   Classic horror short story, written by Robert E. Howard in
1934 and published posthumously in Weird Tales in 1938.  The
tale involves two men from New England, John Branner and his
friend Griswell, who are traveling in the South and, stuck out
in the wilderness with nowhere else to stay, decide to spend the
night in a deserted plantation mansion they run across in the
Louisiana forest. Griswell awakens in the night to find Branner
walking up the stairs in an apparent trance. And in a few
minutes, Branner comes back downstairs -- dead but still
walking, carrying the same bloody hatchet that has been used to
split his head open. Griswell flees into the night.  He's
fortunate to run into the local sheriff, Buckner, who takes
Griswell back into the mansion, where they find Branner lying
dead and holding the hatchet, which is now buried in the
floorboards where Griswell had been lying. Buckner tells
Griswell that the house is called Blassenville Manor after the
cruel family that used to live there until the las