Seize The Selected Stories Of Manly Wade Wellman, Vol. 3: Fearful Rock, And Other Precarious Locales Interpreted By Manly Wade Wellman Conveyed As Physical Book

volume of Wellman stories focuses mainly on novellalength tales, The first three are set during and after the American Civil War, with Sergeant Jaeger as a recurring character, The final four storiestwo novellas and a couple of shortsall feature Judge Pursuivant, and are set during the time period when they were writtenlate's and early's.
Between both sets is the odd story out, "For the Love of A Witch," set in colonial America, From John Pelan's End Notes, I gather that this is the first time this story has been reprinted, a real treat for Wellman fans.


The stories that linger with me the

most are probably "The Hairy Ones Shall Dance" and "The Black Drama.
" Both feature Judge Pursuivant, a character rather reminiscent of G, K. Chesterton. The latter imagines the reappearance of a lost manuscript, a play written by none other than Lord Byron, The former has at its heart what amounts to a locked room mystery: a seance is held in which all of the participants are handcuffed to chairs, but, when the lights come up, one is dead, seemingly killed by a wolflike creature.


Also worth noting is, "The Dreadful Rabbits," mainly as an example of Judge Pursuivant not always knowing the right thing to do in a supernatural situation This volume contains the complete "Sergeant Jaeger" and "Judge Pursuivant" stories, which Wellman mainly wrote for Weird Tales during the late 's.
They're all on the longer side, which is a nice change from the first two volumes, as it allows at least some character development to squeak through.
While he's still weak on developing female characters it was the times and it was the Pulps, both Judge Puirsivant and Sergeant Jaeger are both really great characters, and surprisingly enough, rarely serve as the protagonist in their own stories! Originally written over a span fromtofor various fantasy pulps mostly Weird Tales these stories are great short horror stories.
They range from the grim Fearful Rock to the almost silly The Dreadful Rabbits, which I almost cant resist referring to as The Rascally Rabbits.
Included in this volume are the stories of Judge Pursuivant, an investigator of folklore and occult matters, and the tales of Sergeant Jaeger, who brings both Christianity and folk magic to the Fearful Rock area, as well as a couple of unrelated stories.
A couple of these stories managed to raise a chill on my back and thats not an easy thing to do.
Im looking forward to reading other volumes of Wellmans work!
Placeholder review I don't own a copy of this, but I'm reading a number of stories contained in it from scans of their original magazine appearances, and I needed to put the review somewhere.


"The Hairy Ones Shall Dance" This novella originally serialized in three parts in Weird Tales magazine in thes introduces another of Wellman's "Occult Detective" characters, one Judge Hilary Pursuivant.
Yet, Pursuivant is not the main character, and only enters the narrative at about the halfway point he just happens to live nearby.
Instead an exstage magician/escape artist and rationalist teams up with a spiritualist/occultism expert and believer to investigate a woman purported to have great powers as a medium.
While in her isolated small town, during the middle of their seance in fact, a murder takes place and our stage magician is arrested, then has to flee a rather hasty lynch mob before stumbling across the previously mentioned Judge, who puts the details together and concludes that perhaps a werewolf is involved.
This story was a bit longer than I usually like, but I'll give it to Wellman for filling it with wellpaced incident the jail breakout/lynch mob scene is some good suspense writing, and brought to mind the "escaping the hotel" bit of Lovecraft's "Shadow Over Innsmouth" fromyears earlier and an interesting angle.
Essentially, this come from an interesting time when Spiritualism/Theosophy was still presenting itself as some kind of science as long as one was a little forgiving and dragged in a lot of psychological speculation and so, once again, we have a semirational approach to lycanthropy ectoplasmic projection, you see and, as usual for a werewolf story, it turns into a "whodunnit".
There are shout outs to sitelinkAlgernon Blackwood and surprisingly enough sitelinkP, G. Wodehouse as well, a nice little bit where our male and female leads start to wonder if maybe the coincidentally wellplaced Judge is himself the werewolf he sure does seem to know a lot about them! and allinall is a nice example of a pulpaction occult thriller.
I'd sure like to know what that very specific reference to Long Island, The Literary Digest andwas all about!

"Coven" A Civil War vet in Arkansas runs afoul of a satanic cult in this tale a fun, twofisted action romp of a novella with backwoods occultism and folklore, an actual demon and some last minute philosophizing about other dimensions.
Also features an appearance by Union Soldierturnedpreacher Sgt, Jaeger with his book of Pennsylvania Dutch PowWow magic, Again solid example of pulpera action/horror,

"Fearful Rock" Another Civil Warera novella with Sgt, Jaeger, this features a Union troop sent to engage with Quantrill's raiders, discovering an evil house and an innocent girl of the Mandifer family who has been sworn to betroth some evil thing.
But after the battle with the raiders, the war and time moves on, and finally Kane Lanark returns to the area in search of the daughter, Enid, who now seems again entrapped by the resurrected evil of her adopted father and brother.
This was pretty good, I generally wouldn't have enjoyed the length but its paced well enough and packed with enough events as to remain interesting.
Jaeger is a little more interesting here as well for example, he now has access to a magical tome by Albertus Magnus but is conflicted over its more satanic sections and charms.
There's unkillable zombie raiders, as well as a barely seen unspeakable evil sadly, defeated offscreen and daddy Persil and son Larue are memorable creations, threatening, evil and, in the finale, resurrected as skinless creatures just like Frank in HELLRAISER!.
I also liked the opening, where Jager reacts with revulsion to a satanic image found in a basement, and a guard is killed remotely by magic.
Good stuff. After the "cracking" short stories in the first amp second volumes, this volume, containing some of Wellman's longer works describing the evilfighting heroics of Sergeant Jagger and Judge Pursuivant were a bit let down.
Yes, the classic werewolf novella "And The Hairy Ones Shall Dance" is there, along with several topnotch works evoking memories of postCivil War American south, and other "precarious locales".
Nevertheless, perhaps I am biased towards shorter works, my span of attention getting shortened nowadays, and that's why I would like to drop a star in my review.
Howdy, Mr Rabbit!

Für seinen Schriftstellerkollegen H, P. Lovecraft war es klar: Gegen die dunklen, bösen Kräfte im Universum hat der Mensch keine Chance Wahnsinn ist im Kampf gegen diese Mächte noch die kleinste Folge.
Für Wellman sieht das anders aus, In seinen Geschichten ist das Böse auch stark, aber durch klar agierende, mutige Helden besiegbar, auf die der alte englische Spruch zutrifft: "Tenderhanded stroke a nettle, And it stings you, for your pains: Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it soft as silk remains.
"

Die titelgebende Geschichte "Fearful Rock" trägt wie alle Geschichten Wellmans stark regionale Züge, Hier finden wir uns in den Ozarks wieder, und ähnlich wie die Appalachen, in denen John the Balledeer unterwegs ist, bietet auch diese Gegend viele dunkle, böse Orte und noch bösere Menschen.
Der Teufelsanbeter Persil Mandifer will seine Tochter für seinen Herrn opfern der zufällig dazustolpernde Kavallerieoffizier und der bodenständige Sergeant Jaeger geraten in ein uraltes Netz aus düsteren Machenschaften.
In "Coven" kehrt Sergeant Jaeger nach dem Bürgerkrieg nach Fearful Rock zurück und muss feststellen, dass das Böse schwerer auszurotten ist als gedacht.
In "Toad's Foot" schließlich denkt sich der ExSergeant "Diese Stadt ist zu klein für uns beide, Hexe" er hat genug davon, dass sich seine Schäfchen ihr Seelenheil von einer seltsamen Frau verderben lassen.
Zum Glück hat er einige Hilfsmittelchen parat, mit denen er selbst den dunklen Mächten Angst einjagen kann, . .

"For the Love of a Witch" ist meines Erachtens die schwächste Geschichte des Bands, ohne rechten Zusammenhang zu den anderen.
Der Titel lässt schon ahnen, dass hier ein aufrechter Mensch in eine sozial schwierige Situation kommt, seinen Feind mehr zu mögen, als es seinen Nachbarn gut erscheint.


Eine Séance soll beweisen, dass es soetwas wie ektoplasmische Erscheinungen nicht gibt, Doch das Zusammentreffen eines Skeptikers und eines an das Übernatürliche glaubenden Professors in "The Hairy Ones Shall Dance" gerät aus den Fugen, als ein haariges Monster alle wissenschaftlichen Ansätze zunichte macht.
Der Richter Pursuivant hat eine Idee, was hier vorgeht, Der kauzige, mutige Richter Pursuivant ist auch tragende Person in der meiner Ansicht nach besten Geschichte des Bands, "Black Drama", in der ein neuentdecktes Stück Lord Byrons als Katalysator für eine unheilige Transformation dienen soll.
Die beiden Schlussgeschichten, "The Dreadful Rabbits" und "HalfHaunted" bestärken nochmal deutlichst die eingangs gestellte These, dass ein mutiger Mann selbst die grausigsten Ungeheuer besiegen kann.


Wellmans Prosa ist einfach, ruhig und unaufgeregt, selbst in dramatischsten Momenten dadurch wirkt das Unheimliche um so mehr, Gleichzeitig bringt er hin und wieder so wunderbare kleine Satzschätzchen wie diesen hervor: "For those she liked she did things to those she didn't like she did other things.
" "Toad's Foot", S

Nightshade Books belebt immer wieder die Werke von Autoren, die in die Vergessenheit abzudriften drohen, Hier tun sie das auf beeindruckende Weise Kunstledereinband mit Goldprägung, dickes Papier, angenehmes Schriftbild mit viel Weißraum, Ein besseres Lektorat hätte die hin und wieder auftretenden Typografiefehler gewiss ausgemerzt, Die Illustrationen können mich in keinster Form überzeugen und wirken fast amateurhaft und dadurch fehl am Platze in einem sonst so edel aufgemachten Werk.
Wozu das Vorwort dient, ist mir unklar selten habe ich ein so langweiliges Aufzählen von persönlichen Erlebnissen gesehen,

Diese Sammlung von Geschichten Wellmans macht mir klar, warum er eigentlich nur für seine "John the Balladeer"Geschichten gerühmt wird: an diese wunderbaren Kleinode reicht nichts in diesem Sammelband auch nur ansatzweise heran.
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