I've had some extra free time over the last couple of months and I've been reading a lot of short fiction. I finally got around to checking out Dark Forces. I don't know why but I think the Richard Matheson story "Where There's a Will" was my favorite. I think I was just in an EC Comics kind of mood when I read that one and it just hit the spot. I'm a little over half way done with The Weird. I recently read a time travel anthology edited by the same folks who edited The Weird.
I also recently read:
Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural edited by Mary Wise (1944)
The Great God Pan, The Black Cat, The Monkey's Paw, Leiningen Versus the Ants - lots of classics in this one. I had read almost all of the better stories previously, but it was nice to revisit them. There are a couple of ghost stories that were new to me that I thought were interesting: "They" by Rudyard Kippling and "The Ghost Ship" by Richard Middleton. Neither of them are intended to be scary, but I liked them nonetheless.
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural edited by Marvin Kaye
This one is also good. The editor is an old fogey who doesn't care for newfangled movies like Rosemary's Baby, The Shining, and the "Hammer Draculas with their bottomless buckets of blood." It's cool though because while I disagree with him about some of the (then) modern horror stories I do agree with his overall point that the best stories are rarely the goriest. And he also seems to have a genuine love for the genre.
The book has an incredible range of authors from Bram Stoker to Orson Scott Card, from Alfred Tennyson to Damon Runyan, from Isaac Bashevis Singer to J.R.R. Tolkien. And, while I can't say that I love all or even most of the stories, there are a number of them that have elements to them that make them stick with you for a long time.
My favorites of those that I had not previously read:
"Sardonicus" by Ray Russell, "The Question" by Stanley Ellin, "The Silent Couple" by Pierre Courtois and "The Hungry House" by Robert Bloch.
The Best American Noir of the Century
I bought this book and expected stories in the vein of Double Indemnity and Out of the Past. The folks who put this thing together have a very odd definition of noir, imo, because a good chunk of the stories veer very close to non supernatural horror. I mean, if "The Paperhanger" by William Gay is noir fiction then why wouldn't Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" qualify as well? I only mention this book because there may be some people here who like their crime fiction with a teaspoon of horror.
My favorites:
"All Through the House" by Christopher Coake
"Man in the Dark" by Howard Brown
"Texas City, 1947" by James Lee Burke
"Forever After" by Jim Thompson
"The Paperhanger" by William Gay
Anthologies in progress:
The Weird
Dark Crimes: Great Noir Fiction
The Sword and Sorcery Anthology (ed. David G. Hartwell)
100 Wild Little Weird Tales
Specialty of the House by Stanley Ellin