Get all 25 Bob Drake releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Room in the Tower, There Was Once a Road (two minimalist pieces), Legendary Lore Of The Holy Wells Of England, Planets and Animals, Two Tales of Uncanny Visitations, Suite for Notation Software, What Day Is It? (Expanded Edition), 2 Improvisations dans une Eglise, and 17 more.
1. |
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Not many normal folks live around here anymore
having had one too many strange things show up at their door;
some were oozing, some were scuttling, some were shambling,
some were floating, some had one too many dimensions.
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2. |
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Nobody around here is willing to discuss the events
which led them to dynamite the graveyard;
but it had to do with certain things
to which one would not ordinarily attribute
the power of apparently independent mobility.
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3. |
Just Ask Mr. Smith
00:18
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Everyone knows skeletons can’t move,
but just try explaining that to Mr Smith who was the
digger of the graves up at the county cemetery,
who swore he saw one fumbling in a thicket.
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4. |
Toolshed
00:14
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Nobody knew
some thing lived in the old toolshed,
and even if they had seen it
wouldn’t have believed it.
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5. |
Bad Reputation
00:18
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The reputation of that empty house
by the river wasn’t so good,
and it was not exactly improved
by what they found there after
that freakishly localised storm.
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6. |
Hand of Saint Anne
00:29
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They have a hand of Sainte Anne
But alas, also a terrible dog
who wouldn’t let me get near it.
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7. |
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Acres of stinging nettles
brambles and poison ivy
hedges of toxic shrubs enclose
The Megalith of Forgotten Purpose,
Leaching unknown properties into the surroundings.
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8. |
Rot of the Stars
00:23
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They saw a meteorite blaze into the field,
and found the thing that fell was not a stone,
but a lump of pale, fetid jelly.
“Rot of the stars”.
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9. |
The Tunnels
00:28
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To fetor-belching tunnels in the Pyrenées
mad devotees crawl for miles
upon their bleeding hands and knees.
Most will soon be dead from nameless maladies.
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10. |
Nobody Knows What to Do
00:28
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Nobody Knows What to Do
Because that old farmhouse
which was said to be badly haunted
simply crumbled to the ground.
And that’s really really good,
but in its place they found a
seemingly bottomless abyss...
Nobody knows what to do.
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11. |
House By The Swamp
00:32
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Keep away from that house
down by the swamp!
They say a noxious looking oily cloud
came down into the yard there one day,
and ever since then
the things that grow there
are deformed... poisonous...evil.
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12. |
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The seekers now wish they’d given up their search
before it had had led them to those dreary abandoned hills,
and the terrible old farmhouse redolent of spiritual ill;
for now the Sun is setting
and they seem to be forgetting
how to find their way to the windows or doors
which suddenly seem to be missing.
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13. |
Ash Tree: First Movement
00:27
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Let’s hope they chop the thing down.
That twisted...overgrown...hideous ash tree next to the farmhouse
was said to be a nest of small fearsome things
which were rarely glimpsed
and which had caused the untimely demise
of everyone who slept there.
Let’s hope they chop the thing down.
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14. |
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Trees normally don’t emit vocal utterances
but when they tried chopping down that
hideous ash tree by the farmhouse
it emitted uncanny ululations.
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15. |
A Certain Slab
00:22
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We were informed to lift a certain slab,
which we did, and we now live to regret it;
prepared for the worst this was still too much...
we died.
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16. |
Profound Musings
00:19
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I don’t know about you
but I can truthfully say
if I could pick a time
to kick the bucket
I’d pick some other day.
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17. |
The Flopper
00:25
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There’s nothing
worse than thinking
there’s something
burrowing beneath your house,
and then to hear it flopping
and then to hear it flopping
its way to your backdoor.
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18. |
Puppy
00:28
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Remember that day we walked down by the Dismal Swamp?
We found that little black puppy there who followed us home.
Well he’s still here with us, looks like he’s gonna stay...
But he’s four feet tall, his eyes glow red
and he walks through walls...
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19. |
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When that farmer started plowing
near that old house he unearthed some
sort of casket encrusted with
unknown matter decorated with bas-reliefs of
the most shocking,obscene design.
Ever since then he claims the whole family is
sick, and they are awakened every night by
something snuffling and gurgling
through the vast, dismal, empty barren, unlitten hallways
of their vast dismal empty ancient farmhouse...
which they will soon be abandoning
to the unseen tenant.
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20. |
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No one knew who’d once lived in that farmhouse on the hill,
nearly lost in fields untended and in ruins.
The local folks say no one’s dared go near it 30 years,
since the day they found that skeleton in there;
of a thing no one had ever seen before.
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21. |
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The crazy lady down the road
said she heard a rumbling
from underneath the graveyard.
Then a few days later
all the monuments began to
crumble into little pieces.
No one knew why,
nobody knew what it meant.
Another few days passed
and then the whole place
started to subside...
Now there’s nothing there
but a dismal swamp emitting
venomous effluvia.
Mephitic effluvia which,
if inhaled, - the local people say -
leads directly to a condition
somehow involving liquifaction.
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22. |
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Forgotten house
remote in Dreary Hills where nobody goes.
Shuttered labyrinth of unending night
could it be it has a secret?
A secret? yeah I’ll tell ya a secret. I heard they found somethin in there,
somethin nobody was really sure what to do with or even what it
was exactly. I heard there’s somethin wrong with the wallpaper in there too; made outta some kinda weird stuff nobody knows how to make anymore or even what it was exactly...and it reacted somehow with the glue...you know there’s supposed to be stuff bricked up in the walls in there too...?
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23. |
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24. |
Ask Anybody Around There
00:37
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If you enquire no one will dare to say anymore than:
“There’s something wrong with that place”.
And that all of the people who’ve tried to reside there
are dead or completely insane.
Nobody knows exactly what’s wrong
but everyone’ll tell ya:
“There’s something wrong with that place”.
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25. |
The Sun Slants Strangely
00:48
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Shadows of cypress and chrysanthemums
on pale garden walls
hint at the fabulous things
which may be just beyond.
A few dead leaves skitteraround a collection of
things found in graveyards.
Pale sunlight slants strangely
on neglected formal gardens
in autumn.
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26. |
The Cloud - Introduction
01:18
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27. |
The Cloud
03:01
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Nobody can pretend to believe any longer
that cloud on a certain hilltop is natural.
‘Cause it’s been lingering up there
for at least two weeks,
its colour is indescribable, and it reeks.
Roiling and seething,
the wind doesn’t move it
and it's settled on the crest
where those malignant ruins
allegedly brood
like a pestilence.
Some say it emits a
furtive phosphorescence,
or a persistent low rumbling.
Other people say indistinctly within,
pale things are seen fumbling.
But I’ll tell you ONE aspect of this thing
everybody agrees on:
nobody else will go up there to explore,
for the few who’d done so
weren’t heard of no more!
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28. |
The Dynamistagraph
00:24
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It was a thing to weigh ghosts the Dynamistograph.
That is if the spirit stood upon or pressed the membrane.
The Dynamistograph: complex in nature yet sensitive.
That is if the spirit stood upon or pressed the membrane.
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29. |
Miracle
00:17
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C’est le Miracle des Museaux!
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30. |
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Encyclopedia of Psychic Science
The only comprehensive survey
of every kind of psychical phenomena
known to mankind
By Nandor Fodor
($8.95)
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31. |
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Table tippers of old days
Here is a partial list of a few of the more celebrated:
Mme d’Esperance, Daniel Dunglas Home,
Florence Cook, Eusapia Palladino,
Margery Crandon, William Stainton Moses,
Margaret and Kate Fox
and the Goligher Family...
table-tippers of the good old days.
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32. |
Bear
00:24
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If I could mutate myself for one day I’d be a bear.
Anthropomorphic, of 500 pounds, and then go on a rampage
eating up all of the pizzas in town then go home, flop in a chair,
watch some movies and sleep.
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33. |
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Devil’s Pool (New Hampshire)
Grey House of Horror (Somewhere in France)
House of the Crazy Fancies in London (England)
Mr O’Donnell claims some of these hauntings are dangerous.
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34. |
The Hounds
00:37
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In a remote recess beyond time
eldritch eternal hounds are getting bored
nothing to do decide to mess with you.
So they’re eating their way through space to your brain
digging a hole through time to your brain
planning some re-constructive psychic surgery.
When they get there you say: “well that’s OK,
as long as you take me back with you”
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35. |
It Has No Name
00:35
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36. |
October 22 1910, Paris
00:35
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Proceeding from the medium’s upper left arm,
I saw a cloudy whitish column, at the top end of which
was a gracefully beckoning hand.
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37. |
Another Unusual Cloud
00:33
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August 7th 1823 at Noblesville Indiana
a crackling square white cloud appeared in an otherwise clear sky.
The cloud performed a curious spiral motion
and discharged a rock which fell,
and no geologist can classify to this day.
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38. |
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September 5th 1814 in Northern France; a somber whitish rumbling cloud
revolving on its axis, discharged from two cord-like features
a shower of stones then slowly faded away.
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39. |
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There’s a whole lot of animals
in the valley of the Mississippi,
including unknown things
you wouldn’t want to meet.
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40. |
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I could hear something big crunching the dogfood,
and it was not the dogs; they were in bed with me
and just about as equally frightened as I was.
I could see nothing there, but the ravenous crunching
went on and on...
The crunching went on and on.
I was unable to move
in the grey lighting
I could not move
I could not turn on the light
I could not shout
I could not cry out
I could not move to turn on the light
I could only wait...
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41. |
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Here’s a partial list of the things they found
when they explored the old abandoned Grand Hotel
after all those years.
Here’s the notebook we found in there.
This had a lot to do with why we wanted
to close that place up for good. This is
from about 40 years ago; a group of
people went in there to explore the place.
They were never found, just this
notebook. Here’s what it says they found:
The Hall of the Screaming Figure
The Vault of the Unwholesome Vapours
and the Chamber in Which They Could
Never Strike a Light.
That’s just the first page, it gets weirder.
They go up to the second floor and found:
The Stairway to Oblivion
The Seeping Wing
The Room of Inexplicable Disorientation
Anyway that’s why we closed the place up.
It still stands today and you can
explore it for yourself if you’d like to;
but just don’t linger longly,
or things may start going wrongly...
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42. |
Splishing
01:04
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43. |
The Persecuting Engine
01:07
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I’d forgotten the words
which would placate the Thing
now that I was in its chamber.
It stood on its hind legs and placed its
forepaws on my shoulders,
and told me telepathically:
“Your punishment will be the Engine.
the Persecuting Engine; which from afar
can influence your actions as we wish,
distort your perceptions into undecipherable alien ones,
replace your will with ours and nothing can stop it.
And no one will believe you,
they’ll just say you’re crazy”.
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44. |
Lo, The Colour
01:06
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There had come a terrible darkness
The sky was crushed and apparently melted
More imaginitive deluges were coming
A breath from regions unnamed would also occur
Vines falling in brittle states
The entire farm was shocking
Gloomy outlook for the crops
The entire nebula swayed ominously
Fathomless gulfs broke out
A dim yet distinct formation began to be bad.
Things were lower; the temperature tingled to impulses
but a mirage of the awful moment
It had fallen!
and run away in the yard.
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45. |
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The thing wandered into a drain
and chose not to exit again.
It found a great room
which would serve as its tomb,
and displayed on a plinth its own brain.
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46. |
The Thing On The Roof
01:12
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Recording this song in the barn one fine September afternoon
when all at once something heavy hit the roof and ran across the tiles.
It sounded much too big and clumsy to me to be a bird, a lizard or a squirrel.
You’re gonna hear it at the end of the song and you can
draw your own conclusions...
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47. |
November 18 1911, Paris
01:25
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As the head-like structure approached the back of the curtains,
it gave quite a flat impression, not like a picture
but like the mask of a face on which the features of a face
were to be modelled by the sketchy insertion of small grey
and white patches of some kind of soft material.
This remarkable thing moved freely
and drew a long white veil after it
which suddenly detached itself and fell to the ground,
while the mask-like object disappeared backwards
into the darkness of the cabinet.
When on the medium’s left an oblong white mass was again
exposed, the author took another photograph (Figure 53).
After this the sitting had to be closed
on account of Eva’s fatigue.
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48. |
Kaziah's Pet
02:00
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Nobody could say what kind of a thing
had done a deed that no one could describe
in a manner which could not be explained
It was a hideous brown nuzzling thing
like a large rat, nauseously anthropoid.
Blasphemous abnormality
that really should not be;
yellow pointed fangs bathed in sick violet light
loathesome tittering bathed in sick violet light
hybrid blashpemy bathed in sick violet light
morbid atrocity bathed in sick violet light
nuzzling shockingly bathed in sick violet light
paws like little hands bathed in sick violet light
face like human face bathed in sick violet light
fed on witches blood bathed in sick violet light
Well I know who that is, that’s Old Kaziah’s pet,
Brown Jenkin!
More and more people are reporting having been
“nuzzled curiously” by a “shocking little rat-faced abnormality”
in the hours before dawn in the so-called Witch House in Arkham.
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49. |
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They tell me this whole county is full of haunted places
and things that just ain’t right it’s the Shunned Country
The Shunned Country
Stay away!
So here we are; good luck,
and don’t say we didn’t warn ya.
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50. |
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51. |
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Well now if I were you I’d avoid it
still, there is one good thing;
you can get a place there real cheap.
The Shunned Country.
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