Spider Horror

It’s bad enough that its venom-dripping chelicerae can slice through flesh like warm butter. Worse? It’s right there under the bunk. It’s a fact now. To make it through the night, the children must obey the rules: don’t get out of bed, stay out of the shadows, and don’t wake the beast. But as the threats multiply, so do the rules of survival. And with the safety of dawn still hours away, the fun is just beginning.

A winter storm has buried North Dakota in snow and ice. With accidents being reported across the region, Deputy Ron Weller must patrol along the main road through a normally tranquil forest in Beeman County. The night grows menacing as he discovers vehicles that have been run off the road, their drivers mysteriously missing. Strange tracks lead through a region of thick forest known as Devil's Rock. There, Weller makes a horrifying discovery. A monster has awakened. Its hunger is insatiable, and its ferocity has no limits.

Warning: You may have a huge, invisible spider living in your skull. This is not a metaphor. You will dismiss this as ridiculous fearmongering. Dismissing things as ridiculous fearmongering is, in fact, the first symptom of parasitic spider infection - the creature secretes a chemical into the brain to stimulate skepticism, in order to prevent you from seeking a cure. That’s just as well, since the “cure” involves learning what a chain saw tastes like. You can’t feel the spider, because it controls your nerve endings.

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh author known for his works of horror and the fantastic. He is recognized as an influence on modern writers of supernatural fiction. Holy Terrors (published in 1946, a year before his death) is a collection of 14 short stories of which nine are very short and are included in this recording. They are: “The Rose Garden”, “Psychology”, “The Soldier's Rest”, “The Cosy Room”, “The Ceremony”, “Holy Things”, “The Turanians”, “The Happy Children”, and “Munitions of War”.

When Arkham Advertiser reporter Andy van Nortwick receives a mysterious film reel in the mail, with a simple note: "Maude Brion is very much alive!", he steps onto a path which will lead him to the brink of madness. Brion, the famous actress and film director, vanished a year ago on an ill-fated expedition into the Amazon rainforest, delving into the legend of the Spider Queen. Thrilled by the prospect of his big break, Nortwick swings the funds to launch a rescue mission. He gathers a team of explorers and a keen folklorist to bring back Brion and cement his reputation.

E.F. Benson (1867-1940) is probably best known today for his sparkling, comic Lucia novels. In his own day, it was his ghost stories which were his most popular works. This collection of 10 stories exemplifies Benson's fine literary style and his ability to create the most frightening of ghostly and macabre tales.

Isla Perdida has been untouched by humans for hundreds of years. Until now. A team of researchers has landed on the rocky shores of this dangerous landscape and discover that a horrific predator is waiting for them. It doesn't take long for this deadly arachnid to make its way from the humid island jungle to the American mainland. As this new threat terrorizes Southern Florida, a murderous infection begins to spread. Victims are piling up, and death is not the worst of it.

Seventeen-year-old Piper and her boyfriend Cory are held captive by horrifying spider cryptids in the savage dimension of Arachnall. The Spider King tries to seduce her into ruling with him as his queen and makes Cory a soulless slave. Piper must make an impossible choice: help the beleaguered Spider Queen dethrone the Spider King and escape or turn into one of the bloodthirsty monsters.

Here is a collection of nine tales of the macabre and the supernatural from the acknowledged master of these genres. They are: "The Black Cat", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", "The Premature Burial", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Oval Portrait", "Berenice", and "Ligeia".

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) was born in Dublin, Ireland and is acknowledged as an influential writer in the genre of gothic and supernatural fiction of the 19th century. Many of his short stories were originally published in various magazines. Here are six of them: “The White Cat of Drumgonnial”, “Dickon the Devil”, “The Drunkard's Dream”, “The Secret of the Two Plaster Casts”, “The Vision of Tom Chuff”, and “An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House”.

Ambrose Bierce's collection of short stories of the supernatural and macabre Can Such Things Be? was first published in 1893 and republished in a revised edition in 1910. This selection contains two of his most famous tales: "The Moonlit Road" and "The Death of Halpin Frayser" together with 10 others.

A third collection of 18 classic tales of the weird and supernatural by some of the best known writers in these genres.

Jaunty the Clown just wants to entertain families with lighthearted slapstick antics, but people think of clowns as terrifying, nightmarish creatures who hide in closets or under beds. When Jaunty, along with his fellow performers, are fired from the circus, they're told that the world just doesn't like clowns anymore. Still, clowns have to eat. And since these clowns don't eat children, to make ends meet they're eventually forced to take a job in a popular haunted attraction, the Mountain of Terror. But millions of oversized spiders are about to invade....

E. Nesbit is rightly best known for her children's books, but she also wrote works for adults, including short stories in the genres of the uncanny, macabre, and supernatural. There are five of these in this collection.

“The Thing Invisible” is a story featuring Thomas Carnacki, a detective who investigates cases of an occult or supernatural nature. It is one of five tales of Carnacki's ghost hunting exploits that first appeared serially in The Idler magazine in 1910 and were published together with one more as a collection Carnacki the Ghost-Finder in 1913. After a good dinner, Mr. Carnacki relates his experiences of ghost-finding to his limited circle of four friends whom he has summoned to his home in Chelsea.

Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909) was an American writer, born in Italy and educated in the USA. He also studied at the universities of Cambridge and Heidelberg. He was a prolific writer in many fields, but it was his novels that were most popular, commanding a large following. His stories of the macabre and supernatural are very highly regarded. Roy Macready reads five of them from Uncanny Tales.

It is said that if ghosts were real, they'd be everywhere - at shopping malls, parking lots, in the parlor, the bathroom, on the sidewalks and boulevards. (After all, how many people have lived and died throughout human history?) But maybe, just maybe, they are everywhere - on your lap at this very moment, in the walk-in closet, in the grand oak tree just outside your window, in the shower, the cellar - mumbling, grinning, stumbling about, screaming - but only a chosen few of the living have been blessed with the awful gift of being able to see them, hear them, interact with them, tormented by them.

E.F. Benson (1867-1940) is probably best known today for his sparkling, comic "Lucia" novels. In his own day it was his ghost stories which were his most popular works. The Sanctuary exemplifies Benson's fine literary style and his ability to create the most frightening of supernatural and macabre tales, this one being particularly disturbing.

M.R. James (1862-1936) was provost of King's College, Cambridge, and Eton College. He was a highly regarded scholar and academic in his time but today is remembered for his ghost stories, which are considered among the finest in the genre. The seven stories in this Volume One are: "A School Story", "Rats", "A Warning to the Curious", "Two Doctors", "The Haunted Doll's House", "Casting the Runes", "There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard".

Barry Pain was noted for his humorous tales of “Eliza” and her husband, but his tales of the weird and supernatural are equally noteworthy. This volume, More Tales in the Dark, contains eight of them.