Gordon Grice's Blog

 

Correspondents of mine recently witnessed a bald eagletaking the body of a gray squirrel that had been killed on the road. The eagletook its prize into a tree. There it began to pluck the squirrel, presumably tomake it more palatable. Gray fur wafted down. One witness recalled times whenhe had found a pile of such fur with no tracks around to explain its origin—a mysterynow resolved. In this very brief video of the incident, the squirrel is obscuredin the tree, but the eagle and its fur-plucking are plain.

 

I visited the site the next day and found dozens of tufts offur remaining beneath the tree. They weren’t in a pile, but had blown downhillin a sort of cone pattern. Most of them were gray, but we also saw white tuftslikely plucked from the squirrel’s belly.

 

If you know bald eagles mostly from nature documentaries,you will have seen spectacular footage of them taking live fish. I live a fewblocks from a river, and it’s far more common in my neighborhood to see thescavenged side of their diet—squirrels in particular.

(Click the title to hear a reading of each poem.) 
"Der Vampyre" (1748)
by Heinrich August Ossenfelder
A new translation into English by Gordon Grice


First appearance of a vampire by that name in creative literature.


Christine, you pray so stiff and firm
In notions from your mother learned,
Like a soldier making foolish boasts,
Like country folk who talk of ghosts.

You don’t love me at all, Christine.
I’ll get you back for that, you’ll see.
I’ll drink from you some fragrant wine
And make myself a vampire in time.

While you’re pillowed in peaceful sleep,
I’ll lick the crimson from your cheeks.
I’ll kiss you, and take the time to taste.
Tell me, Love, are you afraid?

You will be. You’ll faint to my caress,
Like you’re floating down to death.
I’ll ask you then: Do you believe
In Jesus, or in your savior: me?




From The Giaour (1813)

By George Gordon Byron



. . . on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race.

There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corse:
Thy victims ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
But one that for thy crime must fall,
The youngest, most beloved of all,
Shall bless thee with a father's name—
That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!

Yet must thou end thy task, and mark
Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,
And the last glassy glance must view
Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;
Then with unhallowed hand shalt tear
The tresses of her yellow hair,
Of which in life a lock when shorn
Affection's fondest pledge was worn,
But now is borne away by thee,
Memorial of thine agony!
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave,
Go—and with Ghouls and Demons rave;
Till these in horror shrink away
From Spectre more accursed than they!



"Vorvoloka"

from the film Isle of the Dead (1945)
Directed by Mark Robson. Written by Ardel Wray, Val Lewton, and Josef Mischel

What do you do, Vorvoloka?
What do you do behind locked doors?
Vorvoloka, Vorvoloka!

Vorvoloka,
I have twisted rose briar
before your door.
The thorns that pierced His brow
will tear your flesh, evil one.

I have put salt in the fire
And a cross of ashes on your door—
Vorvoloka, Vorvoloka.

Vorvoloka, born of evil,
Sinful and corrupt,
Your hands are bloody with violence
Your mouth bitter with the taste
of sin and corruption.

You are guilty and abhorred
Vorvoloka, Vorvoloka.

Illustration: Vampire (1895) by Edvard Munch

 

Grendel Press is running a terrifying deal for Christmas —four beautifully printed books packed with dark fantasy, horror, andsupernatural fiction, all for $20. Each separately costs around $12.99, so the GP 2023 Collection is a real deal.

Included Anthologies

Paramnesia — psychological horror, unraveling identity, and unreliable memory. (Featuring Gordon Grice's creepy take "Real Estate.")

The Devil Who Loves Me — dark romance, supernatural seduction, and love with teeth

More Than a Monster — creature folklore, mythic beasts, and the humanity beneath the monstrous

Uncanny & Unearthly Tales — eerie, atmospheric stories that linger like ghosts.

 

 

Luke’s home from the war, but his town’s not the same. The old man thatstalked him when he was a child is dead—and more dangerous than ever. Can evena hair-triggered crippled Eagle like Luke stop him?

Find out in "The Old Man on Fire," part of the new anthology from Savage Realms Press. Necro-Sapiens features delightfully dreadfulstories of the macabre from Gordon Grice, James Dorr,  Angelique Fawns, andmany more.

My infamous story of zombies in love returns in The Best of MetaStellar Year Four! 

Readers first quaked to its lyrical horror a couple of years ago on MetaStellar, one of the world's most popular online science fiction and fantasy magazines. Now you can read it in paperback or eBook, along with half a hundred more tiny terrors. 

 

Raccoons by Wayne T. Allison
The raccoon has sensitive knuckles and a blood-curdlingbattle cry, as you’ll find out in the cover story I wrote for the latest Oklahoma Today (September-October 2025). Artist Madelynn Goodnight and I will show you a sideof this familiar carnivore you probably haven’t seen before.

And, since this is the Animal Issue, you’ll find all sortsof other bestial doings inside, including my tale of backyard encounters with ablack bear.

 Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

 

Behind the Shadows III: Dark Secrets has crept out of theshadows and into paperback. Or, whatever e-format you like, but I always prefer tohold the thing in my own tentacles. As promised, this anthology contains mydarkest story yet, the hideous tale of Doctor Fouquet. He's back from the grave, but that hasn't helped his drinking problem at all!

The publisher is doing a Kickstarter for this horrifying collection. Pitch in now for percs--and a chance to read my darkest creation, "Doctor Fouquet."

Illustration by RembrandtSomeone was missing.

The group of women had stood in thedirt road chatting. The bushes stirred nearby, and then everyone was knockeddown. It took them a moment to recover their feet and their senses. That’s whenthey saw that one of them was gone. It didn’t take long to find theexplanation. A lion was strolling away, already several yards distant, and inits mouth, held in a stranglehold, was the woman who had vanished from theircircle without a sound.

In Njombe District, Tanganyika, in theearly 1940s, people lived in fear. The lions had suddenly taken to eating them,and there was little the people could do. Few of them owned effective weapons.Their houses were mostly made of thatch—that is, grass. It was easy for thelions to break in at night, or even to punch a paw through a wall and drag asleeping person out. Everyone was too poor to afford the tools that could havesaved their lives.

One man who did own a decent weaponwas the husband of the woman who’d just been snatched. He grabbed his musketand ran after the lion into the bush. He shouted for his neighbors to followhim, but they were too afraid. In the bush the man heard the sounds of lionsfeeding—moist sounds, varied occasionally by the crack of bone. Soon he saw,partly shielded by brush, the shape of a lioness. She stepped into the open.The fur of her chest and face was matted with blood. What she carried in hermouth made the man shiver with fear—in fact, he shook so badly that thepercussion cap fell off his musket. It was useless. The lioness watched him fora moment, then turned around and carried her burden back into the bush.

What he had seen in the lioness’smouth was a severed leg. His wife’s.

The Njombe pride of the 1930s and1940s is estimated to have killed more than 1500 people. A game warden namedGeorge Rushby, who hunted the lions, noticed that the lions no longer ate biggame like buffalo and zebra; they seemed to eat only bush pigs and humans. Whenthey ate humans, they often devoured everything except the skull, which theywould crack open like a nut to eat its nutritious contents. Several times,Rushby found a human skull like a bowl licked clean. The killing only stoppedwhen the pride was exterminated.

A Nightmare(Often printed in a bowdlerized form as "A Coast-Nightmare." The text here is Rossetti's uncensored version.)I have a love in ghostland— Early found, ah me, how early lost!—Blood-red seaweeds drip along that coastland By the strong sea wrenched and tossed.In every creek there slopes a dead man’s islet, And such an one in every bay;All unripened in the unended twilight: For there comes neither night nor day.Unripe harvest there hath none to reap it From the watery misty place;Unripe vineyard there hath none to keep it In unprofitable space.Living flocks and herds are nowhere found there; Only ghosts in flocks and shoals:Indistinguished hazy ghosts surround there Meteors whirling on their poles;Indistinguished hazy ghosts abound there; Troops, yea swarms, of dead men’s souls.—Have they towns to live in?— They have towers and towns from sea to sea;Of each town the gates are seven; Of one of these each ghost is free.Civilians, soldiers, seamen, Of one town each ghost is free:They are ghastly men those ghostly freemen: Such a sight may you not see.—How know you that your lover Of death’s tideless waters stoops to drink?—Me by night doth mouldy darkness cover, It makes me quake to think:All night long I feel his presence hover Thro’ the darkness black as ink.Without a voice he tells me The wordless secrets of death’s deep:If I sleep, he like a trump compels me To stalk forth in my sleep:If I wake, he rides me like a nightmare; I feel my hair stand up, my body creep:Without light I see a blasting sight there, See a secret I must keep.