About the book…From the dim and bottomless depths of your darkest nightmares…
‘An hour later there was a scream. An awful gurgling scream. And I ran in, I didn’t even turn on the light. I ran, ran, ran, oh, Jesus God Mary, it had him, it was shaking him, shaking him just like a terrier shakes a piece of cloth and I could see something with awful slumped shoulders and a scarecrow head and I could smell something like a dead mouse in a pop bottle and I heard…’ He trailed off. ‘I heard it when Andy’s neck broke.’ – The Boogeyman, Stephen King.
…come fourteen more black and brooding tales to make the flesh creep, to twist and torment the inner sanctums of the mind…
Ironically, the synopsis above from Goodreads, has a snippet from the only convincingly horrifying tale, in this, the quarter of a century edition of The Pan Books Of Horror
You would expect something decent, something better at this stage, having chronicled the horrific, with some hits, some misses in the previous volumes, and there is a definite decline in quality through the series, but dear lord, guys, this one is a mess.
I picked this up for fifteen great British pounds in Hay On Wye, the only Pan book I could find in a town with 20 bookshops. It was my birthday, my other half brought it for me, and this should have been a flagship edition, as evidence by the boasting of King’s inclusion on not 1, but 2 stories in this collection.
But why is it so bad?
What makes it so awful?
Well, let me tell you my thoughts….
The way the stories are arranged makes no sense.
They feel like hay seeds chucked against a barn wall, hoping some would stick.
‘The Boogeyman’ by Stephen King , was originally published in Night Shift, itself published in 1978, a whole 6 years before the Pan Book inclusion. I am suggesting that anyone in those pre-interweb days would have a copy of this themselves, so it is not , essentially, a new story.
It is dark, nasty and scary, a twist on the boogeyman myth with a reprehensible protagonist and traumatising child deaths talked about with little to no emotion . The conclusion is satisfying to the reader whilst also inventing a whole new fear from grownups who should be beyond this but actually are not.
King is a big hitter in this time frame, with his success of the mid to late 70’s, carrying him forward to a prolific, and as we now know, coke driven 80’s, so this name on the cover would have been a huge draw. Sadly , nothing else about the book stands out as much…
The table of contents are a brief synopsis of the other tales, are as follows-
‘Baby’s Blood’ by Alan Ryan-the title tells you all you need to know…a story of addiction, consumption and consumerism, this is unpleasant but not what I would consider ‘scary’.
‘Upon Reflection’ by Terry Reeves-a weird fantasy type story that wanders in out of nowhere and has you checking the title to make sure it’s the right book you are reading. Odd, and doesn’t fit with the overarching anthology format of showcasing horror in the late 20th century.
Josie Comes To Stay’ by J.I Crown- an ambitious young woman, in the face of outstanding misogyny, tries to find her husband’s heavily insinuated hidden treasure. She marries him, he adores her in all the characteristic ways a man would ‘own’ a woman after marriage, and as she tries to better her and him, the house literally gets pulled down around their ears.
‘Just One Of The Family’ by Norman F Kaufman– a body horror tale of an ingested twin who begins to make themself known and results in one of the most ridiculous scenes of surgery I have ever read. Kaufman is a Pan regular, but this is a massive misfire.
‘Job Centres Are Less Dangerous’ by Curt Pater -a set of young men hear about a man who might be able to help their ambitions come to life in a time of massive unemployment and economic uncertainty. Again, the resolution is seen in the title..
‘Let’s Do Something Naughty’ by Alan W.Lear– a deeply unsettling tale of a bored housewife and her daughter, and neighbourhood chum crossed with black magic, possession and incestuous, appalling sexualisation of children. Nauseating.
‘Grave Business’ by Cristina Kiplinger-1 of only 2-2!-tales from the 15 written by women, you would never think that 1980’s Britain was in the grip of Third Wave feminism at this time, a 2 page disturbance of the grave variety…shudders galore!
‘Onawa’ by Alan Ryan– a bizarre tale of an indigenous person wrapped in horror which left me conflicted as to its potential to be viewed within a racist lense. At least it was short.
‘The Architect’s Story’ by Ian C.Strachan– Satanism, folklore and Scottish dialect, Bizarre and unconvinving
‘The Boogeyman’ by Stephen King-a man, Lester Billings, visits a psychiatrist following the collapse of his marriage, and the deaths of his 3 children. Is he culpable? Can he be helped or if he beyond this?
‘Tell Mommy What Happened’ by Alan Ryan-a second appearance from Alan, precognition or a ghost?Who knows what happened to Margaret Lockwood’s son, Robbie (even more relevant, does anyone care?!)
‘The Squatters’ by Carl Shiffman-a haunted house story which actually chills, this is the tale of people taking possession of an unoccupied house, before it takes possession of them. Neat, short and nasty.
‘The Woman In The Room’ by Stephen King-the moving and relatable tale of a man visiting his mother, as she lies dying in hospital, and asks of him one last thing. Believed to be based on the experiences King had around his late mother’s last illness , just before he hit the big time. Intense and deeply emotional
‘Black Silk’ by Barbara-Jane Crossley– following the previous story is a hard task, and sorry to say, as the last story in the book as well, this fails to make the landing. A man with aims to own a beautiful wife, gets more than he bargained for in the shape of Tania. Again, the clue is in the title.
To conclude, I am still picking these volumes up wherever I can, though they are in short supply, and hoping to find a gem, a throwback to a time when anthologies were representative of the state of horror in the 20th century, this edition was a hit, and a miss.
Do you collect any vintage horror books or series? Has anything resonated with you over the years and on revisiting, they stand up better, or worse, than you remember?
Drop me a line and let me know!
My other reviews of the Pan series can be found on the blog as soon as I can update them all, I will add in the hyper links!
About the editor…
Herbert Maurice van Thal (1904-1983), known as Bertie van Thal, was a British bookseller, publisher, agent, biographer, and anthologist.
Author
bridgeman.lenny@gmail.com
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