It's Del Toro Time!

Aaaaaaaand, we’re done! It’s “A Little Something For Us Tempunauts” by Philip K. Dick and “The Dark Descent” is over! PARTY HORN NOISE!

WE’RE SO CLOSE TO THE END! It’s the penultimate “Dark Descent” story and it’s a whopper! “The Hospice” is quintessential Robert Aickman: it’s creepy, offbeat, weird, strange, chilling and inexplicable. We really loved it and now… only one story to go!

What a mystery this story is! Willow isn’t sure if she likes it, or if it even qualifies as horror. I’m enamored of it, but can’t really decide what it’s about! PERFECT! It’s “The Asian Shore” by Thomas M. Disch!

This week, it’s one of the most terrifying and terribly intimate stories we’ve yet covered. The cosmic horror of “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood!

This week, Willow and I take a look at the creepy effects of UNFETTERED CAPITALISM with Edith Wharton’s “Afterward!”

Whaddaya get when you take a dead guy, an invisible monster and a heaping dose of post-Civil War Traumatic Stress Disorder? “The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce! The missingest author in the history of Weird Fiction!

This week, Willow and Phil take a quick look at a quick story: “The Beautiful Stranger” by Shirley Jackson. We throw out a lot of theories as to the actual nature of this story, but the one thing we can agree on? That stranger is beautiful.

Sometimes, you don’t even need to ask. “What Was It?” by Fitz-James O’Brien!

Boy oh boy are we ever getting tired of sad men dying for their ghosts. It’s “The Beckoning Fair One” by Oliver Onions! A good story, but jeez, guys. See a therapist or something.

We’ve got a big one this week! It’s “The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers and Willow goes OFF. If you’re looking for her sources, here they are! de Oliveira, Hugo Mendes. “An Empire of Delusion: The Process of Alienation as Expressed by Robert W. Chambers’ ‘The Repairer of Reputations.’” Thesis, Proquest Dissertations Publishing, … Continue reading "The Dark Descent – “The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers"

This week, we’re heading off to jolly ol’ Russia for a bit of nineteenth century whimsey titled “Clara Militch” or “Klara Milich” or any number of permutations. It’s by Ivan Turgenev and it’s a real cracker! By which I mean, we were utterly confused by it.

It’s another headscratcher! “Seaton’s Aunt” by Walter de la Mare might not be the scariest story we’ve ever read, but it sure does make me feel sad!

Yes, I sing Hall and Oates at one point. It’s “Night-Side” by Joyce Carol Oates!

We’re back in Lovecraft Country, this week! It’s Stephen King’s “Crouch End” and it’s a modern CLASSIC!

When is a ghost not a ghost? When it’s a SIGNAL-MAN! It’s “The Signal-Man” by Charles Discken and Willow has NOTES on the story! NOTES!

“Seven American Nights” is phenomenal and Gene Wolfe is brilliant. That’s all.

“Sssssssssmokin’!” Oh, somebody stop me. This week, we begin a new chunk of “The Dark Descent” as we wend our way into “A Fabulous Formless Darkness” by way of the game-changing short story “Smoke Ghost” by Fritz Leiber. Does it live up to the hype? Yes. Yes, it does.

Oh, Henry James. Why must you be so obtuse? This week, it’s a return to the creeps and the spooks as we take a step inside “The Jolly Corner!” Any good? Well, Willow had no idea what was going on!

This week, it’s a story that really left a wild impression on us. Is it supernatural? Natural? A little bit of both? Who knows! It’s “Mackintosh Willy” by Ramsey Campbell!

This week, it’s a story that is remarkably similar in many ways to last weeks. So, we both loved it, of course! Right? RIGHT?! *sigh* It’s “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor.