Brennan creates a malignant atmosphere with seeming ease in this marvelous piece of sinister witchery. The highly regarded "Canavan's Back Yard" follows, and this story of an accursed piece of real estate is perhaps the creepiest tale in the bunch. "On the Elevator" and "The Green Parrot" are up next both are tales of spirits coming back to either harass or perplex the living, and both are finely done. This short story leads to an appropriately grisly conclusion. This is an excellent ghostly tale I could easily picture it as an EC comic book! In "Death in Peru," we learn that the practice of voodoo is not confined to Africa and Haiti. In "The Calamander Chest," a man discovers that inexpensive furniture may indeed carry a higher price. Next up is a short piece on hypnotism gone awry, "Levitation" it leaves a vivid impression, despite its brevity. Wells' 1896 tale of submarine monsters invading the English coast, "The Sea Raiders" (and if you knew what high esteem I have for Wells, you would realize that this is high praise indeed!). This is one fun story, almost on a par with H.G. The book kicks off with a tremendous start with the longest tale, "Slime." In this story, a monstrous blob of submarine goop gets thrown onto land and starts doing what it does best: devouring things. The 10 stories in this collection run the gamut from the monstrous to the macabre, with many of them of the ghostly variety. This is an extremely enjoyable bunch of scary stories, and Brennan turns out to be an exceptionally readable author, writing in a clean and forthright style. It's been out of print for many years, and it took me a half dozen attempts at eBay auction before I could get my hands on a decently priced copy. Prospective readers of Brennan's collection should be advised that this is NOT an easy book to acquire. The book consists of short stories that, for the most part, first appeared in the classic pulp magazine "Weird Tales" in the early 1950s indeed, the book is dedicated to that great magazine, which ended its 31-year run in 1954.
"Nine Horrors and a Dream" is a collection of Joseph Payne Brennan's best horror tales, and was first published by Arkham House in 1958.
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