I remember reading a story quite a while ago about a man (field scientist?) who goes to some island which is inhabited by giant snails. Giants man-eating snails. Which he soon falls victim to.
It was in a collection of stories (possibly aimed at young adults), and for some reason I think it might have been written by Hitchcock.
Does anyone have any idea what I’m talking about, or am I just doing crazy?
I read that story. Don’t remember the name of the story, or the author, but I can at least confirm that such a story exsists, and is not a figment of your imagination. I don’t think that Hitchcock wrote it, as that would be the sort of detail that would stick with me.
I wasn’t sure if it was BY Hitchcock, or in a book of stories which included one by him, or just one that used his name to try to sell their book. I just associated his name with it.
But, I just got an email from someone who informed me that it is called “The Quest for Blank Claveringi” by Patricia Highsmith. Whee! 
There were a few juvenile collections that had Hitchcock’s name on them that The Master actually had nothing to do with – he neither wrote nor edited. know. I read a few of them.
That said, I don’t know of any stories about giant snails. do know about two movies with giant snails, though. My favorite is The Monster That Challenged the World, a perennial favorite on WNEW’s “Creature Feature”. They must have owned a copy. A not-bad flick, except that it’s hard to make snails evil. (“It’s a giant snail! Walk for your lives!!”) My favorite scene is the one where the crotchety old dam-keeper yells at what he thinks are some damned kids playing at his dam, while a snail the size of a Volkswagen slowly sneaks up behind him and bites his head off.
Christ almighty … I’m laughing so hard I have tears in my eyes. Thanks for the laugh CalMeacham.
I’ve actually read the story mentioned in the OP. I’m glad that I, too, am not crazy.
AndYrAStar I know that I remember a story like that. I think I read it in a magazine though, not a book. And even after all this time the kid I was remembers that the final line was something about the sounds of the snail as it munched the flesh of the scientist.
Sounds like “The Quest for Blank Claveringi”, by Patricia Highsmith. I have it in the 1985 collection Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural. Originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1967 as “The Snails.”
I don’t remember the name of the story, but it’s in Hitchcock’s Witches’ Brew collection for young adults. I’ve been trying to get this off half.com, but they sent me another, different Hitchcock anthology of the same name.
IIRC the same book had “That Hell-Bound Train”, and a story about a guy who got shrunk to a tiny size and run over by a toy train.
-Ben
LOL! Yes! I totally remember those creature feature movies! The story, sadly, I do not remember. Sorry kiddo
YOU!!! Out of my thread!
I would just like to add that in the Star Trek animated series, the crew went to a planet inhabited by giant (but not killer) snails.
Mr. Spock found out during a mind meld that they thought he was handsome.:eek: