Horror by Anton Chekhov

[hoppyzicehog]

Greetings.
The other day I watched part of "Black Sabbath," the 1963 Italian horror anthology film starring Boris Karloff. The first story was said to be based on "The Drop of Water" by Anton Chekhov.
Another horror story by Chekhov is called "The Dead Body." It appears in a book called Twilight Creatures (Amazon text with table of contents pasted below). Another story, "The Black Monk" is about how a young academic's life is destroyed after he encounters an apparition. "A Bad Business" is about a graveyard watchman who encounters an apparition in the cemetery.

I haven't read any of these stories yet but, given that they're by the great Chekhov, I'm guessing some of them might be pretty decent fodder for the podcast at some point.

Of course, it could be that these are fairly tame ghost stories without much Lovecraftian weirdness/creepiness. I was just curious if anybody on the forum had read any of Chekhov's horror stories. If so, what are some of the best ones?
Thanks!

Publication Date: June 30, 2010
“TWILIGHT CREATURES: Stories of Vampires, Werewolves and other Unspeakable Beings” features 40 absorbing and fascinating short stories and legends from around the world, some of them translated to English for the first time. Martin Monreal provides an introductory essay, which situates each story in its proper context.

TWILIGHT CREATURES includes famous and lesser known stories by Sheridan Le Fanu, M.R. James, Noemi Sutera, Bram Stoker, Guy de Maupassant, H. R. Haggard, Apuleius, Turgenev, H. Clifford, Baring-Gould, Saki, E. Peattie, Mary Freeman, Machen, Poe, Benson, Blackwood, Bierce, Wells, Dunsany, Conan Doyle, O’Donnell, H. James, W.W. Jacobs, Hawthorne, Stevenson, Gogol, and Chekhov, among others, plus a spooky selection of French, Eskimo, Argentine, Russian, Japanese and Chinese folktales.

Explore the world of TWILIGHT CREATURES and by the time you are done reading the last piece, you might just agree with M.R. James’ view "that, humanly speaking, all these many solemn events have a meaning for us, if our limited intelligence permitted of our disintegrating it."

Martin Monreal is a writer, translator and illustrator. He studied Foreign Literature at the University of Buenos Aires, and attended Pratt Institute in New York. He has published poetry and short stories in Spanish, and is the editor of MASTERS OF HORROR AND SUSPENSE: 100 Short Stories, THE CANON OF THE SHORT STORY: 100 Stories, and BEST GHOST STORIES… EVER (upcoming).

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. M.R. James Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance
2. J. Sheridan Le Fanu Carmilla
3. Bram Stoker In the presence of Vampires
(from Dracula)
4. Guy de Maupassant The Horla
5. Henry Rider Haggard Only a Dream
6. Lucius Apuleius The Corpse Watcher
7. Ivan Turgenev Clara Militch
8. Hugh Clifford A Night of Terror
9. Love Unrequited (A Werewolf Legend from France)
10. Sabine Baring-Gould Jean Grenier: Werewolf
11. Saki The Wolves of Cernogratz
12. Elia W. Peattie On the Northern Ice
13. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman The Vacant Lot
14. Fernand D’Anglais The Dissapearance of Mr. Najh
15. Arthur Machen The White People
16. Edgard Allan Poe Metzengerstein
17. The Shroud (A Russian Folktale)
18. The Legend of Rheineck (A German Folktale)
19. Four Eskimo Folktales a. Papik,
who killed his wife's brother
20. b. Artuk, who did all forbidden things
21. c. The Spirit of the Singing House
22. d. The boy from the bottom of the sea
23. Algernon Blackwood The Wendigo
24. E.F.Benson The Man Who Went too Far
25. Ambrose Bierce The Death of Halpin Frayser
26. H.G.Wells The Valley of Spiders
27. Mujina (A Japanese Legend)
28. The Story of Ming-Y (A Chinese Folktale)
29. Lord Dunsany Where the Tides Ebb and Flow
30. Arthur Conan Doyle The Horor of Heights
31. Arthur Christopher Benson Out of the Sea
32. Elliott O'Donnell Up the Nile River
33. Henry James The Turn of the Screw
34. W.W. Jacobs The Well
35. Nathaniel Hawthorne Ethan Brand
36. Robert Louis Stevenson Thrawn Janet
37. Noemí Sutera Summer 1972
38. Nikolay V. Gogol The Cloak
39. Ivan Turgenev The Old Woman
40. Anton Chekhov A Dead Body

[hoppyzicehog]

Well, read "The Dead Body" yesterday. Chekhov is an amazing writer. There's only a quick moment of horror in this one--at the very end, kind of along the lines of "The Man Who Went Too Far." (It is a very creepy moment, though.)
This story seems like an allegorical commentary on the flippancy and stupidity of humans in the face of extremely grave matters that ought to command their full attention. It's a good story, but not exactly Lovecraftian.

I'm reading "The Black Monk" now. A wonderful read, but no horror dimension quite yet...

[hoppyzicehog]

I've read all of the aforementioned Chekhov stories now. Great stories, but none of the three seems at all Lovecraftian, although the bit at the end of "A Dead Body" is quite creepy….