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William Hope Hodgson was born in Blackmore End, Essex in 1877. He ran away from boarding school at the age of thirteen to work at sea, eventually becoming a lieutenant in the merchant marine. He left that line of work because he had become unhappy with the lifestyle. He used his experiences at sea in a number of his short stories and novels, his best selling novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig (1907) in particular. From what I have read about the novel, it is a difficult read, but one filled with all sorts of bizarre monsters and oddities that only one with a marvelous imagination could come up with. While at sea, Hodgson undertook a rigorous workout regiment in order to protect himself from bullying by other sailors, as he was a rather short man. He was very successful at this, and after leaving sea life he opened his own exercise school, W.H. Hodgson’s School of Physical Culture. He even used his knowledge of how muscles work to handcuff famous escape artist Harry Houdini on stage in 1902. It took Houdini over two hours to escape the restraints, after which he accused Hodgson of intentionally hurting him and jamming the locks of the cuffs.

I've just posted a new Featured Movie.  This one is The House On Haunted Hill starring Vincent Price.  To browse the past featured movies click here.

Vintage Horror Radio's next show should be up over the next day or two! 

After writing my previous article about Joseph Payne Brennan, I decided to try and find some more of his work.  This proved to be more difficult than I expected.  I checked E-Bay and Amazon for used copies of his anthologies.  I bid on several different auctions of Nine Horrors And A Dream, but they were going for more than $20 a piece for a thin paperback book.  I settled for The Shapes Of Midnight (1980) for $15.  That anthology was also a thin paperback, but it was the cheapest collection of Brennan tales I could find.  The following is a little information about the 12 stories contained within.

I just realized how long it's been since our last episode of Vintage Horror Radio.  Too long!  Last week was pretty busy for me, so the show had to take a bit of a back seat.  But we're back on track this week, and there will be a new show up today or tomorrow featuring a story from Charles Dickens.

Next week I'll take care of a request from Zack for a radio version of Poe's The Telltale Heart.  I've seen a number of versions of this one, I'll try to pick the best!

Stay tuned... 

You can now see what the cover of the chap book that my short story, "The Collective of Blaque Reach" will look like if you follow the link below.  It looks very cool and fits my story well.  The cover art was created by Allen Koszowski, and it looks terrific.  It sounds like Bound For Evil and my story should be shipping by Tuesday.  I can't wait to check them both out. Working with Tom English of Dead Letter Press has been great.  You couldn't ask for a more nice, helpful editor.

http://departmentofdeadletters.blogspot.com/2008/02/bound-for-evil-arrives-monday-february.html

Edward Frederic Benson, the son the Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in 1867, in Wokingham, Berkshire. He attended Marlborough and King’s College, Cambridge. He spent three years studying archeology abroad in Greece and Egypt. He enjoyed immediate success with his first society novel, Dodo (1893) and ended up writing over a hundred published pieces in a wide range of fields. He is most well known for his comedies and society novels, but his interest in the paranormal allowed him to produce a number of supernatural works of fiction. His novel, Across the Stream (1919), anthologies Visible and Invisible (1923) and Spook Stories (1928) are evidence that he enjoyed the macabre. He sold several stories to Weird Tales Magazine, which I wrote an article about previously. He had a sister and two brothers (both of whom also produced their own writings). He was also the mayor of Rye in Sussex from 1934 to 1937. That town was the model for Tilling, the fictional town that many of his tales took place within. Benson died in 1940 of throat cancer.

NBC.com is making Night Gallery available on their website. Every Wednesday a new episode is going up, according to their site. Click here to go directly to the video player, this link will take you to the Night Gallery home page. It's good to see their not letting these old shows get dusty and forgotten. Of course if you have the Chiller channel they played the hell out of these awhile back.

Looks like they're doing the same thing with The Alfred Hitchcock Hour as well. Excellent!