routed falsehood and how magnificently has Poe come into his own, For “The Raven,” first published in 1845, and, within a few months, read, recited and parodied wherever the English language was spoken, the half-starved poet received $10! Less than a year later his brother poet, N. P. Willis, issued this touching appeal to the admirers of genius on behalf of the neglected author, his dying wife and her devoted mother, then living under very straitened circumstances in a little cottage at Fordham, N. Y.:

“Here is one of the finest scholars, one of the most original men of genius, and one of the most industrious of the literary profession of our country, whose temporary suspension of labor, from bodily illness, drops him immediately to a level with the common objects of public charity. There is no intermediate stopping-place, no respectful shelter, where, with the delicacy due to genius and culture, he might secure aid, till, with returning health, he would resume his labors, and his unmortified sense of independence.”

And this was the tribute paid by the American public to the master who had given to it such tales of conjuring charm, of witchery and mystery as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia”; such fascinating hoaxes as “The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall,” “MS. Found in a Bottle,” “A Descent Into a Maelstrom” and “The Balloon Hoax”; such tales of conscience as “William Wilson,” “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-tale Heart,” wherein the retributions of remorse are portrayed with an awful fidelity; such tales of natural beauty as “The Island of the Fay” and “The Domain of Arnheim”; such marvellous studies in ratiocination as the “Gold-bug,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter” and “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” the latter, a recital of fact, demonstrating the author’s wonderful capability of correctly analyzing the mysteries of the human mind; such tales of illusion and banter as “The Premature Burial” and “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether”; such bits of extravaganza as “The Devil in the Belfry” and “The Angel of the Odd”; such tales of adventure as “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym”; such papers of keen criticism and review as won for Poe the enthusiastic admiration of Charles Dickens, although they made him many enemies among the over-puffed minor American writers so mercilessly exposed by him; such poems of beauty and melody as “The Bells,” “The Haunted Palace,” “Tamerlane,” “The City in the Sea” and “The Raven.” What delight for the jaded senses of the reader is this enchanted domain of wonder-pieces! What an atmosphere of beauty, music, color! What resources of imagination, construction, analysis and absolute art! One might almost sympathize with Sarah Helen Whitman, who, confessing to a half faith in the old superstition of the significance of anagrams, found, in the transposed letters of Edgar Poe’s name, the words “a God-peer.” His mind, she says, was indeed a “Haunted Palace,” echoing to the footfalls of angels and demons.

“No man,” Poe himself wrote, “has recorded, no man has dared to record, the wonders of his inner life.”

In these twentieth century days-of lavish recognition-artistic, popular and material-of genius, what rewards might not a Poe claim!

Edgar’s father, a son of General David Poe, the American revolutionary patriot and friend of Lafayette, had married Mrs. Hopkins, an English actress, and, the match meeting with parental disapproval, had himself taken to the stage as a profession. Notwithstanding Mrs. Poe’s beauty and talent the young couple had a sorry struggle for existence. When Edgar, at the age of two years, was orphaned, the family was in the utmost destitution. Apparently the future poet was to be cast upon the world homeless and friendless. But fate decreed that a few glimmers of sunshine were to illumine his life, for the little fellow was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Richmond, Va. A brother and sister, the remaining children, were cared for by others.

In his new home Edgar found all the luxury and advantages money could provide. He was petted, spoiled and shown off to strangers. In Mrs. Allan he found all the affection a childless wife could bestow. Mr. Allan took much pride in the captivating, precocious lad. At the age of five the boy recited, with fine effect, passages of English poetry to the visitors at the Allan house.

From his eighth to his thirteenth year he attended the Manor House school, at Stoke-Newington, a suburb of London. It was the Rev. Dr. Bransby, head of the school, whom Poe so quaintly portrayed in “William Wilson.” Returning to Richmond in 1820 Edgar was sent to the school of Professor Joseph H. Clarke. He proved an apt pupil. Years afterward Professor Clarke thus wrote:

“While the other boys wrote mere mechanical verses, Poe wrote genuine poetry; the boy was a born poet. As a scholar he was ambitious to excel. He was remarkable for self-respect, without haughtiness. He had a sensitive and tender heart and would do anything for a friend. His nature was entirely free from selfishness.”

At the age of seventeen Poe entered the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. He left that institution after one session. Official records prove that he was not expelled. On the contrary, he gained a creditable record as a student, although it is admitted that he contracted debts and had “an ungovernable passion for card-playing.” These debts may have led to his quarrel with Mr. Allan which eventually compelled him to make his own way in the world.

Early in 1827 Poe made his first literary venture. He induced Calvin Thomas, a poor and youthful printer, to publish a small volume of his verses under the title “Tamerlane and Other Poems.” In 1829 we find Poe in Baltimore with another manuscript volume of verses, which was soon published. Its title was “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Other Poems.” Neither of these ventures seems to have attracted much attention.

Soon after Mrs. Allan’s death, which occurred in 1829, Poe, through the aid of Mr. Allan, secured admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Any glamour which may have attached to cadet life in Poe’s eyes was speedily lost, for discipline at West Point was never so severe nor were the accommodations ever so poor. Poe’s bent was more and more toward literature. Life at the academy daily became increasingly distasteful. Soon he began to purposely neglect his studies and to disregard his duties, his aim being to secure his dismissal from the United States service. In this he succeeded. On March 7, 1831, Poe found himself free. Mr. Allan’s second marriage had thrown the lad on his own resources. His literary career was to begin.

Poe’s first genuine victory was won in 1833, when he was the successful competitor for a prize of $100 offered by a Baltimore periodical for the best prose story. “A MSS. Found in a Bottle” was the winning tale. Poe had submitted six stories in a volume. “Our only difficulty,” says Mr. Latrobe, one of the judges, “was in selecting from the rich contents of the volume.”

During the fifteen years of his literary life Poe was connected with various newspapers and magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia and New York. He was faithful, punctual, industrious, thorough. N. P. Willis, who for some time employed Poe as critic and sub-editor on the Evening Mirror, wrote thus:

“With the highest admiration for Poe’s genius, and a willingness to let it alone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led by common report to expect a very capricious attention to his duties, and occasionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went on, however, and he was invariably punctual and industrious. We saw but one presentiment of the man-a quiet, patient, industrious and most gentlemanly person.

“We heard, from one who knew him well (what should be stated in all mention of his lamentable irregularities), that with a single glass of wine his whole nature was reversed, the demon became uppermost, and, though none of the usual signs of intoxication were visible, his will was palpably insane. In this reversed character, we repeat, it was never our chance to meet him.”

On September 22, 1835, Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, in Baltimore. She had barely turned thirteen years, Poe himself was but twenty-six. He then was a resident of Richmond and a regular contributor to the “Southern Literary Messenger.” It was not until a year later that the bride and her widowed mother followed him thither.

Poe’s devotion to his child-wife was one of the most beautiful features of his life. Many of his famous poetic productions were inspired by her beauty and charm. Consumption had marked her for its victim, and the constant efforts of husband and mother were to secure for her all the comfort and happiness their slender means permitted. Virginia died January 30, 1847, when but twenty-five years of age. A friend of the family pictures the death-bed scene–mother and husband trying to impart warmth to her by chafing her hands and her feet, while her pet cat was suffered to nestle upon her bosom for the sake of added warmth.

These verses from “Annabel Lee,” written by Poe in 1849, the last year of his life, tell of his sorrow at the loss of his child-wife:

I was a child and she was a child,
   In a kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
   I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
   Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago;
   In this kingdom by the sea.
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
   And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
   In this kingdom by the sea,

Poe was connected at various times and in various capacities with the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, Va.; Graham’s Magazine and the Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia.; the Evening Mirror, the Broadway Journal, and Godey’s Lady’s Book in New York. Everywhere Poe’s life was one of unremitting toil. No tales and poems were ever produced at a greater cost of brain and spirit.

Poe’s initial salary with the Southern Literary Messenger, to which he contributed the first drafts of a number of his best-known tales, was $10 a week! Two years later his salary was but $600 a year. Even in 1844, when his literary reputation was established securely, he wrote to a friend expressing his pleasure because a magazine to which he was to contribute had agreed to pay him $20 monthly for two pages of criticism.

Those were discouraging times in American literature, but Poe never lost faith. He was finally to triumph wherever pre-eminent talents win admirers. His genius has had no better description than in this stanza from William Winter’s poem, read at the dedication exercises of the Actors’ Monument to Poe, May 4, 1885, in New York:

“He was the voice of beauty and of woe,
Passion and mystery and the dread unknown;
  Pure as the mountains of perpetual snow,
Cold as the icy winds that round them moan,
  Dark as the eaves wherein earth’s thunders groan,
Wild as the tempests of the upper sky,
  Sweet as the faint, far-off celestial tone of angel whispers, fluttering from on high,
And tender as love’s tear when youth and beauty die.”

In the two and a half score years that have elapsed since Poe’s death he has come fully into his own. For a while Griswold’s malignant misrepresentations colored the public estimate of Poe as man and as writer. But, thanks to J. H. Ingram, W. F. Gill, Eugene Didier, Sarah Helen Whitman and others these scandals have been dispelled and Poe is seen as he actually was-not as a man without failings, it is true, but as the finest and most original genius in American letters. As the years go on his fame increases. His works have been translated into many foreign languages. His is a household name in France and England-in fact, the latter nation has often uttered the reproach that Poe’s own country has been slow to appreciate him. But that reproach, if it ever was warranted, certainly is untrue.

***

William Heath Robinson (1872-1944), English cartoonist and illustrator, published the above short Poe biography in 1900. Below is the cover for Coffee with Poe: A Novel of Edgar Allan Poe's Life where I being Poe to life using his actual letters to his contemporaries and many loves.





#PoeBiography #LifeofPoe #CoffeewithPoe #PoesLife #AndrewBarger #EdgarAllanPoeLife

Friday, March 3, 2023

New Scary Witch Book Cover Reveal - Witchcraft Classics: Best Witch Short Stories 1800-1849

 

Witchcraft Classics: Best Witch Short Stories 1800-1849

I am (witchy) excited to reveal the cover of the latest scary short story anthology that I have edited. This time I have explored, and uncovered, classic witch stories from the first half of the nineteenth century.

In the coming days I will reveal the stories I picked for the collection. Click here to preorder this witch book that will be on sale on March 17, 2023!


#BestWitchStories #ClassicWitchStories #BestWitchShortStories #ClassicWitchShortStories #WitchBook #NewWitchBook #WitchAnthology #WitchCollection

Thursday, March 2, 2023

A Story of Werewolf by Catherine Crowe - Overview by Andrew Barger

Catherine Crowe
(1790-1872)

Introduction
to
A Story of a Weir-Wolf

Catherine Crowe arguably wrote the first werewolf short story by a female. It was republished in The Best Werewolf Short Stories 1800-1849: A Classic Werewolf Anthology for the first time nearly 175 years since its original publication. Crowe also wrote a few novels, with the Adventures of Susan Hopley being her most popular. Yet it is Crowe’s association with scary short stories for which she is remembered today.

Two years after “A Story of a Weir-Wolf” appeared in the May 16th, 1846 (vol. III) issue of James Hogg’s magazine Hogg’s Weekly Instructor, Crowe published a collection she titled “The Night-Side of Nature, or Ghosts and Ghost-seers.” It is a solid compilation of supernatural short stories from real life events. Unfortunately, her werewolf story that begins “on a fine bright summer’s morning” was not contained in “The Night-Side of Nature” and was apparently never re-published by Crowe after it appeared in Hogg’s Weekly Instructor. Thankfully the story will live on. Like any werewolf, it shapeshifted. Less than a decade later, the author had a terrible bought of insanity.

In 1854, at the age of 64, Crowe was found naked wandering the streets of Edinburgh. This is how Charles Dickens described the event on March 7, 1854.
“Mrs Crowe has gone stark mad–and stark naked–on the spirit-rapping imposition. She was found t’other day in the street, clothed only in her chastity, a pocket-handkerchief and a visiting card. She had been informed, it appeared, by the spirits, that if she went out in that trim she would be invisible. She is now in a mad-house and, I fear, hopelessly insane. One of the curious manifestations of her disorder is that she can bear nothing black. There is a terrific business to be done, even when they are obliged to put coals on her fire.”
In 1876—four years after Crowe’s death—William Forster produced a play called “The Weirwolf: A Tragedy” that he made clear was “from a story by Mrs. Crowe” in the printed script. This appears to be the first werewolf play taken from a werewolf story written by a female.


#CatherineCrowe #crowewerewolfstory #classicwerewolf short stories #firstwerewolfstorybyawoman #bestwerewolfstories

Sunday, December 18, 2022

The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton, Scary Short Story by Charles Dickens

 When people think of Charles "Boz" Dickens (1812-1870) around Christmastime, they obviously think of "A Christmas Carol." It was published to much fanfare on December 14, 1843. Yet it is relatively unknown that seven years prior, Dickens published another scary ghost story for Christmas. The scary story was first published in 1836 and later appeared as Chapter 29 in The Pickwick Papers. The ghost story is both funny and horrific in parts, reminiscent of A Christmas Carol in this regard.

Charles Dickens

The name of the story is The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton and it is one of Dickens's best ghost stories. It followed in the grand English tradition of telling ghost stories around Christmastime. The protagonist is one Gabriel Grub, a "sexton and grave-digger" who is going about his business on Christmas Eve when horror strikes among the gravestones. I will let you read it for yourself.



#dickensghoststories #goblinwhostoleasexton #christmasghoststories #dickenschristmastales #dickensgoblins #DickensHolidayStories #AndrewBarger

Friday, November 25, 2022

The Ghostly Visiter; or, The Mysterious Invalid - A Scary Short Story from 1833

 


On February 27, 1833 a horrific ghost story was published by the title The Ghostly Visiter; or, The Mysterious Invalid. The scary story was printed anonymously in The Penny Story-Teller, a British pulp magazine that came out every Wednesday.

The Penny Story-Teller and others were called "penny dreadfuls" given their cheap price and the frightening tales contained within their pages. In these pages is where horror short stories first took root in the UK. "The Ghostly Visiter" is one of the finest examples of a ghost story to come out of these magazines. Despite its horror, it did not rise to the level of the Top 10 ghost stories from 1800-1849, which are contained in The Best Ghost Stories.


#GhostlyVisiter #BestGhostStories #ClassicGhostStories #VintageGhosts #ScaryShortStories #PennyDreadfuls