You won't be finding any urban elves or sparkly vampires in the pages of Things that go Bump. Nor will you find gratuitous sex and gore. The chills that we are offering are of the more fiendishly subtle kind. And even when our offerings are lacking in bare breasts and buckets of blood, the theater of the mind is amply capable in painting a canvas that more than compensates for this lack of simple titillation. And it is this vividly morbid canvas that is the backdrop used by Things that go Bump. Our first volume is a treasury of what awaits you in later releases. Here you will relive the oppressive rural horror of Edward Lucas White's “House of Nightmare”, the slowly building dread of William Hope Hodgson's maritime classic “The Voice in the Night”. We're even delivering a large dose of unexplainable cosmic horror in the proto-Lovecraftian “The Thing from Outside” by George Allan England. Robert E. Howard, the man who gave us Conan the Cimmerian and the puritan avenger Solomon Kane, supplies us with a tale of eldritch horror from beyond time in “The Black Stone”. And E. F. Benson, the master of the slow burn, will keep you awake with his “The Room in the Tower”, which is an extremely subtle horror story, that once read will make it impossible to stay in a guest room with out asking yourself “what horrid events might have taken place during previous occupancies?” I personally hope that David and I can live up to the collections put together by the great anthologists of the past such as August Derleth, Peter Haining, Lin Carter, Donald A. Wohlheim, Groff Conklin, Mary Danby, Kurt Singer, Roger Elwood, Vic Ghidalia, Leo Margulies, Sam Moskowitz, Christine Campbell Thomson, Hugh Lamb, and Herbert Van Thal. All of these wonderful assemblers of the weird have left some huge footprints that it will be extremely hard to fill. But I can assure that we are up to the challenge. These anthologists inspired the creation of Things that go Bump and it's to their collective memories that this anthology is dedicated. Through their combined efforts, many a great story teller has become a household name and many a wonderful tale has been rescued from oblivion. David and I hope that you enjoy these stories as much as we have. It is our hope that they'll make your sleep this evening just a wee bit more uneasy than it would have been if you hadn't had this treasury of classic weird in your hands. Enjoy! Douglas Draa
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