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Boris Karloff Presents Tales of the Frightened #1
Tales of the Frightened
Terror
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
2 people are currently reading
91 people want to read
About the author
Michael Avallone
196 books40 followersAlso wrote Nick Carter: Killmaster series under Nick Carter alias with others
Michael Angelo Avallone was a prolific American author of mystery and secret agent fiction, and novelizations based on TV and films. He claimed a lifetime output over 1,000 works, including novels, short stories, articles, published under his own name or 17+ pseudonyms.
His first novel, The Tall Dolores 1953 introduced Ed Noon PI. After three dozen more, the most recent was 1989. The final volume, "Since Noon Yesterday" is, as of 2005, unpublished.
Tie-ins included Man from U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-0, Mannix, Friday the 13th Part III, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and even The Partridge Family. In late 1960s novellas featured U.N.C.L.E.-like INTREX. He is sometimes cited incorrectly as the creator of Man from U.N.C.L.E. (as in the January 1967 issue of The Saint Magazine), or having died March 1.
As Troy Conway, Rod Damon: The Coxeman novel series 1967-73, parodied Man from UNCLE. An unusual entry was the novelization of the 1982 TV mini-series, A Woman Called Golda, the life of Golda Meir.
Among the many pseudonyms that Michael Avallone used (male and female) were: Mile Avalione, Mike Avalone, Nick Carter, Troy Conway, Priscilla Dalton, Mark Dane, Jeanne-Anne dePre, Dora Highland, Stuart Jason, Steve Michaels, Dorothea Nile, Edwina Noone, John Patrick, Vance Stanton, Sidney Stuart, Max Walker, and Lee Davis Willoughby.
From 1962-5, Avallone edited the Mystery Writers of America newsletter. Personal Life:
He married 1949 Lucille Asero (one son; marriage dissolved), 1960 Fran Weinstein (one son, one daughter); died Los Angeles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_...
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/tri...
Michael Angelo Avallone was a prolific American author of mystery and secret agent fiction, and novelizations based on TV and films. He claimed a lifetime output over 1,000 works, including novels, short stories, articles, published under his own name or 17+ pseudonyms.
His first novel, The Tall Dolores 1953 introduced Ed Noon PI. After three dozen more, the most recent was 1989. The final volume, "Since Noon Yesterday" is, as of 2005, unpublished.
Tie-ins included Man from U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-0, Mannix, Friday the 13th Part III, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and even The Partridge Family. In late 1960s novellas featured U.N.C.L.E.-like INTREX. He is sometimes cited incorrectly as the creator of Man from U.N.C.L.E. (as in the January 1967 issue of The Saint Magazine), or having died March 1.
As Troy Conway, Rod Damon: The Coxeman novel series 1967-73, parodied Man from UNCLE. An unusual entry was the novelization of the 1982 TV mini-series, A Woman Called Golda, the life of Golda Meir.
Among the many pseudonyms that Michael Avallone used (male and female) were: Mile Avalione, Mike Avalone, Nick Carter, Troy Conway, Priscilla Dalton, Mark Dane, Jeanne-Anne dePre, Dora Highland, Stuart Jason, Steve Michaels, Dorothea Nile, Edwina Noone, John Patrick, Vance Stanton, Sidney Stuart, Max Walker, and Lee Davis Willoughby.
From 1962-5, Avallone edited the Mystery Writers of America newsletter. Personal Life:
He married 1949 Lucille Asero (one son; marriage dissolved), 1960 Fran Weinstein (one son, one daughter); died Los Angeles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_...
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/tri...
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 12, 2019
A collection of 26 eerie vignettes. They were written by Michael Avallone specifically for Boris Karloff to narrate. However, only 13 stories were chosen for Karloff's "Tales of the Frightened" LP (between volumes 1 and 2). Boris, along with Vincent Price and Thurl Ravenscroft, has one of the most iconic horror voices in history and his vocal talents add generous depth to what otherwise might be ho-hum flash fiction.
Listening to his narration along with the book, my mind frequently drifted away from plot and became more focused on Karloff's vocal mastery. He increases speed when tension is high, slows down to brood over mystery, and makes everything creepier. The text is meant to have a by-the-fire chatty feel, but he finds numerous opportunity to add casual tone through vocal inflection when I might not have read it that way.
Small deviations, such as the rearrangement of words or what might be adlib, exist between the book's text and Karloff's narration. I suspect this text is an earlier draft of the stories, or Karloff himself made edits as he narrated. The slight changes were actually my favorite parts of the book. I'm a great admirer of Boris Karloff, as an actor and scholar of horror literature. Whether or not the changes between text and narration were by Karloff himself, they were all good.
Given the opportunity, Karloff's narration avoids the "was" verb, moves one-syllable words to the end of sentences, and finds stronger visuals with a mere word change. An excellent example is the change from "slimy" to "scummy" to describe water at the bottom of a well. Either word would have sufficed, but scummy sounded delightfully more sinister.
As for the 13 stories that Karloff narrates, the only two that actually shivered my spine were "The Deadly Dress" and "Don't Lose Your Head." The 13 additional stories featured in this book were generally even weaker, with the exception of "Children of the Devil" which was quite dark, and "The Graveyard Nine" which gripped me immediately and had a strong conclusion.
I think the publisher desired to save paper, because the paragraphs are all generally long and rarely follow grammatical convention. I often found it difficult to follow what was going on because so many shifting subjects were crammed into one paragraph. This might just be part of the difficulty of the vignette medium. I do wonder how much better these stories could have been if Avallone has been given freer rein over the length.
All in all, I don't see any real urgency to track down this book even though it features 13 additional "Tales of the Frightened." You can easily listen to the stories voiced by Karloff (I found the audio on YouTube) and since those are among the strongest of the bunch, that's probably good enough.
Listening to his narration along with the book, my mind frequently drifted away from plot and became more focused on Karloff's vocal mastery. He increases speed when tension is high, slows down to brood over mystery, and makes everything creepier. The text is meant to have a by-the-fire chatty feel, but he finds numerous opportunity to add casual tone through vocal inflection when I might not have read it that way.
Small deviations, such as the rearrangement of words or what might be adlib, exist between the book's text and Karloff's narration. I suspect this text is an earlier draft of the stories, or Karloff himself made edits as he narrated. The slight changes were actually my favorite parts of the book. I'm a great admirer of Boris Karloff, as an actor and scholar of horror literature. Whether or not the changes between text and narration were by Karloff himself, they were all good.
Given the opportunity, Karloff's narration avoids the "was" verb, moves one-syllable words to the end of sentences, and finds stronger visuals with a mere word change. An excellent example is the change from "slimy" to "scummy" to describe water at the bottom of a well. Either word would have sufficed, but scummy sounded delightfully more sinister.
As for the 13 stories that Karloff narrates, the only two that actually shivered my spine were "The Deadly Dress" and "Don't Lose Your Head." The 13 additional stories featured in this book were generally even weaker, with the exception of "Children of the Devil" which was quite dark, and "The Graveyard Nine" which gripped me immediately and had a strong conclusion.
I think the publisher desired to save paper, because the paragraphs are all generally long and rarely follow grammatical convention. I often found it difficult to follow what was going on because so many shifting subjects were crammed into one paragraph. This might just be part of the difficulty of the vignette medium. I do wonder how much better these stories could have been if Avallone has been given freer rein over the length.
All in all, I don't see any real urgency to track down this book even though it features 13 additional "Tales of the Frightened." You can easily listen to the stories voiced by Karloff (I found the audio on YouTube) and since those are among the strongest of the bunch, that's probably good enough.
July 14, 2025
What an awesome collection! Great, creepy, atmospheric stories. Pity the whole thing was so short! Now, I listened to these on audio. I highly recommend doing that. The tales themselves are good, but what really makes the collection is Karloff's creepy narrations. The stories themselves call to mind Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
February 19, 2022
The best creepy, spooky voice next to Vincent Price
December 25, 2023
I really loved those 26 short stories presented by a master of the macabre, Boris Karloff. Today you probably would say this is flash fiction but in the 70s those were true chillers. Everything's in there vampires, traveling salesmen, deadly ladies, fortunetellers, inmates, convicts, tomb robbers, terrorists, satanists, greedy corpses a devil of an artist and a whole parade of folks more. Those tales reminded me a lot on my youth and I still absolutely loved them. This is the ideal stuff for cold winter nights, if you want to have a devilishly fine time. Highly recommended!
October 8, 2020
I first read this in 1975 as a teenager and was thrilled by them. In truth, this book started me on the road of reading horror novels. I rediscovered this book when I recently purchased the audio recording of these tales as told by Boris Karloff. The book itself has a creepy value to it.
November 1, 2022
These spooky stories are very short, which can make them feel rushed or a little unsatisfying. However, when I was a kid, I stole this book from my cousins and fell in love with horror. And the cover alone is very spooky. So I gotta rate it high.
April 27, 2024
The nostalgia this gave me during work was unparalleled. I downloaded this from a blogspot called digital meltdown when I was 15 and Karloff’s dulcet tones came back to me 13 years later.
I never usually rate audiobooks but unfortunately these lovely wee 60s horror tales never made it to the page
I never usually rate audiobooks but unfortunately these lovely wee 60s horror tales never made it to the page
February 9, 2017
The stories were good, but not spectacular. The fact that they were read by Boris Karloff was pretty nice. Great voice.
March 25, 2018
Although these stories we're very dated, it was a quick and entertaining read.
October 22, 2021
Tales of the Frightened is a collection of horror stories written by Michael Avallone. I listened to an edition narrated by the famous actor Boris Karloff; a free version can easily be found on Spotify by searching the name of the book, but, as a word of warning, Karloff does not narrate every story in the collection. (I think the Spotify edition contains 12 tales, one duplicated.) I didn't find many of these stories impressive, but I found some alluring simply for the fact that they came off as 'mythic' in my mind. They are stories that have seeped, to some extent, into the popular culture, if not from this Avallone's versions specifically, than from others. (For example, "The Hand of Fate" can be found in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Tales of the Wayside Inn). In this sense, as one other reviewer noted, I would say that it is like Schwartz's children's classic (and collection of folk stories), Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and it's many sequels. Altogether, they are worth listening to with the lights out, the doors locked, and the clock striking midnight, but, I imagine, at any other period of the day they would be less than ideal, unless you're a really big fan of Karloff and old radio.
April 20, 2015
The stories really don't stick with you, but it is impossible not to hear Boris Karloff reading them to you.
December 22, 2018
Being a fan of Boris Karloff like I am, I enjoyed listening to these old scary tales. Not really scary but still fun, and even better told by Boris Karloff himself.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews