Graham Masterton - The Sphinx - Pinnacle - 1978 (flyleaf, illustration by Jose Reyes)

The Manitou by Graham Masterton

"For as long as there are dark nights and inexplicable fears, the Great Old One will always be there."

I really dug the procedural mechanics of the plotting, and the mix of Native American lore and body horror works wonders in creating an enjoyably horrifying piece of pulpy '70s horror. It reads like a low-budget horror film, putting us face-to-face with grotesque displays of body horror, sending us down endless rundown, poorly lit, hallways suspiciously devoid of people and sticking us in room after room that feel impossibly large, filled with dark corners and their monstrous mysteries.

It does suffer from some minor pacing/exposition issues late in the second act, and the final solution—while creatively appropriate—feels a bit too suddenly realized/unearned, but for the type of quick horror book this is, Masterton really delivers the graphic goods.

8/10

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

Listening to The House At Phantom Park by Graham Masterton. I thought I was crazy thinking I was being read to by Minthara, but it turns out I very much am. Turns out Emma Gregory does a lot of audiobooks

On the 2nd chapter and the author keeps talking about Lillian's figure (she's put on a few pounds, she wished she wore her Spanx, etc.).

Maybe if I focus on Emma Gregory's voice I won't get too irritated

I just read the book Walkers by Graham Masterton and it's a great horror story, plenty gorey and creative, but it has its flaws as far as ableism and bastardizing Celtic religion and such. But the most baffling thing said in the book (and I kinda doubt the author was serious about it and was just saying it to suit the plot, hopefully) was that murderers have a stronger bodily magnetic charge than other people. Like, what? Murderers are not a different species; they're human, anyone can be a murderer. The plot still would have worked without claiming such a thing lol

Why are cishet male writers so fetishistic about dead female bodies? They're all practically saying, 'I would SO have fucked her if she was still alive and didn't have eels nesting in the cavity where her stomach used to be. She still had a great rack and by the way, her pubes are blonde, because that's totally relevant to the fact that she was found dead on a beach being eaten by eels.'

And then there's this:

Ugh. I paid money for this book. Only £0.99, but still. Gross.

Question! Please don't look any of these folks up before replying - I'm trying to narrow down the authors on my horror reading list for the new year. I want to stick mostly with lesser-known authors. (The one exception I'll make is Peter Straub, as a tribute to his memory. But no Stephen King, Anne Rice, etc.)

So - if you have a moment, can you tell me which authors on this list you've heard of? (Not necessarily read, just seen or heard the name before.)

1. John Saul

2. John Ajvide Lindqvist

3. Kelly Link

4. Caitlín R. Kiernan

5. Ray Bradbury

6. Arthur Machen

7. Clive Barker

8. John Fowles

9. Ramsey Campbell

10. Graham Masterton

11. Scott Smith

12. Ottessa Moshfegh

13. Dan Simmons

14. Lauren Beukes

15. Koji Suzuki

16. Paul Tremblay

17. Grady Hendrix

18. Joe Hill

19. Max Brooks

20. Adam Nevill

In my mind, these are familiar names, but I need outside opinion! Any help is much appreciated. 😁

New in Horror: Oct 2022 Releases

It Rides a Pale Horse by Andy Marino

The Larkin siblings are known around the small town of Wofford Falls. Both are artists, but Peter Larkin, Lark to his friends, is the hometown hero. The one who went to the big city and got famous, then came back and settled down. He’s the kind of guy who becomes fast friends with almost anyone. His sister Betsy on the other hand is more… eccentric. She keeps to herself. When Lark goes to deliver one of his latest pieces to a fabulously rich buyer, it seems like a regular transaction. Even being met at the gate of the sprawling, secluded estate by an intimidating security guard seems normal. Until the guard plays him a live feed: Betsy being abducted in real time. Lark is informed that she’s safe for now, but her well‑being is entirely in his hands. He's given a book. Do what the book says, and Betsy will go free. It seems simple enough. But as Lark begins to read he realizes: the book might be demonic. Its writer may be unhinged. His sister's captors are almost certainly not what they seem. And his town and those within it are... changing. And the only way out is through.

The Hollow Kind by Andy Davidson

Nellie Gardner is looking for a way out of an abusive marriage when she learns that her long-lost grandfather, August Redfern, has willed her his turpentine estate. She throws everything she can think of in a bag and flees to Georgia with her eleven-year-old son, Max, in tow. It turns out that the estate is a decrepit farmhouse on a thousand acres of old pine forest, but Nellie is thrilled about the chance for a fresh start for her and Max, and a chance for the happy home she never had. So it takes her a while to notice the strange scratching in the walls, the faint whispering at night, how the forest is eerily quiet. But Max sees what his mother can't: They're no safer here than they had been in South Carolina. In fact, things might even be worse. There's something wrong with Redfern Hill. Something lurks beneath the soil, ancient and hungry, with the power to corrupt hearts and destroy souls. It is the true legacy of Redfern Hill: a kingdom of grief and death, to which Nellie's own blood has granted her the key.

The House at Phantom Park by Graham Masterton

n this abandoned hospital, pain lives on... and it wants revenge. St Philomena's military hospital has been abandoned for over three years. Now Lilian Chesterfield, who works for one of the most successful building companies in England, is in charge of developing it into a luxury housing complex. But as soon as she and her colleagues start work in the Jacobean-style mansion, their dream turns into a nightmare. They hear screaming from wards full of empty beds. They hear doors slamming and find cutlery scattered over the kitchen floor. Then they see faces peering at them from the mullioned windows. Lilian is pragmatic – she doesn't believe in the supernatural. But just when she's put her mind at rest by scouring the mansion from top to bottom and finding nothing, a former patient of St Philomena's arrives with a warning. The hospital is haunted. And it is haunted by something a thousand times more terrifying than ghosts...

Lute by Jennifer Marie Thorne

On the idyllic island of Lute, every seventh summer, seven people die. No more, no less.

Lute and its inhabitants are blessed, year after year, with good weather, good health, and good fortune. They live a happy, superior life, untouched by the war that rages all around them. So it’s only fair that every seven years, on the day of the tithe, the island’s gift is honored.

Nina Treadway is new to The Day. A Florida girl by birth, she became a Lady through her marriage to Lord Treadway, whose family has long protected the island. Nina’s heard about The Day, of course. Heard about the horrific tragedies, the lives lost, but she doesn’t believe in it. It's all superstitious nonsense. Stories told to keep newcomers at bay and youngsters in line.

Then The Day begins. And it's a day of nightmares, of grief, of reckoning. But it is also a day of community. Of survival and strength. Of love, at its most pure and untamed. When The Day ends, Nina―and Lute―will never be the same.

Every morning you wake up, and you climb out of bed, but you never know when life is going to punch you straight in the face.

Graham Masterton, Festival of Fear

𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐋𝐄: Answer These and Tag Nine Others

𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐆𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐘: @supraxstcllas 

𝐓𝐀𝐆𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐆: you! heyo! take this!!! :)

---

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆: Wasted - Sleeping Wolf

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆: Currently ... genuinely struggling to finish The Soul Stealer by Graham Masterton. I'v read his other books, including the weird... monster babies one🥴 it should've been a short read but boi, do i.. have regrets. some candidates i'm thinking of reading next are; The Fall by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan / Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo / Masters of Death by Olivie Blake / Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver ... considering the last one, since i'm just in the mood to read a normal book this year aaand get my feels punched🥴 but yeah i.. like books. whoops. 🤷‍♀️

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆: Ted Lasso (ty, bourbon, for the rec <3) , also Welcome to Wrexham ... i'm not even a soccer fan lmao. Next to that, I've just been rewatching HBK WWE matches <3 and scratching my nostalgia itch with old 90ies Spider-Man episodes on the rare occassion!!

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆: Nutella biscuits ... I ran out of them 😭

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐄: Parts of ATSV, bc, ofc 😂 but nah, hmm.. Snatch (2000), and also Elemental (2023) were my most recent movies!

The Manitou

Graham Masterton’s novel THE MANITOU was hardly great writing, but it had two things going for it: a grimy feel for its New York setting and an attempt to link its plot to Manhattan’s theft from Native peoples (so I guess you won’t find it any Florida public school libraries). Those are both missing from William Girdler’s 1978 film version (streaming on Shudder), which moves the action to San Francisco, where the action keeps stopping for picturesque views of the Golden Gate Bridge. The plot, in which a shaman’s spirit is reborn from a growth on Susan Strasberg’s neck, is defanged because the shaman is now from a tribe that had died out long before white settlers reached the area (so you could show the film in Florida public schools). As a result, he’s just “the other,” a hideous non-white played by little people Felix Silla and Joe Gieb, thereby rendering the film both racist and ableist. It’s clearly just an attempt to work a variation on THE EXORCIST (1973) with effects that can’t approach those of the earlier film. As a fake mentalist who used to date Strasberg, Tony Curtis tries to make the thing work. His early scenes in sessions with older women clients (first Jeanette Nolan and then Lurene Tuttle) have a nice comic rhythm. And even in his later years, he moves with an athlete’s grace. But he can’t conquer the film’s overall tackiness. By the time the shaman emerges from Strasberg’s neck and starts wreaking havoc on a hospital, it’s all just too silly. Curtis and Michael Ansara, as a shaman brought in to fight the evil spirit, have to act scared while wandering through sets that wouldn’t fly in an early video game. When naked Susan Strasberg rises from the seeming dead to join the fray as poorly matted fireballs and lightning bolts fly about, all you can do is laugh. The cast is filled with recognizable names, including Stella Stevens as a medium, Ann Sothern (still beautiful in her sixties and acting up a storm), in one scene as Strasberg’s rich aunt, Paul Mantee as a doctor and Burgess Meredith in a scene-stealing bit as an absent-minded anthropologist.

@allofmy-flaws tagged me to do this lil thing so here it is.

Fave color: that type of warm purple you get from making magenta darker, coffee stain brown, dark moss green... i could go on and on...

Currently reading: Begging to die by Masterton

Last song: Kill the sun by Motherfolk

Sweet/spicy/savory: Savory

Favorite alcoholic drink: anything with rum I think

Currently working on: showing up at work everyday and not showing the crazy so they don't fire me.

Traditional or modern: if we're talking about architecture i think traditional is just more cozy.

Fave writer: Graham Masterton probably

Fave dessert: um...

Fave rapper: Mingyu :)

Fave hockey/soccer/tennis player: i don't care about any of these tbh... here's one of my fave volleyball players tho: Klemen Čebulj <3

Color of my bedroom: the paint was called "green tea"

Fave politician: yeah no

Loyalty or lust: Loyalty

Pizza or pasta: Pasta

Vegan/veggie: i am vegetarian

Fave time period: second half of april me thinks

Love or hate: Love

Last series watched: I rewatched the Avatar again

Classical or rock: Rock

Fairy or dragon: Dragon

GOT or LOTR: LOTR

@babyboobean @trashlord-0070 @misfit-among-the-angels

If it's ok to ask what was the book title of the book you were talking about (ritualistic canabilisim in the French restaurant)

ritual by graham masterton!! lots of trigger warnings obviously, including gore but i believe also gruesome sex scenes (im not sure bc i barely started ritual but it seems to be a reoccurring theme in masterton's books so better safe than sorry)