“The Haunter of the Ring” is a 1934 short story Howard, belonging to the Cthulhu Mythos. It was first published in Weird Tales in the June 1934 issue. Howard earned $60 for this publication. This story is set in the modern age but includes a relic from the Hyborian Age of the Conan stories, the ring of Thoth-Amon.
The story begins with James Allison, lying on his deathbed, reminiscing about his past lives. He believes he has lived through many incarnations, always as a member of the Aryan or Nordheimer race. Allison recalls a specific life as Niord, a powerful warrior, and his encounter with a horrific, demonic entity known as the Worm.
The Tomb’s Secret. Under the name: Patrick Ervin. Featuring Steve Harrison.
The February 1934 issue of STRANGE DETECTIVE STORIES carried two stories by REH: “The Tomb’s Secret” and “Fangs of Gold”. It appears that the story titles were inadvertently switched. Howard’s agent, Otis Adelbert Kline, kept a list of titles and the magazines that purchased them.
The Thing on the Roof first appeared in the February 1932 issue of Weird Tales. Howard sold it to Weird Tales for $40.00, but later said he would have let it go for free, just to see it in print. He was quite fond of it. The story is set in the early 1930’s, and focuses on the legend surrounding the Temple of the Toad God. Howard’s occult tome, Nameless Cults plays a big part in the story.
The story begins with John O’Brien, the narrator, entering a dark, eerie forest, with the intent to kill his rival, Richard Brent, over the love of Eleanor Bland. O’Brien falls and hits his head in Dagon’s Cave, leading to a vivid recollection of a past life as Conan, a Gaelic reaver.
In “Names in the Black Book,” Steve Harrison, a tough detective, finds himself embroiled in a sinister plot involving a list of doomed individuals in a dangerous and mysterious quarter of the city. The story intertwines fear, intrigue, and dark forces as Harrison confronts a familiar enemy thought long dead.
First published in Weird Tales, August 1925, In the Forest of Villefère tells of de Montour’s passage through a supposedly haunted forest. There he comes upon a most unusual traveling companion.
The Hyena is a horror story first published in Weird Tales in March 1928.
“The Hyborian Age” is an essay by Robert E. Howard pertaining to the Hyborian Age, the fictional setting of his stories about Conan the Cimmerian. It was written in the 1930s but only partly published during Howard’s lifetime. Its purpose was to maintain consistency within his fictional setting.
The essay sets out in detail the major events of Howard’s pseudohistorical prehistory, both period before and after the time of the Conan stories. In describing the cataclysmic end of the Thurian Age, the period described in his Kull stories, Howard links both sequences of stories into one shared universe. The names he gives his various nations and peoples of the age borrow liberally from actual history and myth. The essay also sets out the racial and geographical heritage of these fictional entities, making them progenitors of modern nations. For example, Howard makes the Gaels descendants of his own Cimmerians.
Howard wrote one of the first “Weird Western” stories ever created, “The Horror from the Mound,” published in the May 1932 issue of Weird Tales. This genre acted as a bridge between his early “weird” stories (a contemporary term for horror and fantasy) and his later straight western tales.
There is a secret held inside an Indian burial mound, only a few know the secret and they have been sworn to secrecy… until someone became greedy, deciding that there must be treasure hidden in the mound…
