Alfred Hitchcock and where the horror comes from... Some of my earliest influences in horror

During my early teens, I discovered the brilliant horror and suspense anthology books by Alfred Hitchcock. The books I read were produced in the 1960s and 1970s and were among the first books I borrowed from the library when I received my adult library card. They were filled with terrifying creepy stories that I would later learn were considered, then and now as, the classics of horror fiction.

I borrowed them over and over and read them all day long and late into the night when I was supposed to be sleeping. They filled my head with images of monsters, mutants, and ghost-filled mansions by authors like Walter Brooks, A. M. Burrage, Robert Arthur, Ray Bradbury, Margaret St. Clair, and H. G. Wells, to name just a few.

The cover artwork and the illustrations, and paintings inside would stick with me my entire life and color my perception of art, literature, and the world. To this very day, they remain some of my most memorable literary influences.

At the time I imagined good old Alfred Hitchcock sitting at his desk surrounded by piles of books, manuscripts, and illustrations. He'd be reading story after story trying to find the most terrifying tales to include in his next book. I was of course quite mistaken. In reality, Mr. Hitchcock had licensed his name to a publisher, in the case of my books, it was Random House, who’s editors in turn compiled the stories and would “ghostwrite” the introductions on behalf of Mr. Hitchcock.

Looking back with my high powered Nostalgia Goggles firmly in place, I feel I was a very lucky young man who was born at just the right time.

Below are some pictures from my personal collection of the Alfred Hitchcock horror and suspense anthology books.

Many of the books contained beautiful, dark, atmospheric illustrations by artist, Fred Banbury. These images fired my imagination with a delightful dreamlike sense of strangeness and the bizarre. In this illustration we find Mr. Hitchcock floating over a subterranean nightmare world inhabited by a two-legged moose, a fleeting phantom, and tormented disembodied eyes, hands, and feet. It has always been one of my favorites. For me, it still invokes a fearful sense of the weird and the macabre.

This wonderful two-page spread from Ghostly Gallery, shows Alfred Hitchcock’s menacing visage looming over a frightening piece of furniture which also bears his likeness and I'm sure that if we could get a closer look at the little spider in the foreground, we'd find his face there as well.

Depicted below, we see a powerful illustration from the famous horror story, “The Waxwork” by A. M. Burrage. The man in the chair has been hypnotised in a darkened room by the sound of the villain's voice and now sits paralyzed waiting to be murdered. Its stark, bold shadows give it the perfect sense of impending danger and the unavoidable doom that will soon befall the helpless protagonist.

Alfred Hitchcock on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Visiting with the legend.