by leerozelle | Mar 17, 2024 | cosmic horror, the gothic, the weird, weird fiction
H.P. Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model” turns dark arts into shock art in this story that inverts ideas found in Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” and Wilde’s DORIAN GRAY. An outcast painter creates monsters in his gallery that are...
by leerozelle | Mar 10, 2024 | ghost stories, the gothic
Alexei Tolstoy’s “Count Cagliostro” masterfully strikes every note as decadent Gothic, class satire, and romantic pastiche. A bad wizard uses elemental forces and physical mediumship to draw a life-sized simulacrum from an oil portrait. So...
by leerozelle | Mar 3, 2024 | horror short stories, the gothic, weird fiction, werewolves
In Hugh Walpole’s queer chimera tale “Tarnhelm,” a young nerd visits his uncles in Faildyke Hall where a malicious monster dog creeps. With his boy-crush, the narrator must bear witness to a yellow-fanged caraway-scented beast. Charmed storytelling from...
by leerozelle | Feb 4, 2024 | ghost stories, horror short stories, the gothic
THE STORY: “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” uses pet abuse and mariticide to explore PERVERSENESS, described as the “unfathomable longing of the soul TO VEX ITSELF,” or the inner drive to self-destruct. Unusual genital metaphors in...
by leerozelle | Jan 28, 2024 | horror short stories, southern fiction, southern gothic, the gothic, the weird
THE STORY: “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” Ever read Lovecraft’s “The Hound”? The story “His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood” by Poppy Z. Brite is homage and perfection of this weird tale about a pair of foppish ghouls who dig up a strange fetish and pay...
by leerozelle | Jan 14, 2024 | ghost stories, horror short stories, the gothic, the weird
Robert Westall’s “The Ugly House” has the eerie quality of M.R. James but with working-class panache. A toady locks horns with a warlock over a historical eyesore in a story packed with creepy taxidermy, phantom dogs, rat grease, and ghosts. New edition available from...
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