Pigeons from Hell

"Pigeons from Hell" is a horror short story by American writer Robert E. Howard, written in late 1934 and published posthumously by Weird Tales in 1938. The title comes from an image in Howard's grandmother's ghost stories, that of a deserted plantation mansion haunted by pigeons. The Blassenvilles once owned the property but fell into poverty and soon, one by one, they all disappeared, Since then, the locals shun it. The pigeons sometimes flock about the decaying manor. Legend has it that they are the Blassenvilles' souls. Two men traveling through the American South spend the night in a haunted house and encounter a grisly reality of voodoo and zombies. The title comes from an image of the ghost stories told by Howard's grandmother, especially one about a deserted plantation mansion haunted by pigeons. The one-line introduction, by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright, read: "A fearsome story of frightful death, a whistle in the dark, and three women whose bodies hung in that dreadful room of horrors by a late great master of weird fiction.