Here's the first Mild Fear entry of 2025. Mild Fear definitely applies, because nothing on this blog, especially regarding fictitious and literary things that go bump in the night, approaches the horror of certain things transpiring in the real world at this moment.
- Title: Monsters and Nightmares
- Additional cover text: "Hideous tales resurrected from tombs, decaying graves, vaults of death and the blood-soaked lips of vampires ... GRAPHICALLY ILLUSTRATED"
- Author: Bernhardt J. Hurwood (1926-1987). Other books by Hurwood were covered on Papergreat in 2024 and 2021. Hurwood also wrote under the pseudonym Mallory T. Knight.
- Illustrator: Unknown, which is a shame. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "The cover artist is not credited, there is a partial signature [not recognized]. The interior artwork is not credited [by more than one artist], only a couple of pieces are signed."
- Publisher: Belmont (B50-735)
- Year: 1967
- Pages: 156
- Format: Paperback
- Cover price: 50 cents
- Provenance: The name Alan Giannini is written in cursive and pencil on the first page.
- Table of contents: Very colorful chapter titles! See the photo below for the full contents. There are a wer-hyena, a Russian Rip Van Winkle, a haunted vault, screaming skulls, cannibals, demon drummers, banshees, vampires and much more.
- Excerpt #1: "The count was so overjoyed at this turn of events that he refused to punish the undertaker."
- Excerpt #2: "To many it seemed as though the end of the world were at hand."
- Excerpt #3: "Fortunately the concept of therapy through terror came to an end in the 18th century."
- Excerpts from Hurwood's epilogue: "Take heart, dear reader (as they used to say in bygone day), the worst is over. There is no more need to shudder. You are safe from vampires. They have probably formed a union and would refuse to suck your blood unless it met carefully prescribed standards of purity unattainable in this century. ... As far as ghosts, and other assorted supernatural spirits are concerned, you have little to fear. At the rate the Great Society is destroying old landmarks, houses, mansions, and other assorted architectural relics, there won't be any places left for ghosts to haunt. ... What is the mere plague of the Black Death compared to the perpetual threat of nuclear warfare? ... All of our present day horrors notwithstanding — income tax, television commercials and uglification (to mention only a few) things could be worse. At least we can all still indulge ourselves in certain ways. We can still set forth on that most intimate of affairs, the one that each of us embarks upon each time we pick up a book and read it."
- Online thoughts: There's not much in the way of reviews or criticism about this book on the internet. ... In a 2013 post on the Amazing Stories blog about Hurwood's books, the writer mentions Monsters and Nightmares in passing. And he notes: "I think it’s a great shame, but Mr. Hurwood isn’t exactly a household name. He deserves to be one though. ... Several of his books on the occult were short snappy retellings of European and Asian legends of ghosts, demons and various monsters such as werewolves and vampires. Several of the collections were cannibalized and repackaged by the Scholastic Book club under such titles as Ghosts, Ghouls and Other Horrors and Vampires, Werewolves and Other Demons." ... Separately, Lee Harper Oswald mused a little bit about Monsters and Nightmares and Hurwood in a 2020 blog post.
Speaking of nightmares
A couple of nights ago, I had a nightmare that I think was partly fueled by the post-operative oxycodone I've been taking. I usually can't remember dreams well, but what I typed up the next morning as I tried to recall/interpret the dream is both a bit creepy and a bit too on-point:
"For a long period, I had been making unsafe and unauthorized trips to the rooftop of the large building in which I lived. I was addicted to the thrill of walking or running across the rooftops. But, even more so, I was strangely addicted to the terror of the presence that followed just behind me, just out of sight, as I went across the rooftops. It was a very dangerous, and I didn't have the feeling that I was always just eluding it as much as it was letting me elude it. But then I stopped the habit and stopped going to the rooftops. But The Presence wouldn't let this stand. It was either intruding into my everyday existence in the lower parts of the house, or calling me back to the rooftops. It was no longer a thing I could resist or elude."
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