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Study 056 - The Creeper in Darkness (Patreon)

Published:
2023-08-31 12:08:01
Imported:
2026-06
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We're investigating The Creeper in Darkness by Frank Belknap Long!

GET THE NEW ALBUM FROM PITCH BLACK MANOR: SCREAM TEAM!

Special thanks to reader Erik Peabody of Viking Guitar Productions. You can hear Erik tear into a FULL READING of T.E.D. Klein's amazing story The Events at Poroth Farm on the Horror Hill podcast! Listen on YouTube here!

Next up, a month of science fiction starting with A Walk in the Dark by Arthur C. Clarke. We'll see you in the future!

Comments

Aaron La Vene

“Now I’ve got syphilis” has to be Chad’s best one liner to date. It really is a new podcast. Out with the Dean and in with the Dale

Joe Beck

This kind of story really highlights the sexual hangups of the Puritans, what with the little guy penetrating the hero's flesh and promising to satisfy his every evil wish. Add to it the competing desires: to hide his shameful attribute, or to reveal it to the world's horror? Maybe Long - no shame! - was working out a couple of things himself.

Ethan Cordray

As you two were discussing your horror of IV needles, and worrying that a listener might be out there undergoing a procedure right then -- I was listening in a plasma donation clinic, with a needle in my arm drawing my blood out. It's all right though, I just had to try not to laugh too hard!

Ethan Cordray

"I shall live henceforth among people - talk with them, laugh with them, work with them. Yes, people are better than antiques - people are best!" I'm sure that nurse was thinking, "Yes, Dale, you definitely are ready to be around normal people. You are sounding very normal right now."

Boss Coffee

Periwigs, snuff boxes… and tall beavers!

KateSherrod

New PBM! On pay day and just in time for Band Camp Friday! What remarkable planning!

PD Rothenberger

My impulsive, and errant, thought was initally: 'I would totally shove an old person aside if it meant that I would be first in line to get at the new Pitch Black Manor album' when it then occured to me - I now am an old person. Oh well, happy birthday to all those who also turned 50 this year (or whatever age, I'm not here to exclude) and that I can wait to check out 'Scream Team!' when it drops!...

Carver

Great episode! Folks like Frank Belknap Long really kept the "weird" in weird fiction, banging out page after page of pulpy, "first thought best thought" craziness (I imagine him also chain smoking for some reason). For fans of physical media, there are 2 very affordable volumes of his short stories under "The Golden Age of Weird Fiction" banner that also feature killer Cthuhlu/zombie cover art. A lot of his old pulp novels are also very cheap online and are totally cool on the bookshelf. Like his 1967 novel Journey Into Darkness- $4 online- a group of hippie artists go to a psychic's beach house and... there's a space bat on the cover and it's awesome.

KateSherrod

Brown Jenkin is the Lovecraft creation that has always scared me the most, out of his oeuvre. Now I'm just imagining, what if Brown Jenkin, but literally under your skin EWWWWWWWW. Thanks, Frank. I certainly don't remember you only as a member of the circle NOW.

Christine M

This story was kind of crappy (in an entertaining way), but it reminded me of a much more harrowing story called "The Demon Bench End," from the book Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror. Oddly enough, the book is aimed at ages 8-12, but it pulls no punches, and this particular story is incredibly dark and effective!

Matthew Alderman

Familiar: All I can think of is someone shouting “GUILLERMO!”

Victor Badger

It was so great to hear you both having so much fun with this story. I feel like it's been a minute since you covered something this silly. The bat man story, maybe? Your joy gave me joy.

Robby H.

I love you guys, but Shotguns vs. Cthulhu is $80 on Amazon and that is a touch too expensive for me right now

Gunnar Samuelson

Chris’s voice for the familiar makes me think of The Monarch from Venture Bros

Steve

Syphilis? How do you rate it? Is it your favourite venereal disease?

Steve

Shotguns vs Cthulhu! I have a story in their too, my brush with Chris and Chad.

Steve

I'm glad his flesh congealed, because as a liquid, it wasn't really doing the business.

Steve

I'm imagining the homunculus, while posing, is singing "I'm too Sexy".

Richard Horsman

Not a great story, but I do love the tossed off energy of it. If you guys every return to the Doctor Satan stories there’s one that really embodies this ethos. I forget which one it is, but it reads like Paul Ernst was dictating it to the printer.

It's a Ghost.

Favorite quote: "Dale Eliot was in all respects the exact opposite of a normal person." Also, at the first mention of "witch house," I felt a little tingle.

Jim Cannon

Equal parts creepy and silly. That's a difficult line to straddle.

Drix

Alright, I'll be the one to say it. Why is this story called "The Creeper In Darkness"? There's not a lot of darkness, and a distinct lack of creepin. Maybe Long wanted to call it "The Familiar" and realized Sheridan Le Fanu already had him beat with his own weird shrunken magic guy story. Foiled again. Anyways, Yes, DALE

Mark Brett

"People are better than antiques" is the life-lesson I didn't know I needed.

Viking Guitar

Evil villains with normal names is one of my favorite things. As great as "Dale" is, my go-to example is the vampire Jerry Dandridge from Fright Night. His familiar calling out, "Hey, Jer!" is so surreal and hilarious.

Eduardo Garcia

Am I the only one dissapointed that Chad didn't present the demon's legal defense without the southern accent?

Matthew Heimbecker

I really love when the two of you have completely different experiences of a story and it all comes out in the podcast.

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

I remember hearing about the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest and other celebrations of bad writing. What I remember most was a writer of spy fiction who ended many a story with a character or fact never introduced before. In more than one story this involved, if I remember correctly, invisible helicopters. If any of these stories could be located, I think you gents would be just the ones to cover.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

Salem is super weird, you guys. I lived there in the Aughts in a weird neighborhood that was right on the edge of the burn line in 1914, so on one block there were fancy sea captains' houses inhabited by the same families for centuries, hastily built normal-people houses in another direction, and tourists in cloaks all around. At the time we had to drive somewhere to get groceries, but RPG supplements and statues of Isis were available in walking distance from 6AM. And to add to the strangeness was my very part-time job at the local Athenaeum, where I could encounter people who dressed and talked like Thurston Howell. Great place to have a Mage LARP, though.

Eric S. Vallone, M.D.

Three comments. First, everyone raise your hands if this familiar made you think of "Puddock," the familiar from the Chaosium Call of Cthulhu adventure, "The Secret of Castronegro" from 1983's Cthulhu Companion. Second, this story made me think that FBL knew his Cotton and Increase Mather. From The Wonders of the Invisible World: "Now, some Devil is evermore Invited into the Service of the Person that shall Practise these Witchcrafts; and if they have gone on Impenitently in these Communions with any Devil, the Devil may perhaps become at last a Familiar to them, and so assume their Livery, that they cannot shake him off in any way, but that One, which I would most heartily prescribe unto them, Namely, That of a deep and long Repentance. " and also "... 'A witch in league with the Devil is convicted by these Evidences; I. By a witches Mark; which is upon the Baser sort of Witches; and this, by the Devils either Sucking or Touching of them." Well maybe not a long repentance, but the good deed of saving the young girl maybe comes close. And the witches Mark reminds me of the story's familiar attaching to the protagonist. FINALLY, the fans DEMAND more more MORE of Mr. Chris Lackey voicing the story's Familiar as a recurring character in the Podcast. The way he says, "Dale" makes my day and he is destined to join the ranks of Lying Vincent Price. An INSTANT classic.

Jason of the K

Now I want a CW tween romcom show about good and bad witches at Salem High School that spend all their time tricking each other into committing good or evil acts and CONSTANTLY turning these middle manager familiars into bronze.