Frightful fiction by masters from Lovecraft to Stoker to Crowley to Poe. Packed with stories selected and introduced by one of todays leading esoteric scholars, this book will do more than make your toes curl and your skin crawl. These tales reveal hidden truths and forbidden pursuits, and divulge the secrets of magical initiation. Covering topics from rituals to hauntings to the Devil himself, this one-of-a-kind volume includes selections from: Aleister Crowley * Ambrose Bierce * Arthur Machen *Edgar Allan Poe * Robert W. Chambers * Ralph Adams Cram * H.P. Lovecraft * Dion Fortune * Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton *Bram Stoker As Lon Milo DuQuette writes in his introduction, horror takes its time. It creeps in, seeps in, and lingers. These stories will stay with you, biting at your heels from the shadows. Don't say we didn't warn you… Lon Milo DuQuette is a best-selling author who lectures worldwide on such topics as magick, tarot, and the Western mystery traditions. He is currently the US Deputy Grand Master of Ordo Templi Orientis and is on the faculty of the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, and the Maybe Logic Academy. His books include The Magick of Aleister Crowley, Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot, and The Tarot Architect . Visit him at londuquette.com . The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult Hidden Magic, Occult Truths, and the Stories that Started it all ... By Lon Milo DuQuette Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC Copyright © 2014 Weiser Books All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-57863-572-6 Contents Horror Takes Its Time, an Introduction by Lon Milo DuQuette, 1. The House and the Brain by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, 2. Casting the Runes by Montague Rhodes James, 3. Luella Miller by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, 4. An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce, 5. No. 252 Rue M. le Prince by Ralph Adams Cram, 6. The Testament of Magdalen Blair by Aleister Crowley, 7. The Messenger by Robert W. Chambers, 8. The Ring of Thoth by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 9. A Dream of Red Hands by Bram Stoker, 10. Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe, 11. At the Home of Poe by Frank Belknap Long, Jr., 12. The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft, 13. Dickon the Devil by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, 14. The White People by Arthur Machen, 15. The Sea Lure by Dion Fortune, CHAPTER 1 THE HOUSE AND THE BRAIN by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) was an English author of poetry, plays, and novels. He served under Queen Victoria as Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1858-1859. Ironically, he is probably most famous for having penned the words, "It was a dark and stormy night," which have become in the rarefied school of mystery writers a cliché example of a mediocre and unimaginative way to begin a novel. Lord Lytton, however, was anything but mediocre and unimaginative. Among his many works of fiction were The Coming Race, which brought to the birth of the genre of science fiction literature A Strange Story, and Zanoni, whose spooky plots revealed his serious interest in (and mastery of) the occult. His story "The Haunters and the Haunted, or, The House and the Brain" was immensely popular in 1859, but was largely forgotten until the 1920 s when H.P. Lovecraft made mention of it. The Haunted and the Haunters, Or, the House and the Brain A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me one day, as if between jest and earnest—"Fancy! since we last met, I have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London." "Really haunted?—and by what?—ghosts?" "Well, I can't answer these questions—all I know is this—six weeks ago I and my wife were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quiet street, we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill, 'Apartments Furnished.' The situation suited us: we entered the house—liked the rooms—engaged them by the week—and left them the third day. No power on earth could have reconciled my wife to stay longer, and I don't wonder at it." "What did you see?" "Excuse me—I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitious dreamer—nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on my affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife—silly woman though she be—and allowed, after the third night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning, I summoned the woman who kept the house and attended on us, and told her that the rooms did not quite suit us, and we would not stay out our week. She said, dr