"The Crawling Horror" by Thorp McClusky

4 days ago
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0:00:00 Chapter 1
0:13:46 Chapter 2
0:26:41 Chapter 3

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Published in "Weird Tales" in Nov, 1936

We aren't given any hints as to a location, but for being a place settled by Germans and Dutch, with a sprinkling of Poles and Lithuanians, that seems like it should most probably be northern Illinois, although Connecticut is not entirely out of the question, although I don't know how much of that state was still farmland in the 1930s. It's quite a small state to begin with. I vote for Illinois.

Consistency error: he starts off talking about rats in the walls, but then says it was mice who fled to the barn.

Morris chair: an early type of reclining chair

stroke the dog: today we in the US would say pet, but stroke is still the term of choice in the UK. Thorp was born in Arkansas, so definitely American, I guess stroke must have been the word of choice in the US as well at some point and changed over to pet during the 20th century. Not sure exactly when that would have happened, but there you go.

Slavic vampire myths? Yes, vampires as we know them today originate with the Slavic peoples (Russian and/or Polish folklore). Obviously the notion of blood sucking spirits is very ancient, but the modern myth we all know and love is far more recent.

tiling: I have never encountered the word used in this way, and am unclear what it means. Context suggests it refers to vampires, perhaps it means spirit or demon, but it is certainly not a normal usage of the word in the English language. I wonder if it is a word in one of the Slavic languages?

spill: this word can indeed take the meaning of a thin strip of wood or paper used for lighting a fire, candle, etc. Not a usage I've ever heard until reading this story, but upon looking it up, it's a thing.

The pictures used are:

Ch 1: a farm in Roanoke, IL, 1948

Ch 2: "View from across the field at a farm in Hampshire, Kane County, Illinois." by Joseph Gage, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en)

Ch 3: the illustration for the story by Virgil Finlay for the Nov, 1936 volume of Weird Tales

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