Not entirely unavailable... just seldom handled with any great skill. Of course, J. Vernon Shea's "The Haunter of the Graveyard" has this element; Howardian fantasy (usually pastiche) has some of it as well; but as a whole I think most writers have preferred a less overtly repulsive scenario simply because the whole thing relies as much (or actually more with the readers' reactions) on repulsion and physical fear as on the more elusive "spiritual" or psychological fear of the unknown and uncanny. True, a living-dead corpse is an unnatural thing, but the terrors of the violation of natural law here are far overshadowed by the physical repulsion of rotting flesh, the stench of decay (particularly if the person has ever had the experience of being around less-than-fresh corpses), and the fear of the physical harm such a concrete being can do.

To truly handle this sort of theme without lapsing too far into that takes enormous skill and restraint, or the ability to give such physical loathing and horror that extra dimension of genuine terror of the genuinely supernatural....

Here is a short list of less familiar (or, at least, what I consider to be less familiar) horror/weird/sci-fi/fantasy fiction that one can find online.

Finis by Frank Pollock (1906)
[gutenberg.net.au]

Out Of Silence by Erle Cox (1914)
[gutenberg.net.au]

An Exchange Of Souls by Barry Pain (1911)
[ia601202.us.archive.org]

Master Of Falleyn Years by Vincent O´Sulliven (1921)
[shortstories.wikia.com]

The Midnight Express by Alfred Noyes (1935)
[www.hypnogoria.com]

The Black Pool by Fredercik Stuart Greene (1917)
[woolrich3.tripod.com]

Thew Little Room by Madeline Yale Wynne (1895)
[loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com]

The Spectre-smitten by Samuel Warren (1831)
[gutenberg.net.au]

The House Beyond Prettymarsh by S. Weir Mitchell (1910)
[woolrich3.tripod.com]

The House Of The Vampire by George Silvester Viereck (1907)
[www.gutenberg.org]

Stolen Centuries by Otis Adelbert Kline (1939)
[gutenberg.net.au]

The Dissection by Georg Heym (1913)
[weirdfictionreview.com]

The Separated Room by Ethel Colburn Mayne (1917)
[gutenberg.net.au]

Letter From A Madman (proto-Horla) by Guy de Maupassant (1885)
[www.thewhitereview.org]

The Sumach by Ulric Daubeny (1919)
[vampiresrealm.files.wordpress.com]

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell (1924)
[www.dukeofdefinition.com]

Thus I Refute Beelzy by John Collier (1931)
[ciscohouston.com]

The Secred Cell by William E. Burton (1837)
[historicaltexts.org]

Rain by Dana Burnet (1917)
[woolrich3.tripod.com]

The Scarlet Blossom by Wsewolod Michailovich Garshin (1883)
[woolrich3.tripod.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 14 Dec 18 | 01:39PM by Minicthulhu.