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Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales of the Insect Weird

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A blue scarab which makes the sound of a terrifying death-tick. A moth with the markings of a dead man's face. An empire of intelligent, aggressive and colossal ants. The insect kingdom has finally come to seek retribution for humankind's negligence. Never has a creature been so topical - with headlines warning of the mosquito bearing viruses, fire ants destroying power sources, invasive yellow ladybirds or an ecological insect apocalypse that threatens the very balance of our natural world. With growing concerns about global warming, pesticides, and genetically modified crops, Eco-Gothic is moving to the fore in modern scholarship, and this collection allows readers to be a fly on the wall to some of the creepiest and crawliest accounts of insectoid horror from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, E.F. Benson and Jane G. Austin.

317 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 2021

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About the author

Daisy Butcher

4 books21 followers
Doctoral student at the University of Hertfordshire. Focusing on Female body horror in mummies and killer plants.

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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
Profile Image for Paul.
1,474 reviews2,170 followers
September 12, 2024
3.75 stars
This particular Tales of the Weird collection covers the insect world and follows their usual formula. Edited by Daisy Butcher and Janette Leaf. The British Library has access to many thousands of magazines and periodicals where short stories were published: it must be quite a fun job trawling through them looking for stories on a particular topic. There are sixteen stories in this collection. In terms of time they range between 1846 band 1938.
This being insects, it is spider free but there are plenty of ants (millions of them), moths, bees, caterpillars, hornets, beetles and a paying mantis. Egyptian mythology crops up a few times as well (there are a couple that are mummy and curse themed). They are mostly from Britain and the US but there is one from Japan and the settings are worldwide. The range is from Victorian Gothic to Science Fiction of the pulp variety. Not all the tales are negative or scary: weird covers a wide variety of topics. Warning Wings by Alton Eadie is one such tale.
There are one or two well known authors. The first story is by Poe, is set in New York and alludes to a cholera epidemic. Algernon Blackwood contributes a story set in Egypt about a hornet and a vicar:
“And he was thoroughly pleased with himself, for he was a sleek, vain, pompous, well-advertised personality, but mean as a rat.”
H G Wells and E F Benso also Have stories in the collection. There is one anonymous and a couple where very little is known about the authors.
The last story was written by an Austrian in 1938. It is set in the Amazon and concerns a plantation owner trying to hold back millions of well organised ants. Give the date it did seem to have links to the rise of fascism. It was also made into a film starring Charlton Heston (The Naked Jungle).
Again some are better than others, but it is an interesting collection.
Profile Image for Tom.
705 reviews41 followers
October 1, 2022
Slightly more of a mixed bag than other volumes of this series I've read, mainly because this delves into sci-fi and futuristic tales.

It's still an excellent collection, spanning from 1840's to 1930's, we see the insect depicted as the weird, the other, as alien and as sinister force of nature.

This series continues to collect numerous obscure and unheard of (at least by myself) authors and it's a pleasure to read them!


Introduction (Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales of the Insect Weird) • essay by Daisy Butcher and Janette Leaf

The Sphinx • (1846) • Edgar Allan Poe
The Blue Beetle: A Confession • (1857) • A. G. Gray, Jun.
The Mummy's Soul • Anonymous
After Three Thousand Years • (1868) • Jane G. Austin
A Dream of Wild Bees • (1888) • Olive Schreiner
The Moth • (1895) • H. G. Wells
The Captivity of the Professor • (1901) • A. Lincoln Green
The Dream of Akinosuke • (2007) • Lafcadio Hearn
Butterflies • (1904) • Lafcadio Hearn
Caterpillars • (1912) • E. F. Benson
An Egyptian Hornet • (1915) • Algernon Blackwood
The Wicked Flea • (1925) • J. U. Giesy
The Miracle of the Lily • (1928) • Clare Winger Harris
Warning Wings • (1929) • Arlton Eadie
Beyond the Star Curtain • (1931) • Garth Bentley
Leiningen Versus the Ants • (1938) • Carl Stephenson
Profile Image for Paul.
2,230 reviews
April 23, 2024
I don’t mind insects, they have an essential purpose in the world, whether it is pollinating, feeding vast numbers of other species or even clearing all the crap that everything leaves behind. I generally don’t find bugs creepy, but some people do, and this is the inspiration behind all these authors’ stories.

This is the list of stories included:

The Sphinx • Edgar Allan Poe • (1846)
The Blue Beetle: A Confession • A. G. Gray, Jun. • (1857)
The Mummy’s Soul • Anonymous
After Three Thousand Years • Jane G. Austin • (1868)
A Dream of Wild Bees• Olive Schreiner • (1888)
The Moth • H. G. Wells • (1895)
The Captivity of the Professor • A. Lincoln Green • (1901)
The Dream of Akinosuke • Lafcadio Hearn • (2007)
Butterflies • Lafcadio Hearn • (1904)
Caterpillars • E. F. Benson • (1912)
An Egyptian Hornet • Algernon Blackwood • (1915)
The Wicked Flea • J. U. Giesy • (1925)
The Miracle of the Lily • Clare Winger Harris • (1928)
Warning Wings • Arlton Eadie • (1929)
Beyond the Star Curtain • Garth Bentley • (1931)
Leiningen Versus the Ants • Carl Stephenson • (1938)

None of these stories terrified me, I am glad to say, but there was the odd one that made me shudder, in particular Caterpillars. I thought some were better than others, with my favourite being Beyond the Star Curtain, with The Captivity of the Professor coming a close second.

It is a great little collection that these editors have uncovered from the vaults of the British Library. I liked the intro for each of the authors and a potted history of each story, and even better, it was just before the story, so no flipping backwards and forwards. The stores are as diverse as the insects portrayed. Not all of the stories portray the insects as enemies of us, but those stories are in there if you fancy being creeped out a bit. 3.5 stars
Profile Image for Alasdair.
170 reviews
August 31, 2024
Nice mix of stuff in this one - the insects are either very symbolic, representing plague/society/cancer/the soul of a mummy/etc. or very not, representing a bloody massive ant. More early sci-fi here than in the other British Library collections I've read, which helped vary things up a bit. Scattered thoughts on individual stories below.

Highlights probably The Moth (H. G. Wells writes well, what a surprise. The description of irritating academics reminded me of certain emeriti...), Caterpillars (Really gnarly description of writhing swarms of caterpillars embodying cancerous decay), and The Miracle of the Lily (The best sci-fi in the book, told through journal entries over centuries, reminded me of the things I liked about A Canticle for Liebowitz).

Low point probably Beyond the Star Curtain, which as well as being risibly sexist and eugenics-y (chock full of quality lines like Their well shaped heads told of unusual intelligence and Even Derek, hardened misogynist that he was, felt his heart warm to her in her sorrow), was pretty dull and inconsequential.

Enjoyed the two Egyptological stories (The Mummy's Soul and After Three Thousand Years), the former really improved by some dream sequences and the latter, while falling a little into cliche, getting across the vibe of early Egyptologists being useless.

The Captivity of the Professor manages, somehow, to be classist against ants.
Profile Image for Elentarri.
2,070 reviews66 followers
September 6, 2022


This is a deliciously creepy collection of 16 short stories by various authors that include a variety of insect creepy crawlies such as beetles,bees, moths, butterflies, ants, a cockroaches, a flea, caterpillars, a stick insect and a praying mantis.  The stories cover a time range from 1846 to 1938.  The earlier stories in this collection are more Gothic in nature than the rest;  at least one story has a science fiction flavour;  and several stories pit humans against intelligent insects out for control of a territory.  Some of the stories included show insects in a more beneficial light even though they still exhibit strange or supernatural elements.  Stories I particularly enjoyed include: 

~The Blue Beetle: A Confession by A.G. Gray, Jun, which has flavours of Frankenstein, only in this case the "mad scientist" inadvertently creates a blue beetle.

~The Mummy's Soul by Anonymous, involving an ancient Egyptian curse and an artifact in the shape of a large fly.

~After Three Thousand Years by Jane G. Austin, involving another Egyptian cursed insect artifact.

~The Moth by H.G. Wells, either a ghostly mystery or a psychological thriller, depending on how you look at it.

~The Captivity of the Professor by A Lincoln Green, which tells of an entomologist taken prisoner by highly evolved Amazonian ants.

~Caterpillars by E.F. Benson, which involves an infestation of supernatural and disease causing insect grubs in an Italian villa.

~The Wicked Flea by J.U. Giesy, which involves another over enthusiastic scientist and his newly created "pet" flea.  This one came across as a comedy... if you can ignore the horror of a giant flea on the loose.

~Warning Wings by Arlton Eadie, which involves a ghostly moth.
Profile Image for Sam Andrew.
14 reviews
December 31, 2021
Good stuff, both horrible and nice insects. Thought the second last story was a bit dated, but really liked the introduction to each story and the overall introduction at the beginning explaining how they chose the authors. All stories interesting in different capacities. Hope the other books from the same series are of a similar format - in short ants suck.
Profile Image for Muaz Jalil.
361 reviews9 followers
April 17, 2022
I love the series. In this book I loved the Sphinx by Poe, wild bees by Schreiner, the moth by Wells. The best was Lincoln Green:s Captivity of the Professor.
Profile Image for Gavin Felgate.
710 reviews4 followers
February 27, 2022
I'd had this anthology on my bookshelf for several months, and was glad when I finally got to read it.

So, the connection between all of them is that they involve creepy crawlies, and mostly cast them in sinister, antagonistic roles. This is probably not particularly surprsising, given most peoples' reactions to bugs, although a small number of the stories in here included benevelont insects - for example, a butterfly that guides a ship to a stricken vessel.

I did manage to go to a book signing by the editors, both of whom are university scholars, and it was interesting to hear how they chose the stories. For example, all were unabridged, but they had to avoid any stories that might have content that could be triggering. Edgar Allen Poe's "The Gold Bug" was rejected because of its racist content.

All the stories in this book are from the 19th and early 20th centuries, so the only difficulty I had was coping with the language used in some of the narratives, which felt quite dense at times. I liked the fact that there was a mixture of very short stories (for example, Poe's The Sphinx), and longer novellas (for example, A. Lincoln Green's "The Captivity of the Professor").

Overall, I enjoyed reading this, and would definitely recommend it to others.
2,045 reviews20 followers
November 27, 2024
BL Tales of the weird anthology centred around insect themed tales. There's a nice variety of insects in this; scarabs & beetles, ants, moths, fleas, bees - the majority are 'evil' but there are a couple of benificent insects here to balance the tone. We start out with a couple of early gothic mummy tales and end with a couple of sci-fi/fantasy stories from Weird Tales.

The highlight is Clare Winger Harris' The Miracle of the Lily - This is my first introduction to her fiction and I am definitely going to read more. I love early SF and this had elements of Brave New World and a great sting in the tail ending. I also enjoyed Beyond the Star Curtain which was a cross between Aldiss' Hothouse and early planet stories. The other stand out is probably H.G Wells 'The Moth" - but I'm probably a little biassed being a big Wells fan in general.

While this is not nearly as horror oriented as I assumed it would be from the title, I appreaciated the breadth of the stories here and I loved the incusion of some vintage sci-fi.
Profile Image for p..
980 reviews62 followers
May 22, 2022
i was pleasantly surprised by this anthology, not so much because i liked all of the stories but because there was a clear effort to avoid the obvious choices and truly introduce a variety of stories about creepy crawlies. there is a mix of the supernatural and the more scientific and the borderline grounded in reality. such effort is commendable.

however, i must note that 'beyond the star curtain' was a little too misogynistic for me (which is interesting because the author himself calls one of the characters 'a misogynist'). i know the anthology does not reflect the views of the times when the stories were originally written / published but boy, did this feel outdated.

that being said, stories i particularly liked were 'the blue beetle: a confession' by a.g. gray, jun., 'the mummy's soul' by an anonymous author, 'a dream of wild bees' by a. lincoln green, 'after three thousand years' by jane g. austen and 'the moth' by h.g. wells.
54 reviews1 follower
August 23, 2025
Yet another enjoyable collection of classic weird tales collected by the British Library. Stories in this collection are as follows:

The Sphinx by Edgar Allen Poe
The Blue Beetle: A Confession by A. G. Gray, Jun.
The Mummy's Soul by Anonymous
After Three Thousand Years by Jane Goodwin Austin
A Dream of Wild Bees by Olive Schreiner
The Moth by H. G. Wells
The Captivity of the Professor by A. Lincoln Green
The Dream of Akinosuke and Butterflies by Lafcadio Hearn
Caterpillars by E. F. Benson
An Egyptian Hornet by Algernon Blackwood
The Blue Cockroach by Christopher Blayre
The Wicked Flea by J. U. Giesy
The Miracle of the Lily by Clare Winger Harris
Warning Wings by Arlton Eadie
Beyond the Star Curtain by Garth Bentley
Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson
Profile Image for Philip.
158 reviews3 followers
February 8, 2022
An excellent collection of short (mostly) horror stories involving insects. As a lover of insects, I was really excited to read this and I wasn't disappointed. There were quite a few involving ants, which are my favourite insect, so that may have swayed my rating.

Another great collection from the British Library, that I recommend everyone read.
Profile Image for Michael John Paul McManus.
372 reviews1 follower
March 27, 2022
Yet another great volume from the British Library of the Weird. Crawling Horror is a great collection of insect filled stories from giant insects to normal but deadly insects and a life saving white moth!
The British Library collections never fail to thrill and keep my imagination even weirder than it already is. Excellent indeed.
Profile Image for Alex Jones.
233 reviews1 follower
July 25, 2021
Very disappointed by this. British Library Tales of the Weird is my current favourite series and I love insects so I thought this would be a perfect match.

Unfortunately, I can only really recommend the following:
The Captivity of the Professor
The Wicked Flea
Beyond the Star Curtain
Profile Image for Cilibiu Dragos.
43 reviews1 follower
September 22, 2021
This book will take you through a jouney from early years of horror writting to more, let's say, modern times. While I struggled through most of the stories that were showing their age, two in particular ar quite good, The Miracle Of The Lilu and Warning Wings
Profile Image for Ryan.
305 reviews28 followers
May 3, 2022
Read for Season 2 of Whiskey and the Weird podcast. I really enjoyed it, only not as much as FROM THE DEPTHS. There’s a lot of great stories in here across a great breadth of time, scope, and genre.
Profile Image for Catherine Mason.
375 reviews2 followers
March 5, 2023
I enjoyed this book although a lot of it is very silly. The stories are arranged chronologically by when they were published. The Two most recent stories were the silliest.
Profile Image for Tullaia Powell.
87 reviews1 follower
July 16, 2024
3.5⭐️

A lot more misses than the previous collection I read from the British Library, but I suppose that’s the nature of short story collections.
Profile Image for Ned Netherwood.
Author 3 books4 followers
July 5, 2025
Another fascinating collection. The final story is unforgettable
178 reviews4 followers
June 27, 2024
Read:

Anonymous - The Mummy's Soul - 3/5
Lafcadio Hearn - Butterflies 3/5
Lafcadio Hearn - The Dream of Akinosuke - 4/5
H.G. Wells - The Moth 3/5
Profile Image for Syd ⭐️.
515 reviews2 followers
December 18, 2025
Not as bug heavy as I had been hoping, but quite of few of these were the original mummy stories, which were so cool to read. My highlights were “A Dream of Wild Bees,” “Butterflies,” and “Warning Wings.” If you’re interested in the roots of horror, then these may be for you.
Profile Image for Emy.
362 reviews21 followers
September 29, 2024
The Sphinx by Edgar Allen Poe - 4 stars

The Blue Beetle: A Confession by A. G. Gray, Jun. - 3.5 stars

The Mummy's Soul by Anonymous- 3.5 stars

After Three Thousand Years by Jane G. Austin - 4 stars

A Dream of Wild Bees by Olive Schreiner - 3 stars

The Moth by H. G. Wells - 4 stars

The Captivity of the Professor by A. Lincoln Green - 4 stars

The Dream of Akinosuke by Lafcidio Hearn - 3 stars

Butterflies by Lafcidio Hearn - 3.5 stars

Caterpillars by E. F. Benson - 4 stars

The Egyptian Hornet by Algernon Blackwood - 4.5 stars

The Blue Cockroach by Christopher Blayre - 2 stars

The Wicked Flea by J. U. Giesy - 3.5 stars

The Miracle of the Lily by Clare Winger Harris - 4 stars

Warning Wings by Arlton Eadie - 4.5 stars

Beyond the Star Curtain by Garth Bentley - 2 stars

Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson - 3 stars
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