I have one called “Tales of Terror” (I think, I’m at work so I can’t check) that I won from a local newspaper for writing about a true creepy thing that happened to you. I was 17, and I thought I was hot stuff, winning that book.
I know that Hitch and Evan Hunter were great friends from the time Hunter did thw screenplay for The Birds. His dective story Sadie When She Died was originally a novella in a Hitchcock anthology. Hunter liked it so much he rewrote it into a book.
There was one creepy story about a message-board thread that died a couple years back only to be revived through unholy rites. When an unsuspecting board member begins reading the thread, he gets very confused and experiences deja vu.
I can’t remember how it ended, though.
I just browsed through my collection of Hitchcock books to see if this was in any of them. I didn’t find it, but I did find one called “Sorry Right Number.” It’s a very short story–barely over three pages–about a man who picks up his phone and overhears the neighbor who shares his party line plotting to murder his wife.
I remember this! I read one when I was 10 or 11 that had a short story in it about some miners during WWII discovering footprints in an unused section of cave. At first they think it is an amazing discovery of evidence of human life going back further than thought. Only it turns out it is footprints of some sub-terranian nasties that are so dense they move through rock the way humans move through water. And they kill some people. I found the story incredibly frightening.
Anyone know which of the collections that story was in?
I’m wanting to say it was in “Stories That Scared Even Me”.
That’s about all I can think of.
Best wishes,
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Sorry, Wrong Number was originally a radio play by Lucille Fletcher, turned into a movie in 1948 starring Barbara Stanwyck. It may well also have been published as a story in one of the Hitchcock volumes.
For a while, one of the cable channels was running some of his old shows a few years back. It was good to revisit the shows.
I used to have several of his collections, when I was a kid. My parents thought that reading horror was somewhat more suitable for a young girl than reading science fiction, though they really weren’t that thrilled with me reading horror, either.
My mother got me started on the Ellery Queen books because she liked the TV show and she figured I would understand the concept of suspense better and shut up so she could watch.
This lead me to digging through the library for the Hitchcock stuff. I can remember being sooo scared but wanting to read the next story. Mom often busted me for reading late at night.
Which just opened soooo many doors. Lovecraft among them. *That *stuff was really freaky.
I’m going to the lilbrary on Monday or Tuesday anyway to swap out some books. I guess I’ll look up some old Alfred Hitchcock collections and ask for them, if they’re still in the collection.
Oh, and I have a wonderful anthology of stories put out by Black Lizard which other Hitchcock fans might enjoy.
I don’t know what book it was in, but I remember that one as well, and I likewise was scared by it as a child. Was that the same book with story about the child werewolf, Kovaks-something?
I read a bunch of those compilations in my youth, borrowed from the local library. I too remember a “Deadliest Game” type story (maybe THE story), as well as Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter”. I’m pretty sure I read RL Stevenson’s “The Bottle Imp” in one of those as well.
On investigation, I believe it was in, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum”, as the story, “The Microscopic Giants”. Here’s a metal sign with the cover of the magazine it first appeared in - I think the cover illustration took some liberties with the story content.
On this page you can read the content list of “Monster Museum”, if you scroll down some, and it also has the werewolf story I liked, “The Young One.”
http://www.philsp.com/homeville/ISFAC/t170.htm
Awesome, thank you!
It was in “More Stories Not for the Nervious” AlfredsPlace.com is for sale | HugeDomains