Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

 

(pb; 1973)

From the back cover

“Marian Rolfe, her husband Ben and their 12-year-old son David find a neglected mansion that can be theirs for the summer. It all seems absolutely perfect, but there is one hitch. . .”

 

Review

Marasco’s slow-build, low-key horror tale about a malevolent house slowly tearing a family apart is good, its relatable characters, descriptions of the house falling somewhere between a then-modern (early Seventies) feel with a touch of late nineteenth-century/early twentieth century nostalgia and atmosphere—this latter element is subtle but  effective in giving Burnt an especially classic spookhouse feel, much like novels like James Herbert’s David Ash series (Haunted; The Ghosts of Sleath; and Ash) and especially Richard Matheson’s Hell House, 1971). The ending is open-ended (and possibly disappointing for some readers), with an equally low-key and notably-different-than-the-1976-film finish, but the film ending (more striking and effective) lacks the sense of blissful revelation that one of key characters experiences in those moments. Highly recommended read for those who appreciate quiet character-explorations, an emphasis on atmosphere, and sometimes-subtle-shift thrills.

#

The film version, true to the book's atmosphere and characters, was released stateside on October 18, 1976. It was directed by Dan Curtis, who co-wrote the screenplay with William F. Nolan.

Karen Black played Marian Rolf (an alteration of the book-version surname Rolfe). Oliver Reed played Ben Rolf. Lee Montgomery, billed as Lee H. Montgomery, played David Rolf. Bette Davis, who found Reed “loathsome” in real life, played Aunt Elizabeth.

Eileen Heckart played Roz Allardyce. Burgess Meredith played Arnold “Brother” Allardyce. Dub Taylor played Walker, the Allardyces’ surly handyman. Anthony James played the creepy Chauffeur.

The Elementals by Michael McDowell

 

(pb; 1981)

From the back cover

“After a bizarre and disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage, the McCray and Savage families look forward to a restful and relaxing summer at Beldame, on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, where three Victorian houses rise above the shimmering beach. Two of the houses are habitable, while the third is slowly and mysteriously being buried beneath an enormous dune of blindingly white sand. But though long uninhabited, the third house is not empty. Inside, something deadly lies in wait. Something that has terrified Dauphin Savage and Luker McCray since they were boys, and which still haunts their nightmares. Something horrific that may be responsible for several and unexplained deaths earlier—and now is ready to kill again.”

 

Review

 Elementals is a masterful, immediately immersive novel, one whose pacing, thick-with-thematic-atmosphere and striking, sometimes fun characters makes it stand out in the best way possible in a genre glutted with less-than-stellar/standard spookhouse works. (It’s a thin line between lag-time writing in serious need of editing and well-foreshadowed/low-key events and chills, and McDowell’s best work falls on the side of the latter approach).

If it ends in a non-surprising, quiet way—it has character-based twists, so I wouldn’t call it predictable—it’s because I got to know the characters and locations well enough to get a sense of their personalities. This is one of my all-time favorite spookhouse reads, one worth owning and keeping beyond its initial reading.

King Diamond: Abigail by King Diamond, Dan Watters, Damien Worm and others

 

(pb; October 2021: graphic novel, based on King Diamond’s 1987 concept album. Publisher: Z2 Comics.)

From the back cover

“King Diamond’s classic horror story featured on his 1987 concept album Abigail has received a masterful in-depth overhaul and is brought to life in a whole new way in this. . . graphic novel by Dan Watters, Damien Worm, and King Diamond himself!”

 

Review

Summer 1845. Jonathan Lafey, in financial trouble in London, inherits a mansion from his never met and deceased uncle near the rarely visited and superstitious village of Wodenstone. Jonathan flees London with his second wife, Miriam, an eighteen-year-old, talented artist. (His first wife, Sarah, died during childbirth as did their child.)

While traveling through dark woods near Wodenstone, seven shadowy and supernatural horsemen stop the Lafeys’ carriage to warn Jonathan and Miriam to turn back, that the castle is a bad place. Of course, Jonathan scoffs at this (despite his spine-shivery response to the suddenly disappeared horsemen), and he and his wife travel on. Once in Wodenstone, they get a chilly silence when Jonathan asks where La Fey House is—not that they need directions once outside, they can see the mansion atop a nearby hill.

A stink (“It is iron and offal scent of botched surgeries. Of spilled amniotic fluid thickened by blood”) permeates Lafey House, although Miriam claims to not smell it. That’s just the beginning of their troubles in the abode where Count Lafey, Jonathan’s uncle and by most accounts a cruel man, murdered his wife and child—the latter a restless and hungry spirit named Abigail.

King Diamond’s spooky, bloody, and mood-immersive sonic work gets comparable graphic novel treatment, with a nightmare-inducing house with way too many shadowy corners, paintings, and secret places. Damien Worm’s artwork captures well the spirit of Diamond’s melodic and guitar-heavy tale, and Dan Watters’s writing is spare enough to not belabor the source album’s story yet detailed enough to supply further mood-effective details to Abigail.

I’d recommend this graphic novel to fans of Gothic horror, haunted houses and, of course, King’s 1987 album. Here’s hoping Z2 follows this up with a companion work to its 2002 sequel, Abigail II: The Revenge.

Prey by Graham Masterton

(pb; 1992, 1999)


From the back cover:

"There's something in the attic of Fortyfoot House.  Something that rustles.  Something that scampers and scratches.  Something with fur.  But it isn't a rat.  It's something far, far more terrifying than a rat.

"Recently divorced, David Williams takes a job restoring Fortyfoot House, a dilapidated 19th-century orphanage, hoping to find peace of mind and get to know his young son, Danny.  But then he hears the scratching noises in the attic.  And he sees long-dead people walking across the lawn.

"Does Fortyfoot House exist in today, yesterday, or tomorrow - or all three at once?  Only one thing is certain - it is a house with a dark, unthinkable secret that threatens to send David's world hurtling into a living nightmare.  A nightmare that only David himself can prevent - if he can escape the thing in the attic."


Review: 

This is a disappointing work from a normally-excellent author.  What makes Prey disappointing is that its lead character, David, is a plot-convenient-idiot-encounters-haunted-house dumbf**k, risking the lives of his son (Danny) and his girlfriend (Liz) by staying in the house, even when it's clear that the house contains malefic elements that wish them serious harm, if not death.

What kept this deeply flawed work (barely) readable was Masterton's, intriguing science fiction spin on the spookhouse genre: the idea that Fortyfoot House is a triple-fold time machine, linked to Lovecraftian/horrific ancient pasts, is a wild and fun concept, when it works; sadly, the efficacy of the concept is often thwarted by David's bonehead actions, which are especially dumb, even for a b-movie horror character.

Prey is recommended only for hardcore Masterton fans, who must read everything this otherwise fantastic writer publishes - and even then, check it out from the library.

Ash by James Herbert

(hb; 2012: third book in the David Ash series)


From the inside flap:

"Set high on a craggy cliff top on the wind-battered western coast of Scotland is a remote, secluded ancient castle.  A castle that holds secrets that would shake the world if they were ever revealed.

"David Ash, ghost hunter and parapsychologist, is sent there to investigate a series of bizarre hauntings that have grown gradually more menacing and horrific: unaccountable noises, inexplicable putrid smells, the dimming of lights, deathly chills, and objects mysteriously flying across rooms.

"When a resident is found in his room, dead, pinned to the wall, with only his viscous blood holding him in place, the investigator is all too aware that a powerful and dark force lurks within the castle's ancient walls - an incorporeal power ignited by a long-ago curse and fed by the evil of those who inhabit the sanctuary called Comraich Castle.

"There are others, miscreants with black souls, who roam the corridors and passageways, infamous people thought long deceased by the outside world.  Yet their hour of retribution is at hand. . ."


Review:

Ash is a fun, reader-hooking "Old School" spookhouse novel that's full of humorous and truly scary - not to mention often icky - characters, moments and scenes. 

Set two years after the events of The Ghosts of Sleath, this third entry in the David Ash  series is the best one yet: it has none of the plot lag that marred Sleath, and it has all of the Hammer filmesque charms of Haunted - Ash even sports a nice mention of actress Ingrid Pitt, a Hammer flick "regular", that made me smile. 

(Hammer films should make this character- and plot-exciting horror/action novel into a theatrical film, or, at the very least, a cable television miniseries.)

Worth owning, this.

The Shining by Stephen King

(pb; 1977: prequel to Doctor Sleep)


From the back cover:

"This tale of a troubled man hired to care for a remote mountain resort over the winter, his loyal wife, and their uniquely gifted son slowly but steadily unfolds as secrets from the Overlook Hotel's past are revealed, and the hotel itself attempts to claim the very souls of the Torrance family. . ."


Review:

Gripping, vivid and emotionally raw-throbbing from the get-go, this is one of my all-time favorite horror reads - and one of King's best novels.

The Shining is worth owning - and re-reading every few years, this last bit something I say about few novels.

#

This novel has resulted in two films.

The first film, a theatrical flick, was released stateside on May 23, 1980.

Jack Nicholson played Jack Torrance.  Shelley Duvall played Wendy Torrance.  Danny Lloyd played Danny Torrance.  Scatman Crothers played Dick Hallorann. 

Barry Nelson played Stuart Ullman.  Philip Stone played Delbert Grady.  Joe Turkel played "Lloyd the Bartender".  Lisa and Louise Burns played "Grady's Daughters".  Vivian Kubrick, daughter of the film's director, played an uncredited "Smoking Guest on Ballroom Couch".

Stanley Kubrick directed the film, from a screenplay by Diane Johnson.

#

The second film, a television miniseries, aired in three parts, on April 27th and 28th, and May 1st, in 1997.

Steven Weber played John Torrance.  Rebecca De Mornay played Wendy Torrance.  Courtland Mead played Daniel Anthony Torrance.  Will Horneff played Tony.  Melvin Van Peebles played Richard Halloran.

Cynthia Garris played "217 Woman".  Shawnee Smith played a "Waitress".  Sam Raimi played "Gas Station Howie".  Christina Faust played "Screaming Female Ghost".  Richard Christian Matheson played "1st Hitman".  David J. Schow played "1st Ghost in Playhouse".  Preston Sturges Jr. played "2nd Ghost in Playhouse".

Mick Garris directed the miniseries, from a teleplay by source novel author Stephen King.

The Loveliest Dead by Ray Garton

(pb; 2006)


From the back cover

"To most people it's just a large house, old and a bit run-down.  To the Kellar family it's a new start, a chance to wipe out the painful past and begin again.  But soon it will become a living nightmare.  The terrors begin before the Kellars have even finished unpacking.  They hear things, see things, shadowy glimpses into the impossible, things that are there - and then gone.

"Who are the mysterious children playing on the rusty, vine-covered swing set in the backyard?  Who is the figure sitting in the dark corner of the bedroom at night?  Who - or what - waits in the basement?  They are the dead and they cannot rest.  Horror stalks the halls of the Kellar house.  And the secrets of the past are reaching from beyond the grave to destroy the living."


Review:

Loveliest is a plot-familiar, good read with some truly creepy moments and consistently reader-hooking writing, with an ending that deftly avoids the usual expect-a-sequel bullsh*t.

Check this novel out.

The Ghosts of Sleath by James Herbert

(hb; 1994: second book in the David Ash series)


From the inside flap:

"Sleath. Quiet, peaceful. A small village hidden away in the Chiltern Hills, almost forgotten by the modern world. Nothing much seems to happen here, little disturbs the centuries-old tranquility.

"Until the ghosts begin to appear. And frighteningly bizarre events begin to occur.

"Psychic investigator David Ash, a man burdened by the dark secret of his own past, is sent to Sleath to investigate the phenomenona and his discoveries there drive him to the very edge of sanity. The incidents grow worse, until, in a final night of horror, awesome and malign forces are unleashed in a supernatural storm that threatens to consume the village itself.

"For Sleath is not what it seems. And the dead have returned for a reason."


Review:

Sleath is a solid, if initially slow-moving, sequel to Haunted. As he did in that first David Ash novel, Herbert favors a classic - read: slow character- and tension-build - approach to his tale, perhaps prompting readers used to quick thrills/fast action to get impatient with Sleath (I did) or drop the novel for another book.

What made Sleath worth reading, for me, is that, along the way - even during the slow-build parts - Herbert's interesting variations on the ghost genre, as well as his variations on his first book, stood out. Sleath's characters were like those out of one of the better Hammer films, and the explicitly laid out horrors were intense, cinematic and creative in their unveilings.

The ending is borderline apocalyptic for those in the village, simultaneous terror, gore and violence for all involved - that is to say, while familiar, it's a satisfying finale to an "Old School" horror tale.

Decent read from an excellent author; worth checking out, this. If you purchase it, make sure you don't pay full price.

Followed by Ash.

Haunted by James Herbert

(hb; 1988: first novel in the David Ash series)


From the inside flap:

"David Ash, a talented, skeptical investigator of the supernatural, works for the Psychical Research Institute in London. He is a troubled but driven man - driven to disprove the existence of things he cannot afford to believe. It is this very obsession that leads him to a house called Edbrook, and to a terrifying confrontation with his own buried past.

"Peculiar things happen at Edbrook, the Mariell family residence: rooms suddenly freeze while corridors are choked by the heat of unseen fires, and the whole house shudders with the chilling sounds of a child's distant laughter.

"Robert, Simon and Christina Mariell are the surviving heirs of this once noble family, whose history contains some unspoken horror. They believe their home is haunted and challenge Ash to prove otherwise. Ash moves into the mansion and struggles to maintain his pragmatic perspective, but even he cannot explain the shockingly real vision of a familiar pale girl whose irresistible embrace pulls Ash beneath the weeds of the garden pond and nearly traps him there forever."


Review:

Haunted, an old-fashioned ghost story with its spooky mood and solid, traumatized characters, is a hard to set down read.

I spotted one of the main plot twists early on, but Herbert's streamlined writing, aforementioned mood and characters (and their murky motivations) made for an enjoyable book.

Promising start of a series, this: worth checking out.

Followed by The Ghosts of Sleath.

#

The resulting film was released in the UK on October 27, 1995. It was released stateside on June 18, 1996.

Aidan Quinn played Prof. David Ash. Kate Beckinsale played Christina Mariell. Anthony Andrews played Robert Mariell. Alex Lowe played Simon Mariell. Anna Massey played Nanny Tess Webb. John Gielgud played Doctor Doyle.

Geraldine Somerville played Kate. Victoria Shalet played Juliet Ash.

Lewis Gilbert directed the film, from a script he co-authored with Timothy Prager and Bob Kellett.

Better Haunted Homes and Gardens by Jennifer Barnes and Kristen Margiotta

(pb; 2009: children's picture book)


Review:

When Ivy Spookerton goes looking for a new place to live, she has specific requirements for her new home: it must be haunted, in a way pleasing to her macabre mindset and her bugs.

This charming, quirky picture book (reminiscent of The Addams Family) made me smile, as did Margiotta's mood- and color-appropriate artwork, which is what alerted me to the existence of this book.

Here's an excerpt - two of my favorite pages from Better Haunted Homes:

"Ivy Spookerton was up to her ears in creepy crawlies. Renting an attic room from Old Mrs. Wrinklechin had been great for a time but Ivy's bug collection had doubled since she'd first moved in.

"Ivy needed a place where she and her critters would have some space to stretch out.

"When the spiders started to make nests in her hair Ivy knew it was finally time to go house hunting. Haunted house hunting to be precise!

"Ivy had always wanted to live in a haunted house and would settle for nothing less than the most haunted house in all of Pumpkinville."

Better Haunted Homes is worth reading, for those without kids who enjoy G-rated silliness and spookiness; it's worth owning for those who have children, whose sensibilities may appreciate the above elements.

The Black Train by Edward Lee

(pb; 2009)

From the back cover:

"Welcome to the Gast House.

"A historic bed and breakfast. . . or a monument to evil and obscenity? Justin Collier didn't know the house's lurid, shocking history when he arrived for a relaxing stay. He knew nothing about the train tracks that run behind the house, or that they once led to a place worse then hell. But he's learning. . .

"At night he can hear the mansion whisper. He hears little girls giggling where they are no little girls. And if he listens closely he can hear the haunting whistle of the train and the cries of the things chained in its prison cars. Each room of the house holds another appalling secret, but the great secret of all rides the Black Train."

Review:

When Justin Collier comes to Gast, Tennessee, a town with an especially violent and sick past, he has no idea what he's in for. He checks into a landmark, immediately creepy hotel (Branch Landing Inn, haunted by its previous owner, Harwood Gast, a Civil War-era plantation owner with a penchant for depravity, cruelty and slaughter, and his slightly less depraved family - a rapacious nymphomaniac wife and her two like-minded teenage daughters.

Lee's works joyously, unabashedly traffic - heck, revel - in b-movie grue, lust and other social taboos, and The Black Train is no exception. Those who find Stephen King or Dean Koontz "shocking" (as one of my friends claims they are) probably won't enjoy this gleefully gory, sometimes sexually explicit work: this is not a read for the faint of heart.

There's not a lot of plot twists here, but this is a fun, nasty and twisted blast of a b-movie novel (which screams to be shot as a film), that put me in the mindset of Herschell Gordon Lewis' Two Thousand Maniacs! - only with (slightly) smarter characters and a more salacious tone.

Good read, this, if you're a b-movie buff, looking for a grisly demonic thrill ride.

•

There is one film out right now, based on Lee's work: a lower-budget, above-average Header (2006).

Header is a hillbillies-from-Hell sexually nasty work that's liable to put off anybody who cringes at brutal meldings of libido, revenge and humanity-based horrors.

If you see it, make sure to watch for Edward Lee's cameo as "State Trooper #1", as well as a cameo by Lee's real-life friend and fellow horror writer, Jack Ketchum, as "State Trooper #2".

Walkers by Graham Masterton

(pb; 1989)


From the back cover:

"It didn't take long for Jack Reed to decide to convert the huge gothic building in the woods into an idyllic, up-market country club.

"But behind the ornately carved walls of The Oaks lurks a past that was anything but idyllic. Sixty years ago the house was an asylum, home to crazed psychopaths -- all of whom disappeared one night, never to be seen again.

"Now the empty rooms echo the soundless screaming of the madmen trapped inside the brick and plaster, walking endlessly through the maze-like mansion. And now Jack's son, dragged into the hellish prison of the walls, is held a screaming hostage by Quintus Miller, leader of the insane.

"Quintus took the killers into the walls. Now, he insists, Jack Reed will set them free -- or his son will die."


Review:

Landmark work that takes its subject way beyond its specific-source subgenre (spookhouse fiction) -- Masterton keeps it creepy (and f**ked-up funny in some parts), continually ratcheting up the terror factor and the unexpected plot and character turns. More than the usual "ooooh, scary ghosts" horror fare, Masterton not only manages to raise the genre bar, but morphs it into something greater, while thematically linking it to his five-book The Manitou series: an added perk for Masterton's "regular" readers.

Worth owning, this.

The Infinite by Douglas Clegg

(pb; 2001)

From the back cover:

"Harrow is haunted, they say. The mansion is a place of tragedy and nightmares, evil and insanity. First, it was a madman's fortress; then it became a school. Now it lies empty. An obsessed woman named Ivy Martin wants to bring the house back to life. And Jack Fleetwood, a ghost hunter, wants to find out what lurks within Harrow. Together they assemble the people who they believe can pierce the mansion's shadows.

"A group of strangers, with varying motives and abilities, gathers at the house called Harrow in the Hudson Valley to reach another world that exists within the house... A world of wonders... A world of desires... A world of nightmares."

Review:

This is best read as a sometimes-clever, by-the-numbers homage to other classic horror/haunted house novels, namely: Thomas Tryon's Harvest Home, Shirley Jackon's The Haunting of Hill House, and Richard Matheson's Hell House.

Clegg is a competent writer, but The Infinite lacks the necessary haunted-house tension. Clegg lays the multi-layered creepiness on thick -- problem is, most readers have read this story before, created by more effective writers.

The characters are semi-stock: Chet Dillinger, an angry nineteen-year old hick telemetrist, who can move things with his mind; Calista Nybird, a friendly urban psychometrist in her late twenties ("she could hold an object associated with... murder... and if the situation was right, find out something about the murderer or the victim..."); Frost Crane, a forty-five year old bestselling author who channels otherworldly "Voices," most of whom are like Crane himself -- seething, circumstantially-impotent and violent; Jack Fleetwood, an academic type who's in love with the going-mad (and rich) Ivy Martin, who owns the Harrow mansion; and Miranda Fleetwood, Jack's sarcastic sixteen-year old daughter, who lacks psychic abilities (and nevertheless senses the mansion's ethereal-dread).

Near the end, there are some well-rendered splatter-punkish scenes of supernatural mayhem, but even they can't make this anything more than it is: a disposable spookhouse beach read.

Hell House by Richard Matheson

(hb; 1971)

From the inside flap

"For over twenty years, Belasco House has stood empty. A venerable mansion with shadowed walls, it has witnessed scenes of almost unimaginable horror and depravity. Two previous expeditions to investigate met with complete disaster, as the participants were destroyed by murder, suicide or insanity.

"Now a new investigation has been mounted, bring four strangers to the ominous house. Each has their own reason for daring the unknown torments and temptations of the mansion, but can any soul survive what lurks within the most haunted house on Earth?"


Review

This is one of the most shivery haunted house novels I've ever read. Matheson's prose is, as usual, straightforward, with chilling, oozing and often sexual going-ons plaguing the four researchers who take up residence in the notorious abode. Philosophical, psychological, metaphysical, religious and sexual dialogue make up much of this fun, atmospheric read.

Wow-worthy twists also highlight Hell House, as do Matheson's fully-developed characters, whose neuroses decide what forms the hauntings, individual and collective, take.

One nit: near the end, the characters sum up what they think is troubling the mansion, based on what they've experienced. (Is it psychic manifestations, born of the living neuroses of those who enter the house? Is it Emeric Belasco, the Aleister Crowley-like previous owner of the house, whose body was never found? Or are there other ghosts in the mansion?)

These character summations are fine the first time around; but the characters restate their beliefs two, even three times, bogging down the action for a short (approximately twenty page) stretch.

That said, this is a landmark haunted house book, with an ending that's sad, light and ironic.

#

This was released stateside as a film, The Legend of Hell House, on June 15, 1973.

Pamela Franklin played Florence Tanner. Roddy McDowall played Benjamin Franklin Fischer. Clive Revill played Mr. (Lionel) Barrett. Gayle Hunnicutt played Ann Barrett.

John Hough directed, from a script by book author Matheson.