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For over a decade, I have tackled one or two works of horror literature during the month of October. In the past, most of these were collections of horror stories in the excellent collections put out by Dover Publications, but I am coming to the end of these; so I am branching out a bit.

This month, I have read two collections: Amelia B. Edwards¹s The Phantom Coach and Other Stories and Thomas Ligotti’s Noctuary. Ms Edwards (1831-1892) was not only an excellent teller of tales, but also a world traveler, journalist, and—to add a touch of the weird—an early Egyptologist of some note. I have downloaded her book A Thousand Miles Up the Nile from Amazon Kindle to read sometime next year.

Thomas Ligotti, on the other hand, is a contemporary, born in 1953. I had previously read two of his collections—Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe: His Lives and Works—and found them satisfyingly eldritch in every way. The same could be said of Noctuary, which I loved. In fact yesterday’s post on this blog site was a short short story entitled “One May Be Dreaming” from Noctuary in its entirety. Click on the link to check it out.

And, Happy Halloween!