Weird Murmur

  For the month of December I am reading a ghost story everyday as a kind of Ghost Story Advent Challenge. I’ll post about the stories that I read at the end of each week. I’m discovery some wonderfully weird tales. Day 7: " The Lost Ghost" (1903 ) by Mary E. Wilkins “. . . it don’t do anybody in this world any good to see things that haven’t any business to be seen in it.” Sitting with their sewing and crochet, the two women of the framing story are wonderful characters. The ghost in this story likes to pull the cat’s tail, which the cat clearly does not like. Otherwise, it is a sweet and most helpful little ghost. The ghost is an eerie one, and its back-story is chilling. This is a sad ghost story, though with lots of charm and a happy ending. Themes: Ghost Can’t Find Their Way, Ghost-Child, Tragic Death.       Day 8:  “Drive" (2024) by Brian Evenson As an unwilling would-be ritual sacrifice, you must be careful when attempting your escape. Killing y...

  For the month of December I am reading a ghost story everyday as a kind of Ghost Story Advent Challenge. I’ll post about the stories that I read at the end of each week. I’m discovery some wonderfully weird tales.   Day 1: “Bad Company” (1955) by Walter de la Mare If you thought soul-saving, death-bed confessionals were cutting it close, boy oh boy, get a load of this ghost. I guess dying and all gives you… perspective. If it is true that you should never go to bed angry, I suppose it is even more important not to die angry. Themes: Regret, Unfinished Business, Needing Help of Living.   Day 2: “The Red Room” (1896) by H. G. Wells Ahh, to be eight-and-twenty years again! At that age, even I might have stayed the night in the haunted room of Lorraine Castle. Lots of shadows, lots of blown-out candles, and weird creepy old people in this one. Wells’ description of the three elderly castle custodians and the meeting they have with the young, fearless man at the...

  Charlotte Tierney, "A Woman's Place Is in the Haunted Home" in  The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Vol. 1 , ed. Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications: 2025). Ghost stories are often stories about underlying anxiety, but Charlotte Tierney’s “A Woman’s Place Is in the Haunted Home” gives vision to devastating threads of anxiety in a most revealing way. The constant worry that something terrible is about to happen and the never-ending rumination, planning, and strategizing to avoid catastrophe is given form in the ghost itself: the ghost as the manifestation of that dreaded consequence. We hold tight to our worries because they seem to have served us so well in the past, after all, they represent strategies for avoiding bad outcomes; we keep them close. This experience becomes an overwhelming burden that is not only exhausting but isolating. Only the anxious can feel the weight of their own dread, while to other people, those worries are nothing, and they can nudge them ...

  Sebastian Gray, "Lustre" in Cosmic Horror Monthly, Issue #64, October 2025. Just outside of Hell stands the city of Lustre—a city where a strange kind of consumerism of hedonism and soul-trade thrives. Ligotti’s pessimism meets Ballingrud’s hellscapes in this wonderfully weird short story by Sebastian Gray. The limping, bleeding, injured demons make an offer, but you are literally damned if you do, damned if you don’t. There is no escape; there is no way to make the hurt stop.

Oscar Wilde, "The Sphinx Without a Secret" (1887) Read the story free on Gutenberg Sometimes, fans of weird fiction fall into the trap of thinking that for a given work, there is some secret to uncover—an interpretation of the story that will unlock its meaning. This scientific-like model treats fiction as something where textual evidence is used to uncover the answer to its interpretation. But that approach comes under fire in Wilde’s work. “My dear Gerald . . . women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.” Good speculative fiction gives form to the unanswerable, and the wonder comes from the questions raised. The best ghost stories don’t have ghosts, the most interesting Sphinx has no secrets. “The Sphinx Without a Secret” is a story without a mystery; there is nothing to figure out. “’I wonder?’” he said at last.” And that, my friend, is the key to unlocking the interpretation of this story.

  Hiron Ennes, The Works of Vermin  (Tor Publishing Group: 2025). Ennes creates wonderfully weird worlds, always described at just the right level of detail. They know what to explain in depth and what to leave for the reader to fill in. The Works of Vermin is a story of a world, its people, and its vermin shaped by art, war, and decadence. Set in a weird Gormenghast-like city of impossible architecture, built on and within a tree over a poisonous river, it is a novel about revolution, remaking the self, and constructing reality. Saturated with heavy ideas dripping like ecdytoxin from teratopods,  this novel respects the intelligence of the reader and leaves space for reflection. Reminiscent of China Miéville’s  The Last Days of New Paris , art itself takes on physical powers of destruction and construction. The city’s opera, statuary, and embroidery not only record history but they make historical facts true.   Open alchemical street warfare between pest ext...

  Robert W. Chambers, "The White Shadow" in The Mystery of Choice   (D. Appleton and Co., 1897). Read the story here on Gutenburg One way that Robert W. Chambers creates mystery is by offering alternate timelines or histories that may be real or merely the delusions of a narrator. These sometimes involve Carcosa, but not always. From “The Repairer of Reputations” to “In The Court of the Dragon” to “The Demoiselle d’Ys,” timeslips drive much of the weirdness in The King in Yellow . Arguably, even in “The Yellow Sign,” temporal anomalies are at work to explain the decomposed body of the church watchman discovered at the end of the story. “The White Shadow” from The Mystery of Choice is a wonderfully weird tale about the liminal space between childhood and adulthood, and between life and death. It is an “Incident at Owl Creek Bridge” kind of story that focuses on the “magic second” before death that expands for the protagonist into a year of experiences. Reading “The White ...

  Nathan Ballingrud,  Cathedral of the Drowned  (Tor Publishing Group: 2025). You might not expect poignant sub-text and strong theme from a novella that includes a washed-up mad scientist, gangsters in the spider silk trade, a giant centipede, and Catholic missions that involve launching cathedrals into space. But Ballingrud delivers on all of this in his pulpy and intelligent sequel to Crypt of the Moon Spider .   Not only do we learn more about the moon spider silk introduced in Crypt , but this is a story about people struggling with their identity when they recognize that the different sides of their personalities and psychologies stand in deep tension with one another. The novella manages to breathe fresh life into the old sci-fi fixture of a collective mind by taking it on in the context of individuals trying to integrate their own fragmented personalities into a cohesive whole. Enjoyable on so many levels!

    Brian Evenson, "It Does Not Do What You Think It Does" in  Good Night, Sleep Tight  (Coffee House Press: 2024).   We have largely shed the Cartesian myth that our own motivations and psychological drives are transparent to our minds. Contrary to the myth, we don’t have indubitable access to our inner mental states, and we often behave in ways that we don’t understand or frequently misunderstand. We think we have one set of reasons for doing something, but it turns out, there are causes and hidden psychological drives that better explain our behavior. Therapy often reveals surprising motivations behind our actions–you don’t do what you think you do! Brian Evenson’s “It Does Not Do What You Think It Does” focuses attention on this phenomenon. What is the “it” in the title that we misunderstand? Tellingly, the man in Evenson’s story hears the answer repeated to himself over and over before interpreting the rest of the phrase; he hears: “YOU.” It is we who do no...

Arthur Machen, "The Happy Children" in The Masterpiece Library of Short Stories , ed. J. A. Hammerton (Educational Book Co: 1920). Read for free here Through its tone and use of description, this story delivers a unique kind of weird creepiness. In addition, the central horror is simultaneously terrifying and non-threatening—a great example of how the very existence of something can horrify even when the thing itself is recognized as something that means no harm. It is worth noting the inspiration that Lovecraft took from this story. Not to diminish Lovecraft, but, in some ways, “The Happy Children” does Lovecraft better than Lovecraft before Lovecraft ever did it!   The description of the old town and the procession to the abbey on the hill is certainly reminiscent of Lovecraft’s “The Festival.” Machen’s story also features impossible geometries folded into architecture and even a gambrel roof makes an appearance!