I feel that I’m cheating a little with this first review because I actually read the book some years ago and this is taken from my basic notes, but I will be reading from volume two onwards - now. This is a genuinely creepy Lovecraftian tale. One dark night a man runs from a gang of louts and takes refuge in an abandoned building. There he encounters obscenely hideous beings. THE MAN WHO HATED FLIES, by Charles J. Benfleet: A man asks his friend to prove to him the existence of reincarnation, with unexpected results. A very slight and comic story, but written in a style that's designed to entertain. 3/5 A U.S edition of the first Pan book was released by Gold Medal, an imprint of Fawcett Publications, and books 3, 4 and 5 were released by Berkley Medallion. While the first book was complete in its contents, the other three books gave only a small selection of their UK counterparts. There is no evidence to support PBoH #2 ever having a US release. I’ll mention ‘Jugged Hare’ (Joan Aitken), ‘The Mistake’ (Fielden Hughes), ‘The Lady Who Didn’t Waste Words’ (Hamilton Macallister) and ‘A Fragment of Fear’ (Chris Massie) as reasonable supporting horrors; but there are just too many stories here that I couldn’t connect with. As stated earlier, the hit rate on volume two is looking much better.

Young lad had secret solo river swim sessions. Woman bursts on to the riverbank during one such, pursued by a man. She falls in the river and is drowned. The man is later arrested for murder. Beautifully written. Raspberry Jam’ takes it’s time but builds tension brilliantly towards a horribly cruel ending. A fantastic short story. Fengriffen and Other Stories (1971) – Contains the novel Fengriffen and the stories "Among the Wolves" and "Strange Roots" THE BATS, by David Grant: A young boy breeds some unusual pets in the garden shed. There's a bleak, E.C. Comics-style atmosphere to this one, but Grant shies away from the expected grue. 3/5THE SPIDER, by Basil Copper: A man stays in a hotel infested with weird spiders. Absolutely terrifying if you're an arachnophobe, and short and atmospheric if you're not. 4/5 But the real flaw with this one is the gargantuan geographic coincidence which has to be swallowed, whereby two Englishmen who last met over a quarter of a century ago bump into one another, not only in foreign country, but in a sparsely populated region where they are probably the only living souls within a fifteen kilometer radius. I know I am being more than a touch pedantic here, but the biological details of the story did annoy me a bit. Spiders breathe atmospheric air of which there is none to found inside the human body, so that first one which crawled up inside the General would have drowned had it attempted to burrow into the membranes. Finally are the stories that really hit home: A. L. Barker’s SUBMERGED, a simple story about an idyllic recreation spot, chilled me to the bone through eloquent language and late-term horror. Oscar Cook, my favourite ‘grotesque’ author despite the sparsity of his surviving stories (only half a dozen or so remain), delivers HIS BEAUTIFUL HANDS, a loathsome and disgusting read which has a great sense of time and place attached to it. Pelican Cay and Other Disquieting Tales (2010) – Contains the stories "Pelican Cay", "Penny Wise," "Reflection," "Skulls," "The Cannibal Feast," "The War Is Over," "The Cave." (Note: The deluxe, signed edition additionally contains "Penny Wise" (variant draft) and "Twins" [a re-working of a chapter from "Skulls"].)

The Portobello Road’ is a fine ghost story of loss and regret and the British Empire. It feels long-winded but is always interesting. THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, by Ray Bradbury: A carnival worker decides to reinvent himself as a Tattooed Man, but the witch who carries out the work has some sinister ideas. Another highly evocative and lyrical story from Bradbury, who had a thing for 'dark carnivals'. 4/5 The Growth’ by Bruce Lowery. A mother and son are increasingly worried by the size of a growth on her body. Things don't improve as it soon begins to move. I enjoyed this. It builds nicely, and you wonder where it’s all heading. It’s also a moving tale, with her unable to accept what is happening, and desperately hoping for a successful operation Maurice-Yves Sandoz (1892-1958) was a Swiss horror writer who’s novel The Maze was the basis of a Hollywood movie of the same name from 1953. The series lasted from the late 50s to the 1980s, thirty years of dismemberments, vats of acid, shrunken heads, spiders in the bedroom, child vampires, mistaken revenge, eyeballs in the beef stew, homicidal ants, homicidal cats, homicidal babies, psychotic surgeons, straightforward sex-murders, not so straightforward sex-murders, florid torturers and uncannily accurate sculptures which turn out to be taxidermy - ha haaah.THE BENEFACTOR, by Walter Winward: An overweight man delights in his role as benefactor to young children. Some Satanic stuff here, but also undertones of paedophilia which made this one too repulsive for me. 1/5 This is an old-fashioned ghost story about a landlady who receives a visit from the husband she killed years before. Not a classic, but well told. I’d also give worthy mentions to ‘The Treat’ (M. S. Waddell), ‘The Sins Of The Fathers’ (Christianna Brand), ‘Message For Margie’ (Christine Campbell Thomson), ‘The Spider’ (Basil Copper), and ‘The Living Shadow’ (Rene Morris).