#Readathon-‘The First Pan Book Of Horror Stories’ edited by Herbert Van Thal

”In short,truth is stranger than fiction.Even so,we feel that the stories in this book are such that if yur nerves are not of the strongest,then it is wise to read them in day-light lest you should suffer nightmares,for these authors know their craft,and they have not hesitated to expound it with little thought of sparing you from the horrifying details.”

This is from the introduction, by Herbert Van Thal, to his first of 26 volumes of ‘The Pan Books Of Horror Stories’, which was subsequently taken over by Clarence Paget to the final volume, Book 30.

It is quite clear that he intends to shock your socks off with writers at the peak of their powers-this book, however, was published in 1959 and I first read it at about 9/10 after picking it up at a church sale/school fete. So I was keen to see if what I remembered from reading matched what it made me feel now. At one point I had all 30 from years of diligent collecting-but they have gone missing along the way. Maybe I felt I was too old for them, maybe I moved away from horror, who knows? What I do know is that some of them are fetching insane amounts on ebay and Amazon so it is going to take quite some time to build them back up again!

Here are the contents of Book 1-

• Joan Aitken-Jugged Hare
• A.L Barker-Submerged
• George Fielding Eliot-The Copper Bowl
• Jack Finney-Contents of the Dead Man’s Pockets
• Peter Fleming-The Kill
• C.S Forrester-The Physiology Of Fear
• L.P. Hartley-W.S
• Hazel Heald-The Horror In The Museum
• Hester Holland-The Library
• Fielden Hughes-The Mistake
• Nigel Kneale-Oh,Mirror,Mirror
• Noel Langley-Serenade For Baboons
• Hamilton Macallister-The Lady Who Didn’t Waste Words
• Chris Massie-A Fragment Of Fact
• Seabury Quinn-The House Of Horror
• Flavia Richardson-Behind The Yellow Door
• Muriel Spark-The Portobello Road
• Bram Stoker-The Squaw
• Anthony Vercoe-Flies
• Angus Wilson-Raspberry Jam
• Alan Wykes-Nightmare

So! First to note is that this book is incredibly ancient and needs careful handling-it does not respond to being fallen asleep on at all.This is a lived in book,a 14th printing acquired via ebay at what I feel is a reasonable price. I remember 2 stories vividly, the rest are an an enigma. What struck me most was the overwhelmingly English-ness of it. The language, the racial epithets are all quite shocking and I am sure that as a child I did not notice the way that the Welsh, Chinese and Africans are referred to as respectively ‘black,”yellow’ and ‘savage’, in three of the stories. Some of them are deeply unpleasant ,’The Copper Bowl’ for example shows the torture of a young Chinese girl to get locations of a Foreign Legion base from a young soldier.’The Horror In The Museum’ is a Lovecraftian mess, ‘His Beautiful Hands’ distasteful and ‘The House Of Horror’ objectionable as well as possibly anm awful depiction of a Frenchman which borders on francophobic.

The next issue to take is the flagrant sexism-women are mutilated, kidnapped, cursed and sought revenge upon in a majority of these stories in a way that again reflects the time period.’Jugged Hare,”Portobello Road’ and ‘Oh Mirror,Mirror’ are prime examples of this though the whole book is scattered with them. And let’s not start on the depiction of a boy who puts on makeup in ‘Raspberry Jam’ as a ‘cissy’ by his parents…

Now that I have dealt with the problematic issues of the tales…were any of them actually scary?

Yes, yes there were.

Jack Finney’s tale of a man’s life work flying out the window and the lengths he would go to get it back is a masterpiece in suspense.

Bram Stoker’s recounting of an obnoxious American tourist who gets his comeuppance in ‘The Squaw’ stands the test of time as it is scary and gruesome.

‘The Physiology Of Fear’ has a killer last line that given the time this book was written in, is all too close to home dealing with Nazi experiments and the nature of what scares us.

‘Raspberry Jam’ hits all the sweet spots that it ever did.

They bring out reacctions varying from dsgust, fear, nausea and shudders-it is very much of its time and really reflects the mores of it so forewarned is forearmed.

It was a bit disheartening but also not to see that we have come a long way as a society-I think barely any of these tales would be reprinted today. Some of them are unique to this collection whilst others are reprints. It is an interesting experiment in reading what scares you as most of these seem outdated compared to what modern readers will feel is scary. The stories cover themes consistent with the times-most notably revenge-and I don’t know whether they have lasting impact in a world where horror is on the news, in the media and worse than anything these stories suggest. This could be why dystopian tales are so currently trending as with so much conflict in the world,it feels like the end of times are literally on our doorstep, not a ‘future shock’.

But it is a good reminder of what used to scare us-bodily horror, decay, invasion, ghosts and the matter of vengeance all of these have an impact once you push aside the casual racism and sexism. What surprised me was there were no obvious tropes like zombies, vampires but werewolves and ghosts feature twice!

I hope that you might have enjoyed this trip down a dark memory lane, drop me a line and let me know what your favourite antholiges are-do you have a sweet spot for a certain trope?

Until next time, here are some links to a UK based book shop that sells vintage horror and one of my favourite booktubers.Enjoy! Or rather, shudder…

Links-https://alldatalostbooks.co.uk/

Hey Little Thrifter