by 
Theodore “Eibon” Donald (T.E.D.) Klein is an American editor and author who, despite a short list of publishing credits, made an impressive impact on the horror genre. He was a fan of Arthur Machen, M.R. James, Ramsey Campbell, and H.P. Lovecraft. He attended college at Brown University in Lovecraft’s hometown of Providence, Rhode Island, where he wrote his honors thesis on the works of Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany. After he graduated in 1969, he briefly taught high school English in Dexter, Maine before returning home to New York City. He had a handful of stories published from the early 1970s through the mid-1980s. One of his earliest stories, “The Events at Poroth Farm” was published in From Beyond the Dark Gateway, an offshoot magazine of Harry O. Morris’s Nyctalops, in 1972. The story gained a larger audience when it was reprinted in DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series II in 1974. Some of his other stories were published in Charles L. Grant’s Shadows series, and Kirby McCauley’s landmark anthology Dark Forces in 1980.
Klein was editor of The Twilight Zone Magazine from 1981 to 1985, as well as its sister publication Night Cry. His novel The Ceremonies was originally slated to be published by Morrow, but was pulled for unknown reasons and placed with Viking, which published the book in 1984. The novel received high praise from Stephen King and Peter Straub. Klein announced a follow-up novel in his 1985 Faces of Fear interview with Douglas Winter. The interview wraps up by saying Klein resigned as editor of The Twilight Zone Magazine in order to finish the novel, but the book never materialized. His follow-up to The Ceremonies turned out to be Dark Gods, a collection of three previously published novellas, plus a new novella, “Nadelman’s God,” which won a 1986 World Fantasy Award.
To browse the list of T.E.D. Klein titles currently available on Amazon, click here.
These cover scans are from the library of Christopher Fulbright.
TED Klein is an odd case. Had a big book with “Ceremonies,” which if memory serves me correctly, was a N Y Times bestseller, but never followed it up. This happens now and then — he claimed writer’s block; often it’s personal reasons and nobody’s business I guess. I liked “Ceremonies,” but have never really wanted to read it again, but I love his gruesome screenplay for “Dario Argento’s Trauma.” Some of Argento’s fans don’t care for the film but I think it’s one of his best. Strange that Klein went from a literary horror novel to an Italian psycho-shocker, but both are memorable, even if from other ends of the spectrum!.
I think he had left the magazine by then, but when “Night Cry” went out of business I got a note saying that a (still unpublished) novella I’d submitted would have been in a subsequent issue had the magazine continued publishing. Just one of the writing life’s little disappointments we all weather!