There is a Graveyard That Dwells in Man (ed.) David Tibet

"...when men say that there are strange things in the world, they little know the awe and the terror  that dwell always with them and about them."

                                                                                   -- Arthur Machen, "The Inmost Light"

It's like forever since I posted here last, thanks to the books that were on this year's Booker International longlist and a deep dive into James Ellroy's LA Quartet, but really, there's nowhere I'd rather be than in the reading realm of the strange.  It's October now, so that won't be difficult to manage.  

My latest read is an excellent anthology of short stories edited by David Tibet, There is a Graveyard That Dwells in Man. Some time ago I'd read his The Moons at Your Door and have been waiting impatiently for this book ever since.  I was not disappointed -- this collection more than delivered, something I don't generally say about most anthologies I read, and I don't think that it's an understatement at all to say that if any book will get you in the October/Halloween frame of mind, it's this one.   The completely unnerving, the weird, the ghostly,  the horrific, the familiar and the forgotten all come together here, making for hours of unsettling reading.  

9781907222610
Strange Attractor Press, 2020
440 pp
paperback

The full table of contents is here, and of these twenty-three stories I was delighted to have discovered eleven that I hadn't previously read, but the joy didn't stop there.  Rereading the other twelve became far more than a refresher -- in some cases casting a new eye made for a completely different reading experience.  To offer only two examples of many,  this time around it dawned on me that Walter de la Mare's "Seaton's Aunt" gave off more than just a little bit of an Aickman vibe  and EF Benson's "The Room in the Tower" took on much more of vampiric tone for me than I had originally noticed.    There were actually many of these moments, so anyone inclined to skip the familiar might want to do a rethink.  Adding to these two, the  list of my "already-reads" as I call them still managed to produce chills yet again:   "The Death Mask" by HD Everett, "The Slype House" by AC Benson, "The Shrine of Death" by Lady Dilke, The Inmost Light" by Arthur Machen, "The Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions, "The Sweeper," by A.M. Burrage,  "The Other Wing" by Algernon Blackwood,  "Afterward," by Edith Wharton, "The Watcher," by RH Benson and last but not least, "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  

from Pinterest

This book is described at Strange Attractor's website as offering an "unnerving, serpentine tributary to the canon of supernatural literature,"  and I can attest that  "unnerving" in some cases is a mild descriptor.   Of those stories I hadn't read until now, L.A Lewis' "Last Keep," Thomas Ligotti's "The Small People," and Nugent Barker's "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" so creeped me out that a) I woke up in a sweat one night after dreaming about Ligotti's story, b) I had to put the book down for some time after sitting and thinking about "Last Keep" which is absolutely evil, and c) at midday I had scared myself absolutely silly after finishing the Barker story.  All three of these tales were not only unnerving but downright chilling once I pondered the ramifications, but they also satiated my hunger for the off-kilter, uneasy feeling that I crave as I read.  They all go way beyond the boundary of simply a good scare to becoming so unforgettable to the point of swirling around in the brain long after finishing them.

from Tim Hill,  Pixabay 

Also falling into the strange zone are  "Paymon's Trio" by Colette de Curzon and "Liszt's Concerto Pathétique" by Edna W. Underwood,  both of which share a musical theme, but couldn't be  more different.  The first is somewhat subdued initially before it becomes a dark tale involving the call of the forbidden, while the second explores the question of 

"what vague but mentally potent beings dwell on the border line separating the real from the unreal, floating up perhaps from unthinkable depths of time and space, there to await the propitious moment for tapping some nerve of consciousness in us and establishing telegraphic communication with the soul?"

Underwood's tale is short, frightening and so beautifully written. In  "Padolo," set on a small, uninhabited island near Venice, author  LP Hartley may economize on words, but even though left somewhat unspoken, not on terror.   "Brickett Bottom" by Amyas Northcote and "A Black Solitude" by H.R. Wakefield move into more ghostly territory, while Wakefield's  "Present at the End" finds a man ridding himself of the demons that plague him.   There's also a dark poem by John Gower, "Slep Hath His Haus," which I had great fun reading out loud (it's in Old English), and a story by Richard Middleton, "The Bird in the Garden,"  in which a veil hangs about a child "which served to make all things dim and unreal,"  with the true horror coming when that veil is lifted. Oh. Gutwrenching. 

In my reading, there were two different times I found quotations that I thought so nicely expressed what I saw in all of these stories.  First from A.C. Benson's "The Slype House" comes the idea that 

"Oh, it is as appears; he hath been where he ought not, and he hath seen somewhat he doth not like"

followed later by the words of Arthur Machen in "The Inmost Light" in which says 

"...when men say that there are strange things in the world, they little know the awe and the terror that dwell always with them and about them."

I was so sorry to see this book end -- the choices of stories that David Tibet made to fill this volume are outstanding.  Do not miss his opening piece  "A Rainbow Rag to an Astral Bull," where he explains his idea of "the Graveyard," and be sure to read author Mark Valentine's "Biographical Notes" that close this volume.  

So very, very highly recommended, for lovers of the supernatural, the weird, and the forgotten.  

rats. I should have saved this book for October: The Moons At Your Door, (ed.) David Tibet

97981907222429
Strange Attractor Press, 2016
450 pp
paperback

As I'm sitting here writing this, in the background I'm listening to the eerie music of Current 93's album Faust .  Had I been listening to this  when I read Count Eric Stanislaus Stenbock's tale in this book of the same name,  it would have totally heightened the creep factor that the story produced in my head.   The editor of this collection of strange, hallucinatory tales just happens to be David Tibet, the founder of Current 93, and that particular album was inspired by that particular story. 

Tibet's music isn't solely limited to Stenbock as inspiration though;  it reflects at least one way in which the stories and authors in this book (and beyond) have "crept, crept, crept" into his work; in the introduction to this book he lists other music which has been inspired by Ligotti, Machen,  M.R. James and others, whose "names and phrases and worlds and dreams" he has "channeled" into what he's done.  And if Faust is any indication of how he's managed this, I need to listen to more.

Getting to the book now, it's one thing reading an anthology of strange, supernatural tales and it's quite another to read a book that serves as part of a roadmap of stories that have not only made a huge influence on someone's life, but continue to "enthral, and terrify" that person. All of these stories, he says,

"...spell how close is the darkness, how subtly and slyly it may seep into our lives and change them utterly." 

"Enthral, and terrify" they did in my case, and seep into my life is an understatement in the case of some of these stories.  For example,  Stenbock's "Faust" I had to put down in the middle and continue the next day because it was so utterly terrifying;  "The Tower of Moab" by L.A. Lewis and  "The Testament of Magdalen Blair" by Aleister Crowley  took me out the comfort of my reading chair, out of my living room, and into another place entirely.  Those last two are probably imprinted on my brain forever now, and along with the two stories and two poems by Stenbock in this book, have raised the bar for what I'll be expecting from my strange/dark fiction reading from this point on.  Some of these twenty-eight stories I've read before, but I didn't care -- I got a  sense that they belonged here for some reason so I reread them with absolute pleasure.


I'll post the contents here, but I will not be going into any detail about any of them. That should be a pleasure best left to anyone reading this post.

"The Moons at My Door" by David Tibet

*"Faust," "The True Story of a Vampire," "Vol d'Amor," and "Requiem"  by Count Eric Stanislaus Stenbock 

"Casting the Runes," "A School Story," and "O, Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad" by MR James

*"He Cometh and He Passeth By" and "Look Up There!" by HR Wakefield

"The Horla" by Guy de Maupassant

"The White People," by Arthur Machen

* "The Testament of Magdalen Blair," by Aleister Crowley

"The Frolic" and "Les Fleurs," by Thomas Ligotti

"The Monkey's Paw," by WW Jacobs

 * "Ravissante," by Robert Aickman

"Smee," by A.M. Burrage

"Sredni Vashtar," by Saki

"Bluebeard," by Charles Perrault

"The Touch of Pan," by Algernon Blackwood

From "The King in Yellow," by R.W. Chambers

 *"Young Tambling," traditional (as sung by Anne Briggs)

* "The Hobyahs," traditional

 *"Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrows," by Thomas de Quincey

 *From "The Thunder: Perfect Mind"

From The Epic of Gilgameš

 *"Couching at the Door," by DK Broster

"The Old Nurse's Tale," by Elizabeth Gaskell

Rounding out the rest of this book are "Biographical and Story Notes," by Mark Valentine and "Lunar Tunes," by David Tibet. 

The asterisks by a few of the story titles mark those I hadn't previously read; I'll just briefly mention a few of those here.  Some time ago I preordered (and am now anxiously awaiting) Strange Attractor's  edition of Of Kings and Things: Strange Tales and Decadent Poems by Count Eric Stanislaus Stenbock, also edited by David Tibet. Not to steal Strange Attractor's thunder, but if anyone's interested, Snuggly Books has recently published a collection of Stenbock's work called Studies of Death.   If the Stenbock entries in The Moons at Your Door are any hint of what's to come, I'll be freaked out, utterly terrified, and delighted all at the same time. HR Wakefield's two entries reminded me of MR James, perhaps not with as much depth, but both had eerie twists; Aleister Crowley's "The Testament of Magdalen Blair" chilled me to my bones with its implications.   Aickman's "Ravissante" actually woke me up one morning at 4:30 with an "aha" moment; evidently it was strange and powerful enough to have lingered on in my sleeping subconscious after reading it twice.  "Young Tambling" sent me to youtube to listen to the haunting voice of Anne Briggs;  "Couching at the Door" seems mild and even a bit silly at first but don't let it fool you: it hides a darkness that completely crept under my skin and has stayed there. 

I'm now deep into a second round of Current 93's Faust and thinking how sad I am that this book is over, but fortunately all is not lost.  I have Tibet's newest collection, There is a Graveyard That Dwells in Man (also preordered) to look forward to.  I'm just sorry I didn't save The Moons At Your Door for October reading -- it would have been great to include it in the heading-to-Halloween lineup.

One more thing: yes, you may have many of these stories in various anthologies shelved in your library, but the ones you probably don't are well worth the cost of this book.  The Moons At Your Door should be a mainstay in the home libraries of any serious reader of strange/dark/supernatural fiction.