Bob Dylan and a ggg-ghost! Photo by Gary Miller/Getty Images/Canva

By PJ Grisar
October 28, 2024

During breaks from his Never Ending tour, Bob Dylan returned to social media to send his regrets to the Buffalo Sabers hockey team for missing a match, recommend a incredibly famous restaurant in New Orleans and, in a new twist for the Nobel laureate, hints at his frightening literary aspirations.

“At the Frankfurt hotel there was a publishing convention and every room was occupied, parties all night,” Dylan posted on X, formerly Twitter, on October 23.

“I was trying to find Crystal Lake Publishing so I could congratulate them on publishing The Great God Pan, one of my favorite books,” Dylan continued. “I thought they might be interested in some of my stories. Unfortunately there were too many people and I never found them.

At the Frankfurt hotel there was a publishing convention and all the rooms were occupied, parties all night. I didn’t know there were so many book publishers in the world. I was trying to find Crystal Lake Publishing so I could congratulate them on publishing The Great God Pan, a…

-Bob Dylan (@bobdylan) October 23, 2024

As always, Dylan speaks, the world listens. It was quite a surprise in October for Crystal Lake, a press based in Bloemfontein, South Africa, specializing in dark fiction and horror, whose current titles include an anthology called Vile ladies And Blood and Bullets: A Trio of Western Horror Novels. (Yes, they also published a “reworked” edition of Machen’s 1894 book. Great God Panabout a sinister woman who seems to drive powerful men to suicide.)

“We had literary agents in Frankfurt representing our books, so we weren’t there in person,” Joe Mynhardt, founder and CEO of Crystal Lake, said in an email.

Mynhardt said that since the post about Dylan, they spent a few days tracking down the songwriter and his team.

“I understand they now have our contact information, so fingers crossed,” Mynhardt wrote in his email Saturday.

While Dylan has already published a memoir, Chronicles: Volume 1and his 2022 book The philosophy of modern songIt remains to be seen what scary stories he might have in his drawer. What he was able to admire in Machen’s short story is less mysterious: a story of sex, pagan gods and death. Somehow it all seems very appropriate, even if it’s lacking in the Americana department (Machen was Welsh, as was another great poet named Dylan).

Dylan already has spooky hits in his catalog like “Man with the Long Black Cloak”, “Ballad of a Thin Man” and his JFK murder ballad “Murder Most Foul” if you were looking for a Halloween party playlist to play with swing. a few Timothée Chalamet’s lookalikes In A Complete unknown fashion.

“Naturally, we are very interested in anything Bob has to say,” Mynhardt said. “We live for good stories.”