Pan Book of Horror Stories: Volume 1

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After ninety years of utter indifference to this sex business, old Miss Eliza Mary Hannam finds unfamiliar desires welling up within her. It takes her a further decade – just past her hundredth birthday, in fact – to find herself with the opportunity to satisfy these urges. This story about a house which physically rebels against its inhabitants is well told, but I was expecting more given the author. Perhaps that is unfair.

Raymond Henry Williams (1921-1988) was a Welsh Marxist theorist, academic, critic, novelist and short story writer. During the war, he took part in the Invasion of Normandy, commanded a tank unit and was involved with the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp. Barbara Field Benziger (1918-1084) was an American writer who specialised in non-fiction about mental illness. In 1956, she survived the sinking of the ocean liner Andrea Doria. Shades of the Second World War can be felt in the stories 'The Oldest Story Ever Told' and 'The Shed'. The latter evokes a sense of concentration camps and death marches, but with an altogether stranger conclusion. My first foray into the cult world of PBHS, and it's a mixed bag. The novella that opened the book is really very good stuff-pulpy and predictable, but very well written. So far the rest of the work is just...meh. It's not violent or extreme enough to be novel or transgressive; it's more of a general vibe of pornographic and shoddy bloodletting. It's kind of like watching a video nasty: The real crime is less in the content (I've read worse in Richard Laymon and Ed Lee), and more in the utter ineptness of the, ahem, execution.

The Tunnel’ by Raymond Harvey. A railway signalman discovers his wife is having an affair. Even though this is a very straightforward tale that leads to a cliched and obvious end, it’s nevertheless a cosily enjoyable romp with a funny lead character who enjoys looking at dirty mag’s on the job! THE SNAIL WATCHER, by Patricia Highsmith: A man's obsession with collecting snails has a dark outcome. An early companion piece to Hutson's SLUGS, and as slimy, ghoulish and nasty as you'd expect. 5/5 This is a great series of books, but I guess all good series have their dud volumes. This Sixth Pan Book of Horror Stories is easily the weakest so far. Of the twenty stories here, I can only say that I enjoyed six of them, with maybe a further four scraping to the OK mark. The fact that most of the ten more forgettable stories appear in the middle of the book suggests that perhaps the publishers/editor realised this and went with the let’s start with a bang, go out with a bang strategy. Here we have a tongue-in-cheek story which is enjoyable if a little corny. A man knows he is bound for Hell and contemplates what horrendous tortures may be awaiting him. He’s surprised to find himself in a very ordinary-looking room. Then he discovers there is nothing to read but Reader’s Digest and no music to listen to but The Sound of Music. A flamboyantly effeminate Satan explains that each Hell, and each Heaven, is tailor-made and that one person’s Hell is another person’s Heaven. Mrs Manifold' by Stephen Grendon - one of the few supernatural tales in the collection is a highly atmospheric ghost story, very much in the revenge tradition, revolving around a seedy inn come boarding house owned by the eponymous woman. I think this probably gets my vote as the best story of the bunch;

A thirteen-year-old orphan girl is very fond of the obese bachelor who visits her regularly. His intentions are anything but wholesome. A disturbing tale of sexual menace. The authors, most of whom were of obscure origin and who remained obscure, had several obsessions. Darkest Africa and the mysterious East was one (cue immeasurable fathomless cruelty); in case you think they were all racist blighters, they also seemed to think that behind the façade of every English country house was a retired surgeon just aching to graft your normal legs onto the body of his stunted daughter. Or chain you in the library and gradually eat bits of you. If you look for gruesomeness in your horror stories you can’t go past this diabolical tale of revenge. David F. Case (1937-2018) was an American novelist and short story writer who specialised in horror and westerns. His short story Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale (1970) was filmed as And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973) (dir. Roy Ward Baker) A hospital patient recalls a train trip that took him to a mysterious shed where he was tortured and blinded. Intriguing first person set up is let down by an unsatisfactory second half that explains the mystery. (3/5)Almost unheard of - A Pan Horror Collection in which there are absolutely no duffers! Except one rather inconsequential poem, all of the stories here are, at the very least, great macabre fun. A man cannot tolerate his wife any more so he kills her in a spontaneous act of violence, but he underestimates his physical ability to dispose of her body. Not memorable, but short. When you have a short story beginning with the line “I like to burn children”, it is a fairly safe bet we are not looking at an O. Henry Prize contender. No, this one has the feel of Kaufman deliberately dumbing down in response to the New Brutalism seen in Pan12.

As a result of reading the more trashy stories in the 1980s I was inspired to read more in the series and this provided exposure to classic authors and their deeper story-telling in the earlier editions. Adobe James was the pseudonym of James Moss Cardwell, an American writer and educator. A number of his stories are featured in this series, including one of my personal favourites - The Ohio Love Sculpture (included in The Fourth Pan Book of Horror Stories). THE COFFIN MAKERS, by Raymond Williams: In Victorian times, two coffin makers have a falling out. Another disappointment, going for the gore but with no discernable atmosphere or decent plotting. 2/5

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In the year 1079, a man sets out to kill the nobleman husband of the woman he loves. A very unpleasant, though well written, tale of medieval sadism. The fact Brookes is prepared the ditch the love of his life on the suspicion that his genes may have in some unspecified way been tampered with, appears anachronistically outdated. Surely coming clean with the lady and offering to go for the snip would have been far more gentlemanly. When a moneylender attempts to collect a debt from an eccentric with a strange photographic device, his life takes a bizarre twist. Effective step into the "Twilight Zone" and a highlight of the volume. (5/5) Other than the fact the reader is able to indulge in the slightly dubious pleasure of witnessing a deranged sadist get his comeuppance, this is a disappointingly disposable read.