“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” Alone by Night (Michael & Don Congdon, ed.) Ballantine, NYC, 1962.
“Dress of White Silk,” Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1951.
“Blood Son” (as “ ‘Drink My Red Blood . . .’ “), Imagination, April 1951.
“Through Channels,” Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1951.
“Witch War,” Startling Stories, July 1951.
“Mad House,” Fantastic, January/February 1953.
“Disappearing Act,” Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 1953.
“Legion of Plotters,” Detective Story Magazine, July 1953.
“Long Distance Call” (as “Sorry, Right Number”), Beyond Fantasy Fiction, November 1953.
“Slaughter House,” Weird Tales, July 1953.
“Wet Straw,” Weird Tales, January 1953.
“Dance of the Dead,” Star Science Fiction Stories #3, (Frederik Pohl, ed.) Ballantine, NYC, 1954.
“The Children of Noah,” Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1957.
“The Holiday Man,” Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1957.
“Old Haunts,” Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1957.
“The Distributor,” Playboy, March 1958.
“Crickets,” Shock, May 1960.
“First Anniversary,” Playboy, July 1960.
“The Likeness of Julie” (under the pseudonym Logan Swanson), Alone by Night (Michael & Don Congdon, ed.) Ballantine, NYC, 1962.
“Prey,” Playboy, April 1969.

Dress Of White Silk by Richard Matheson

Grandma locked me in my room and wont let me out. Because its happened she says. I guess I was bad.
This is my favourite Richard Matheson story. It is told from the point of view of a six year old locked up by her Grandma because she has been “bad.” Over the course of the story we find out exactly how bad she has been…

I wasnt never bad with it. I put it back neat like it was never touched. Granma never knew. I laughed that she never knew before. But she knows now I did it I guess. And shell punish me. What did it hurt her? Wasnt it my mommas dress?

Well, not exactly. That is we know by the end of the story something pretty terrible has happened to the narrator’s best friend, Mary-Jane, but we aren’t sure precisely what. More importantly, we are not quite sure who is to blame. Is it a ghost story? A vampire story? Is it, in fact, a naturalistic account of a girl who idolises her dead mother and pretends she is somehow still under her influence when she turns violent against her friend? (It’s perfectly possible to read this story as having no supernatural element at all – the grandma’s cries of god help us its happened its happened simply meaning the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree…) Is it a witch story? A child demonic possession story?

Blood Son is also a good one. About a young child hyperfocused on the one thing children shouldn’t play with. Death. And Vampires. And Bats. They should have him tested for Autism.

He never spoke a word until he was five. Then, one night coming up to supper, he sat down at the table and said “Death.”

Through channels is a murder investigation interview of one of the eye-witnesses or suspects (too early to tell). The person talking has been deeply shocked and you can tell based on their speech patterns they have witnessed something deeply disturbing. The TV was playing static and one word. FEED. Which then changes to something chilling.

Yeah, yeah. Them letters. Them big crooked letters. They was up there. On the set. I seen them. And . . . and . . . One of the E’s. It kinda . . . faded. It went away. And . . . and . . .

Witch War is a lovely story as well. Seven gestures, seven postures, seven laughters ringing thin beneath thunder. Teeth showing in girl giggles. Hands tireless, painting pictures in the air. In stark contrast with seven (repeated ad nauseam) girls, signifying purity and innocence, stay their deeds. Monsters.

I loved Mad House too. Beautifully written, the story of a writer’s creative block, bad enough that he turns to blame whoever was there for him. His wife, and then his house. Do the houses take on the personality of their owners much like dogs do?

The woman appears, alarm etching transient scars on her forehead. Her husband is beyond himself. Her husband is shooting poison through his arteries. Her husband is releasing another cloud of animal temper. It is mist that clings. It hangs over the furniture, drips from the walls.
It is alive.
So through the days and nights. His anger falling like frenzied axe blows in his house, on everything he owns. Sprays of teeth-grinding hysteria clouding his windows and falling to his floors. Oceans of wild, uncontrolled hate flooding through every room of his house; filling each iota of space with a shifting, throbbing life.

In his attempt to center himself, he looses his job, his wife, and he’s pretty sure the house is out to get him, to get rid of him like a cancerous tumour.

I’m not bad. But every time I speak I build higher the walls of hatred and bitterness around me until I cannot escape from them.
With words I have knit my shroud and will bury myself therein.

Disappearing act was also amazing. A journal found inside a coffee shop tells the fantastic fiction of a daily life gone mad yet again. The owner of the notebook can see how gradually people he knows and has talked to have been erased out of existence. Any attempt to find them or a trace of them, leads nowhere. When his wife also disappears he fears he might be next so he decides to write his story. I’m thinking now.. maybe I liked this story as it’s also a story about death. Eventually we all die and if there’s no-one to remember us, were we really there? Any shape of a written record will remain and will attest to a person’s existence.

But I have to put it down. I’ve been writing too long. There’s no peace unless I put things on paper. I have to get them out and simplify my mind. But it’s so hard to make things simple and so easy to make them complicated.

Legion of plotters is a story of how the Chinese Drop was an effective torture method. By providing a constant but small nuisance, even the most patient of souls can go mad. Mr. Jasper is plagued by other people’s minor annoyances. Screaming babies, coughing bus mates, inconsiderate co-workers.

With every taxing customer, a gushing host of brilliantly nasty remarks would rise up in Mr. Jasper’s mind, each one surpassing the one before. His mind would positively ache to set them free, to let them pour like torrents of acid across his tongue and, burning hot, spout directly into the women’s faces.

Life was full of irritations.

People just have to learn how to deal with it. A psychological irritant or setback, if of sufficient intensity and duration, often causes mental health problems requiring professional help. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/magical-enlightenment/202110/how-cope-lifes-daily-irritations

Slaughter House is aptly named for a haunting story involving two brothers who move to a new property. One of them becomes more and more reclusive and the other one similarly suspicious. As dissent grows, the brother who still has a calm head on his shoulder, enters his brother’s room and notes (my favourite passage): The room was a stygian cave.

stygian • \STIJ-ee-un\ • adjective, often capitalized. 1 : of or relating to the river Styx 2 : extremely dark, gloomy, or forbidding.

The likeness of Julie contains some pretty wild depictions of a toxic obsession which leads to rape and fighting in the woods. Don’t read this if you’re squeamish. Good part: the victim is not who you think it is.

It would destroy him if he saw her any more. Already, his brain felt like rotting sponge, so bloated with corruption that the pressure of his skull caused endless overflow into his thoughts. Trying to sleep, he thought, instead, about the bruises on her lovely body, the ragged scratches, and the bite marks. He heard her screaming in his mind.
He would not see her any more.

“Prey,” in which a terrified woman is stalked by a malevolent Tiki doll, as chillingly captured in yet another legendary TV moment;

There are a lot of psychological and paranoia stories in this collection, and they are some of Matheson’s best, though back to back like this, it can feel a little bit overwhelming in how similar they are to each other. But, each taken individually, this is an excellent collection of stories.