Having read the anthology assembled by David Tibet known as THE MOONS AT YOUR DOOR back in 2016, it was only natural that I would one day pick up this sister volume, THERE IS A GRAVEYARD THAT DWELLS IN MAN, at some point in the future. Unlike the first volume, here the majority of the stories collected were ones I have never read (with a few exceptions) and, also unlike the first volume, most of the stories, as far as I could tell, were not ones that have seemingly influenced the music of Current 93 on a lyrical level (the one exception being Machen's "The Inmost Light," which I really feel should have been included in the first volume). Incidentally, the ones that I HAD previously read was the aforementioned "Inmost Light" (always a decadent pleasure to reread), Thomas Ligotti's "The Small People" (which I enjoyed much more the second time around), and Walter De La Mare's "Seaton's Aunt." But the rest of the stories were unknown to me, and it was a eldritch joy to read most of them for the first time (for example, the fact I had never read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" was a shameful lacuna in my explorations of horror & supernatural fiction, and I was pleased as the cat that got the cream to finally fill that small gap). Some of the other highlights of the collection in my humble opinion were Colette de Curzon's clever "Paymon's Trio," LA Lewis' bizarre "Lost Keep" (which I felt had a great macabre ending), RH Benson's understated "The Watcher"... Oliver Onions' "The Beckoning Fair One" was enjoyable if a bit overlong (at 72 pages), and having it smack-dab in the middle of the book kind of hurt the reading momentum of the collection: initially I thought maybe it would have been better to have it at the very end, but my opinion on that score changed upon reading the final story, the beautiful "Present at the End" by HR Wakefield, which touched me so deeply that I was moved to tears by its lovely ending.
My only gripe with this collection is that, like the first one, it is perhaps a bit TOO old-fashioned; here Ligotti is the only "modern" (and living) author represented. I would be very curious indeed if, in future volumes, Mr. Tibet would assemble a collection of contemporary writers in the field that he has enjoyed and/or have influenced the music of Current 93, lyrically or otherwise.