Kurt Singer – World’s Greatest Stories Of The Occult

Kurt Singer – World’s Greatest Stories Of The Occult (Panther, May 1965: originally Kurt Singer’s Ghost Book, W. H. Allen, 1963)

Kurt Singer – Preface

R. S. Lambert – The Shaking Tent of the Indian Medicine Man
Ina Trimmer – Nemesis
Ida Clyde Clark – Houdini’s Story of a Call from the Dead
Ida Clyde Clark – The Case of the Widow’s Mite
Ann Taylor – The Curse of Hamid
Ida Clyde Clark – Prophetic Dreams and Precognition
Kurt Singer – The Curse of King Tut
Ida Clyde Clark – White Birds Over Vienna
Clyde Clark – The Ghost of Cambridge University
Ida Clyde Clark – When Walt Whitman Walked Again
Ida Clyde Clark – The Return of Oscar Wilde
Harry Wheeler (as told to John Godwin) – Curse of the Snowlands
R. S. Lambert – The Amherst Mystery
Kurt Singer – Ghost with a Rabbit Punch
Ethel Dougan (as told to Jane Sherrod Singer) – The Bedside Vigil
Richard Dimmock (as told to John Godwin) – Death Has Yellow Tusks
George H. Wilson – Ghost Haunts General J. C. Smuts’ House
Ida Clyde Clark – Mark Twain’s Dream of Death
Lieutenant Harry E. Rieseberg – A Dream Locates a Treasure Ship
Ida Clyde Clark – The Angry Ghost of Shakespeare
Thornton Lyman – Gangway for Ghosts
Ida Clyde Clark – The Rector and the Dead Hand
Myron R. Brown (as told to Jane & Kurt Singer) – I Talked with the Dead
Jane & Kurt Singer – Voices from an Indonesian Cemetery
William Seabrook – Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields
Dirk Travers (as told to C. V. Tench) – How Ghosts Hanged Three Murderers

Blurb
A World Tour Of The Weird And Supernatural

From the most remote corners of the world Kurt Singer has unearthed ghost stories and tales of the occult that have become uneasy legends in the countries where they occurred. From Egypt, for instance, comes the story, The Curse of King Tut, of the quite inexplicable events that followed the-breaking open of the tomb of King Tutankh-Amen, while Dead Men Working In The Cane Fields will baffle and perplex the most rational reader.

As Kurt Singer says in his preface, you may not believe in the supernatural. If you don’t then read these authenticated accounts of psychic phenomena and label them delusions, tricks, products of dreams. If, on the other hand, you are among the many who have experienced inexplicable events these stories will provide many additional discomforting quest­ion marks.

” …. only notable for the historical significance of of being the first ever cover with a candle melting on a human skull” according to Justin in Paperback Fanatic #12 and, Seabrook’s possibly dubious but bloody creepy authentic zombie encounter apart, i’m willing to bet this is dreary in a way only supernatural non-fiction can be.

Kurt Singer – Horror Omnibus

Kurt Singer – Horror Omnibus (W. H. Allen, 1965, Panther, 1966)

Robert W. Chambers – The Yellow Sign
Frank Lillie Pollock – The Last Dawn
H. P. Lovecraft – The Dreams In The Witch-House
E. F. Benson – Mrs. Amworth
Charles Collins & Charles Dickens – The Trial For Murder
Merle Prout – The House Of The Worm
Tigrina – Last Act: October
Frank Belknap Long – The Man With A Thousand Legs
August Derleth – The Pacer
H. G. Wells – The Inexperienced Ghost
Henry S. Whitehead – Cassius
C. Hall Thompson – Clay
J. S. Le Fanu – Shalken The Painter
Laurence Manning – Caverns Of Horror

Merle Prout – The House Of The Worm: “I saw for a moment – his face! Purple, bloated, the crawling flesh nearly covered his staring eyes; white worms swarmed his puffed body, exuded squirming from his nostrils and fell upon his vivid lips. The foul stench grew stronger, so thick was it that my tortured lungs cried out for relief.”

A black magic cult worship at a shrine in Sacrament Wood, unleashing a terrible plague across the US. Only the narrator, Art, and his fellow weird fiction enthusiast, Fred, know the truth behind the epidemic – but the authorities won’t believe them!

Told in a hysterical spasm of (bad) journalese, but a must for fans of festering corpse fun.

August Derleth – The Pacer: ” … since these souls were moving merely to and fro in the cellar, it would be a comparatively easy thing to draw them back, if one had a body to put them into.”

St. John’s Wood, London. Immediately prior to his death, the eccentric scientist Brent found a volunteer for his experiment and successfully bagged a lost soul. Unfortunately, the house at number 21 has proved difficult to let ever since, due to the sudden death of the next tenant and unaccountable noises from the locked room upstairs. Mr. Larkin, an author of romantic novels, moves in and is soon troubled by the phantom footsteps. And what’s that buried by the lilac bush …?

Frank Belknap Long – The Man With A Thousand Legs: (Weird Tales, August 1927). Arthur St. Armand, youthful mad scientist, experiments with etheric vibrations (whatever they are) transforms him into a blood-drinking half man – half squid trailing streams of noxious golden slime. The many tentacled monstrosity commits several gruesome murders – notably those of a child and a heroic diver he takes apart piece by piece – before heading out to sea. The part that is still Armand pleads with a lighthouse keeper for help but, rejected, takes out a cutter, killing a hundred men in the process before meeting its doom. Utterly bonkers and a true horror pulp classic.

Tigrina – Last Act: October: Original to Magazine Of Horror. Young Meg Clayton was burnt as a witch by the Bloomsbury Villagers. Before she died, she placed a curse on them and all generations of their families to come – “October shall bode ill for you and yours”.

Jump to the present day and Miss Simpson’s Residence for Refined Gentlewomen where spinster Hortense Pilkington – the last descendant of the ‘witch-finder – has just agreed to mind the Cranston child on All Hallows Eve. Being aware of the curse and conscious of how many of her family have died during October down the years, she takes every precaution to ensure her safety until one minute past midnight when she’ll be safe for another year …

Frank Lillie Pollock – The Last Dawn: New York. Eastwood and his team at Columbia University Observatory keep vigil for the imminent new star which, provided it shows, will prove Prof. Bernier’s theory that the universe is finite. At last it appears, two weeks late. “Oh, ace!” thinks Eastwood, “this will be great!” The new star promptly sets the planet ablaze killing everyone. Eastwood and assistant Alice are the last to go and she decides that now is as good a time as any to have her first bunk up so at least they go out on a happy note.