Weird Murmur

Jon Padgett, "Organ Void" in The Secret of Ventriloquism  (Dunhams Manor Press: 2016). "Organ Void" brings together philosophical pessimism, gross body horror, Padgett's notion of borrowed realities, and a symbol that triggers gnosis reminiscent of Robert W. Chambers' Yellow Sign. Padgett’s story packs a heavy punch and is ripe for giving a reader’s subconscious free rein.   The story starts with Rose, driving her VW Bug on an interstate exit while listening to a recording of a self-help guru. She stops to help a presumably homeless person who is carrying a cardboard sign that reads " ORGAN  -VOID ." But the narrative facts are constantly shifting, and what is really going on is far from being that straightforward. Throughout, Rose's reality morphs seamlessly between her being a kind and compassionate commuter, to being a homeless person herself living under a freeway, to being a confused patient in a hospital treated by a Dr. Gord Onavi (an an...

  Robert W. Chambers, "The White Shadow" in The Mystery of Choice   (D. Appleton and Co., 1897). Read the story here on Gutenburg One way that Robert W. Chambers creates mystery is by offering alternate timelines or histories that may be real or merely the delusions of a narrator. These sometimes involve Carcosa, but not always. From “The Repairer of Reputations” to “In The Court of the Dragon” to “The Demoiselle d’Ys,” timeslips drive much of the weirdness in The King in Yellow . Arguably, even in “The Yellow Sign,” temporal anomalies are at work to explain the decomposed body of the church watchman discovered at the end of the story. “The White Shadow” from The Mystery of Choice is a wonderfully weird tale about the liminal space between childhood and adulthood, and between life and death. It is an “Incident at Owl Creek Bridge” kind of story that focuses on the “magic second” before death that expands for the protagonist into a year of experiences. Reading “The White ...

  Ambrose Bierce, "Haïta the Shepherd," in  Tales of Soldiers and Civilians  (E. L. G. Steele: 1891). Read the story here on Gutenburg In a previous murmur covering Ambrose Bierce’s short story “An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” I argued that Robert W. Chambers takes more from that story than just the name “Carcosa.” Likewise, it is often claimed that while Chambers takes the name “Hastur” from Bierce’s “Haïta the Shepherd,” the influence of that story on Chambers’ work ends there.  I think there is a much deeper connection, and I will argue that important themes in Bierce’s “Haïta the Shepherd” carry over to The King in Yellow .  Although a central theme in “Haïta the Shepherd” focuses on happiness being elusive and that the best way to attain happiness is by not purposely seeking it out, the story is also packed with other interesting themes relevant to certain readings of The King in Yellow . The first line of Bierce's parable like tale: “[i]n the heart of Haïta, t...

SEEING THINGS "I closed my eyes and saw the King in Yellow moving through the forest."                                                     -  from the diary of Dora Lange In fact, there is much to see in this second episode, and plenty of yellow references to keep your juices flowing. Aside from the imagery that we’ll come to below, we get our first direct references to Carcosa and the King in Yellow, most notable in the discovery of Dora Lange’s diary. In the glimpse of the diary shown on screen, we see that Dora has handwritten excerpts of Cassilda’s Song. Readers of Chambers will recognize the verse that opens the book The King in Yellow :                Along the shore the cloud waves break,                The twin suns sink behind the l...

  Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa," in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians  (E. L. G. Steele: 1891). Read the story here on Gutenburg There is a common view that when writing The King in Yellow , Robert W. Chambers simply borrowed a few names that he liked from Ambrose Bierce, and that is where the influence stops. For example, Chambers uses the names "Carcosa", "Hali," and "Hastur," all of which were first in the Bierce. The consensus is that the use of those names doesn't signal any deeper connection to Beirce's work. That view is worth reconsidering, particularly in light of the story "An Inhabitant of Carcosa." I hope that interpretations of The King in Yellow  benefit by recognizing a deeper connection and the influence that Bierce's work had on Chambers and the King in Yellow mythos.      I'll mention two general ways that these story connect. First, Chambers adopts some of Bierce's eerie visual descripti...

INTRODUCTION It has been several years for me since first watching season one of HBO’s True Detective , and it's time to revisit the series with an eye toward bringing out some of the themes and issues prevalent in much of the weird fiction considered here on Weird Murmur. I’ll take each of the episodes in turn, drawing out ties to the series’ inspirational roots found in Thomas Ligotti, Karl Edward Wagner, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert W. Chambers, and others. These murmurs will assume familiarity with the episode under discussion and so I won’t provide much in the way of summary. Diving right in, the name of the series, “ True Detective ,” sounds like a title fit for a newsstand pulp sitting alongside magazines like Amazing Stories, Dime Detective, Doc Savage , and Weird Tales . As it turns out, there was just such a true crime pulp using that title, and it had quite a long run. It will be interesting to see whether the story shares much in common with the style popular in the heyday ...

Meghan Arcuri, "Found and Lost" in  Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign , ed. James Chambers (Hippocampus Press: 2021).  My opening murmur is usually spoiler-free; however, this post reveals some details that particularly spoiler sensitive readers may wish to avoid. The King in Yellow stories that I enjoy the most are usually the ones that capture the mood and mystery of the original Robert W. Chambers—the stories that don't answer the questions. In that tradition, two of my favorites are Karl Edward Wagner's "River of Night's Dreaming" and Sarah Read's "The Inn of the Fates." Although certainly parts of Arcuri's short story retain the yellow-mystery and leave the reader with lots of questions, "Found and Lost" is, first and foremost, a cleverly creative story that gives us a peek into what Mr. Hawberk and Louis Castaigne, from "The Repairer of Reputations," are doing when they are off-page in the...

Sarah Read, "The Inn of the Fates" in Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign , ed. James Chambers (Hippocampus Press: 2021).  Sarah Read's story captures the imagination in a similar way that Robert W. Chambers'  The King in Yellow  does. In the same way that Chambers doesn't give us all the answers and leaves things mysterious, this one is weird in all the right places! It is a King in Yellow story in the tradition of Bierce, Chambers, and Wagner with no Lovecraftian detours—an absolute delight.    This one has a lot of "oh, that was cool" moments. Which one grabbed you?

Nicole Cushing, "The Suffering Clown" in  The Mirrors  (Cycatrix Press: 2015). Snuck into the anthology, this King in Yellow story is handled with precisely the right touch. Cushing has a way of distilling philosophical pessimism into something that delivers a gut-punch. It has clowns in tatters with cosmic connections; its got grime, hopelessness, and loss. Ultimately, we must sell out and reconcile ourselves to living in this sham of a world. Have a great weekend!