Three Vampire Tales: Dracula, Carmilla, and the Vampyre


Tamar Sheridan Bergman - 2002
    This collection of classic vampire tales not only features three of the most important works in the genre, but also a historical analysis of vampire stories.

666 (31 Horrifying Tales From The Dead Book 4)


Drac Von Stoller - 2013
    It was Halloween and Samantha`s contractions were unbearable so her husband rushed his pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver their new bundle of joy. Mike told the doctor and nurse to take great care of his wife. The doctor and nurse reassured Mike they would take very good care of her and not to worry. Mike waited patiently in the waiting room as the doctor and nurse delivered their beautiful baby. After a few hours the baby finally arrived and the doctor entered the waiting room and told Mike to come in the room and see his new baby. Mike entered and his wife was all smiles and said "Honey, it`s a boy!" "I think he looks like a Johnny. What do you think?" asked his wife. "Johnny sounds fine to me," replied Mike. Mike was so excited and held his baby boy in his arms as tears rolled down his cheeks and said "Darling, I think he likes me." Mike stayed the night in his wife's room with their new baby, but as they were both sleeping, an unforeseen force came in their room that was about to change their lives forever, when they both woke in the morning. Morning came, and Samantha was discharged from the hospital, and time for their new baby to be raised in their new home. It wasn't until after little Johnny turned 6 years of age that things around the Delany Estate turned deadly. The first sign that Johnny had the mark of the beast was June 6. It was the 6th month, 6th day, and Johnny was 6. All the numbers represented 666.

True Crime Case Histories - Volume 7: 12 Disturbing True Crime Stories (True Crime Collection)


Jason Neal - 2021
    Real true crime is not for everyone. The stories in this book represent humanity at its absolute worst. Pure evil. Television crime shows and news articles often skip the gruesome parts of true crime stories. The real details are just too grisly for the average viewer or reader.In my books, however, I do my best to include the details, regardless of how unsettling they may be. Each story requires hours of research. I search through old newspaper articles, court documents, police reports, autopsy results, and first-hand descriptions. Some of the specifics can be disconcerting. I choose to include the details not to shock, but to give the reader a deeper view into the mind of the killer. Although it’s unlikely any of us will understand the motives of a diabolical monster, the level of depravity will keep you turning pages.That being said, if you are overly squeamish about the details of true crime, this book may not be for you. If you’re okay with it… then let’s begin.Volume 7 features: Longer stories, more photos, a bonus chapter, and an online appendix with additional photos, videos, and documents. Volume 7 of True Crime Case Histories features twelve new stories from the past fifty years.A sampling of the stories include:You’ll read about a law enforcement officer that took advantage of the trust associated with his uniform. His brutal reign of terror lasted eight years. It took the bravery of two young women that escaped his grasp to bring him down.There’s the story of the recent law school graduate with a crush on his neighbor. Rather than asking her out on a date, he stalked and spied on his classmate, eventually taking her life. There’s also the heartbreaking story of a single mom, drowning in debt, that did the unthinkable for insurance money.Seven of the stories in this book feature women killers, two of which took the time to meticulously dismember their victims—a task that can take great strength. Another woman manipulated her two teenage boys into killing for her. Yet another woman staged an elaborate hoax to get rid of her loving husband rather than go through the agony of a messy divorce.You’ll also read of a sadistic group of up to twelve killers that took joy in abducting and torturing young men in Australia. Sadly, only one of the mysterious group has been brought to justice.Plus many more disturbing stories.The twelve stories in this volume are shocking and disturbing, but they’re true. These things really happen in the world. We may never understand why killers do what they do, but at least we can be better informed. You may have heard of a few of the stories in this volume, but there are several I’m almost certain you haven’t.

Vampires: Encounters With the Undead


David J. Skal - 2001
    Every page of Vampires features a column of commentary by the editor, expanding upon the stories and exploring the evolution of the vampire mystique in folklore, literature, and popular culture. More than 200 beautifully rendered black-and-white images of vintage engravings, film posters, and popular artifacts make this big book the "living end" of vampire fact, fiction, and lore.

Edgar Allan Poe: The Strange Man Standing Deep in the Shadows


Charlotte Montague - 2015
    Poe is viewed as the ultimate doomed romantic whose last days are shrouded in sordid mystery. His life was a disaster, but his achievements in writing are amazing. He is widely recognized as father of the modern short story, inventor of the detective story and the master of horror. A Boston born writer, editor, and literary critic, he's best known for his creepy and macabre tales as well as being one of the central figures in the Romanticism movement in the United States.  Accurately being dubbed as the ultimate doomed romantic, Poe was a drunk, his last days are shrouded in mystery akin to that of his short stories.  During his lifetime, Edgar Allan Poe didn't make a dime out of writing, but his legacy to the world is one of never-ending riches.  He left behind seventy-three wonderfully gruesome stories and a novel filled with suspense and brilliantly twisted plots.  Hist stories and poems are now read and revered globally.  As another master of horror, Stephen King, has said, we are all "the children of Poe." Abraham Lincoln, Josef Stalin, Michael Jackson, and Bart Simpson all have one thing in common; they are fans of the nineteenth century American writer and poet, Edgar Allan Poe.  The writer of "The Raven" has legions of such devotees across the globe.  The list of authors inspired by Poe is long and varied, but his profound influence reaches much further-into music, film, and art just as much as modern day literature.  There have been more than a dozen film adaptations of his story "The Fall of the House of Usher," and his works have inspired composers ranging from Claude Debussy to Lou Reed.  More than 160 years after his death, Charlotte Montague has written a fascinating account of Poe's life and times, in which she uncovers a strange man, standing deep in the shadows, who's unique imagination and macabre writing have changed popular culture forevermore.  n the process, she uncovers a strange man, standing deep in the shadows, whose macabre stories and twisted plots changed literature forever. The Oxford People series offers deep dives into the most influential people, subjects, and cultures from history. From horror-fiction legends like H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, to historical heavyweights like Houdini and JFK, to the supernatural world of vampires, werewolves, and ghosts—Oxford People encompasses it all. Other titles in this series include: Angels, Che, Creating Sherlock Holmes, Extreme Science, Gettysburg, Ghosts, Gunfighters, Houdini, HP Lovecraft, John F. Kennedy, Myths and Legends, Privates and Privateers, Roosevelt and Churchill, Royal Weddings, Skies of WWII, Tesla, Tesla vs. Edison, Vampires, Vikings, Werewolves, Women of Invention, Zombies.

Spells


Michel de Ghelderode - 1941
    Like Ghelderode's plays, the stories are marked by a powerful imagination and a keen sense of the grotesque, but in these the author speaks to us still more directly. Written at a time of illness and isolation, and conceived as a fresh start, Spells was Ghelderode's last major creative work, and he claimed it as his most personal and deeply felt one: a set of written spells through which his fears, paranoia and nostalgia found concrete form.By turns mystical, macabre and whimsically humorous, and set in the unsettled atmosphere of Brussels, Ostend, Bruges and London, Spells conjures up an uncanny realm of angels, demons, masks, effigies and apparitions, a twilit, oppressed world of diseased gardens, dusty wax mannequins and sinister relics.Combining the full contents of both the 1941 and 1947 editions, this translation of Spells is the most comprehensive edition yet published.Michel de Ghelderode was born in Brussels in 1898. After nearly a decade of penning fiction, drama, literary journalism and puppet plays, in 1926 he began to write almost entirely for the theater and the following ten years saw the creation of most of his major plays. After 1936 he suffered from poor health and his involvement with the theater diminished. In the later 1940s, performances of his plays in Paris sparked a major awakening of interest in his work. Ghelderode died in 1962; the interior of his apartment, packed with books, pictures, puppets and masks, has been reassembled in Brussels as the Musee-Bibliotheque Michel de Ghelderode.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker Chronicles


Joe GentileMark Dawidziak - 2005
    For the first time ever, a monster collection of 26 new original Kolchak short fiction stories by noted authors from comics, horror fiction, and film! With the advent of the new Kolchak ABC TV show, Moonstone proudly announces new contemporary prose adventures of the original Kolchak, TV's first and foremost paranormal investigator! Plus all kinds of other cool stuff, like tales from Kolchak's untold past, monster huntings, noir thrillers, and even horror stories of more cerebral type!

Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula


Christopher Frayling - 1978
    Because it contains its own mythology and its own set of rules, it has also proved a psychologically attractive genre for many writers from its Romantic inception to the present day.

Gary's Children (Shingles Book 2)


Rick Gualtieri - 2018
    Gary Handler has issues. His boss hates him, his mother hounds him, and his cat thinks he’s an idiot. But that’s okay because Gary’s got the perfect solution to all of life’s troubles: a porn site subscription and his right hand.Sadly, all habits grow old, even the fun ones. Gary soon finds himself at the doorstep of a creepy old pawn shop where he buys a used adult novelty toy to spice up his one-man sex life.Pity for him that it’s cursed by the angry spirits of all the “kids” he’s flushed down the toilet. Needless to say, hairy palms are about to become the least of his worries.----------Jack on, jack off ... with the Jacklight in book 2 of Shingles, the horror comedy series that’s not for those with faint hearts or weak bladders.

The Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 1


Alastair GunnRhoda Broughton - 2016
    Wimbourne Books presents the first in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 1 in the series spans the years 1852 to 1899 and includes stories from a wide range of female authors; English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and American. Includes tales by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charlotte Riddell, Isabella Banks and Gertrude Atherton. Readers new to this genre will discover its pleasures; the Victorian quaintness, the sometimes shocking difference in social norms, the almost comical politeness and structured etiquette, the archaic and precise language, but mostly the Victorians’ skill at stoking our fears and trepidations, our insecurities and doubts. Even if you are already an aficionado of the ghostly tale there is much within these pages to interest you. Wait until the dark of the stormy night arrives, lock the doors, shutter the windows, light the fire, sit with your back to the wall and bury yourself in the Victorian macabre. Try not to let the creaking floorboards, the distant howl of a dog, the chill breeze that caresses the candle, the shadows in the far recesses of your room, disturb your concentration.

Of Mice and Me


Mishka Shubaly - 2014
    He had a beautiful new girlfriend and sudden prosperity as an author. But when he adopts an orphaned infant mouse, his world is turned on its head. The mouse comes to symbolize everything left unresolved in his life — his relationship with his divorced parents, his fear of family and commitment, and his inability to feel true happiness and love. By turns hilarious and moving, Mishka Shubaly’s latest Kindle Single captures the journey we all take in life — from being loved, to giving love. Cover by Adil Dara.

Slice and Dice


Jeff Strand - 2021
    Desperate to win back his father’s approval, the boy hatches a plan involving his father’s love of slasher films. If the boy can become a real-life slasher right out of the movies, it just might be an opportunity to make his father proud again, no matter what the cost.In Iain Rob Wright’s “The Reckoning,” the year is 2035 and people live inside their individual worlds. Amelie’s ‘pod’ is a marvel of tech-centric existence, taking care of her every need. But when a serial killer that the press have named ’The Reckoning’ comes calling for Amelie, her futuristic living space turns deadly.In William Malmborg's "Billy's Blade," a budding serial killer bites off more than he can chew when he tries to stab Stacy Collins to death on the Prairie Path. A ruthless investigative journalist, Stacy goes on the offensive, goading the killer with unflattering articles, all in hopes of sparking a second encounter. Will Billy and Stacy meet again?Jeff Strand’s “Twentieth Anniversary Screening” recounts the grisly events surrounding the terrible slasher flick THE ROOFER, remembered only because an obsessed fan tried to reenact the murders as they played out on the screen. When the same theater shows the film twenty years later, will the warnings that this is a really, really bad idea be justified?

Obake Files: Ghostly Encounters in Supernatural Hawaii


Glen Grant - 1996
    Included are 8 full-color reproductions of "uncanny photographs" taken in the Islands. Based upon archives, newspaper articles and extensive firsthand accounts collected over twenty-five years, Obake Files is the definitive reference book for anyone interested in the supernatural traditions of Hawai'i's multicultural people. ". . .I thought about the presence that I had felt at my right shoulder during the ceremony and held back my tears, as we drove through the mystic Kohala night under the lunar bow. From that time forward, I realized that I could never look upon the supernatural tales that I was gathering in a wholly objective light. . ." - Glen Grant

In a Glass Darkly


J. Sheridan Le Fanu - 1872
    Justice Harbottle, The Room in the Dragon Volant, and Carmilla. The five stories are purported to be cases by Dr. Hesselius, a 'metaphysical' doctor, who is willing to consider the ghosts both as real and as hallucinatory obsessions. The reader's doubtful anxiety mimics that of the protagonist, and each story thus creates that atmosphere of mystery which is the supernatural experience. This new annotated edition includes an introduction, notes on the text, and explanatory notes.NB: The Familiar is a revision of The Watcher; Mr. Justice Harbottle is a revision of An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street.

In the Shadow of the Vampire: Reflections from the World of Anne Rice


Jana Marcus - 1997
    In The Shadow Of The Vampire offers a close up view of her devotees and disciples, fangs and all. Over 100 photographs from Anne Rice's Memnoch Ball in New Orleans as well as other events serve as a portrait of this growing subculture. The photographs illustrate the themes the readers relate to in their fantasies and everyday lives and the extremes to which they will go to be close to their mentor. The subjects of the photographs, the fans themselves, explain in accompanying interviews their spiritual relationships to romance, eroticism, loneliness, bloodlust or outsider status of the characters in the book. From the people who sleep in coffins to the teenage Goth-rockers to the HIV-positive man who found a deep allegorical comfort in the vampire Lestat, their responses range from the burlesque to the sublime.