The HorrorBabble Podcast

"The Horror in the Hold" by American author Frank Belknap Long, first appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in February 1932. The magazine described the tale as follows: "A tale of the old adventurous days when Spain and England fought for the supremacy of the seas.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Mommy" is a short story by American writer, Mary Elizabeth Counselman. The story tells of a little girl in an orphanage, who claims to have been visited by her dead mother. It first appeared in Weird Tales in April 1939. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Tree-Men of M'Bwa" by Donald Wandrei first appeared in Weird Tales in February 1932. The magazine described the tale as: "A startling story of Africa, strange monstrosities, and the weird power of the Whirling Flux." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Vallisneria Madness” by Ralph Milne Farley, first crawled up out of the earth in the May 1937 edition of Weird Tales Magazine. The tale was described as follows: “A strange and curious little story, about the moonlight mating of flowers.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The City of Lost Souls" by Genevieve Larsson first appeared in Weird Tales in October 1928. This is how the magazine described the tale: "Weirdly terrible was the punishment of the twelve who avenged a brutal murder in a spectacular way." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Seed from the Sepulchre" is a short story by Clark Ashton Smith. The tale, which first appeared in Weird Tales in October 1933, was described by the magazine as follows: “A horror tale of the Venezuelan jungle, and a diabolical plant that lived on human life.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Drone" is a short story by Abraham Merritt. The tale explores two rather unusual cases of metamorphosis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Spirits' Mountain" is a story by Spanish author, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, included as part of his collection, "Romantic Legends of Spain." In the tale, a young man is tasked with the retrieval of a scarf from a haunted mountain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Transgressor" is a short story by Henry Kuttner. The tale, which first appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in its February 1939 edition, tells of an individual whose curious invention proves to be terribly successful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The House of Living Music" is a short story by the regular Weird Tales author, Edmond Hamilton. The story, which first appeared in Weird Tales in January 1938, was described as follows: “A strange weird-scientific story with a tragic denouement—about a great composer who could re-create all living things in sound.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Pale Man" is a short story by American writer, Julius Long. The story tells of the eccentric behavior of a strange guest in a country hotel. It first appeared in Weird Tales in September 1934. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Glamour of the Snow" is a short story by British author, Algernon Blackwood. It tells of a writer who falls in love with a ghostly ice-skater in the Valais Alps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The House of the Worm" is a Cthulhu Mythos story by the American author, Mearle Prout. It first appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in October 1933. The story tells of two men, and their struggle against an otherworldly blight that originated in a bleak forest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"I, the Vampire" is a horror short story by American author, Henry Kuttner. The story first appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in February of 1937. It tells of a vampire loose in Hollywood, feasting on the stars of the silver screen. But is there more to this vampire than simple bloodlust? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Smee" by British author, A. M. Burrage, is a classic ghost story, in which a group of youngsters decide to play a game of hide and seek in an old, haunted house. It was first published in Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine, in December 1929. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The House of Shadows" is a short story by Mary Elizabeth Counselman. First published in Weird Tales Magazine in April 1933, the story tells of a family whose images would not reflect in the mirror. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"A Terribly Strange Bed" is a short story by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1852 in Household Words, a magazine edited by Charles Dickens. It was written near the beginning of his writing career, his first published book having appeared in 1848. Collins met Dickens in 1851, and this story was the first contribution by Collins to Dickens's magazine Household Words. After several more pieces for the magazine, he became a paid member of staff in 1856. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Red God Laughed" by American author Thorp McClusky, first appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in April 1939. The story tells of the extinction of the human race, and of he who came to survey the Earth following our demise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“When the Flame-Flowers Blossomed” by Leslie F. Stone, first sought sunlight in the November 1935 edition of Weird Tales Magazine. The tale was described as follows: “A bizarre fantasy about strange life found on Venus by two explorers from Earth.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Till A’ the Seas” is a post-apocalyptic short story by H. P. Lovecraft and R. H. Barlow. The story, which describes a dying world, was first published in The Californian in 1935. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Evening Primrose" is a short story by British-born author, John Collier. It tells of a poet who seeks solace and privacy in the forgotten corners of a department store. To his horror, he discovers that he is not alone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Space-Eaters" is a short story by American writer, Frank Belknap Long. It first appeared in the July 1928 edition of Weird Tales. The story explores the concept of the 'ultimate horror', as viewed from the perspective of a short story writer, and his closest friend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Three Marked Pennies" is a classic horror story by Mary Elizabeth Counselman, first published in Weird Tales in August 1934. The magazine provided the following synopsis: “A strange destiny awaited the holders of the pennies, with doom for one and weal for the others.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Ninth Skeleton" is an early work by the American author, Clark Ashton Smith. In the story, which debuted in Weird Tales in September 1928, a man has a bizarre encounter with a procession of skeletons in an otherwise familiar setting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Fire Vampires" is a short story by American writer Donald Wandrei. It first appeared in Weird Tales in February 1933, and was described by the magazine: "Out of the sky struck a dread electric scourge that burned the life out of countless thousands and left charred skeletons to mark its passing." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Creeping Fingers" is a short story by American author, Loretta Burrough. It was Burrough's first published story, appearing in Christine Campbell Thomson’s 1931 collection, AT DEAD OF NIGHT. The tale tells of a weary guest, left with no choice but to spend the night in a hotel room with a questionable reputation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Bell-Tower" is a short story by American author, Herman Melville. It tells of an enigmatic architect whose unconventional aspirations result in tragedy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Picture in the House" is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft. It was written on December 12, 1920, and first published in the July issue of The National Amateur, 1921. In the tale, a genealogist seeks shelter from an approaching storm in an apparently abandoned house. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Corpse Light" is a short story by British writer Dick Donovan (aka J. E. Preston Muddock). It's the tale of a sceptical physician, and a windmill known as 'The Haunted Mill'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Mark on the Wall" is a short story by British author, Virginia Woolf, in which a trivial observation triggers a tidal wave of introspection, and self-reflection. The story first appeared in 1917 as part of the collection, Two Stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Transfer" is a short story by Algernon Blackwood. The tale, which was first published in the magazine, Country Life, in 1911, tells of a child’s fascination with a barren patch of land in a big garden known as the Forbidden Corner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Sunken Land" by George W. Bayly was first published in the May-June-July, 1924 edition of Weird Tales. It is the story of a strange journey into the heart of Canada's Northwest Territories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Sweets to the Sweet" is a short story by Robert Bloch. The story, which first appeared in Weird Tales in March 1947, tells of an eight-year-old girl with uncanny abilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Afterward" is a short story by Edith Wharton. It was first published in the 1910 edition of The Century Magazine and in her books, The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton and Tales of Men and Ghosts, 1910. It is an ironic ghost story about greed and retribution. The ghost comes for one of the main characters long after a business transgression where the character wronged another. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Lady in Gray" is a short story by the American author, Donald Wandrei. The tale first appeared in Weird Tales in its December 1933 edition, and was described by the magazine as follows: “The story of a strange woman and a loathsome gray slug that came to a sleeper in his dreams..." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Written in French by Russian author, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy in 1839, "The Family of the Vourdalak" tells a tale of vampirism in rural Serbia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Rats" is a short story by the British author, F. A. M. Webster. First published under a pseudonym in the 1931 anthology, At Dead of Night, the tale tells the story of Mike Halliday, a man determined to make the most of a problematic holiday in dreary England. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Unnamable" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. In the tale, the antiquarian Randolph Carter tells a close friend the tale of an indescribable entity that allegedly haunts a dilapidated house near an old cemetery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Dread Summons" is a short story by the regular Weird Tales contributor, Paul Ernst. The tale was given the following synopsis back in November 1937: “The old butler heard a scream, muffled by the street noises from outside, and when he investigated he found that a dread summons had been answered.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Creeper in Darkness" is a short story by Frank Belknap Long, which first appeared in Strange Stories in April 1939. The tale tells of a disturbing encounter with a witch's familiar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Black Bargain" first appeared in Weird Tales in May 1942, and tells of a situation involving a man who is quite literally afraid of his own shadow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Imp of the Perverse" is a short story by 19th-century American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe. Beginning as an essay, it discusses the narrator's self-destructive impulses, embodied as the symbolic metaphor of The Imp of the Perverse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Nobody's House" is a short story by the British writer, A. M. Burrage. In the story, which first appeared in his 1927 collection, SOME GHOST STORIES, a prospective homebuyer visits an old house, eager to hear of its haunted history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Mortal Immortal" is a short story from 1833 written by Mary Shelley. It tells the story of a man named Winzy, who drinks an elixir which makes him immortal. At first, immortality appears to promise him eternal tranquility. However, it soon becomes apparent that he is cursed to endure eternal psychological torture, as everything he loves dies around him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Seven Seas Are One" by American author Allison V. Harding, first appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in September 1944. The magazine described the tale as follows: “The Captain knew that somehow, some day his fate was coming—out of the sea and the wind!” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Supernumerary Corpse" is a short story by the American author, Clark Ashton Smith. The tale, which first appeared in Weird Tales in November 1932, was described by the magazine as follows: “Jasper Trilt was dead—but what was the thing in his likeness that lay supine on the floor of the laboratory?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"It All Came True in the Woods" is a short story by American author, Manly Wade Wellman. If first appeared in the July 1941 edition of Weird Tales Magazine... “If you should speak in the woods of Amasookit, your words are clothed with flesh and blood. So the Indians believed…” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"Black Was the Night" is a rare weird tale by the little-known author, Laurence Bour, Jr. The story, which first appeared in Weird Tales in May 1940, tells of a long-awaited encounter in a crumbling, haunted house. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Polar Vortex" is a short story by the obscure American author, Malcolm Ferguson. The story first appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in September 1946. The magazine described the story as follows: "A curiously terrible experiment of blasphemous implications!" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"The Night Ocean" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft and R. H. Barlow. Barlow drafted the tale, and handed it to Lovecraft to edit in the summer of 1936. It first appeared in the magazine The Californian, in its Winter 1936 edition. It tells of an unnamed artist, who, whilst vacationing by the beach, becomes increasingly unsettled by the presence of the ocean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices