Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues with this look at six of the neglected horror stories written by architect Ralph Adams Cram between 1894 and 1903.
NUMBER 252 RUE M LE PRINCE – A haunted house at the title address in Paris turns out to be the former home of a Spanish sorcerer. The story’s narrator makes the typically stupid decision for a horror story of spending a night in the house to get to the bottom of the supernatural phenomena.
He compounds his stupidity by sleeping in the temple room in which the sorcerer performed rituals on his Black Magic altar. Overnight the foolish narrator is attacked by a blob-like, protoplasmic monster with wide, staring eyes.
THE DEAD SMILE – Lured by shrill screaming and shrieking from the family mausoleum, Sir Gabriel Ockham seeks to quiet the dead. To that end he must creep into the tomb of his evil late father and obtain a mysterious package containing an old family secret. His father’s corpse lies there outside its coffin and with its decapitated head which moves around on its own, smiling at all who enter. Continue reading
LE DIABLE AMOUREUX (THE DEVIL IN LOVE) – Written in 1772 and translated into English in 1793. This story was penned by Jacques Cazotte and is a forerunner of the type of fantastic, oneiric horror stories that E.T.A. Hoffmann would specialize in. 
AMAZING ADVENTURES Vol 2 #27 (November 1974) 
THE WOLF IN THE GARDEN (1931) – Written by Alfred Hoyt Bill. This neglected novel is ideal for people who go in for horror tales set long ago. In this case the 1790s. 
THE AUTOMATIC MAID-OF-ALL-WORK. A POSSIBLE TALE OF THE NEAR FUTURE (1893) – Written by female author M.L. Campbell. Obviously I shortened the title for my blog post headline. Balladeer’s Blog’s look at “ancient” science fiction continues with this 1893 robot story. 
POLEIS – In this post I’m looking at Poleis (Cities), written by Eupolis, one of the Big Three of Ancient Greek Comedy along with Aristophanes and Cratinus. This satirical comedy is dated from approximately 422 B.C. to 419 B.C. Like so many other such comedies it has survived only in fragmentary form. 
MESSAGES FROM MARS BY THE AID OF THE TELESCOPE PLANT (1892) – Written by Robert D Braine. I shortened the title for the blog post headline. The main character of this novel is a sailor named Nordhausen. After leaving Madagascar our hero winds up shipwrecked on an uncharted island. 
The natives take him through a cave entrance to their hidden village which is a blend of the primitive and the futuristic. For the “sacrilege” of damaging one of the telescope plants Nordhausen is to be executed. The means? A device formed from several of the lens-like leaves which magnify the sunlight into a makeshift heat-ray, like holding a magnifying glass over a piece of paper to catch it on fire. 
PART TWENTY-NINE – As always part of the fun comes from the way the Fool Killer’s opinions are a mix of today’s left-wing and right-wing attitudes. Some you’ll agree with, others you won’t but it’s always interesting. 
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