Robert E. Howard 24 min read

When the narrator shows off a jewel-hilted Afghan dagger, his friend Gordon reacts with strangled horror, the first sign that a cursed ring has driven the man to the brink of murder.

Robert E. Howard's 1934 story is an atmospheric occult-horror tale, a John Kirowan story. Eerie, gripping, superbly told. Read it for a chilling Howard weird tale of sorcery and psychic compulsion, where an ancient cursed ring works its malignant will, and the occult investigator John Kirowan must unravel a deadly enchantment, in classic pulp-horror style.

In its time

Published in 1934, during the 1930s, space opera soars.

Reading it

24 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

H. R. Hammond