Status Updates From The Weird: A Compendium of ...

The Howling Man by Charles Beaumont (1959)- An excellent story about a man who falls ill and is taken to an abbey with a creepy secret.

Same Time, Same Place by Mervyn Peake (1963)- Very well written, being Peake, but I thought this one was just sad. :(

Mister Taylor by Augusto Monterroso (1952)- A tale about a man who establishes a shrunken head sales business in Latin America. Nicely satirical.

Axolotl by Julio Cortazar (1956)- A nice surreal story about a man meditating on Axolotls, and the changes they invoke in him.

A Woman Seldom Found by William Sansom (1956)- A short but sweet one about a man who finds a woman who's too perfect.

The Hungry House by Robert Bloch (1951)- An excellent ghost story about a couple unwittingly moving into a haunted house.

The Complete Gentleman by Amos Tutuola (1952)- A very weird one about a man saving a woman kidnapped by a skull that built its own body.

"It's a Good Life" by Jerome Bixby (1953)- An excellent story of a town subject to the whims of a terrifyingly powerful child

A Child in the Bush of Ghosts by Olympe Bhely-Quenum (1949)- A story about a child confronting his fear of death. Not sure I got this one, but also nice to have a non-Western story.

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson (1950)- Only Jackson can make what otherwise seems to be a relatively mundane series of events feel so creepy.

The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles by Margaret St. Clair (1951)- A fun satirical one

The Aleph by Borges (1945)- Loved this. I thought I'd read most Borges, but I don't remember this one. A very interesting take on infinity, as is common with Borges, and a fun and wryly self-deprecating metafictional nature too.

The Crowd by Ray Bradbury (1943)- An imagining of crowds as true, eerie animals.

The Long Sheet by William Sansom (1944)- A very allegorical tale of labour told through the wringing out of a sheet.

Smoke Ghost by Fritz Leiber (1941)- An excellent story about a man haunted by a modern industrial ghost.

White Rabbits by Leona Carrington (1941)- A fun story about some quirky neighbours who rear rabbits (/s)

Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim (1942)- A shorter story about what mimics humans may have.

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz (1937)- I've been wanting to read this (well, the collection) for a while, and I did love it. The kafkaesque tale of a man visiting his dying (dead?) father in a sanitorium where time is jumbled up (perhaps...)

Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson (1939)- A tale of the defense against ghouls that attack the NYC subway system. This was... fine.

The Town of Cats by Hagiwara Sakutaro (1935)- A tale about a lost wanderer in the Japanese mountains who wanders into a town of people he wonders if are possessed by the spirits of cats. Wasn't a fan on this one (not even sure it was speculative)

The Tarn by Hugh Walpole (1936)- A short tale of a jealous man driven to take his more successful friend to a mountain Tarn which whispers temptation to him

The Shadowy Street by Jean Ray (1931)- a very good story about a liminal street, which only exists for one man, and perhaps exacts revenge for crimes against itself.

Genius Loci by Clark Ashton Smith (1933)- an excellent story about a meadow inhabited by a malevolent presence. My first non-Zothique Smith, but I loved this too.

I find amusing that one blurb says "Jean Ray was a Flemish writer..." and the other "Jean Ray was a Belgian writer..."

Flanders is in Belgium ofc, but I wonder if one was written by Ann and one by Jeff?

The Book by Margaret Irwin (1930)- a very creepy story about a possessed book

The Mainz Psalter by Jean Ray (1930)- an excellent creepy nautical story, about sailing into parts no man should be

The Night Wire by H. F. Arnold (1926)- Excellent framing, but ultimately just "meh" on the wired story.

The Dunwich Horror by Lovecraft (1929)- This was excellent. Far superior to The Call of Cthulhu (the only other Lovecraft I've read yet, and I thought really wasn't very good).

The White Wyrak by Stefan Grabinski (1921)- a simple story about the discovery of and fight against a soot monster

Unseen - Unfeared by Francis Stevens (1919)- A neat story of a horrible discovery about the world made by a photographer experimenting with new ways of development, wit an ambiguous ending.

In the Penal Colony by Kafka (1919)- an excellent short story in laborious detail about an intricately complicated and gruesome execution machine.

The People of the Pit by A. Merritt (1918)- an excellent, really well written story of a terrifying mountain containing a demonic city and its inhabitants

The Hell Screen by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1918) excellent Japanese mosaic short story (didn't know you could do that) about a callous painter his disturbing work