WARNING:If you are at all squeamish about blood and gore, you might not want to read further. If, however, you are a regular reader/writer of horror stories or a watcher of horror movies, it’s probably all right for you to continue.
My brother John and I have had many strange conversations over the years and gotten involved in many off-beat projects. Two that come to mind are when we played rock music backwards to look for satanic messages and when we took a fake UFO photo.
One time, many years ago, we got onto the subject of King Kong’s epic fall from the Empire State Building. How we got onto the subject, I don’t remember.
To recap the climactic scene, the giant ape–clutching Fay Wray–climbs to the top of the Empire State Building. He sets Fay down so he can swat more effectively at the military planes that are buzzing around his head, and he falls to his death.
John said that a mass the size of that ape falling that distance would hit the pavement so hard that it would burst like a rotten tomato and create a far-reaching splatter pattern. It would be similar to the blood splatter detectives examine when someone has been brutally and bloodily murdered.
Most of the gore would be around the body with splashes on the walls and ceiling growing smaller and less dense with their distance from the unfortunate corpse. John maintained that a similar splatter pattern would result when the sorrowful simian smashed into the pavement. In fact, John calculated the radius of the splatter pattern.
Although John was highly proficient in math, this equation would have been fairly simple as equations go. The only unknown was how much the ape weighed. I don’t remember if the figure was available in any of the King Kong literature or if John made an estimate for the sake of filling in the blanks. The other factors-like-how high the building was and the velocity at which the ape plummeted to the pavement–could be looked up or determined by other calculations.
According to John’s calculations, the splatter pattern was sizeable. He found that simian debris would be flung as far away as Albany, which was approximately 150 miles distant. These, of course, would be smaller bits, like in the splatter pattern of our murder victim. Albany might see some molecules of ape innards or blood mist settle down from the sky but not big pieces like chunks of intestines or pieces of liver.
This, of course, would be the best-case scenario if the land were flat with no obstructions. Unfortunately, with city skyscrapers surrounding the impact zone most of the splatter would be blocked by the buildings–there would be ape innards many stories up on those buildings, in fact.
But maybe a little blood mist would clear the tops of those buildings and make its way to Albany.
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
I’ve just released a new collection of short stories–The Last Bus and Other Stories. These 26 stories span almost the length of my 50+-year writing career, from “The Park” in 1972 to “Spare Parts” and “An Evening Stroll” in 2021.
As in my first collection, The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories, The Last Bus is divided into sections for Science Fiction and Fantasy, Horror, and Literary/Mainstream. Also, as in my first collection, I’ve included commentary before and after each story giving some background about the story. Some of these stories have been previously published, but for most this is their first publication.
It’s always difficult to design a cover for a short story collection, especially when the collection contains stories ranging through several genres. The first reaction is to illustrate one of the stories. If it can be the title story, so much the better. I tried this, but the covers didn’t work. Since some of these stories contain ghosts and phantoms, I decided to go with a phantom face in the trees as sort of a general statement.
A few of the stories in this collection are:
Games Machines Play—A computer holds a college student hostage until he complies with a peculiar request.
An Evening Stroll—While walking in the fog one evening, a college professor inadvertently turns back the clock on his own life.
Spare Parts—On the eve of his wedding, something odd falls out of Mike Thayer’s ear, and he learns a shocking truth about himself.
Safety First—Not only is William Fawth’s car programmed to help him develop safe driving skills, but it has an attitude that grates on his nerves.
The Last Bus—Local businessman Wilson Brakhage offers tours of the wreckage of the worst tornado disaster in Nebraska’s history.
Blood—Are the cattle mutilations the work of a cougar, or is there a darker, supernatural force at work here?
Obsession—A visit to the doctor makes 29-year-old Chuck convinced that he’s growing old. Judi needs to snap him out of it before it destroys their marriage.
Keeper of the Shrine—A college student who works the night shift in a photofinishing plant learns a life lesson from a dead spider.
The Last Bus and Other Stories (ISBN: 9798861015325) is available as an eBook ($2.99) and a trade paperback ($12.95) from most online booksellers.
There is a new free promotional tool for authors called Shepherd. This is how it works:
You recommend five books similar in theme to your book.
You write a short, personalized recommendation for each book.
Above your recommendation is printed a short bio and photo of the author (the photo is optional).
Also above your recommendations is a short description of the book you are promoting.
You supply the author photo and cover photo of your book; Shepherd will pull the cover photos of the books you recommend off Amazon.
Shepherd will link to your book on Amazon and Bookshop.
Here is the email I got from Ben at Shepherd when my page for In Human Form went live on September 26:
Last month we had 152,000+ visitors! A new record!
We launched a new recommendation system in August that will help even more readers find your list!
We will add genre and age pages toward the end of 2022. The new pages will allow readers to browse genres like historical fiction or children’s books. We will also add filters so readers can search for things like:
Show me all books about World War 2 that are historical fiction.
Show me all the science-fiction books about cyborgs published in the last two years.
Show me all the children’s books about robots for kids age 8.
Back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, a religious group claimed that subliminal messages in rock music were converting unsuspecting kids to satanism. All you had to do, they said, was play the songs backwards to reveal the satanic commands.
My brother John and I were skeptical, but we thought it would be great fun to play some popular songs backwards just to see if anything turned up. Call it a scientific experiment, if you will.
Back in those technology-challenged days, playing a song backwards was a chore. Our process consisted of recording the songs on a cassette tape, opening up the cassette, flipping the tape over, and reassembling the cassette. The result was that when we played the tape, we would hear the songs backwards.
We checked out three singers/bands. It took us an entire Saturday from early morning to late into the evening because after we’d prepared the songs to be played backwards, we had to listen to them closely to ferret out any potentially satanic messages.
We started with Kenny Rogers, who was really more country than rock, and came up empty. Then we tried Billy Joel, who was a little more of a rocker, but stillwe got nothing.
John said, “Kenny Rogers and Billy Joel just don’t look like they’d be in league with the Devil.” He pulled out another album, showed me a picture of the band and said, “If anyone is putting satanic messages in their music, it’s these guys.”
The band was Queen, and we struck paydirt. I’m not saying that this is proof positive that Queen embedded satanic phrases in their music, but some of the words sounded ominous to us.
We found several satanic-sounding phrases, but since so many years have passed, I’ve forgotten most of them. Two of them, however, were so memorable that they remained with me through the years.
In “Bohemian Rhapsody” we found the chant, repeated several times: “One now one, one now one…” Perhaps that could mean, “we are one with the devil?” In another song we found: “I….want your heart.” A romantic might think of that as a lovesick guy pining for his true love’s heart. But, given our fascination with the macabre, we went another way and interpreted it as a guy expressing his desire to cut out someone’s still-beating heart and offer it as a sacrifice to the Evil One.
On a side note, John introduced me that day to the Queen song ’39, which I love because it is a science fiction song based on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. That’s something you usually don’t hear in connection with a rock band. ’39 tells the story of a band of volunteers who sail in a (space) ship across the milky seas (the Milky Way Galaxy) looking for a new world because the Earth is “old and gray.” They return after one year has passed for them, but 100 years have passed on Earth. On top of all that, it is a tragic love story. It’s pretty cool; give it a listen.
For information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
What if your quest for cheap parking led you to an underground garage with no means of exit and you just kept going down and down?
This is what happens to the narrator of “Cheap Parking,” written by Sarah K. Rodden, produced by Phil Michalski, and narrated by Danielle McRae on the NoSleep podcast. It is the second story on this episode of the podcast and starts around 19:35.
This is a gripping little horror story. It kept me on the edge of my seat, and I highly recommend it. “Cheap Parking” is Sarah’s second professional fiction sale to the NoSleep podcast. Also, check out her first story, “Recalculating,” which begins at about 18:20. After listening to it, you may never trust your GPS again.
Sarah’s father is Robert Rodden II, who I published in October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror 31 years ago. His novelette “Sun Tea” from that anthology is also a suspenseful, horrifying tale, and is available in paperback and digital form.
As I cautioned when I mentioned the NoSleep podcast here just under three years ago, these stories are not for children. So send the kiddies to bed, settle down with a glass of wine, and leave the lights on.
Just in time for Halloween (sort of), my latest horror story, “Unblinking Eyes,” is online in the Nov. 1 issue of Theme of Absence, along with myauthor interview. It would be best if you didn’t read this story after midnight when you are alone in the house and the wind howls like a lost soul around the eaves and bony fingers of barren tree branches knock against windows and the creaking you hear in the basement and attic might be the house settling…or on the other hand…
Enjoy the story!
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
This is my list of classic and modern horror stories for Halloween to get you into the mood for the creepiest time of the year.
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. When I was a kid, I wished I had been born on Halloween and was a tiny bit jealous of my cousin, Linda, who actually was born on October 31.
I’m a traditionalist about the trappings of All Hallows Eve. No misunderstood vampires or witches with hearts of gold for me. Give me a rotting corpse, rats scurrying through subterranean tunnels, or a vampire planning to snack on a priest and his entire congregation, and I’m happy.
You’ll find all of these creatures of the night–the decaying corpse, the scurrying rats, and the midnight snacking vampire–in the stories on this list of classic and modern horror tales. I first posted it several years ago on a previous blog but have tweaked it over the years, adding some stories and links and making sure the links already in place still work.
One of the latest additions is my own story, “What’s Wrong with Being a Nurse?”. Since this list’s beginning, I have followed an unwritten rule against shameless self-promotion, but I finally broke down and included “Nurse” because of comments I’ve gotten from readers.
It is almost an impossible task to make a list of good horror stories because there are legions of them, and there are many authors who aren’t on this list and probably should be. But in the interests of keeping the list manageable, I will only note a few of my favorites–although if I continue tweaking it and posting it every Halloween season for the next 20 years, the list may grow to a ponderous size.
The stories are listed in approximately the order in which they were published, ranging from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in 1820 to “What’s Wrong with Being a Nurse?” in 2011. NOTE: I don’t receive any compensation when you click on a link (I do, however, receive a royalty if you buy The Moaning Rocks, which contains “What’s Wrong with Being a Nurse?” because it is my collection and is currently in print). The links merely suggest where you can find the story if you’re of a mind to.
This is a well-crafted story by one of the first masters of the American short story. With his richly-detailed descriptions of the settings, the people, and the food, Irving transports the reader into his tale of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman.
I first encountered this short gem in class when I was in elementary school. Poe, like Irving, also did much to develop the style of the American short story. He wrote many other stories that are worth a read, but “The Tell Tale Heart” is one of my favorites. Also check out “The Cask of Amontillado”, another tale which I encountered in elementary school.
This is my all-time favorite horror story, probably because it doesn’t show, but rather implies, and the implications are chilling. I also read this one (or my teacher read it to the class; I can’t remember which) when I was in elementary school. Teaching horror stories in elementary school seems to have been a trend when I was young.
I have never been a huge Lovecraft fan because, even though he wrote in the 1920s and 30s, his style was reminiscent of authors writing a century earlier. Also, he struggled with dialogue, so there isn’t much of it in his stories, which can slow the pace. That said, his imagination has generated many stories which have kept generations of readers awake at night. The inside of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s mind must have been a scary place indeed. “Pickman’s Model” has been dramatized on Cabinet of Curiosities, Guillermo del Toro’s eight-part Night Gallery-like anthology series that started streaming on Netflix on October 25, 2022. This series gives new meaning to the phrase “Netflix and chill.”
This is another one of my favorites. WhenJeff Mason and I edited our anthology of original horror stories, October Dreams: a Harvest of Horror, we wanted to publish a classic story, and we chose this one because it had been out of print for years. Now OD has been out of print for years (although you can still pick up used copies on Amazon and other used book outlets), but fortunately this story is online in its entirety. The Graveyard Rats has also been dramatized on Guillermo del Toro’s eight-part Night Gallery-like anthology series that started streaming on Netflix on October 25, 2022.
“Interim”, “The Lake”, “The Emissary” and others by Ray Bradbury
Interim was my first choice for our OD classic horror story. Originally published in Bradbury’s first collection, Dark Carnival, it had been out of print for years. But while we were preparing our anthology, it was reprinted in a collection of stories from Weird Tales magazine, so we went with our second choice, “The Graveyard Rats.” Also, “The Lake,” “The Emissary” and the other stories in Bradbury’s collection The October Country are eerie journeys into the unknown.
I saw the Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segment based on this story before I read the original. I highly recommend it, both the story and the Night Gallery adaptation.
Stephen King has filled several volumes with many excellent short stories. “Children of the Corn” is from his first collection, Night Shift. “Survivor Type”–about a man, stranded on a deserted island with no food, who eats himself–is from King’s collection, Skeleton Crew.
This gruesome little gem (only about 175 words), which had appeared in a magazine a short time before Jeff and I published it in October Dreams, can be read on the author’s blog.
Published for the first time in OD and out of print for years, the author has recently released this 12,000-word novelette in digital and paperback. Bob Rodden was strongly influenced by Stephen King and Ray Bradbury and those influences show in this story. “Sun Tea” is about a subtle invasion and is strong on ghastly horror with a few surprises.
I decided to include this story on this list because of the reactions it has gotten. It was my wife Cheryl’s favorite, and my niece Jennifer told me that it’s a “very disturbing story,” which is what I was going for–it is a horror story, after all. It is about a little girl who wants to be a human sacrifice. You can find it in my collection The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories.
Humorous Horror Stories for Halloween
It’s a very rare thing to find a humorous horror story, but there are a few around. Here are two of my favorites:
“A Case of the Stubborns”by Robert Bloch opens with the ominous line: “The morning after he died, Grandpa came downstairs to breakfast.” For the rest of the story, the grandson tries in various ways to convince Grandpa that he is, in fact, dead and should go upstairs and lie down like any self-respecting corpse. The thing that finally convinces the old gentleman is simple yet unique. Although this is a light-hearted story, the element of horror is not ignored as Grandpa decays throughout the narrative with certain body parts failing off of him at inconvenient times. Bloch was also the author of Psycho, which was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 film. This story is included in Bloch’s collection Such Stuff as Screams are Made Of .
“Aqua Sancta” by Edward Bryant is a short little gem about a priest and his congregation who have been imprisoned by a vampire for a midnight snack. The story ends with the priest’s unique solution to the problem. It can be found in 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories.
IMAGE: The Grim Reaper, by Joleene Naylor, cover from the first edition of my collection, The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories.
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
If you’re a fan of horror, I highly recommend the No Sleep Horror Podcast. Each episode is a collection of horror stories by various writers, dramatized by voice actors and complete with sound effects and mood-setting music. The episode I linked to is S12E12. The second story (beginning at about the 18:20 mark) was written by Sarah Rodden, daughter of Robert Rodden II, who I published in October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror 30 years ago.
This is Sarah’s first professional sale. It is called “Recalculating”, and after listening to this story you’ll never trust your GPS again.
Just a caution, though, these stories are not for children. So send the kiddies to bed, settle down with a glass of wine, and leave the lights on.
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
The band was Queen, and we struck paydirt. I’m not saying that this is proof positive that Queen embedded satanic phrases in their music, but some of the words sounded ominous to us.
