Tag Archives: horror

Dear Edgar 35 ~ The Oval Portrait

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Mark Hayes

On occasion, when you spend time in the company of dead authors, you come across an obscure little story that inspired something far more well known. Occasionally the original feels like it is a pastiche of the more famous work. … Continue reading →

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Still Researching Lovecraft

Posted on June 24, 2025 by Mark Hayes

I am still engaged in a project involving a book about the worlds of H.P. Lovecraft. I originally mentioned this just over a month ago, in a post called Researching Lovecraft… This as you may have guessed is a follow on from that post, as people liked it and because I failed my sanity rolls, so had to crack on with writing the book…. Continue reading →

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Researching Lovecraft

Posted on May 12, 2025 by Mark Hayes

So here me, back up to my neck with old tentacle hugger, getting annoyed at him. Just like old times… thus here are a few ‘notables’ which will probably find the cutting room floor in the end but have amused me for one reason or another in the meantime. Continue reading →

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Dear Edgar 28~ The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Mark Hayes

At some point in your life you will have learned of this story, you will most likely not recollect when and how you learn of it, but you know of the story. ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ is one of those stories that is part of the zeitgeist of humanity. It is a story so intrinsic to our collective culture, so ingrain within us, so referenced and repeated, that it exists beyond itself. Continue reading →

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Dear Edgar 27: The Man of the Crowd

Posted on March 31, 2025 by Mark Hayes

 It was well said of a certain German book that “er lasst sich nicht lesen” –it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their … Continue reading →

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Dear Edgar 16 ~ The Business Man

Posted on March 26, 2025 by Mark Hayes

At home, on the shelf above my desk, just to the left of the raven black quill and owl tormented ink stand, and in front of the leather bound scroll case of dubious origin, I have a porcelain phrenology skull, … Continue reading →

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Dear Edgar ~23 William Wilson

Posted on January 31, 2025 by Mark Hayes

“In me didst thou exist—and in my death, see … how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.” William Wilson is a tale with more than one interpretation, which possibly accounts for the remarkable number of adaptions of a story which is … Continue reading →

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Terrifying Joy from the Forests of Flanders

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Mark Hayes

Terrifying joys, and glimpses into Europe’s our collective cultural past. For while these are all Flemish tales, they are tales that are echoed throughout Europe. Which is only natural, as travels tell tales of their homelands and those tales get retold and made anew. A such this book is tales of the kind told around the camp fire, on the edge of the woods, with twilight all around. Told to frighten, and to warn. The woods are dark, the wise do not wander there.

But who wants to be wise… Continue reading →

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Dear Edgar #22 The Fall of the House of Usher

Posted on October 27, 2024 by Mark Hayes

The themes of three earlier stories in particular are each echoed in this story, those being Morella, Berenice and Ligeia. Which is not to say that Edgar was obsessed with putting female characters into soporific states that seem death like, decaying, and wasting away, but it is a theme that comes up time and time again in the early tales. What is odd is that these themes were so prevalent before the wasting disease that would take his wife from him not many years later was diagnosed. Equally the male characters in all these stories react to these tragedies with obsession and madness that echoes how the death of Victoria was to plunge him into a deep alcohol fuelled depression and began his own downward spiral to an early grave.

Occasionally life imitates art in dreadful ways. Continue reading →

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Dear Edgar #17 Ligeia

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Mark Hayes

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the … Continue reading →

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