Scan barcode
chloekg's review against another edition
4.0
Great collection! This book contains a wide variety of what is scary and how the tales are told. Some stories bring me back to this book year after year.
kimberly_b's review against another edition
3.0
This is an okay collection of horror stories. Nothing spectacular, but it was entertaining.
megapolisomancy's review against another edition
3.0
100 stories in 500 pages, so this is a collection of horror flash fiction. No editorial explanation of the choices are given, and indeed there’s no introductory material of any sort for the stories themselves. The authors are almost entirely American, with the odd Brit thrown in here and there, and while a lot of big names are included, very few of the stories are their acknowledged masterpieces. The uniform length and genre leads to a lot of repetition - a little setup, then a nasty surprise (the protagonists tend not to fare well in these stories). There’s a lot of filler, but some great stuff too - I need to get much better acquainted with Steve Rasnic Tem and Avram Davidson and Nancy Holder.
The Adventure of My Grandfather • (1824) • Washington Irving
The narrator’s grandfather stays at an inn in Bruges in a haunted room, with a ghostly musician and dancing furniture. Of the type of story in which there is no real resolution or conflict - he sees the haunt and that is that. 1/5
The Adventure of My Aunt • (1824) • Washington Irving
The narrator’s aunt, a widow, moves into a new mansion, in which a dastardly servant has hidden himself behind a portrait, intending to murder and rob her. Of the type of story plumbed so meticulously by Scooby Doo. Dialogue from the frame story is sometimes interspersed in the same tense and person as the story, which is quite jarring. 1/5
The Adventure of the German Student • (1824) • Washington Irving
A melancholic German student studying in Paris during the revolution makes the acquaintance of a beautiful guillotine victim. Although it’s an anti-Enlightenment tale at heart, it’s a more effective tale of creepiness than the prior two. As always, although it was also in Straub’s “American Fantastic Tales,” I liked it better here. 3/5
Ants • (1987) • Chet Williamson
A man mistreats ants, so the ants mistreat him. The antagonist (get it?) is compellingly sketched in a very short amount of time, although the ending is a bit goofy for my taste. 3/5
The Assembly of the Dead • (1990) • Chet Williamson
An American congressman visits an unnamed country to retrieve the body of one of his constituents. A shady character offers to return the body for a sum of money, but when the congressman sees it, he realizes only some of the body parts are from the man he is looking for. He goes through with the deal, but this causes him no small amount of existential dread. 4/5
At the Bureau • (1980) • Steve Rasnic Tem
An incredible Kafkaesque story of dead-end jobs and inhumane officescapes. Even if I don’t like any of the rest of the stories in this book, which seems unlikely, this one makes the whole thing worthwhile. 5/5
Babylon: 70 M. • (1963) • Donald A. Wollheim
Predicated on a coincidence too ridiculous to work - a scholar receives an ancient Babylonian urn to restore and research just as his neighbor is reading a Babylonian-related nursery rhyme to her child. Putting the two together, he stumbles into an ancient bit of magic. Very (M. R.) Jamesian, but not effectively so. 2/5
Berenice • (1835) • Edgar Allan Poe (variant of Berenice—A Tale)
Poe and I just don’t really get along - this pulls from his usual grab bag of tricks (being buried alive, a guilty conscience, mental illness and bizarre fixation on a beautiful woman), none of which do much for me, and his hysterical writing style continues to grate on me. 1/5
Beyond the Wall • (1907) • Ambrose Bierce
A man visits a childhood friend and finds him decrepit and living in the presence of a ghost who knocks on the outside of an upper story wall. The friend proceeds to fill the narrator in on the back story - the ghost is that of a woman who was once his neighbor, and they flirted by tapping on the wall separating their bedrooms. The narrator leaves and the friend dies. That’s it. 1/5
The Boarded Window • (1889) • Ambrose Bierce
The narrator recounts the folklore behind a local haunted cabin - seems that during Ohio’s frontier days, a man was preparing his wife’s body for burial when a panther put in an unexpected appearance. Actually uses a lot of the same themes as Poe, but without the irksome prose. 3/5
Boxes • (1982) • Al Sarrantonio
Two boys invade the home of a local hermit who collects boxes. One boy escapes, but the other doesn’t. Much is made of the contrast of the comforts of home and childhood with the creepy appeal of the collection of boxes. Vaguely reminiscent of both Bradbury and R. Campbell, but falls short of both, perhaps due largely to the fact that I fail to see the appeal (or menace) of a room full of boxes. 2/5
The Candidate • (1961) • Henry Slesar
A young executive engaged in a feud with an older colleague is contacted by a mysterious group that uses the collective willpower of its members to wish targets dead. His assumption that he’s a prospective client proves unfounded. 2/5
Cemetery Dance • (1992) • Richard T. Chizmar
Firmly in the Poe tradition - a young man believes himself to have received a note from a teenage girl he murdered years before, and kills himself on her grave thinking it will earn her forgiveness. Turns out he wrote the note himself. 1/5
The Certificate • (1959) • Avram Davidson
50 years after an alien invasion, a man navigates their bureaucracy in order to escape the only way he can. Wasn’t really expecting science fiction in this collection, but why not, I guess. I swear I’ve read this one before, although none of the places ISFDB has it appearing are familiar to me. 3/5
Cheapskate • (1987) • shortfiction by Gary L. Raisor
A boy, upset that his parents gave him a camera instead of roller skates for his birthday, uses said camera to take pictures of his dad fooling around with the babysitter, which he then uses to extort a pair of roller skates. The story closes with the rollerskating boy being pulled by the dad in the car, but he doesn’t think he can keep up for much longer… A modern conte cruel, this is not my thing at all. 1/5
The China Bowl • (1916) • E. F. Benson
What is the weird equivalent of a “cosy catastrophe” story? Whatever the phrase, this is is one - a man buys a house vacated by a widower, and the ghost of the wife helps bring her murderous husband to justice. The husband meets a gruesome end (accidentally…?) but otherwise this is all very staid and unremarkable. 2/5
The Cobweb • (1914) • Saki
The young wife of the new owner of a farm waits for the 90-something-year-old cook to die so that she can modernize the kitchen, only to find that death does not always come to the ones we expect. I certainly wouldn’t have described this as a horror story, although it’s certainly about the weight of the past and misplaced faith in the present. I think that all of the Saki stories that I’ve read have been a few pages long, did he write anything lengthier? 3/5
Come to the Party • (1983) • Frances Garfield
Four friends, lost while looking for a publisher’s party, end up at a creepy mansion that they assume to be the correct site, although no one they recognize is there and everything seems increasingly off-kilter. When one runs away, she stumbles onto the correct house, where she’s told the creepy mansion (home of some sort of human-sacrificing cultists) burned down years ago, and, indeed, there’s nothing there when she looks back. This one would not be out of place in a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collection - aside from a little bit of characterization, there’s little to no effort to set up anything other than the “shocking” ending, although the suffocating feeling of being at an unwelcoming party is captured effectively. 2/5
A Curious Dream • (1882) • Mark Twain
A curious dream in which the narrator sees a stream of skeletons cadavers vacating a nearby cemetery, which their descendents have allowed to lapse into disrepair. Folksy, not too serious, very Mark Twain. Does the presence of a talking cadaver immediately place something in the horror genre? I would say not. 2/5
Dark Wings • (1982) • Phyllis Eisenstein
An aging spinster, liberated by the recent deaths of her overbearing parents, takes advantage of her newfound freedom to try to paint a mysterious giant bird she sees at night on the beach. The bird eventually feeds her to its young. A relatively well-written story. 3/5
Dead Call • (1976) • William F. Nolan
A man takes a call from a dead friend, who talks him into joining this passive, relaxing state. Probably the highest ratio of ellipses to words that I have ever encountered. 3/5
Different Kinds of Dead • (1990) • Ed Gorman
Another one that could have come straight out of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark - a man picks up a mysterious, beautiful woman by the side of the road who turns out to be a ghost - but the barebones plot is used here to illustrate the similarities between death and a wasted, lonely life. Perfectly paired with the preceding story. 4/5
Displaced Person • (1948) • Eric Frank Russell
A man sits on a park bench, and an artistic-looking European immigrant joins him. They chat and we learn the displaced person is so because of his fomenting of a rebellion against a despot. Our narrator, a good American, agrees that tyrants bring it upon themselves. Turns out the foreigner is Lucifer. The devil as the first revolutionary is an old trope on the Left, but it is certainly a good one. 5/5
The Disintegration of Alan • (1985) • Melissa Mia Hall
An artist’s husband begins to mysteriously disintegrate one morning. The things we lose when a relationship ends refigured as weird. 3/5
Down by the Sea Near the Great Big Rock • (1984) • Joe R. Lansdale
A family vacations down by the sea near the great big rock - which turns out to be some sort of monster that incites and feeds on negative emotions. The family ends up slaughtering each other. A bit too focused on humans torturing and butchering each other for my taste. Lansdale is another icon of the field that just doesn’t speak to me. 2/5
Dragon Sunday • (1979) • Ruth Berman
You begin to see dragons infesting LA - are you crazy, or has no one else noticed because of the fog? More of a prose poem about the beauty of dragons than a story, but I do have a soft spot for writing in the 2nd person. 3/5
Duck Hunt • (1986) • Joe R. Lansdale
A rite of passage into manhood turns out to be much more brutal than expected. The male bonding ritual is skillfully skewered, although this one also basically boils down to human beings torturing each other. 3/5
The Dust • (1982) • Al Sarrantonio
Much like “Boxes,” this one hinges on childhood, but even less effectively so here: a developmentally-disabled (?) man, figuratively haunted by the time his childhood “friends” dumped dust all over him, is literally haunted by the dust in his home. I’m having a hard time putting my finger on exactly what didn’t work here, but work it did not. 1/5
The Evil Clergyman • (1939) • H. P. Lovecraft
Looked this one up after finishing it to see that it was an excerpt from a letter describing a dream, published posthumously as a story - and that’s how it reads. 1/5
Examination Day • (1958) • Henry Slesar
Exactly the sort of thing present in the Year’s Best anthologies that has killed my interest in science fiction. A boy, on his 12th birthday, goes to a government-mandated exam, but his level of intelligence has been outlawed, and he is killed. Somehow the boy (who reads more like a 5-year-old than a 12-year-old) has never heard of these tests before. 1/5
The Faceless Thing • (1963) • Edward D. Hoch
Mostly great - a very old man returns to his childhood home to confront the monster that killed his sister when they were young, only to find that old age is not an exclusively human malady. The fact that said “very old man” is actually only 60 kind of makes the message a little hard to swallow. 4/5
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar • (1845) • Edgar Allan Poe
I’ve read this one several times recently and, while it’s probably one of the Poes I’m most favorable toward, I didn’t feel the need to read it again at this point.
Feeding Time • (1955) • James E. Gunn
We are told right off the bat how beautiful our female protagonist is, which, in combination with the title, gave me a bad, bad feeling about where this was headed. That turned out to be ill-founded, though - instead, she just happens to have some sort of psychic connection with an alien in a zoo in the future that she tricks into eating psychiatrists. You heard me. 1/5
Feeding Time • (1953) • Robert Sheckley
A nerd finds a book on the care and feeding (virgins) of griffins. He assumes, of course, that that means female virgins, right up until the point that he is eaten by a griffin. Clever, Sheckley. In the broadest strokes, this story is identical to “Babylon: 70 M.” 3/5
The Final Quest • (1981) • poem by William F. Nolan
This sure is a poem.
Fish Night • (1982) • Joe R. Lansdale
Two salesman stranded in the desert encounter spectral, time-traveling fish from the world before humanity. The older one, longing to be a part of this simpler world, strips himself of everything modern to swim off through the air with them, but the younger one, with fillings in his teeth and a rod in his back, understands that this is his world. Shockingly, things don’t work out for the man floating off with the giant fish. I enjoyed this one thematically, and it was well-written (and wasn’t about people torturing one another!) but the image of a man swimming through the air is a bit too Disney for me. 3/5
The Four-Fingered Hand • (1911) • Barry Pain
The hereditary vision of a four-fingered hand that warns the men of the family when there’s danger afoot doesn’t take kindly to being ignored. 2/5
A Ghost Story • (1875) • Mark Twain
Starts off as a legitimately scary story, with a massive presence pulling the covers off of the narrator, blood dripping, chains being dragged about, and so on. Takes a turn when it’s revealed the the massive presence is the ghost of the Cardiff Giant and proceeds as a humorous Twain story. 3/5
Give Her Hell • (1969) • Donald A. Wollheim
Again, the story of humans torturing other humans - this time a man physically and emotionally abusing his wife and daughter. When they almost escape him, he makes a deal with the Devil, not realizing his wish for a second life would render him reincarnated as his own daughter - a hell of his own making. Not pleasant to read. 2/5
The Giveaway • (1981) • Steve Rasnic Tem
A childhood taunt (“if you’re bad, your dad’s going to give you away”) turns out to be true. After seeing her mother carried off (by some truly terrifying entities that strongly echo John Collier’s “Evening Primrose”), a daughter vows to herself never to upset her father again. A much better handling of the same thematic material as the preceding story. 4/5
The Glove • (1975) • Fritz Leiber
As good as a story about the sexual assault of a woman written by a man of his generation could be? This may sound like (or be) damning with faint praise. The supernatural elements are entirely different, but the emphasis on the community of an apartment building (and the exclusion of any other setting) is very reminiscent of Leiber’s later “Horrible Imaginings.” 3/5
The Grab • (1982) • Richard Laymon
A man takes an old college buddy (who is going through a cowboy phase) to a local redneck bar where the titular game is taking place - trying to grab a ring out of the mouth of a decapitated head kept in a jar. There’s a shocking surprise! 2/5
The Haunted Mill; or, The Ruined Home • (1891) • Jerome K. Jerome (variant of The Haunted Mill)
Starts with a bit of metafiction about ghost stories and Christmastime before moving on to the secondhand story of a man who buys a haunted mill and thinks the ghost therein must be trying to reveal some hidden treasure to him. This results in a ruined home. 3/5
He Kilt It with a Stick • (1968) • William F. Nolan
A man has a lifelong antagonistic relationship with cats. The cats get catastrophic revenge. 1/5
Heading Home • (1978) • Ramsey Campbell
A mad scientist awakens in his basement, having been assaulted and tossed down there by his wife’s lover. He crawls back upstairs to wreak his revenge. The twist ending is given away by the title. I expected better from Campbell. 2/5
The Hollow of the Three Hills • (1830) • Nathaniel Hawthorne
Starts off seeming like a story of a Weird Place, which has been sorely lacking in this collection, but ends up being instead about a witch showing a younger woman scenes with distant times and places until she dies. 1/5
The Hollow Man • (1991) • Norman Partridge
Some sort of parasitic reptilian monster replaces one human captive with another. A run-of-the-mill creature feature, but a well-written one, and I’d take that sort of thing over a contes cruel any day. 4/5
Holly, Don't Tell • (1979) • Juleen Brantingham
A girl is stuck with her awful shrew of a mother after her father leaves without saying goodbye. Her favorite keepsake of his is the trunk in which he kept his magic tricks, and in a somewhat bizarre twist a boy comes over intending to assault her and she tricks him into falling into the trunk, which turns to be a bottomless pit (where her father is also hiding). 3/5
The Hound • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1924) • H. P. Lovecraft
Very minor Lovecraft - two graverobbers bring a must unholy doom upon their own heads. 3/5
The Hour and the Man • (1894) • Robert Barr
A bandit is sentenced to death. Heavily prefigures some of Borges’ and Robbe-Grillet’s work. 4/5
The House at Evening • (1982) • Frances Garfield
A coven of vampiric ladies of the evening still inhabit a brothel in a neighborhood that has mostly died out. It’s still visited by the occasional college boy, though. 2/5
The Idea • (1971) • Barry N. Malzberg [as by K. M. O'Donnell ]
A TV man comes up with some sort of new idea for a pilot and ends up alienated from his family and on trial. I am confident enough in myself to admit that this one sailed right over my head, although I enjoyed reading it well enough. 3/5
Identity Crisis • (1982) • Thomas F. Monteleone
A man seeks revenge against his shady employer by killing the employer’s newborn infant. When he realizes none of the children in the maternity ward have nametags, an unpleasant solution presents itself. 1/5
In the Corn • (1982) • Robert Fox
A pseudonym for Al Sarrantonio - given away by the fact that it is, yet again, concerned with a traumatic childhood incident. A young man tells his doctor about the time his governess accidentally blinded him by dropping him on dried corn stalks when he was a child. Wrong, the doctor says, your brother did it on purpose and you have repressed the memory. Then it turns out the doctor is the brother and he’s back to finish the job. The gore is dwelled on incessantly. Totally nonsensical, this was perhaps my least favorite story in the book. 1/5
An Incident on Route 12 • (1962) • James H. Schmitz
With the lack of prefatory material, it’s kind of weird being thrown into each story with no idea when it was written, and I would have pegged this one as a decade or two prior to 1962. A bank robber waylays some passersby to steal their car, only to find they had already
Interview • (1963) • Frank A. Javor
A takedown of predatory, sensationalistic journalism as science fiction where the subject’s (a grieving mother) emotional response is artificially enhanced. 2/5
The Adventure of My Grandfather • (1824) • Washington Irving
The narrator’s grandfather stays at an inn in Bruges in a haunted room, with a ghostly musician and dancing furniture. Of the type of story in which there is no real resolution or conflict - he sees the haunt and that is that. 1/5
The Adventure of My Aunt • (1824) • Washington Irving
The narrator’s aunt, a widow, moves into a new mansion, in which a dastardly servant has hidden himself behind a portrait, intending to murder and rob her. Of the type of story plumbed so meticulously by Scooby Doo. Dialogue from the frame story is sometimes interspersed in the same tense and person as the story, which is quite jarring. 1/5
The Adventure of the German Student • (1824) • Washington Irving
A melancholic German student studying in Paris during the revolution makes the acquaintance of a beautiful guillotine victim. Although it’s an anti-Enlightenment tale at heart, it’s a more effective tale of creepiness than the prior two. As always, although it was also in Straub’s “American Fantastic Tales,” I liked it better here. 3/5
Ants • (1987) • Chet Williamson
A man mistreats ants, so the ants mistreat him. The antagonist (get it?) is compellingly sketched in a very short amount of time, although the ending is a bit goofy for my taste. 3/5
The Assembly of the Dead • (1990) • Chet Williamson
An American congressman visits an unnamed country to retrieve the body of one of his constituents. A shady character offers to return the body for a sum of money, but when the congressman sees it, he realizes only some of the body parts are from the man he is looking for. He goes through with the deal, but this causes him no small amount of existential dread. 4/5
At the Bureau • (1980) • Steve Rasnic Tem
An incredible Kafkaesque story of dead-end jobs and inhumane officescapes. Even if I don’t like any of the rest of the stories in this book, which seems unlikely, this one makes the whole thing worthwhile. 5/5
Babylon: 70 M. • (1963) • Donald A. Wollheim
Predicated on a coincidence too ridiculous to work - a scholar receives an ancient Babylonian urn to restore and research just as his neighbor is reading a Babylonian-related nursery rhyme to her child. Putting the two together, he stumbles into an ancient bit of magic. Very (M. R.) Jamesian, but not effectively so. 2/5
Berenice • (1835) • Edgar Allan Poe (variant of Berenice—A Tale)
Poe and I just don’t really get along - this pulls from his usual grab bag of tricks (being buried alive, a guilty conscience, mental illness and bizarre fixation on a beautiful woman), none of which do much for me, and his hysterical writing style continues to grate on me. 1/5
Beyond the Wall • (1907) • Ambrose Bierce
A man visits a childhood friend and finds him decrepit and living in the presence of a ghost who knocks on the outside of an upper story wall. The friend proceeds to fill the narrator in on the back story - the ghost is that of a woman who was once his neighbor, and they flirted by tapping on the wall separating their bedrooms. The narrator leaves and the friend dies. That’s it. 1/5
The Boarded Window • (1889) • Ambrose Bierce
The narrator recounts the folklore behind a local haunted cabin - seems that during Ohio’s frontier days, a man was preparing his wife’s body for burial when a panther put in an unexpected appearance. Actually uses a lot of the same themes as Poe, but without the irksome prose. 3/5
Boxes • (1982) • Al Sarrantonio
Two boys invade the home of a local hermit who collects boxes. One boy escapes, but the other doesn’t. Much is made of the contrast of the comforts of home and childhood with the creepy appeal of the collection of boxes. Vaguely reminiscent of both Bradbury and R. Campbell, but falls short of both, perhaps due largely to the fact that I fail to see the appeal (or menace) of a room full of boxes. 2/5
The Candidate • (1961) • Henry Slesar
A young executive engaged in a feud with an older colleague is contacted by a mysterious group that uses the collective willpower of its members to wish targets dead. His assumption that he’s a prospective client proves unfounded. 2/5
Cemetery Dance • (1992) • Richard T. Chizmar
Firmly in the Poe tradition - a young man believes himself to have received a note from a teenage girl he murdered years before, and kills himself on her grave thinking it will earn her forgiveness. Turns out he wrote the note himself. 1/5
The Certificate • (1959) • Avram Davidson
50 years after an alien invasion, a man navigates their bureaucracy in order to escape the only way he can. Wasn’t really expecting science fiction in this collection, but why not, I guess. I swear I’ve read this one before, although none of the places ISFDB has it appearing are familiar to me. 3/5
Cheapskate • (1987) • shortfiction by Gary L. Raisor
A boy, upset that his parents gave him a camera instead of roller skates for his birthday, uses said camera to take pictures of his dad fooling around with the babysitter, which he then uses to extort a pair of roller skates. The story closes with the rollerskating boy being pulled by the dad in the car, but he doesn’t think he can keep up for much longer… A modern conte cruel, this is not my thing at all. 1/5
The China Bowl • (1916) • E. F. Benson
What is the weird equivalent of a “cosy catastrophe” story? Whatever the phrase, this is is one - a man buys a house vacated by a widower, and the ghost of the wife helps bring her murderous husband to justice. The husband meets a gruesome end (accidentally…?) but otherwise this is all very staid and unremarkable. 2/5
The Cobweb • (1914) • Saki
The young wife of the new owner of a farm waits for the 90-something-year-old cook to die so that she can modernize the kitchen, only to find that death does not always come to the ones we expect. I certainly wouldn’t have described this as a horror story, although it’s certainly about the weight of the past and misplaced faith in the present. I think that all of the Saki stories that I’ve read have been a few pages long, did he write anything lengthier? 3/5
Come to the Party • (1983) • Frances Garfield
Four friends, lost while looking for a publisher’s party, end up at a creepy mansion that they assume to be the correct site, although no one they recognize is there and everything seems increasingly off-kilter. When one runs away, she stumbles onto the correct house, where she’s told the creepy mansion (home of some sort of human-sacrificing cultists) burned down years ago, and, indeed, there’s nothing there when she looks back. This one would not be out of place in a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collection - aside from a little bit of characterization, there’s little to no effort to set up anything other than the “shocking” ending, although the suffocating feeling of being at an unwelcoming party is captured effectively. 2/5
A Curious Dream • (1882) • Mark Twain
A curious dream in which the narrator sees a stream of skeletons cadavers vacating a nearby cemetery, which their descendents have allowed to lapse into disrepair. Folksy, not too serious, very Mark Twain. Does the presence of a talking cadaver immediately place something in the horror genre? I would say not. 2/5
Dark Wings • (1982) • Phyllis Eisenstein
An aging spinster, liberated by the recent deaths of her overbearing parents, takes advantage of her newfound freedom to try to paint a mysterious giant bird she sees at night on the beach. The bird eventually feeds her to its young. A relatively well-written story. 3/5
Dead Call • (1976) • William F. Nolan
A man takes a call from a dead friend, who talks him into joining this passive, relaxing state. Probably the highest ratio of ellipses to words that I have ever encountered. 3/5
Different Kinds of Dead • (1990) • Ed Gorman
Another one that could have come straight out of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark - a man picks up a mysterious, beautiful woman by the side of the road who turns out to be a ghost - but the barebones plot is used here to illustrate the similarities between death and a wasted, lonely life. Perfectly paired with the preceding story. 4/5
Displaced Person • (1948) • Eric Frank Russell
A man sits on a park bench, and an artistic-looking European immigrant joins him. They chat and we learn the displaced person is so because of his fomenting of a rebellion against a despot. Our narrator, a good American, agrees that tyrants bring it upon themselves. Turns out the foreigner is Lucifer. The devil as the first revolutionary is an old trope on the Left, but it is certainly a good one. 5/5
The Disintegration of Alan • (1985) • Melissa Mia Hall
An artist’s husband begins to mysteriously disintegrate one morning. The things we lose when a relationship ends refigured as weird. 3/5
Down by the Sea Near the Great Big Rock • (1984) • Joe R. Lansdale
A family vacations down by the sea near the great big rock - which turns out to be some sort of monster that incites and feeds on negative emotions. The family ends up slaughtering each other. A bit too focused on humans torturing and butchering each other for my taste. Lansdale is another icon of the field that just doesn’t speak to me. 2/5
Dragon Sunday • (1979) • Ruth Berman
You begin to see dragons infesting LA - are you crazy, or has no one else noticed because of the fog? More of a prose poem about the beauty of dragons than a story, but I do have a soft spot for writing in the 2nd person. 3/5
Duck Hunt • (1986) • Joe R. Lansdale
A rite of passage into manhood turns out to be much more brutal than expected. The male bonding ritual is skillfully skewered, although this one also basically boils down to human beings torturing each other. 3/5
The Dust • (1982) • Al Sarrantonio
Much like “Boxes,” this one hinges on childhood, but even less effectively so here: a developmentally-disabled (?) man, figuratively haunted by the time his childhood “friends” dumped dust all over him, is literally haunted by the dust in his home. I’m having a hard time putting my finger on exactly what didn’t work here, but work it did not. 1/5
The Evil Clergyman • (1939) • H. P. Lovecraft
Looked this one up after finishing it to see that it was an excerpt from a letter describing a dream, published posthumously as a story - and that’s how it reads. 1/5
Examination Day • (1958) • Henry Slesar
Exactly the sort of thing present in the Year’s Best anthologies that has killed my interest in science fiction. A boy, on his 12th birthday, goes to a government-mandated exam, but his level of intelligence has been outlawed, and he is killed. Somehow the boy (who reads more like a 5-year-old than a 12-year-old) has never heard of these tests before. 1/5
The Faceless Thing • (1963) • Edward D. Hoch
Mostly great - a very old man returns to his childhood home to confront the monster that killed his sister when they were young, only to find that old age is not an exclusively human malady. The fact that said “very old man” is actually only 60 kind of makes the message a little hard to swallow. 4/5
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar • (1845) • Edgar Allan Poe
I’ve read this one several times recently and, while it’s probably one of the Poes I’m most favorable toward, I didn’t feel the need to read it again at this point.
Feeding Time • (1955) • James E. Gunn
We are told right off the bat how beautiful our female protagonist is, which, in combination with the title, gave me a bad, bad feeling about where this was headed. That turned out to be ill-founded, though - instead, she just happens to have some sort of psychic connection with an alien in a zoo in the future that she tricks into eating psychiatrists. You heard me. 1/5
Feeding Time • (1953) • Robert Sheckley
A nerd finds a book on the care and feeding (virgins) of griffins. He assumes, of course, that that means female virgins, right up until the point that he is eaten by a griffin. Clever, Sheckley. In the broadest strokes, this story is identical to “Babylon: 70 M.” 3/5
The Final Quest • (1981) • poem by William F. Nolan
This sure is a poem.
Fish Night • (1982) • Joe R. Lansdale
Two salesman stranded in the desert encounter spectral, time-traveling fish from the world before humanity. The older one, longing to be a part of this simpler world, strips himself of everything modern to swim off through the air with them, but the younger one, with fillings in his teeth and a rod in his back, understands that this is his world. Shockingly, things don’t work out for the man floating off with the giant fish. I enjoyed this one thematically, and it was well-written (and wasn’t about people torturing one another!) but the image of a man swimming through the air is a bit too Disney for me. 3/5
The Four-Fingered Hand • (1911) • Barry Pain
The hereditary vision of a four-fingered hand that warns the men of the family when there’s danger afoot doesn’t take kindly to being ignored. 2/5
A Ghost Story • (1875) • Mark Twain
Starts off as a legitimately scary story, with a massive presence pulling the covers off of the narrator, blood dripping, chains being dragged about, and so on. Takes a turn when it’s revealed the the massive presence is the ghost of the Cardiff Giant and proceeds as a humorous Twain story. 3/5
Give Her Hell • (1969) • Donald A. Wollheim
Again, the story of humans torturing other humans - this time a man physically and emotionally abusing his wife and daughter. When they almost escape him, he makes a deal with the Devil, not realizing his wish for a second life would render him reincarnated as his own daughter - a hell of his own making. Not pleasant to read. 2/5
The Giveaway • (1981) • Steve Rasnic Tem
A childhood taunt (“if you’re bad, your dad’s going to give you away”) turns out to be true. After seeing her mother carried off (by some truly terrifying entities that strongly echo John Collier’s “Evening Primrose”), a daughter vows to herself never to upset her father again. A much better handling of the same thematic material as the preceding story. 4/5
The Glove • (1975) • Fritz Leiber
As good as a story about the sexual assault of a woman written by a man of his generation could be? This may sound like (or be) damning with faint praise. The supernatural elements are entirely different, but the emphasis on the community of an apartment building (and the exclusion of any other setting) is very reminiscent of Leiber’s later “Horrible Imaginings.” 3/5
The Grab • (1982) • Richard Laymon
A man takes an old college buddy (who is going through a cowboy phase) to a local redneck bar where the titular game is taking place - trying to grab a ring out of the mouth of a decapitated head kept in a jar. There’s a shocking surprise! 2/5
The Haunted Mill; or, The Ruined Home • (1891) • Jerome K. Jerome (variant of The Haunted Mill)
Starts with a bit of metafiction about ghost stories and Christmastime before moving on to the secondhand story of a man who buys a haunted mill and thinks the ghost therein must be trying to reveal some hidden treasure to him. This results in a ruined home. 3/5
He Kilt It with a Stick • (1968) • William F. Nolan
A man has a lifelong antagonistic relationship with cats. The cats get catastrophic revenge. 1/5
Heading Home • (1978) • Ramsey Campbell
A mad scientist awakens in his basement, having been assaulted and tossed down there by his wife’s lover. He crawls back upstairs to wreak his revenge. The twist ending is given away by the title. I expected better from Campbell. 2/5
The Hollow of the Three Hills • (1830) • Nathaniel Hawthorne
Starts off seeming like a story of a Weird Place, which has been sorely lacking in this collection, but ends up being instead about a witch showing a younger woman scenes with distant times and places until she dies. 1/5
The Hollow Man • (1991) • Norman Partridge
Some sort of parasitic reptilian monster replaces one human captive with another. A run-of-the-mill creature feature, but a well-written one, and I’d take that sort of thing over a contes cruel any day. 4/5
Holly, Don't Tell • (1979) • Juleen Brantingham
A girl is stuck with her awful shrew of a mother after her father leaves without saying goodbye. Her favorite keepsake of his is the trunk in which he kept his magic tricks, and in a somewhat bizarre twist a boy comes over intending to assault her and she tricks him into falling into the trunk, which turns to be a bottomless pit (where her father is also hiding). 3/5
The Hound • [Cthulhu Mythos] • (1924) • H. P. Lovecraft
Very minor Lovecraft - two graverobbers bring a must unholy doom upon their own heads. 3/5
The Hour and the Man • (1894) • Robert Barr
A bandit is sentenced to death. Heavily prefigures some of Borges’ and Robbe-Grillet’s work. 4/5
The House at Evening • (1982) • Frances Garfield
A coven of vampiric ladies of the evening still inhabit a brothel in a neighborhood that has mostly died out. It’s still visited by the occasional college boy, though. 2/5
The Idea • (1971) • Barry N. Malzberg [as by K. M. O'Donnell ]
A TV man comes up with some sort of new idea for a pilot and ends up alienated from his family and on trial. I am confident enough in myself to admit that this one sailed right over my head, although I enjoyed reading it well enough. 3/5
Identity Crisis • (1982) • Thomas F. Monteleone
A man seeks revenge against his shady employer by killing the employer’s newborn infant. When he realizes none of the children in the maternity ward have nametags, an unpleasant solution presents itself. 1/5
In the Corn • (1982) • Robert Fox
A pseudonym for Al Sarrantonio - given away by the fact that it is, yet again, concerned with a traumatic childhood incident. A young man tells his doctor about the time his governess accidentally blinded him by dropping him on dried corn stalks when he was a child. Wrong, the doctor says, your brother did it on purpose and you have repressed the memory. Then it turns out the doctor is the brother and he’s back to finish the job. The gore is dwelled on incessantly. Totally nonsensical, this was perhaps my least favorite story in the book. 1/5
An Incident on Route 12 • (1962) • James H. Schmitz
With the lack of prefatory material, it’s kind of weird being thrown into each story with no idea when it was written, and I would have pegged this one as a decade or two prior to 1962. A bank robber waylays some passersby to steal their car, only to find they had already
Interview • (1963) • Frank A. Javor
A takedown of predatory, sensationalistic journalism as science fiction where the subject’s (a grieving mother) emotional response is artificially enhanced. 2/5
leilaniann's review against another edition
4.0
I love short story collections for airplane rides, and this one did not disappoint! It entertained me for many hours.
innae's review
A short little review on each story in the book -
1. The Adventure of My Grandfather by Washington Irving: (ghosts) 3/12/08 - Well, the writing is ancient, and truthfully a little confusing...some of it is story telling, and then the listener interjects, and well, sometimes it was confusing.
And really, not much of a horror story...the furniture dances. Not scary at all, not even to "grandfather" who tried to dance with the clothes press. eh
2. The Adventure of My Aunt by Washington Irving: (no category) 3/13/08 - I think I have decided that I don't need to hunt down any Irving stories, because UG. I so do not like his writing style. And this one was another NOT horror story. It ends
up being an intruder, not a ghost. UG. really not impressed with this anthology yet.
3. The Adventure of the German Student by Washington Irving: (ghost/evil spirit) 3/14/08 - PLEASE let this be the last Irving tale...please!!! This one was more along the lines of what I think of for horror stories. I figured it out long before
we got to the end, but I think it is a technique that is over used now, but when Irving wrote it, perhaps not. The best tale of the anthology so far.
4. Ants by Chet Williamson: (Gaia's Revenge) 3/15/08 - YEAH!!! A true horror story, that still has me itching. This is how a short short story should be. Just, wow!! and beware the ANTS.....And now this one is the best tale so far!!
5. The Assembly of the Dead by Chet Williamson: (?) 07/03/08 - I don't think i understood this one...no, scratch that, i am SURE i didn't understand this one. It is quite....odd.
6. At the Bureau by Steve Rasnic Tem: (?) 09/24/08 - an odd little tale, where you really don't "get" what is happening until the end, and even then....
7. Babylon: 70 M. by Donald A. Wollheim: (monsters) 09/24/08 - Liked this one, gave a little laugh at the end, because if you pay attention, you know how it must end.
8. Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe: (teeth?) 10/9/08 - Edgar was a sick man, but also a genius. A tale about being obsessed with his fiance's teeth.
9. Beyond the Wall by Ambrose Bierce: (love lost) 10/9/08 - not so much a horror tale as a sad tale, of a love lost, but perhaps regained.
10. The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce: (love lost) 10/9/08 - I am sensing a theme to Mr. Bierce's work. Again, not so much horror, although there is a bit of the element. It is about a man who goes mad after the loss of his wife, although she may not have been as dead as he thought.
11. Boxes by Al Sarrantonio: (?) 11/27/09 - A story of two boys off for an adventure (ala The Body by Stephen King) -- only, things don't go exactly as they expected, although it is left much to your imagination on how it all ends and on who or what exactly is "The Man who collects boxes"
12. The Canidate by Henry Slesar: (voodoo) 11/27/09 - I saw the idea of the ending coming, but not how they put it together. I quite like the idea of wishing someone dead (not actually to do it, but in my religion, if you put something out there, it can come true -- the more people you have behind the thought means it is more likely to become truth), as this tale falls into what my beliefs are. Nice story.
13. Cemetery Dance by Richard T. Chizmar: (?) 07/01/10 - A sad tale of a stalking murder and the murderer's suicide. Delusion can take us many places, even into death.
14. The Certificate by Avram Davidson: (aliens) 07/01/2010 - another sad tale, in a world where no one is allowed to die (or get a new overcoat), what would you do to escape? Apply to die of course.
15. Cheapskate by Gary Raisor: (family issues) 7/6/2010 - You have to actually turn the page to get the zinger (nice how they arranged that in the book) -- and wow..nice story. a bit darker than some of the other ones, but...nice. I am going to remember to not ask for roller skates for my birthday.
16. The China Bowl by E.F. Benson: (ghost) 08/19/10 - a nicely told ghost story. Not overly horror, except for the last line :-)
17 . 04/21/2011 The Cobweb by Saki...a little tale about being careful what you wish for..death doesn't always come for the old.
18. 04/26/2011 Come to the Party by Frances Garfield - a nice little haunted house story..i liked this one
19. 01/04/2013 A Curious Dream by Mark Twain .. A little too whiny..no wonder I didn't comment on this before, quite a forgetable tale
20. 05/10/2011 Dark Wings by Phyllis Eisenstein...a beautifully written tale full of imagery, became real horror in the last sentence.
21. 05/10/2011 Dead Call by William F. Nolan...a creepy ghost story. I quite liked it. Hey, isn't that you're phone ringing?
22. 05/10/2011 Different Kinds of Dead by Ed Gorman...1991, I expected this story to be older as it is relatively recent it is just the retelling of a hitchhiker story. I would have been more impressed had it been 40 years older.
23. 01/07/2013 Displaced Person by Eric Frank Russell odd that I missed this story, I believe I missed it as after reading it I think it would have stuck with me. Not quite horror, even if it does have Lucifer, in fact a little sad
24. 05/10/2011 The Disintegration of Alan by Melissa Mia Hall...an interesting story I didn't fully understand.
25. 06/23/2011 Down by the Sea near the Great Big Rock by Joe R. Lansdale ... I have long thought Lansdale was whacked, this story did not change my mind. Entertaining little tale.
26. 6/23/2011 Dragon Sunday by Ruth Berman..weird story. About being off your meds possibly? Or maybe ON your "meds".
27. 09/01/2011 Duck Hunt by Joe R. Lansdale .. sick and wrong and disturbing...a lovely addition to this collection
28. 09/01/2011 The Dust by Al Sarrantonio .. loved this tale about what the dust can do. My favorite story thus far.
29. 09/01/2011 The Evil Clergyman by H.P. Lovecraft .. eh. Not all that impressed though the language was lovely
30. 09/19/2011 Examination Day by Henry Slesar ..not what I expected, the sign of a great horror story -when it surprises you in a slightly scary way
31. 09/19/2011 The Faceless Thing by Edward D. Hoch..anti-climatic. Not all that exciting of a tale. In fact, a rather boring tale about getting older
32. 12/31/2011 The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan Poe..there is a reason he is considered such a great horror writer, this is one of his lesser known tales but is super creepy
33. 01/27/2012 Feeding Time by James Gunn..i saw the ending before it happened, but still a cute story
34. 01/27/2012 Feeding Time by Robert Sheckley..again I saw it coming, but enjoyed the story anyway. Interesting to read two stories about essentially the same thing, but told so differently.
35. 01/27/2012 The Final Quest by William F. Nolan ..a poem about King Arthur's final battle, with Death
36. Fish Night by Joe R. Lansdale..no idea when I read this odd tale about parallel universes..an odd tale by an odd man
37. The Four-Fingered Hand by Barry Pain..no idea when I read this story...a poker story and a premonition tale. It was okay
38. 12/25/2012 A Ghost Story by Mark Twain.as would be expected this ghost story is more humorous than horror..cute though
39. 12/31/2012 Give Her Hell by Donald A. Wollheim .. A story proving that one should not trust the Devil
40. 12/31/2012 The Giveaway by Steve Rasnic Tem..a creepy story with some psychological marital abuse
41. 12/31/2012 The Glove by Fritz Leiber..eh. An okay story of a ghostly glove
42. 01/01/2013 The Grab by Richard Laymon...cute and horrible. Gotta love Laymon
43. 01/11/2013 The Haunted Mill or the Ruined Home by Jerome K. Jerome...this story had zero purpose, no resolution, no ending, just dumb
44. 2/1/13 He Kilt It with a Stick by William F. Nolan disturbing tale
45. 2/22/13 Heading Home by Ramsey Campbell ... HEADing Home indeed, tale of a mad scientist, who while mad is not dumb
46. 2/22/13 The Hollow of the Three Hills by Nathaniel Hawthorne...old. Writing style not to my liking. Okay story about an evil witch
47. 5/2/13 The Hollow Man by Norman Partridge..just weird, I didn't understand this one at all
48. 5/2/13 Holly, Don't Tell by Juleen Brantingham .. Who doesn't love creepy kids with a secret? Done a little differently though. Not a favorite, but not bad
49. 5/14/13 The Hound by H.P. Lovecraft ... hmmm, I really got into the creepiness of this story, and I can't say it disappointed. Makes me want to read more Lovecraft :-)
50. 5/14/13 The Hour and the Man by Robert Barr ... not really sure this was a true horror novel, was a bit more of a irony story I think. Something not expected. I am not sure giving someone hope is torture, but maybe it is....
51. 06/04/13 The House at Evening by Frances Garfield ... I saw something coming, and although I didn't figure out exactly what, this was still a pretty predictable tale
52. 06/04/13 The Idea by Barry N. Malzberg .. HUH? I read it twice and still don't get it
53. 02/28/14 Identity Crisis by Thomas F. Monteleone - way disturbing. I guess when it is babies taking the brunt of the horror it makes it more disturbing for me
54. 02/28/14 In the Corn by Robert Fox - after the story got going, you knew how it was going to end, still a great story.
55. 02/28/14 An Incident on Route 12 by James H. Schmitz - alien story. Not quite an abduction.
56. 03/10/14 Interview by Frank A Javor - creepy, interesting to have a disclaimer on an interview
57. 01/07/15 The Jam by Henry Slesar - a nice little tale of Hell...an eternal traffic jam
58. 01/09/15 The Kirk Spook by E. G. Swain - just a ghost story..I was expecting something more when the story just ended
59. 01/12/15 Making Friends by Gary Raisor - wowza...I felt the horror creeping over me as I realized where this little short piece of terror was going. A fantastic short (2 pages) story. My favorite of the book so far.
60. The Marble Hands by Bernard Capes - not sure when I read this one...a story about imagination...or is it??
61. Mariana by Fritz Leiber - what would you do if you found out you were just an illusion. Created by someone, and easily turned on, or off, at their whim?
62. (05/15/15) Masque by Ed Gorman - a lot is left to your imagination, but it is a story of what a mom will do for her child...
63. (05/15/15) The Middle Toe of the Right Foot by Ambrose Bierce - classic ghost story...includes a spooky house, and the reveal at the end.
64. (07/11/15) Moving Night by Nancy Holder - creepy because for most of the story you are not sure what has happened, even at the end you are not sure...
65. (07/11/15) Naples by Avram Davidson - eh. I was not a fan of the writing style, so I admit I skipped bits and pieces which may have made the story not make sense to me
66. (07/12/15) Night Visions by Jack Dann - what if you wanted to kill yourself, but technology wouldn't let you? interesting premise.
67. (07/12/15) Night Deposits by Chet Williamson - really just sad. a story of how mistakes never really let you go
68. (07/13/15) Nightshapes by Barry N. Malzberg..weird werewolf story. Not a fan
69. (07/14/15) No. 1 Branch Line, The Signalman by Charles Dickens - I remember listening to an audio version of "The Signalman", good story, creepy
70. (07/14/15) The Old Black Hat by Gary Raisor - the hat DOES NOT belong to Frosty
71. (07/22/15) Out of the Storm by William Hope Hodgson - an okay story. You wonder was it the storm or was it really a THING??
72. (07/22/15) Out of Africa by David Drake - I liked this story well enough. A tale of hunting, and really catching "the one"
73. (08/05/15) The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe - truly a short story at three pages. Good for what it was
74. (8/05/15) Party Time by Mort Castle - creepy. Happy Food indeed. (I get that our narrator is a circus geek...but is kept in the basement and is only brought out for parties)
75. The Passenger by E.F. Benson (090715) - a bit of a ghost story..where the ghost is still around because of unfinished business
76. Peekaboo by Bill Pronzini (091015) - so good!! Maybe struck me as better than usual because I just read a bunch of two sentence horror stories, and this one a similar feel (even tho it was longer than two sentences )
77. The Pitch by Dennis Etchison (9/11) - a bit like "Making Friends" without the caring. Was a good story, not a great one
78. The Poor by Steve Rasnic Tem (9/14) - the nightmare of a social worker
79. The Rag Thing by Donald A. Wollheim (9/16) seems several shorts I have read lately have left the ending a bit ambiguous. Really, it makes it scarier when your imagination takes over
80. Rendezvous by Daniel Ransom (9/16) this one is another ambiguous one...and a little to true to life for me
81. The Same Old Grind by Bill Pronzini (9/17) horror like Sweeny Todd
82. The Skeleton by Jerome K. Jerome (9/17) just a ghost story... Where the ghost embodied his own skeleton
83. Something There Is by Charles L. Grant (9/22) - a writer anxiously awaiting a muse...though it is a case of be careful what you wish for
84. Spring-Fingered Jack by Susan Caspar (9/23) - what an interesting concept about today's world (1983). Practicing in real-life to win the video game. Creepy.
85. Sredni Vashtar by Saki (090115) - not sure exactly when I read this, but it is part of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories they wouldn't let me do on TV collection I am reading in the month of September - I have never liked ferrets and their like. This story just reinforces that feeling.
86. The Statement of Randolph Carter by H. P. Lovecraft (9/24) a creepy tale...two friends enter the swamp, but only one returns
87. The Story of Muhammad Din by Rudyard Kipling (9/24) a horror story in that this world is horrible, maybe too much truth.
88. The Thing in the Forest by Bernard Capes (9/25) a bit of the your salvation is also your doom feeling
89. Threshold by Sharon Webb (9/29) at what point do animals become human...how much do we want to teach them?
90. Today's Special by Dennis Etchison (9/30) frustration with coworkers could lead anyone to cannibalism, right?
91. Topsy by F. Paul Wilson (10/1) a mental patient tale, an okay story
92. Toy by Bill Pronzini (10/2) sci Fi horror ... What happens when you play with unknown
93. Transfer by Barry N. Malzberg (10/3) a bit of Dr Jeckyll in this tale of murder
94. Treats by Norman Partridge (10/5) just creepy.
95. Under My Bed by Al Sarrantonio (10/6) a good story about a "monster" protecting an abused boy...also a bit creepy
96. Up Under the Roof by Manly Wade Wellman (10/7) a story that encourages one to face their fears
97. The Upturned Face by Stephen Crane (10/8) more creepy as you think about it, but the story was just a story
98. We Have Always Lived in the Forest by Nancy Holder (10/9) surprise. I actually gasped as I read this story. I am not sure completely how to take it, but it did have that moment of pure horror for me
99. Where Did She Wander? by Manly Wade Wellman (10/9) an interesting twist on the ghost story
100. Witness by Avram Davidson - another one with a nice twist. something I could see being done on Twilight Zone back when. I don't think it would hold much surprise for the jaded world of today
I can't believe I am finally done with this book. It feels like it has been hanging around waiting for years (oh wait...it has).
1. The Adventure of My Grandfather by Washington Irving: (ghosts) 3/12/08 - Well, the writing is ancient, and truthfully a little confusing...some of it is story telling, and then the listener interjects, and well, sometimes it was confusing.
And really, not much of a horror story...the furniture dances. Not scary at all, not even to "grandfather" who tried to dance with the clothes press. eh
2. The Adventure of My Aunt by Washington Irving: (no category) 3/13/08 - I think I have decided that I don't need to hunt down any Irving stories, because UG. I so do not like his writing style. And this one was another NOT horror story. It ends
up being an intruder, not a ghost. UG. really not impressed with this anthology yet.
3. The Adventure of the German Student by Washington Irving: (ghost/evil spirit) 3/14/08 - PLEASE let this be the last Irving tale...please!!! This one was more along the lines of what I think of for horror stories. I figured it out long before
we got to the end, but I think it is a technique that is over used now, but when Irving wrote it, perhaps not. The best tale of the anthology so far.
4. Ants by Chet Williamson: (Gaia's Revenge) 3/15/08 - YEAH!!! A true horror story, that still has me itching. This is how a short short story should be. Just, wow!! and beware the ANTS.....And now this one is the best tale so far!!
5. The Assembly of the Dead by Chet Williamson: (?) 07/03/08 - I don't think i understood this one...no, scratch that, i am SURE i didn't understand this one. It is quite....odd.
6. At the Bureau by Steve Rasnic Tem: (?) 09/24/08 - an odd little tale, where you really don't "get" what is happening until the end, and even then....
7. Babylon: 70 M. by Donald A. Wollheim: (monsters) 09/24/08 - Liked this one, gave a little laugh at the end, because if you pay attention, you know how it must end.
8. Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe: (teeth?) 10/9/08 - Edgar was a sick man, but also a genius. A tale about being obsessed with his fiance's teeth.
9. Beyond the Wall by Ambrose Bierce: (love lost) 10/9/08 - not so much a horror tale as a sad tale, of a love lost, but perhaps regained.
10. The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce: (love lost) 10/9/08 - I am sensing a theme to Mr. Bierce's work. Again, not so much horror, although there is a bit of the element. It is about a man who goes mad after the loss of his wife, although she may not have been as dead as he thought.
11. Boxes by Al Sarrantonio: (?) 11/27/09 - A story of two boys off for an adventure (ala The Body by Stephen King) -- only, things don't go exactly as they expected, although it is left much to your imagination on how it all ends and on who or what exactly is "The Man who collects boxes"
12. The Canidate by Henry Slesar: (voodoo) 11/27/09 - I saw the idea of the ending coming, but not how they put it together. I quite like the idea of wishing someone dead (not actually to do it, but in my religion, if you put something out there, it can come true -- the more people you have behind the thought means it is more likely to become truth), as this tale falls into what my beliefs are. Nice story.
13. Cemetery Dance by Richard T. Chizmar: (?) 07/01/10 - A sad tale of a stalking murder and the murderer's suicide. Delusion can take us many places, even into death.
14. The Certificate by Avram Davidson: (aliens) 07/01/2010 - another sad tale, in a world where no one is allowed to die (or get a new overcoat), what would you do to escape? Apply to die of course.
15. Cheapskate by Gary Raisor: (family issues) 7/6/2010 - You have to actually turn the page to get the zinger (nice how they arranged that in the book) -- and wow..nice story. a bit darker than some of the other ones, but...nice. I am going to remember to not ask for roller skates for my birthday.
16. The China Bowl by E.F. Benson: (ghost) 08/19/10 - a nicely told ghost story. Not overly horror, except for the last line :-)
17 . 04/21/2011 The Cobweb by Saki...a little tale about being careful what you wish for..death doesn't always come for the old.
18. 04/26/2011 Come to the Party by Frances Garfield - a nice little haunted house story..i liked this one
19. 01/04/2013 A Curious Dream by Mark Twain .. A little too whiny..no wonder I didn't comment on this before, quite a forgetable tale
20. 05/10/2011 Dark Wings by Phyllis Eisenstein...a beautifully written tale full of imagery, became real horror in the last sentence.
21. 05/10/2011 Dead Call by William F. Nolan...a creepy ghost story. I quite liked it. Hey, isn't that you're phone ringing?
22. 05/10/2011 Different Kinds of Dead by Ed Gorman...1991, I expected this story to be older as it is relatively recent it is just the retelling of a hitchhiker story. I would have been more impressed had it been 40 years older.
23. 01/07/2013 Displaced Person by Eric Frank Russell odd that I missed this story, I believe I missed it as after reading it I think it would have stuck with me. Not quite horror, even if it does have Lucifer, in fact a little sad
24. 05/10/2011 The Disintegration of Alan by Melissa Mia Hall...an interesting story I didn't fully understand.
25. 06/23/2011 Down by the Sea near the Great Big Rock by Joe R. Lansdale ... I have long thought Lansdale was whacked, this story did not change my mind. Entertaining little tale.
26. 6/23/2011 Dragon Sunday by Ruth Berman..weird story. About being off your meds possibly? Or maybe ON your "meds".
27. 09/01/2011 Duck Hunt by Joe R. Lansdale .. sick and wrong and disturbing...a lovely addition to this collection
28. 09/01/2011 The Dust by Al Sarrantonio .. loved this tale about what the dust can do. My favorite story thus far.
29. 09/01/2011 The Evil Clergyman by H.P. Lovecraft .. eh. Not all that impressed though the language was lovely
30. 09/19/2011 Examination Day by Henry Slesar ..not what I expected, the sign of a great horror story -when it surprises you in a slightly scary way
31. 09/19/2011 The Faceless Thing by Edward D. Hoch..anti-climatic. Not all that exciting of a tale. In fact, a rather boring tale about getting older
32. 12/31/2011 The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan Poe..there is a reason he is considered such a great horror writer, this is one of his lesser known tales but is super creepy
33. 01/27/2012 Feeding Time by James Gunn..i saw the ending before it happened, but still a cute story
34. 01/27/2012 Feeding Time by Robert Sheckley..again I saw it coming, but enjoyed the story anyway. Interesting to read two stories about essentially the same thing, but told so differently.
35. 01/27/2012 The Final Quest by William F. Nolan ..a poem about King Arthur's final battle, with Death
36. Fish Night by Joe R. Lansdale..no idea when I read this odd tale about parallel universes..an odd tale by an odd man
37. The Four-Fingered Hand by Barry Pain..no idea when I read this story...a poker story and a premonition tale. It was okay
38. 12/25/2012 A Ghost Story by Mark Twain.as would be expected this ghost story is more humorous than horror..cute though
39. 12/31/2012 Give Her Hell by Donald A. Wollheim .. A story proving that one should not trust the Devil
40. 12/31/2012 The Giveaway by Steve Rasnic Tem..a creepy story with some psychological marital abuse
41. 12/31/2012 The Glove by Fritz Leiber..eh. An okay story of a ghostly glove
42. 01/01/2013 The Grab by Richard Laymon...cute and horrible. Gotta love Laymon
43. 01/11/2013 The Haunted Mill or the Ruined Home by Jerome K. Jerome...this story had zero purpose, no resolution, no ending, just dumb
44. 2/1/13 He Kilt It with a Stick by William F. Nolan disturbing tale
45. 2/22/13 Heading Home by Ramsey Campbell ... HEADing Home indeed, tale of a mad scientist, who while mad is not dumb
46. 2/22/13 The Hollow of the Three Hills by Nathaniel Hawthorne...old. Writing style not to my liking. Okay story about an evil witch
47. 5/2/13 The Hollow Man by Norman Partridge..just weird, I didn't understand this one at all
48. 5/2/13 Holly, Don't Tell by Juleen Brantingham .. Who doesn't love creepy kids with a secret? Done a little differently though. Not a favorite, but not bad
49. 5/14/13 The Hound by H.P. Lovecraft ... hmmm, I really got into the creepiness of this story, and I can't say it disappointed. Makes me want to read more Lovecraft :-)
50. 5/14/13 The Hour and the Man by Robert Barr ... not really sure this was a true horror novel, was a bit more of a irony story I think. Something not expected. I am not sure giving someone hope is torture, but maybe it is....
51. 06/04/13 The House at Evening by Frances Garfield ... I saw something coming, and although I didn't figure out exactly what, this was still a pretty predictable tale
52. 06/04/13 The Idea by Barry N. Malzberg .. HUH? I read it twice and still don't get it
53. 02/28/14 Identity Crisis by Thomas F. Monteleone - way disturbing. I guess when it is babies taking the brunt of the horror it makes it more disturbing for me
54. 02/28/14 In the Corn by Robert Fox - after the story got going, you knew how it was going to end, still a great story.
55. 02/28/14 An Incident on Route 12 by James H. Schmitz - alien story. Not quite an abduction.
56. 03/10/14 Interview by Frank A Javor - creepy, interesting to have a disclaimer on an interview
57. 01/07/15 The Jam by Henry Slesar - a nice little tale of Hell...an eternal traffic jam
58. 01/09/15 The Kirk Spook by E. G. Swain - just a ghost story..I was expecting something more when the story just ended
59. 01/12/15 Making Friends by Gary Raisor - wowza...I felt the horror creeping over me as I realized where this little short piece of terror was going. A fantastic short (2 pages) story. My favorite of the book so far.
60. The Marble Hands by Bernard Capes - not sure when I read this one...a story about imagination...or is it??
61. Mariana by Fritz Leiber - what would you do if you found out you were just an illusion. Created by someone, and easily turned on, or off, at their whim?
62. (05/15/15) Masque by Ed Gorman - a lot is left to your imagination, but it is a story of what a mom will do for her child...
63. (05/15/15) The Middle Toe of the Right Foot by Ambrose Bierce - classic ghost story...includes a spooky house, and the reveal at the end.
64. (07/11/15) Moving Night by Nancy Holder - creepy because for most of the story you are not sure what has happened, even at the end you are not sure...
65. (07/11/15) Naples by Avram Davidson - eh. I was not a fan of the writing style, so I admit I skipped bits and pieces which may have made the story not make sense to me
66. (07/12/15) Night Visions by Jack Dann - what if you wanted to kill yourself, but technology wouldn't let you? interesting premise.
67. (07/12/15) Night Deposits by Chet Williamson - really just sad. a story of how mistakes never really let you go
68. (07/13/15) Nightshapes by Barry N. Malzberg..weird werewolf story. Not a fan
69. (07/14/15) No. 1 Branch Line, The Signalman by Charles Dickens - I remember listening to an audio version of "The Signalman", good story, creepy
70. (07/14/15) The Old Black Hat by Gary Raisor - the hat DOES NOT belong to Frosty
71. (07/22/15) Out of the Storm by William Hope Hodgson - an okay story. You wonder was it the storm or was it really a THING??
72. (07/22/15) Out of Africa by David Drake - I liked this story well enough. A tale of hunting, and really catching "the one"
73. (08/05/15) The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe - truly a short story at three pages. Good for what it was
74. (8/05/15) Party Time by Mort Castle - creepy. Happy Food indeed. (I get that our narrator is a circus geek...but is kept in the basement and is only brought out for parties)
75. The Passenger by E.F. Benson (090715) - a bit of a ghost story..where the ghost is still around because of unfinished business
76. Peekaboo by Bill Pronzini (091015) - so good!! Maybe struck me as better than usual because I just read a bunch of two sentence horror stories, and this one a similar feel (even tho it was longer than two sentences )
77. The Pitch by Dennis Etchison (9/11) - a bit like "Making Friends" without the caring. Was a good story, not a great one
78. The Poor by Steve Rasnic Tem (9/14) - the nightmare of a social worker
79. The Rag Thing by Donald A. Wollheim (9/16) seems several shorts I have read lately have left the ending a bit ambiguous. Really, it makes it scarier when your imagination takes over
80. Rendezvous by Daniel Ransom (9/16) this one is another ambiguous one...and a little to true to life for me
81. The Same Old Grind by Bill Pronzini (9/17) horror like Sweeny Todd
82. The Skeleton by Jerome K. Jerome (9/17) just a ghost story... Where the ghost embodied his own skeleton
83. Something There Is by Charles L. Grant (9/22) - a writer anxiously awaiting a muse...though it is a case of be careful what you wish for
84. Spring-Fingered Jack by Susan Caspar (9/23) - what an interesting concept about today's world (1983). Practicing in real-life to win the video game. Creepy.
85. Sredni Vashtar by Saki (090115) - not sure exactly when I read this, but it is part of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories they wouldn't let me do on TV collection I am reading in the month of September - I have never liked ferrets and their like. This story just reinforces that feeling.
86. The Statement of Randolph Carter by H. P. Lovecraft (9/24) a creepy tale...two friends enter the swamp, but only one returns
87. The Story of Muhammad Din by Rudyard Kipling (9/24) a horror story in that this world is horrible, maybe too much truth.
88. The Thing in the Forest by Bernard Capes (9/25) a bit of the your salvation is also your doom feeling
89. Threshold by Sharon Webb (9/29) at what point do animals become human...how much do we want to teach them?
90. Today's Special by Dennis Etchison (9/30) frustration with coworkers could lead anyone to cannibalism, right?
91. Topsy by F. Paul Wilson (10/1) a mental patient tale, an okay story
92. Toy by Bill Pronzini (10/2) sci Fi horror ... What happens when you play with unknown
93. Transfer by Barry N. Malzberg (10/3) a bit of Dr Jeckyll in this tale of murder
94. Treats by Norman Partridge (10/5) just creepy.
95. Under My Bed by Al Sarrantonio (10/6) a good story about a "monster" protecting an abused boy...also a bit creepy
96. Up Under the Roof by Manly Wade Wellman (10/7) a story that encourages one to face their fears
97. The Upturned Face by Stephen Crane (10/8) more creepy as you think about it, but the story was just a story
98. We Have Always Lived in the Forest by Nancy Holder (10/9) surprise. I actually gasped as I read this story. I am not sure completely how to take it, but it did have that moment of pure horror for me
99. Where Did She Wander? by Manly Wade Wellman (10/9) an interesting twist on the ghost story
100. Witness by Avram Davidson - another one with a nice twist. something I could see being done on Twilight Zone back when. I don't think it would hold much surprise for the jaded world of today
I can't believe I am finally done with this book. It feels like it has been hanging around waiting for years (oh wait...it has).
cjmartin1987's review
3.0
A pretty decent collection of horror shorts. Kept my interest throughout. Some were really good and others were just average. There were a few too many nihilistic stories for my taste but I really enjoyed the stories that had a folktale-feel to them.
More...