I’ve been browsing through—and enjoying—The Book of Lists: Horror, edited by Amy Wallace, Del Howison, and Scott Bradley.

The book is filled with the sort of lists you’d expect, such as “Twenty Great Openings in Horror Fiction,” “Eight Horror Notables Who Have Directed Music Videos,” and “Six Stars Who Turned Down Famous Horror Movie Roles.” There are also some unusual lists which made me laugh, including “Anthony Timpone’s Ten Movies I Wish I Never Put on the Cover of Fangoria” and “Davey Johnson’s Account of the Involuntary Reactions of Ten Dates to Ten Horror Movie Moments.”

But one of the lists actually managed to achieve poetry, as far as I’m concerned. And that’s “Warren Martense’s Ten Things H.P. Lovecraft Never Asked for in a Bar,” which includes:

3. The barmaid’s phone number.
5. The name of the sax player on the jukebox.
9. Whatever Hemingway drank.

I liked this particular list so much that I’d post the entire thing here if I could, but that’s more than fair use would allow. So you’ll have to track it down yourself.

But here’s a mystery for you—

Who the heck is Warren Martense?

According to the book’s biographical blurb:

Warren Martense is a leading figure in horror fiction’s underground. He hails from the Catskill Mountains, where his complex love-hate relationship with his family inspired his controversial novel Stormy Monday.

Considering the fact that I’ve never heard of a Warren Martense, the only link I get when Googling that name is a single review of The Book of Lists: Horror, the only entry at Amazon is again only The Book of Lists: Horror, and the few horror gurus I’ve asked have never heard of a Warren Martense, that horror fiction underground referenced above has to be deep underground.

Perhaps there really is a Warren Martense, and I may be completely off base here, but I’ve decided to go out on a limb by saying—since Warren Martense turns out to be internet invisible, I suspect that this is a pseudonym.

Am I correct? Is this a real person? Anyone out there know?

Who was that masked man? I’d like to thank him.