Ryan Whitley

I think that’s exactly the impression I’ve gotten!

Their eps are keeping me going through grad school at the moment (lol). Also a host recommended Robert Hugh Benson a few eps back and his work has been my obsession the last couple weeks. Really, really, consistently solid recs. Anyways, check 'em out! Enjoyment of Whiskey not required.

Nothing to do with nothing, but if you're into weird horror check out Whiskey and the Weird. Weird horror book club sorta thing, hosts are great, banter's great, they use the British Library Weird Horror books to structure their selections BUT many of the stories covered are public domain (so, free)

So glad you’re enjoying RH Benson!! Thanks for listening and for the shoutout.

Why don't we do a little Bar Talk for Episode 1 of the new season?

@thejessicaberg.bsky.social is reading the best book she's read in a long time (The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard) and washing it down with a Labatt's NA. Yum.

We’re baaaaaaaccckk!!!!

I wish some enterprising and visionary director would turn this into a feature film - it would almost certainly be successful. One of my favorite John Langan tales.

I think it has to do with the many layers of verisimilitude Langan works in to the stratified narrative, plus it’s (at least partly) religious horror, and that works well on me. I love the “found footage” aspects of the story, too.

This is my 2nd time reading this (the first was in Datlow’s BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR, VOL. 10) and it’s just as powerful. I read a lot of horror & like other avid readers of the genre am somewhat inured to its effects. This story scares me. It did the first time I read it and no less the second time.

“Lost in the Dark” by John Langan. Org. pub. HAUNTED NIGHTS, ed. Ellen Datlow, Lisa Morton, Blumhouse Books, 2017. Read in LOST IN THE DARK AND OTHER EXCURSIONS by John Langan, Word Horde, 2025.

I read this for the podcast (Whiskey and the Weird), so don’t want to say too much here, but what I will say is this story smacks of being written by a P.K.!

“The Face of the Monk” by Robert Hichens. Org. pub. BYE-WAYS, by Robert Hichens, 1897. Read in HOLY GHOSTS: CLASSIC TALES OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL UNCANNY, ed. Fiona Snailham, pub. British Library, 2023.

Naturally, he saves the day in grandiloquent style. Fun, but in the Scooby Doo sense, and not as entertaining as the more ghostly and ghastly tales.

The unique thing about it was that deGrandin was not engaged to solve the mystery, but stumbled upon it himself: a creepy dude keeping young girls in a coven-like atmosphere, trying to cheat them out of their inheritances and their lives.

I love the Jules deGrandin stories, faults and all. They almost never fail to bring a smile to my face, and I have fun every time I read one. That said, I enjoy the supernatural tales more and this one had a mundane solution.

“The Great God Pan” by Seabury Quinn. Org. pub. in Weird Tales, October 1926. Read in: THE HORROR ON THE LINKS: THE COMPLETE TALES OF JULES DEGRANDIN, Vol. 1, pub by Night Shade Press, 2017.

This was a good story, a bit creepy, a bit fun, & kind of a soft intro to Langan for new readers. It’s a cursed object story that places the reader in the captain’s chair - how you respond is up to you, but I came away from it feeling a bit guilty. I’ll read this collection in order, & I can’t wait!

The opening salvo in the newest John Langan collection is short, punchy, not as funny as Victor Lavalle let on and his great introduction, and written in a guilt-inducing second person. Langan is likely my favorite contemporary horror author, so a new collection is caused for rejoicing.

“Madame Painte: For Sale” by @johnlangan.bsky.social, org. pub. In BEHOLD! ODDITIES, CURIOSITIES, AND UNDEFINABLE WONDERS, ed. by Doug Murano, Crystal Lake Publishing, 2017. Read in: LOST IN THE DARK AND OTHER EXCURSIONS by John Langan, pub. @wordhorde.bsky.social, 2025.

I wish the ending was a bit more grim though. It was all rather too neatly tied up for my liking.

This one, though, is a banger of a story. A student at “Old College,” Oxford uses a mummy to commit foul deeds. Great academic atmosphere, charming banter, which is now sometimes unintentionally humorous, and lots of pipe smoking.

(though “Lost in a Pyramid” was published in 1869 by Louisa, May Alcott, & before that “The Mummy’s Soul” by an anonymous writer in 1862, & in 1868 “After Three Thousand Years” by Jane G. Austin) so whoever claimed that was likely ignorant, but perhaps just discounted stories authored by women.

Here’s one that’s been on my list for a while – argued by some as perhaps the first English language mummy story…

“Lot No. 249” by Arthur Conan Doyle. Org. pub. in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, September 1892. Read in: HAUNTINGS: TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL, ed. Henry Mazzeo, pub. Doubleday, 1968. Illus. Edward Gorey

“You are in a small pool of muddy grey light at the bottom of the stairs from the painting, and you think to yourself, either I am in the painting, or the painting has escaped its canvas and become part of the real world, or I have somehow been transported to the place the artist used as his model.”

Kiernan messes with the reader’s perception by shifting subtly between second and first person. There’s more not written in the story perhaps than there is written, but that chasm of imagination is fun to cross.

I’m reading this collection in order and this is my favorite story in it so far, but it’s early days yet. Cursed or dark art stories always capture my attention and this story throws in (obliquely) a curio shop to boot.

“Still[er] Life, From Hunger” by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Org. pub. In Sirenia Digest #173, June 2020. Read in: BRIGHT DEAD STAR, pub. Subterranean Press (@subpress.bsky.social) , 2025.

The color is a dreadful choice to begin with, but the way the character is painted as just as much of an addict as her heroin-using neighbor, “Number Twelve”, is so good. And then the ending - is she alive? Very few could make me care about a story about a dress, but here we are.

It’s full of the angst we all feel when we’ve ordered something we really want and then have to wait for. The agony of the delay in clicking the “purchase” button was very real and beautifully composed. But Awad infuses this normal story set-up with so much dread it’s delicious.