Comments on Posts

When I moved this blog from Wordpress, the comments did not come along. Since there weren't very many, it was easy to move them here manually.

Unfortunately, I don't have a comment mechanism for this version of the blog, but please feel free to drop me a note, using the mail icon in the footer. If you would like me to make the comment public (for example, if you have further information about one of these stories), please let me know, and I will add it to this page and associate it with the relevant blog post.

Notes on the Tiger's Cave #

Tara Challoner, December 23, 2023 #

I found on Google a magazine called American Masonick Record and Albany Saturday Magazine which published this on May 30 1829, stating it was translated from Elmquist & a German source I can’t make out. It also says it is a reprint from the Edinburgh Literary Journal, which is strange as Chambers didn’t publish it until 1832. Hope this helps. Tara Challoner!

Nina Zumel, December 29, 2023 #

Thanks, Tara! I will check this out.

Nina Zumel, January 1, 2024 #

Thanks for the leads — this is what I was able to find: Revisiting the Tiger’s Cave

Tara Challoner, January 2, 2024 #

Dear Ms. Zumel,

Your research is awesome & very helpful. I try to track down stories for the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) & mostly work on 19th century ghost stories & folk tale collections. I have no idea where E.F. Bleiler got the idea that the Boarwolf is from Apel, though R. P. Gillies was also a translator of German. I do a lot of translating (with Google Translate!) & found nothing by him that matches. I found a magazine crediting it to Tales of a Voyager (Museum of Foreign Literature & Science). If the Apel source had been Peter Haining, I could understand. I spent a lot of time tracking down the real authors of 1 anthology that he made multiple mistakes on, sometimes I think he pulled names out of thin air. & The Eve of St. Agnes it probably was plagiarized later, it wouldn’t be the first time a story had a few changes made & presented as ‘new’. I worked on a anthology called Weird Tales: Irish where a story by American writer C. F. Hoffman was slightly changed to make it Irish, except they forgot that there are no Alleghany Mountains in Ireland! Anyways, I’ll try looking for the the Danish for The Tiger’s Hole. & check out the ISFDB, we could use a researcher like you!

Tara Challoner

Nina Zumel, January 2, 2024 #

Thank you! I love the ISDFB, it's super useful for all kinds of information!

Ha, yes, Peter Haining is infamous among ghost story aficionados (among others) for his stunningly wrong attributions. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had made some of them up.

Notes on Nina Dalgarooki #

Tara Challoner, January 2, 2024 #

Thanks for finding the author of this story. Never heard of Rosina, glad she got sprung from the loony bin, unlike many other unfortunate women. Also have some more info to pass on- I found the author for the story of My Two Aunts. William Pitt Scargill’s widow published it in a posthumous collection of his work called The Widow’s Offering. Keep up the great sleuthing!

Nina Zumel, January 3, 2024 #

Great work, and thank you! I’ll update my Volume 3 page!

Revisiting the Tiger's Cave #

Note that this comment chain isn't actually about "The Tiger's Cave." Dr. Aguirre simply used this post to start a conversation.

Manuel Aguirre, February 27, 2024 #

Dear Nina, Some time ago I came across a tale by Isaac Crookenden, ‘The Mysterious Murder, or, The Usurper from Naples’. It was photographed from an 1808 chapbook by Marquette University, (Gothic Archive Chapbooks), and accessible at

https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=english_gothic .

It’s a jolly bad imitation of (among other sources) Radcliffe’s Sicilian Romance. I passed it to two of my students for transcription to Word, and found that page 12 is repeated while page 13 is missing. It may be (but I have no means of proving it) that the error was in the original chapbook itself. Do you know of any other source where I could retrieve the missing page? Gratefully, Manuel Aguirre

Nina Zumel, February 27, 2024 #

Hi Manuel:

My goodness, that Crookenden fellow sure was prolific!

Unfortunately, I can only find other copies of the flawed Marquette scan online. However this bibliography (http://www.romtext.org.uk/reports/cc09_n03/) says that the University of Virginia Library has a copy.

U. of Va. also run Project Gothic (https://gothic.lib.virginia.edu/), which has a different Crookenden chapbook online, but not The Mysterious Murder. According to the website, the contact person for Project Gothic is Cristina Richieri Griffen (crg5j@virginia.edu); perhaps you can contact her, to see if they do indeed have a copy, and whether they can get you a scan of page 13.

Good luck!

Cheers, Nina

Manuel Aguirre, February 27, 2024 #

Well, that was useful, thanks a lot, Nina. I’ve already written to Christine for info. Yes, like Sara Wilkinson, Crookenden was a very active hack, and not entirely negligible as a writer either. I dream of the time when some library will at last digitise the entire corpus of Gothic novels, chapbooks, bluebooks, stories, plays and poems and offer it online to everyone for free. Then Franco Moretti will be able to do his distant reading thing on the lot and reveal hidden wonders. Thanks again, Manuel

A Dead Letter #

Helen Kemp, November 30, 2024 #

Hi Nina

A friend pointed me towards you and I am really enjoying your work – thank you so much!

I’ve just read ‘A Dead Letter’ and noted your note on ‘win pots’. When I’ve come across ‘pots’ before it has usually meant ‘cups, medals, awards’ for athletic or sporting prowess – this might fit a bit better here as being a more ‘healthy’ option than poker!

Nina Zumel, November 30, 2024 #

Hi Helen!

Thanks for the kind words! I’m glad you enjoy my blog(s).

Thanks also for the comment about the phrase “win pots” – poker was a guess, after I googled the phrase. But what you say also makes sense. I’ll amend the note.

Helen Kemp, November 30, 2024 #

So glad you like the idea, Nina. I’ve remembered that the word ‘pothunters’ was an early 20th C thing, for those who chased sporting trophies. It’s the title of a book by P G Wodehouse.