Peter Haining

In my attempts to broaden my knowledge of weird fiction masters of earlier days, one name keeps coming to the fore – Peter Haining. Strangely enough, he’s not an author of these types of tales; rather he’s an anthologist, and I can credit him with masterfully extending the range of my reading.

Peter Alexander Haining was born in Enfield, Middlesex, on the 2^nd of April 1940. He began his working life as a journalist in Essex before moving to London where he eventually joined the publishing firm, New English Library. He advanced to the position of Editorial Director before becoming a full-time writer in the 1970s.

Haining predominantly worked to edit collections of short stories across various genre categories; he mostly compiled collections of ghost stories and horror tales but occasionally branched out into Westerns or crime fiction (during which he used the pen names “Ric Alexander” or “Richard Peyton”). In 1983, he wrote a reference book on the Doctor Who series in celebration of the 20^th anniversary of the show, entitled Doctor Who: A Celebration of Two Decades Through Time and Space. He also wrote a similar work outlining the filmic adaptations of Sherlock Holmes entitled The Television Sherlock Holmes and, inspired by the success of this book, went on to pen similar treatises about Maigret, Poirot, Dr Finlay and James Bond.

Occasionally, he returned to his journalistic roots to write factual accounts on various topics which interested him, including an overview of the Channel Tunnel. However, two of these books were almost his undoing: his work on Sweeney Todd, which argued that the Demon Barber of Fleet Street was an actual historical character, encountered controversy when independent researchers could not verify the statements he made in its pages; his book on the Victorian bogey Spring Heeled Jack – The Legend and Bizarre Crimes of Spring Heeled Jack – also raised questions about its veracity. Despite this lapse, he was awarded the British Fantasy Award’s Karl Edward Wagner Award in 2001.

He spent several years towards the end of his life compiling accounts and conducting interviews for a series of World War Two books: The Jail That Went To Sea (2003), The Mystery of Rommel's Gold (2004), Where The Eagle Landed (2004), The Chianti Raiders (2005) and The Banzai Hunters (2007). He died after completing this project on the 19^th of November, 2007.

Since identifying him as a source of weird fiction, my collection of his anthologies has slowly grown. I have obtained the two volumes of the Ancient Mysteries Reader and these are – for Lovecraft fans of all stripes – simply amazing. Let me talk you through them and demonstrate why:

 

HAINING, Peter (Ed.), Christopher SCOTT (illus.), The Ancient Mysteries Reader – Book 1, Sphere Books, London, 1978.

I: Subterranean Worlds

“MS. Found in a Bottle” by Edgar Allan Poe

“The Coming Race” by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

II: Prehistoric Man

“The Grisly Folk” by H.G. Wells

“The Mound Builders” by Lafcadio Hearn

III: Mythology

“The Shining Pyramid” by Arthur Machen

“The Call of Cthulhu” by HPL

IV: Lost Races

“The Moon Pool” by A. Merritt

“The Terror of Blue John Gap” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The premise of these books is to outline common themes along the lines of “Great Unsolved Mysteries of the World” and then to present two short stories by well-known authors to demonstrate the mysterious nature of the phenomenon. Some of these work better than others, but most are high-quality tales worth reading. At the start of each section, there is a brief précis of the phenomenon being discussed, outlining where the mystery came from and cross-referencing various sources that detail the subject under discussion: these intros alone are worth the price of admission for anyone wanting to base their games on these foundations.

The first volume in the series has Poe and Bulwer-Lyttons’ musings on the notion of a Hollow Earth, and Bulwer-Lytton’s theories of a “mesmeric force” utilised by the Vril-ya, the inhabitants of that realm, a concept that Hitler enthusiastically embraced; Wells and Hearn contribute tales inspired by the artefacts of lost civilisations; Machen and Lovecraft dabble in the notion of ancient forbears and atavistic reversion; while Merritt explores the ruins of Nan Matol at Ponape and Conan Doyle entertains the possibility of relict creatures still dwelling amongst us, in a precursory tale to the Lost World. What’s not to love?

 

HAINING, Peter (Ed.), Christopher SCOTT (illus.), The Ancient Mysteries Reader – Book 2, Sphere Books, London, 1978.

I: Ancient Civilisations

“The Valley of the Sorceress” by Sax Rohmer

“A New God Was Born” by B. Traven

II: Legendary Continents

“The Lost Continent” by Geoffrey Household

“An Offering to the Moon” by Clark Ashton Smith

III: Mysterious Monuments

“The Secret of Stonehenge” by Harry Harrison

“The Bald-Headed Mirage” by Robert Bloch

IV: Monsters

“Creature of the Snows” by William Sambrot

“The Convenient Monster” by Leslie Charteris

V: Gods from the Skies?

“The Cave of History” by Theodore Sturgeon

“Men Without Bones” by Gerald Kersh

In the second volume we are treated to another helping of the mysterious and the unknown. Sax Rohmer explores the mysterious Queen Hatshepsut of Ancient Egypt while the mysterious (in his own right) Berick Traven discusses a bizarre incident concerning the conquistadores in Peru; Geoffrey Household dabbles in Atlantis while Clark Ashton Smith (a Mythos mainstay) rediscovers the Lost Continent of Mu; Harry Harrison plays about in Stonehenge while Robert Bloch discovers the origin of the Easter Island carvings on another world. Meanwhile, William Sambrot tracks down the elusive Yeti and Leslie Charteris unveils a little-known Simon Templar case involving the mysterious Loch Ness. Finally, the wild theories of Erich von Daniken regarding visitors from other planets are thoroughly explored by Theodore Sturgeon and Gerald Kersh.

The best thing about these collections is that they not only clarify the mysteries and why they’re so mysterious, but they also provide a narrative exploration of the subject that shows the sort of creative dynamism that they can inspire. Seek them out; be inspired!

(NB: the Ancient Mysteries Reader was originally published in one volume by Gollancz in 1975.)