The First Pan Book of Horror Stories

by Herbert van Thal

Specially selected for Pan, here are 22 terrifying tales of horror by such famous authors as Peter Fleming, C.S. Forester, Bram Stoker, Angus Wilson, Noel Langley, Jack Finney and L.P. Hartley.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Gothic, Thriller, Canon

317 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Herbert Maurice van Thal (1904-1983), known as Bertie van Thal, was a British bookseller, publisher, agent, biographer, and anthologist.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

From 1958 to 1988 The Pan Book of Horror Stories was the annual British gorefest. It started out here, the very first of the 30, with a most unscary black cat on the cover, and with some kind of literary aspirations. Within a few years it fell, nay, it swandived, into the filthiest of sewers, it became caked with disgust and it revelled in relentless cruelty.

Yay!

There seem to be hardly any reviews of this nasty stuff, so here I boldly go. The favourites from this first rather feeble volume are :


AL Barker, ‘Submerged’.

Young lad had secret solo river swim sessions. Woman bursts on to the riverbank during one such, pursued by a man. She falls in the river and is drowned. The man is later arrested for murder. Beautifully written.

Oscar Cook, 'His Beautiful Hands'

A manicurist extracts deliberately protracted revenge on a man who wronged her mother. Incest, rotting fingers and a deformed baby also loom large. Never let it be said that Oscar Cook, whoever he was, did things by halves.

George Fielding Eliot, ‘The Copper Bowl’

Exquisite boy’s-own tale of torture - the hero tied up - his sweetheart tied down - the evil Chinese intend to extract the vital information from him - never! never I say! I laugh in the fact of death! oh but what's this? A rat! - placed on his sweetheart's naked stomach and quickly covered by the copper bowl... and a hot coal placed on the upturned bowl - what will the rat, driven mad by heat, then do? Nooo... anyway, the idea turned up later in American Psycho, so clearly it must be a good one.

Jack Finney, ‘Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket’

Companion piece to Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” (one of the all time great short stories). This guy lives way up on the 16th floor in a NYC apartment, and is writing a crucial work-related document, a window is opened, wind blows document out of the window where it comes to rest on the small ledge which runs under the windows, but about 15 feet away. He steps outside to retrieve it and the nightmare begins. Great contrast between inside (normal) and outside (hell). Apparently Stephen King ripped off this idea for one of his stories.

Nigel Kneale, ‘Oh, Mirror, Mirror’ Creepometer reading : 77

Lunatic aunt keeps pretty blonde girl relative prisoner and convinces her she’s ugly. Great study of insanity.

Anthony Vercoe – 'Flies'

A starving tramp breaks into a vacant Elizabethan house in Holborn, and is transported back in time to the height of the Great Plague. He finds a rotting corpse, and big blowflies attack him. Oh well, you had to be there.

Angus Wilson - 'Raspberry Jam'

Two batty old lesbian alcoholics have an inappropriate friendship with a boy. This is a good one!

I guess these horror anthologies are like a time capsule of the fears and obsessions of the age. If so people in 1958 were scared of hulking retired surgeons with a Nazi past and a big library.

And now on to volume two!

[Steve Payne · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading all 37 Fontana Books of Horror and Ghost stories, I now embark on the 30 volume Pan Books of Horror (published between 1959 and 1989).

Like their Fontana counterparts, these volumes would attention grab from the shelves with their garish and ghoulish covers (my edition of volume one has a severed head lying amongst roots on an earthy floor). Again, like Fontana, they mix old with new stories, with later volumes concentrating more on the new. The Pan books don’t have the fine lengthy introductions of the Fontana books, but in the first ten books more than make up for it in quantity.

I feel that I’m cheating a little with this first review because I actually read the book some years ago and this is taken from my basic notes, but I will be reading from volume two onwards - now.

There are twenty-two stories here and there are quite a few I didn’t much care for (I’m halfway through the second volume of the series and I’m glad to say that the hit rate is much higher). Here, I’d have to say that only seven left any indelible impression, with maybe another six as reasonable inclusions.

The standouts for me are:-

‘Submerged’ by A.L. Barker – A boy swimming in what he has always nostalgically considered to be ‘his’ river witnesses an argument and event between a man and a woman. The more I think about this story the better it gets.

‘The Copper Bowl’ by George Fielding Eliot – As punishment, a woman is tortured because a man she knows will steadfastly not give out military information. A fine and gripping little story.

‘Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket’ by Jack Finney – A man walks along a building ledge to retrieve a piece of paper. Very entertaining story which grabs and maintains the attention. I wonder if Stephen King read this before writing ‘The Ledge’ (from ‘Night Shift’)?

‘The Physiology of Fear’ by C.S. Forester – Experiments involving fear are carried out by a Nazi. Fascinating characters and situation.

‘W.S.’ by L.P. Hartley – An interesting little tale of a writer who is haunted by ‘someone’ sending postcards which are postmarked from locations that are getting nearer.

‘Behind The Yellow Door’ by Flavia Richardson – Now here’s a memorabe tale, worthy of a Lon Chaney/Tod Browning film. An old woman incarcerates a younger woman with the intention of amputating the young woman’s lower half to replace the lower half of her withered daughter. Macabre and gripping stuff!

‘The Portobello Road’ by Muriel Spark – A dead woman tells the story of her relationships with her childhood friends, with one roguish character being very sinister. This classily written affair is the best story of this first collection. It flows beautifully and you’re there with the characters and situations throughout the storyteller’s life.

I’ll mention ‘Jugged Hare’ (Joan Aitken), ‘The Mistake’ (Fielden Hughes), ‘The Lady Who Didn’t Waste Words’ (Hamilton Macallister) and ‘A Fragment of Fear’ (Chris Massie) as reasonable supporting horrors; but there are just too many stories here that I couldn’t connect with. As stated earlier, the hit rate on volume two is looking much better.

Yes, you have to take what you consider to be the bad with the good (but that's how you discover what you like, and don't like). The journey through nostalgia and prospective discoveries is usually a very entertaining one…

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing up I never remember my mother reading anything but one of this endless (more than 30 vol.) series. So I read them too. Good bedtime reading if you like this sort of thing.

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are the books which fed my burgeoning appetite for horror in my late teens and early twenties. Almost all the stories in this collection frightened me when I read them first - I daresay they would have lesser impact now that my palate has been jaded.

"The Copper Bowl", "Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket", "W.S." and "Oh, Mirror, Mirror" are some of the stories which I still remember.

[Andrew Lennon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked a couple of these stories, but overall most of them were very dated and very boring.
I read a short story in between reading books so I've been reading these off and on for months.
Sadly I disliked more than I liked.
Two stars only because of the few stories that were actually ok.


All reviews can be found at http://lennonslair.blogspot.co.uk/

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This did nothing to change my opinion that short story collections are on the whole hugely unsatisfying. Nothing really bad here but nothing really great either. Stand out stories were Submerged by AL Barker and Portobello Road by Muriel Spark. There are also stories by Bram Stoker and Nigel Kneale (he of Quatermass fame).

Meh.

[Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

The First Pan Book of Horror Stories has a lot to answer for. It was the first horror anthology I ever read, some fourteen years ago now, I guess. I was hooked from the start and I went back and re-read it straight away. It inspired me to seek out the sequels, along with a whole many other anthologies besides, so it will always hold a special place in my heart.

Looking back at it now, I see that it’s a bit of a varied collection, and some of the stories are weak. But the ones that stay with you are the ones to look for, and on that note alone I give this a five star rating.

Altogether, I found three stories here less than average. Joan Aiken’s JUGGED HARE, which opens the collection, is short and to the point, but doesn’t really have time to get going. I found the characters interesting but the horror less so. THE LIBRARY, by Hester Holland, is an old-fashioned “housekeeper arrives at weird house and finds horror” type story, and never engaged with me at all. There are a couple of good ideas here, but the finale is very predictable. THE MISTAKE, by Fielden Hughes, is a Poe-like story about an asylum inmate troubled by a frightening dream, and very tame and dated by today’s standards.

Next are the stories that are fairly entertaining, although not ones I’d want to revisit. Peter Fleming’s THE KILL is moderately enjoyable, mixing family curses and werewolves, but never lifts above the norm for the genre. I liked the writing style the best. C. S. Forester’s THE PHYSIOLOGY OF FEAR is one that explores the horrors of the Nazi death camps, and makes for gruelling reading, but the subject matter is such that I couldn’t necessarily ‘enjoy’ reading it. L. P. Hartley’s W. S. conjures up a nice sense of foreboding in its story of postcards from a sinister enemy and is a fun little effort. OH, MIRROR, MIRROR is Quatermass author Nigel Kneale’s contribution, about the horrible life of a young girl, worthy because of the great twist ending.

THE LADY WHO DIDN’T WASTE WORDS is by Hamilton Macallister. It’s short and ambiguous, about a weird train passenger. Plenty of unusual stuff going on here. Chris Massie’s A FRAGMENT OF FACT is the usual spooky-house-on-the-moor stuff which has a few moments of excellence amid the typical ingredients. Flavia Richardson’s BEHIND THE YELLOW DOOR has a predictable plot but some gruelling surgical horror behind it that makes for extremely macabre reading. Angus Wilson’s RASPBERRY JAM is about a couple of grotesque old ladies and has a moment of inconsequential violence that turned my stomach more than anything in the rest of the book.

Finally are the stories that really hit home: A. L. Barker’s SUBMERGED, a simple story about an idyllic recreation spot, chilled me to the bone through eloquent language and late-term horror. Oscar Cook, my favourite ‘grotesque’ author despite the sparsity of his surviving stories (only half a dozen or so remain), delivers HIS BEAUTIFUL HANDS, a loathsome and disgusting read which has a great sense of time and place attached to it.

George Fielding Eliot’s THE COPPER BOWL is a historical yarn in which a French soldier is subject to a new form of torture by a Chinese warlord. It’s pretty sick and downbeat with it. Noel Langley’s SERENADE FOR BABOONS sees a British doctor in South Africa caught up in witch-doctery and really hits home. I love reading about Africa in fiction and this one brings the nation’s belief in magic and curses to life. Seabury Quinn’s THE HOUSE OF HORROR is a pure pulp outing, taken from the pages of WEIRD TALES. It’s extremely ghastly and hard-going, and the author wrings maximum torment out of the disturbing shenanigans. Full of action and excitement, this.

Muriel Spark’s THE PORTOBELLO ROAD is something else entirely: a character study dealing with themes of alienation, loneliness, obsession and friendship. It’s no horror story, at least not by my definition, but the grasp of characterisation shown by the author makes for an enthralling read, if it is a little overlong. Anthony Vercoe’s FLIES is another sickening one about bluebottles, providing visceral shock after visceral shock and a good example of charnel-house nastiness. Alan Wyke’s NIGHTMARE, which closes the collection, is another psychology outing, this time a study of persecution. I found it utterly believable and no less frightening than a fictional vampire, for example.

That leaves two twin highlights for me, both top-notch stories among my very favourite from the genre. They’re also very different in tone. Jack Finney – the guy who wrote INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS – contributes CONTENTS OF THE DEAD MAN’S POCKET, a brilliantly conceived anecdote about a guy walking on an apartment ledge hundreds of feet up in the air. It’s the tensest thing I’ve read, and worked especially well for me as I suffer from vertigo. Utterly realistic, this had my stomach in knots throughout. Stephen King’s a big fan of this one, and even wrote a variation on the story, although it’s not on par with this.

My other favourite is the Lovecraftian HORROR IN THE MUSEUM, by Hazel Heald, with Lovecraft’s help. Jam-packed with hideous nightmare creatures, plenty of suspense and slithering horror, this makes use of Lovecraft’s creations in an original, thoroughly entertaining way and is one of my favourite Cthulhu stories of all time. A real highlight, this.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me tell you of a dirty little secret, reissued from the UK’s pulp past. This book is a glorious reissue of the first in a series of thirty horror books that delimited and defined many a British horror reader for over twenty-five years.

On its original issue it was seen as something garish and unpleasant, its horrific tales too gruesome and unsettling for many. When you ask many of the present day genre writers – Stephen Jones, Clive Barker, Mark Morris, Phillip Pullman – it is this series they remember that affected them when younger.

So: in this reissue, with a new introduction by Johnny Mains, we have a new edition of a book that otherwise stays the same, even down to the original cover of a black cat’s face on a black background( related to the Bram Stoker tale in the book) and the 3’6 price label in the bottom right corner of the cover.

We have twenty-two tales, from some familiar names – as well as the aforementioned Bram Stoker, there’s also Jack Finney, Nigel Kneale, C.S. Forester, and Seabury Quinn – to others which are less so these days – Hester Holland, L.P. Hartley, Hamilton Macallister, anyone?
Though the names may not necessarily be familiar, titles like ‘Contents of the Dead Man’s Pockets’ (Jack Finney), ‘The Library’ (Hester Holland) and ‘The Horror in the Museum’ (Hazel Heald) pretty much tell you what to expect. Some have been reprinted through the years – Bram Stoker’s’ The Squaw’, for example, though this is one of his lesser known tales (and involves no vampires!)– and yet there are many other near-unknown tales that deserve a revivification. In fact, it is the fact that many of these are less known that made this a treat for me.

As perhaps you might expect from a British book of the 1950’s, it often reads with that British sense of the stiff upper lip, of facing adversity under pressure, intermingled with a feeling of distress and tension, though it must be said that not all are British. (There are two stories reprinted by permission from the great Arkham House, for example, which give a decidedly Weird Tales feel to parts of the collection.) And yet there is that thing that can only really be described as a sense of unease. Although there is, unlike other books later in the series, no profanity, comparatively little grue and a surprisingly substantial amount of psychological subtlety, there are scenes of torture, gross awfulness and violence. We also have adultery, jealousy and the odd bit of nastiness. Though time may have diluted the chills a little, it is a wonderfully nostalgic read.

Two things struck me most on rereading. The first is that how important the settings are. Many are quintessentially English, from gloomy rooms and desolate buildings and the back streets of London to the quiet country lanes and softly flowing little rivers, all are here. It is these quietly beautiful and imposing environs that accentuate the weirdness within, and this makes the tales eerily effective.

Secondly, it was also surprising to find that many of the stories still hold up after all this time. Particular favourites of mine were Nigel Kneale’s Oh, Mirror, Mirror, until recently very hard to get hold of, and Oscar Cook’s His Beautiful Hands, a grisly tale of decaying flesh. In a similar way, C.S. Forster’s The Physiology of Fear has a 1950’s take on the Nazi concentration camps that fuses both horror and guilt. By contrast, Angus Wilson’s Strawberry Jam is unsettlingly icky. It was great to read one of Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin tales again, in The House of Horror, though it is clear that some aspects of the character and culture have dated – the funnily translated phrases from French into English, the use of the term 'negro' as acceptable. Despite this, this is an undervalued and near-forgotten series that deserves a wider reading.

On the other hand, there are exceptions that have dated quite badly: George Fielding Eliot’s The Copper Bowl is a derring-do tale of Chinese torture that reads like a bad pulp tale of the 1930’s. Had it not been for the unforgettable portrayal of a rat, burrowing beneath the skin of a torture victim, this one would not have been memorable at all.

Similarly, Muriel Spark’s tale The Portobello Road involves the word ‘nig’. Though it can be argued that these tales were a product of their time, and the tale is partly set in South Africa, contemporary readers may find such parlance shocking.

On the whole though, there are more hits than misses. There are tales that unsettle (LP Hartley’s W.S.), tales that make you look at normal things in a different way and tales that are just a little messy.
If you fancy reading the origins of a series that became influential, if you appreciate a gently delicious shudder on an autumnal evening, then this is a great read. Recommended perhaps for that Halloween read.

[Stephen McQuiggan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth it for Nigel Kneale alone.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my early exposures to horror fiction and it hooked me. This is the first place I found "Contents of the Dead Man's pocket" by Jack Finney and I thought it was just the perfect horror storie. There's a lot of good stuff here though, including "Flies" and others.

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Classic horror stories that seem a bit outdated now. Favorites were 'W.S.' by LP Hartley, 'Behind the Yellow Door' by Flavia Richardson, 'The Squaw' by Bram Stoker, 'Flies' by Anthony Vercoe and 'The Kill' by Peter Fleming.

[Aussiescribbler Aussiescribbler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I only read a few volumes at that time, the Pan Books of Horror Stories made a big impact on me in my adolescence. For a short time I loved these gruesome tales with their shocking twist endings. Around the same time I ate up most of the Edgar Allan Poe stories. A little later I went off horror for a while because I was suffering from OCD and depression and had too many horrible ideas already in my head to want to add any more. It would be a number of years before my taste for horror returned.

Now I'm starting in at the first volume with the intention of reading them all.

Here are my thoughts on the stories which make up that classic first collection :

Joan Aiken - Jugged Hare

This is a subtly creepy tale of menace, something to whet the appetite for the more explicit horrors that come in later stories.

A.L. Barker - Submerged

Another subtle psychological story of lingering unease.

Oscar Cook - His Beautiful Hands

The Grand Guignol really kicks in with this deliciously vile story.

George Fielding Eliot - The Copper Bowl

A simple historical tale about a fiendish form of torture which has probably been used in reality. I first encountered it in the movie Terror at Orgy Castle (1972) (the watching of which is also a form of torture).

Jack Finney - Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket

Jack Finney was the author of the much-filmed novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This story deals with a very different form of terror - one to which I am particularly susceptible - fear of heights. Once again, a simple story, but one that might well have you hanging onto the arm of your chair as you read it.

Peter Fleming - The Kill

A very well-written, if a little predictable, werewolf story written by Ian Fleming's younger brother. Like so many of the stories in these books, this would make a perfect segment in one of those multi-story horror movies.

C.S. Forester - The Physiology of Fear

A tale of sadistic Nazi experiments by the author of the Midshipman Hornblower books. You may well guess the ending, but its jet-black sense of irony is something special anyway.

L.P. Hartley - W.S.

Like Stephen King's Misery (well the movie anyway, I've never read the book), this is a writer's nightmare, and when that writer writes as beautifully as Hartley it is a joy to read. This one really had me intrigued from the first paragraph.

Hazel Heald - The Horror in the Museum

"This Hazel Heald woman must have been a real H.P. Lovecraft fan," I said to myself as I read this story, with its references to ancient Gods and tentacled creatures including Cthulu. Later I discovered that it was ghost-written by Lovecraft for Heald. It's a classic. Once again I would love to see it filmed, even if the descriptions Lovecraft gives of his infernal beasties allow us to conjure up something more horrific than even the most imaginative special effects could probably do justice.

Hester Holland - The Library

Another very simple story, but effectively creepy because of its details.

Fielden Hughes - The Mistake

Not one of my favourites. The central idea is good, but I thought it could have been presented a bit more powerfully.

Nigel Kneale - Oh, Mirror, Mirror

This second-person narrative, that is one which places you as a character within the story who is being addressed by the narrator, is one of the most unusual, and disturbing, in the book. It is a intimate depiction of an all too believable evil. Nigel Kneale is most famous as the creator of the Quatermass television series and movies.

Noel Langley - Serenade for Baboons

This fine story is reminiscent of the old E.C. Comics stories of horrible people meeting an even more horrible fate.

Hamilton McAllister - The Lady Who Didn't Waste Words

This is a really strange one. It doesn't provide any answer to its central mystery, but has a delicious sense of black comedy.

Chris Massie - A Fragment of Fact

Another strange one. Definitely imaginative, but a mystery with no solution.

Seabury Quinn - The House of Horror

I'm pretty jaded when it comes to horror, but this one conjures up an idea so hideously depraved that it shocked even me.

Flavia Richardson - Behind the Yellow Door

Another gruesome classic with a very memorable final line.

Muriel Spark - Portobello Road

A well-written ghost story told from the point of view of the ghost by Muriel Spark, author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Bram Stoker - The Squaw

Another classic story from the author of Dracula. It's not hard to foresee the gruesome climax to this story, but that is what gives it its suspense, and it is all presented with black humour, a ear for dialogue (or rather monologue, as the main character seldom shuts up) and indelibly gruesome images.

Anthony Vercoe - Flies

The central concept is a common one in horror stories, but Vercoe makes something unforgettable out of it by conjuring up a skin-crawling sense of disgust.

Angus Wilson - Raspberry Jam

One of the very best stories in the collection. The child's view of the adult world, the complex and believable characters and the shocking, but believable, ending, make this a mini-masterpiece of the macabre.

Alan Wykes - Nightmare

A fine example of the paranoia story.

[Shawn]

PLACEHOLDER REVIEW

In "His Beautiful Hands" by Oscar Cook, Warwick relates another unpleasant club story to his friend, this one involving a older violinist fixated on a young, female barber who looks to exact a hideous revenge for secrets hidden away. Lurid and nasty, but not as good as "Boomerang" in the next volume.

[Andrew Garvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 2010 re-issue of the 1959 anthology classic, this is a cracking collection of late-nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth century horror short stories. It also has a useful new introduction setting this edition and the rest of the series in historical context. Sadly, Pan apparently abandoned the idea of re-issuing any of the other 29 volumes. Oh, well. Off to the second hand booksellers it is.

In the meantime, here’s a brief overview of each of the 22 stories in this first, groundbreaking volume.

‘Jugged Hare’ is OK. A subtle, decent opening story.

‘Submerged’ feels overlong, and a little too much like an exercise in creative writing.

‘His Beautiful Hands’ is the first of several truly great stories in this collection. It’s also wonderfully gruesome.

‘The Copper Bowl’ is based around some truly gleeful stereotyping about the cruelties of a nineteenth century Chinese villain. Great fun.

‘Contents of the Dead Man's Pockets’ is tense and well-written but let down by a disappointing ending.

‘The Kill’ builds slowly (too slowly at times) to a fine ending in just a sentence.

‘Physiology of Fear’ is good but an extremely predictable ending leaves it on a flat note.

‘WS’ is atmospheric, creepy, mysterious and ambiguous. Very good.

‘Horror in the Museum’is another v good one, either ghostwritten or heavily influenced by and/or edited by HP Lovecraft, and it clearly shows.

‘The Library’ feels long at just 11 pages but does have a good ending

‘The Mistake’ comes across a little too Edgar Allan Poe-Lite. Nothing special, really.

‘Oh Mirror, Mirror’ is understated but has a very unsettling fairy tale-ish concept.

‘Serene for Baboons’is a strong tale of superstition, African animal horror and things the white man doesn't understand.

‘The Lady who Didn't Waste Words’ is nicely creepy but peaks at completely wrong time, smack in the middle.

‘A Fragment of Fact’ is unusual and mysterious. Good one.

‘The House of Horror’ features some now-classic horror themes – a demented old man, a secluded house and medical horror. Not bad.

‘Behind the Yellow Door’ continues the body horror theme in a fairly nasty way.

‘The Portobello Road’ is a fine ghost story of loss and regret and the British Empire. It feels long-winded but is always interesting.

‘The Squaw’ is a tolerable Bram Stoker short. And I’m really not a Stoker fan.

‘Flies’ is a disgustingly good story about a spooky infestation of the little beasts.

‘Raspberry Jam’ takes it’s time but builds tension brilliantly towards a horribly cruel ending. A fantastic short story.

In ‘Nightmare’ a kindly doctor tries to help a sad, angry man haunted by self-hatred. Intriguing and with a strong end, it’s a great way to finish the collection.

[Tanja · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a republish of an anthology, first published in 1959. I had overlooked this fact at first, so some of the stories I was annoyed with for not being original, may actually have been so back in the day ;) But overall this wasn't a great collection. The first half was very unsurprising to any horror buff, the second had some nice stories: Oh mirror mirror, A serenade to baboons, The squab. But for the rest I didn't find any good story flow. I would probably have liked this when I was younger, but I've read too many great short horror stories, to enjoy this collection that much.

[Dimitri · Rating 2 out of 5]

An old horror anthology with few scares and mostly one-pun endings. A few are memorable for setting or style, but you could see them coming a mile away: the torture method of a Machu mandarin in "The Copper Bowl" , the werewolf curse in "The Kill"....The best ones were "the Horror of the Museum" which is basically Vincent Price in print and "the House of Horror", which reminded me of Poe's Dupin stories.

[Sarah Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was first published in 1958 and from reading the stories you can tell. Every story though is very well written and kept me captivated but as for horror stories it would take a lot more to scare me.

[Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some eerie stories by Muriel Spark, AL Barker and LP Hartley, but most of them would be best described as, er, less than tasteful. Lots of cheerful torturing and maiming.

[Shawn]

PLACEHOLDER REVIEWS:

"The Copper Bowl" by George Fielding Eliot - In China, the Legonnaire Fournet is captured by the malevolent Mandarin, Yuan Li, lord of river pirates, for some information he possesses. But when other forms of persuasion fail, and with killing or even physical injury of the Legionnaire not a consideration, the Mandarin defers to the use of the titular object, and a hostage, to gain the information he requires... A late period conte cruel, this has the requisite sadism, as well as some pulpy fighting and theatrics - the gruesome, downer ending, while not unusual, is nicely handled.

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pan Book of Horror Stories is a diverse collection of old fashioned horror fiction. There is implied racism in certain stories but that has to be taken in the context of the time when they were written. For example, in ‘His Beautiful Hands’ by Oscar Cook the manicurist is vengeful partly because of her Javanese blood. ‘The Copper Bowl’ by George Fielding Eliot features Yuan Li, an evil Chinese mandarin bent on torture to get the location and strength of French Foreign Legion forces in his way. Sax Rohmer’s books about Fu Manchu were all the rage back in 1928 when this was written. Perhaps the fiendish torture gave Orwell the idea for Room 101.

And perhaps ‘Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket’ by Jack Finney inspired ‘The Ledge’ by Stephen King. Tom Benecke is ambitious to be the Wizard of Wholesale Groceries but his careful study of shop display tactics, months of research written in shorthand on a single piece of yellow paper, blows out through the window of his eleventh-floor apartment and gets stuck along a ledge. Finney racks up the tension as Tom goes to fetch it.

‘The Physiology of Fear’ by C.S. Forester of Hornblower fame features Nazis. Dr Georg Schmidt had the bad luck to finish his studies just as they took over Germany and is now employed in a concentration camp. If he fails to perform his unpleasant duties he will join the inmates. His nephew Heinz also works for the SS and is studying fear. This works because Forester keeps it low key throughout.

Next up is a 1933 story from Weird Tales. When Stephen Jones goes to Rogers Museum he is deeply impressed by the horrible wax figurines. Artist George Rogers had been sacked from Madame Tussauds because of doubts about his sanity. ‘The Horror in the Museum’ by Hazel Heald is a riff on’ Pickford’s Model’ and I was impressed by the vocabulary, the slow build-up of mysterious, unseen, ghastly creatures lurking in the background, the hints of cosmic terror. Why it could have been written by Lovecraft himself! I researched online and found...it was written by Lovecraft himself! It was either a collaboration or simply ghostwritten by Lovecraft and I’d put my money on the latter. In any case, it’s a great horror story.

Seabury Quinn was another big name author in Weird Tales with his stories of Dr Jules de Grandin. ‘The House of Horror’ (1926) features that Frenchman in an adventure with his good friend Dr Samuel Trowbridge. En route to a medical emergency, they are forced by bad weather to stop at a large, mysterious house where a handsome man asks for their help treating a beautiful young girl who seems ill. They soon realize they are prisoners of an evil doctor. Based on this sample I must agree with Brian Stableford who said that the Grandin stories were marred by stereotyped characters and poorly resolved plots. Having a tree fall on the villain at just the right moment is hardly fair play. De Grandin is really a poor man’s Poirot. Still, it’s kind of fun and if you’re reluctant to use crude Anglo-Saxon swear words it will provide you with a fine alternative vocabulary. Marbleu! Parbleu! cordieu! Par la moustache du diable! Nom d’un chat rouge! The latter phrases can be translated into English.

There’s another evil surgeon ‘Behind the Yellow Door’ in a low key tale from Flavia Richardson. Marcia Miles goes to be a companion to an eminent doctor and her daughter and gets an unpleasant surprise. All in all, medical reputations are not enhanced by this book.

I’m vaguely aware of Muriel Spark as a literary author so I was interested to read ‘The Portobello Road’. It follows the life of a girl nicknamed Needle after she stabs herself on one in a haystack. The friends with her at the time, especially George, are determined that they will stay in touch, whatever life brings. It starts with Needle watching two friends shopping on the Portobello Road which prompts her to narrate the tale of their lives. There are autobiographical elements to this and it gives you a glimpse of the bygone age of British colonialism.

Another literary type is Angus Wilson who contributed ‘Raspberry Jam’ to this volume. Little Johnnie, aged eleven, is an imaginative single child who tolerates his straitlaced parents but spends a lot of time with two mad old sisters down the road. Maria seems stern at first but has a sense of humour and Dolly, once beautiful, is wildly romantic. This is a penetrating look at English village life and ends on a distinctly chilling note.

Perhaps due to early conditioning with Stephen King’s popular novels, my notions of horror are usually of something supernatural. This diverse collection ranges from the lowbrow, entertaining pulp of Seabury Quinn through the able, clever words of Jack Finney to the literate, sober prose of Spark and Wilson. Each style works its magic in different ways and I enjoyed them all but the most horrific for me were those where man inflicted horror on man. The evil of Lovecraftian monsters pales into insignificance beside the mundane terror of Nazi doctors and the like because, God help us, they really exist.

This fine collection is out of print now but can be picked up very cheap secondhand and is well worth the pennies.

[Runalong · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF - fifty pages. All have horrible things happening to women gleefully and one also extremely racist. 1959 not a classic year

[André · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good selection of horror stories.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A confession: I will basically read any anthology of ghostly or horrible or weird stories that I find in front of me as long as it contains at least one or two works by familiar authors which I haven’t read before. I picked up this on a whim from Foyles and it’s actually a reissue of the 1959 edition of what would become the longest running horror anthology in the world. Much as I expected, the stories are pretty much split evenly between really interesting and really bad.

I suppose what they have in common is that they all aim to be horror stories rather than ghost stories; this is to say that any sense of atmosphere is too frequently forgone in favour of shock value. Perhaps this is what people did before they made the Saw movies, but many of these were simply too lurid for my taste, being little more than a guessing game between author and reader as to when and how the kill would come. Sometimes they surprise with their ingenuity and sometimes they don’t, but given that I prefer my chills in the noble tradition of the Victorian ghost story (as perfected by M.R. James) most of the incidents described failed to raise more than a chuckle in this reader.

But as I said, there are a few highlights. ‘Oh, Mirror, Mirror’ by the great TV writer Nigel Kneale is a compelling exercise in a kind of mesmeric fairytale style, while ‘The Portobello Road’ by Muriel Spark and ‘Raspberry Jam’ by Angus Wilson boast a more subtle and powerful social message than many of the other works here. There’s also fun to be had with the brutally silly ‘The Squaw’ by Bram Stoker, and ‘The Horror in the Museum’ by Hazel Heald (a pseudonym for Lovecraft himself).

[Eddie Jardine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Synopsis:
Some really good writing involved and some truly terrible. The better ones:
The contents of the Dead man’s pocket, by Jack Finney
Tale of a man who gets stuck on a window ledge and eventually falls.
The Psychology of Fear by C.S. Forester
Story about Nazi torture and claim that non whites do not fear because they are sub human
The Portobello Road by Muriel Spark
A tale from the perspective of a ghost
The Squaw by Bram Stoker
A cat gets its revenge on a loudmouthed American tourist who inadvertently killed its kitten, in a tourist torture chamber.

Terrible writing included: The House of Horror by Seabury Quinn and Raspberry Jam by Angus WIlson

What was good about it:
I Like short Stories because of the variety they offer. They are succinct and efficient. Most of these were well written and quick to read. The “horror” was more suspense and very mild supernatural or macabre ideas. I would expect this for a book compiled in the late 1950’s

What didn’t I enjoy about it:
The two stories listed were utterly awful. The descriptions were long and clumsy. Raspberry Jam had paragraphs that spanned pages and read like the mad gossip. The House of Horror is possibly the floweriest most adjective and simile packed rubbish I have EVER read.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would put these stories into three categories: the scary, the gross and the is-that-it!? My rating is four stars as I think the stories vary in quality. Looking back at the contents page now there are even a couple from the selection of twenty-two that I cannot really recall. There are a couple that haven't aged too well in regards to the approach to disfigurement, disability and mental health.
However, I had not read any of the individual authors works before so it was a good introduction to who I would like to read more of. I found Peter Fleming's 'The Kill' stayed with me to the point where I hesitated turning off the light and made wonderful use of framing the backstory. In both 'W.S.' by L.P. Hartley and 'The Library' by Hester Holland I found that I knew what was going to happen but it still felt compelling. Jack Finney's 'Contents of the Dead Man's Pocket' and A.L. Barker's 'Submerged' both jangled my nerves around getting stuck in places where no one can help and did not end in the way I fully expected. I think I most enjoyed 'The Portobello Road' by Muriel Spark and 'The Squaw' by Bram Stoker as although they were both very different in content they both seemed to conclude that we get what we deserve, whether it takes a couple of hours or the rest of our lives.

[Jonas Wilmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2,5 stars) This is the first one in the Pan series, first released in 1959 and re-released in 2010. It's a pretty uneven collection of horror stories. There are a few brilliant ones (Submerged by A.L. Barker, The Squaw by Bram Stoker and Flies by Anthony Vercoe), some in between ones and a lot of really awful ones! These latter are flawed foremost by predictability and an almost mind numbing text book approach to horror. There's, obviously, a reason why many of the names in this collection are not remembered as masters of horror, and it becomes ever so clearer when you get to Bram Stokers stellar contribution. Still I give it 2,5 stars because of the few brilliant stories and some of the mediocre ones that still managed to entertain - Seabury Quinns The house of horror for example. But if you seek a really good collection of classic horror stories I'd recommend Hamlyn's: The best ghost stories.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Out of print anthology series from 1959 but found four books in a secondhand shop. 22 stories in volume one - four real gooduns - a few middlers - but mostly badduns. Still, great fun to read!

The Copper Pot - a rat is part of a novel torture method

Contents of the Dead Man’s Pockets - a man sees his life’s work fly out the window and he goes out after it

The Squaw - the black cat from the book’s front cover seeks revenge against an American dude

Raspberry Jam - a young boy suffers for his questionable relationship with two fruity ladies

These four were all great. Unlikely to find them printed anywhere else, especially Raspberry Jam, with its infamous ending.

Hoping for a higher number of gooduns in the next book!

[Dominique Lamssies · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the American edition of this book, which has all the same stories in it.

I give Van Thal credit because the book contains at least one horror story for every kind of taste you could have when it comes to horror. There's psychological, ghosts, slasher, animals, cosmic and everything in between. If you ever want to break out of your comfort zone within horror and try a new subgenre, this is the way to go because all the stories are high quality.

But if you are very set in your ways when it comes to horror (as I am) and know what you like, that makes this anthology uneven. A few stories are AMAZING! The rest, yeah, not so much.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I had read this anthology previously I had to take another look before adding a review simply to confirm my positive memories. Well I was right - or mostly so - of course there are a few weak stories but a collection with stories from Muriel Spark, L. P. Hartley, Angus Wilson, Peter Fleming and a real unknown gem from Bram Stoker deserves to be rated highly. It also demonstrates the elasticity of the horror genre and the wealth of writers and imaginations it attracts. It is a fine example of why I enjoy anthologies classified as horror or suspense and why I am often surprised at how varied and interesting their storytelling is.

[Manda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yeah, I understand that 6 decades ago people were easier to scare, but I certainly wouldn't describe ANY of the stories in this anthology as "spine chilling".

Some were definitely thought provoking - The Contents Of The Dead Mans Pockets especially so - but none of them really even gave me the creeps, let alone frightened me.

I enjoyed reading them nonetheless and would probably read other volumes of this series, albeit with lower expectations.