First Response to Robert E Howard’s Pigeons from Hell
I just finished reading this delightful little horror story from Robert E Howard and I’m fairly impressed. It was originally published in Weird Tales in 1938, a posthumous publication. You can read it here.
It’s a classic horror in many ways, travellers stop the night in an abandoned house, only one leaves alive and that just barely. There’s an old legend of a violent and cruel family, there’s darkness that seems almost palpable, there’s dead men walking and terror-induced bouts of insanity.
At the heart of the mystery is voodoo, which I didn’t expect at first. It doesn’t go into too much detail, but does of course paint the practice as evil. The murderous creature in the house is a zuvembie, that is, a creature who used to be a woman but who is now a twisted creature with hypnotic powers that delights in killing people. I have no idea if there’s more lore about zuvembies but I may investigate later.
What was interesting was the portrayal of African Americans in this story. Usually Howard’s stories have non-whites as borderline savages or openly savages. Even the other story of his I’ve read set in America in relatively recent times, Black Canaan, has ‘blacks’ as the villains – the chief villain being a voodoo priest intent on killing ‘whites’. It’s degrading stuff and I have to pull a lot of mental trickery on myself to read it.
But this story, while it still has a voodoo man who’s made a pact with a demonic snake spirit and a vengeful ‘mulatto’, displays none of the usual hatred or condescension. And the villain is from a white family known and reviled for its cruel treatment of African Americans even post slavery. I’m not saying it’s an accepting story, there are still clear racial divides, as there were in society at the time, but it’s certainly a step up from Black Canaan.
Anyway, that aside, it is a good horror story with a nice atmosphere of impending doom. Some extended dialogue with theorising about, and attempted rationalising of, events does break the mood however which is unfortunate.
And what about the pigeons? Sadly, they’re just window dressing.
Keep dreaming!
It’s a classic horror in many ways, travellers stop the night in an abandoned house, only one leaves alive and that just barely. There’s an old legend of a violent and cruel family, there’s darkness that seems almost palpable, there’s dead men walking and terror-induced bouts of insanity.
At the heart of the mystery is voodoo, which I didn’t expect at first. It doesn’t go into too much detail, but does of course paint the practice as evil. The murderous creature in the house is a zuvembie, that is, a creature who used to be a woman but who is now a twisted creature with hypnotic powers that delights in killing people. I have no idea if there’s more lore about zuvembies but I may investigate later.
What was interesting was the portrayal of African Americans in this story. Usually Howard’s stories have non-whites as borderline savages or openly savages. Even the other story of his I’ve read set in America in relatively recent times, Black Canaan, has ‘blacks’ as the villains – the chief villain being a voodoo priest intent on killing ‘whites’. It’s degrading stuff and I have to pull a lot of mental trickery on myself to read it.
But this story, while it still has a voodoo man who’s made a pact with a demonic snake spirit and a vengeful ‘mulatto’, displays none of the usual hatred or condescension. And the villain is from a white family known and reviled for its cruel treatment of African Americans even post slavery. I’m not saying it’s an accepting story, there are still clear racial divides, as there were in society at the time, but it’s certainly a step up from Black Canaan.
Anyway, that aside, it is a good horror story with a nice atmosphere of impending doom. Some extended dialogue with theorising about, and attempted rationalising of, events does break the mood however which is unfortunate.
And what about the pigeons? Sadly, they’re just window dressing.
Keep dreaming!
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