After the People Lights Have Gone Off

by Stephen Graham Jones, Joe R. Lansdale (Introduction), Luke Spooner (Illustrator)

This collection of fifteen stories taps into the horrors and fears of the supernatural as well as the everyday. Included are two original stories, several rarities and out of print tales, as well as a few "best of the year" inclusions. Stephen Graham Jones is a master storyteller. What does happen after the people lights have gone off? Crack the spine and find out. With an introduction by Joe R. Lansdale.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Anthologies, Audiobook, Adult

310 pages, Paperback

First published August 18, 2014

About the author

Stephen Graham Jones is the NYT bestselling author thirty-five or so books. He really likes werewolves and slashers. Favorite novels change daily, but Valis and Love Medicine and Lonesome Dove and It and The Things They Carried are all usually up there somewhere. Stephen lives in Boulder, Colorado. It's a big change from the West Texas he grew up in.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘So, monsters are real. Surprise.’

One of my favorite parts of Spooky Season is overdoing it on scary books and then being home alone for a weekend and regretting it at midnight. I can think of no better choice for these sorts of shenanigans than After the People Lights Have Gone Off by the prolific and wildly imaginative Stephen Graham Jones. This collection is so good I read it in a wave of obsessive joy, unable to pull myself out of its vortex of horror and even when I had to be ripped away (jobs, man smh) I found his sinister stories haunting every corner of my mind. It’s late at night when they really start to kick in, as if the compulsive reading pulled aspects from the page into your world not unlike the opening story, Thirteen, about a small town movie theater urban legend that might actually be leading young teens to their doom. Jone’s is quickly ascending to the throne of modern Horror Writers, amplified last year by the success of The Only Good Indians, and it is no surprise to see why he connects so well with readers. Jones has a gift for telling chilling and gripping stories fleshed out through engaging details and a nuanced literary sensibility that will remain in your mind like a ghost in an abandoned home.

Horror is such a fun and fascinating realm of storytelling. In marketing classes we learned a lot about the different psychological hooks to engage an audience with: appeals to emotions like adventure, security, family, sex, etc. One of the most powerful—and we see it employed constantly in a lot of political messaging particularly for the sake of polarizing issues—is the appeal to fear. It’s a primal emotion and it sticks with you, reshaping everything around it with fight-or-flight responses. So, naturally, horror stories are going to have quick access to your emotions and subconscious and really make you feel something. A few years ago it was a dark and stormy night and I was up late playing guitar in my second-floor apartment of an old home. Suddenly I see my door slowly open and then stop, an arm clearly visible in the gap between door and doorframe. I stopped and sat silently, looking at this arm with my heartbeat racing, watching, waiting, wondering what was coming next. A full minute passed this way. Was someone here to murder me or was an ex here and honestly prefering the murderer scenario. Finally I said loudly, “well, lets get it over with.” Nothing. I stood up and threw the door open….to discover my vacuum that had been holding the porch door shut had fallen over from wind, caught in my cardigan hung up next to the door and fallen against my front door (that didn’t fully latch unless locked). It’s a fun story to tell and gets laughs, but the feeling of my heart racing and the uncomfortably minute of silence resonates stronger than the laugh. Had I been a better storyteller, this would be the detail to focus on.

Jones excels at finding that moment and exploring it in all it’s hair-raising glory. What works best is the variety of ways he finds to chill you, especially in scenarios you’d least expect. This collection is wonderful for how imaginative the scares are. He makes horror out of a book group meeting (honestly one of my favorites, you can read it here), a Goodwill hoodie, a thermometer and even has a torture horror scenario about *checks note* solving a math problem. This guy is good. Stories such as the opening also manage to hit nostalgia in ways captured by shows like Stranger Things, returning the reader to childhood and folding terror into the nostalgia. With Jone, nothing can ever seem safe again and any moment might have a monster just waiting to strike. And even the scares are wonderfully varied, with vampires, monsters and haunted houses, to psychological terror where your own mind is out to get you, ‘thinking the bad instead of the good, defaulting to disaster instead of joy, letting the world infect you,’ or one particularly shocking story where the monster is homophobia set to violence.

Jones knows horror and there is a deep undercurrent of psychological understanding of what makes something spooky. He examines it and then breaks all the rules. In The Spindly Man, a book group is discussing Stephen King’s story The Man in the Black Suit (click the link to read the story) and the narrator muses on how it is generally tame for him because the horror is kept at a distance. Quickly we learn how wrong he is and that horror can reach across any barrier, even time, and suddenly confront you with demons. Stories such as Uncle, another favorite, play on feelings of guilt and build slowly, sucking you into a terror you can’t quite place but know is overwhelming you. There is a strong literary aspect to these stories that never come across as overly difficult or academic, just a well-tuned engine housed in quite wonderful and sometimes surreal prose that hammer each story into your subconscious like a steak into the heart of a vampire.

One of my favorite aspects of this book is the author’s afterword where he gives a bit of history on each story. It makes him seem so endearing, particularly the way he openly confesses to being scared by things and that fear leads him to write the stories. There’s something charming when you realize even the storyteller is spooked, which wraps you up in his stories all the more. What is nice, too, is that each story is long enough to feel full but short enough to fly through a few really quickly for maximum spooky. This is a legitimately terrifying collection with almost all hits that will certainly creep up behind you on a dark night. Maybe you won’t survive….

4.5/5

‘Each moment, the world washes its hands of you, starts all over again. Easy as that. Wonderful as that.’

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stephen Graham Jones does horror better than terror and delights in a laconic, no-nonsense style that occasionally verges on unconscious parody. As I am a reader who prefers Arthur Machen to Stephen King and Nabokov to Hemingway, I am far from being Jone's ideal reader.

I can still be impressed by his style, however, which sometimes shines most clearly in the simplest descriptions. For example, in “Brushdogs,” he tells us how a character opened two cans of chili and then “poured them into a pan, shook their can shape away.” What a clear image! What an efficient description of a simple task! On the other hand, when Jones uses the same style to summon peak moments of terror, he sometimes relies too greatly on ellipsis and suggestion, producing passages that merely obscure without terrifying.

Since he is a craftsman, Jones produces no real “klunkers” here, but the title story, by far the longest piece in the book, creeped me out a little bit but never really scared me and only fitfully held my attention. “This is Love” has its ghastly moments and concludes with an effective revelation, but suffers from the fact that it is designed to be both a chilling horror story and a sincere plea for the tolerance of gay love. (Although I agree with the message, I find these two literary purposes to be incompatible. As Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn was supposed to have said, “If you have a message, call Western Union!”)

Jones, who is a native Texan, a hunter, and a member of the Blackfeet tribe, is familiar with the one-horse towns and wild places of the West, and two of his most vivid tales—“Thirteen” and “Brushdogs”--draw on that background. I also enjoyed the brief “Spiderbox” (weird geometric construction unleashes portal), “Welcome to the Reptile House” (punk rock, tattoos at the crematorium, and worse), “The Black Sleeve of Destiny” (unexpected perils of shopping at the thrift store), and “Snow Monsters” (a nice variation on The Fatal Wish).

My two favorites, though, are “Doc's Story,” which manages to make werewolves both more sympathetic and more terrifying, and the aforementioned “Thirteen,” which includes a coming-of-age theme, a Texas movie palace, a horror in the bathroom, the taste of first love, a teenage urban legend, a vicious sexual predator, and three ghosts—all topped off by a Halloween night climax. And the marvelous thing is that this story never seems crowded or excessive or baroque, but instead classic, simple, straightforward, and—yes—even kind of sweet.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I heard about this author when I spoke briefly to Thomas Olde Heuvelt on his book tour (he was reading Mongrels), I came to this book in a somewhat strange way. Book Riot had a quiz called Which Indie Press Should You Be Obsessed With?" , so of course I took it, and ended up with a publisher I had never heard of - Curbside Splendor. I went on an interlibrary loan requesting frenzy and ended up with five books from Curbside Splendor or their imprint, Dark House Press, which this title is from. I selected this book purely from the amazing cover, and it has not disappointed.

These are the best kind of horror stories. The kind where you finish it and in the seconds after reading the last word, a realization of what has occurred slowly starts to cross your mind. This may be a byproduct of reading too fast, which I do, but sometimes my eyes finish before my brain does. But in that moment after, that feeling of horror, that chill - this is not a thing that I experience very often! There were a few stories that had me swearing at the end and needing some fresh air.

I don't even know how to pick favorites. Welcome to the Reptile House went somewhere I didn't expect. Brushdogs made me read it twice because I didn't quite understand, but then I did. The Spindly Man made my book club loving heart shiver (and I read it the morning I was headed to book club! Bad decision!) The Black Sleeve of Destiny could make thrift shopping scary. And so on.

I always read the front and back material in books, I just can't help myself, so I was fascinated to read the author's explanations of what inspired the stories. He is very firmly situated in the horror genre, with some of these stories serving as tributes practically to previous stories, in a way I would never have understood without him telling me (because I read so infrequently in this genre.) There is a level of intentionality that adds to the experience.

I also need to mention the absolutely beautiful book. The cover is gorgeous. Each story has a full black title page, and the page after has an illustration in black and white facing the first few words/ sentences of the story in a larger font. It was simply a pleasure to read, and it felt like the same level of attention the author has paid was reflected in the book design, such a rare thing.

This will be a perfect read for #spooktober, #scaretober, or however you want to call October in a clever way that makes you crave a scary read.

[Char · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are hundreds of reviews and ratings for AFTER THE PEOPLE LIGHTS HAVE GONE OFF and there's not much I can add to what's already been said.

I love how this man writes and his powers of description. It takes concentration to properly read his prose and during this time of near constant distraction, (there's a pandemic going on), the fact that he captured my attention and held it, really says something.

There's a ton of variety here, my favorites being DOC'S STORY, SECOND CHANCES, THE SPINDLY MAN, UNCLE and THE SPIDERBOX. There's also an excellent introduction from Joe R. Lansdale, wherein he talks about some of his favorite stories.

I enjoyed the hell out of this collection and maybe it's just the thing to distract you during this uncertain time?

Highly recommended!

Get your copy here: https://amzn.to/39WIPHP

*I bought this paperback with my hard-earned cash. *

[Sadie Hartmann]

Well this was incredible. SGJ is a favorite author and this collection of short stories colors in more of the picture for me. SGJ is probably one of the best short fiction writers in the genre and ever, as far as I’m concerned. This single-author collection stands among the greats.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

*For note of disclosure, see below.

Stephen’s latest book, After the People Lights Have Gone Off, is a short story collection published by the new and impressive Dark House Press**. What I admire most about Stephen’s work is how fearlessly he approaches and employs possibility. It’s one thing to come up with the concept, the what-if, but Stephen pokes, prods, and expands his possibilities until you-the-reader arrive at this strange place that is simultaneously shocking and familiar. His fiction doesn’t shy away from the difficult implications and questions, nor does he shy away from the horror of inevitability.

The fifteen stories work individually and as a collective reading experience. You experience Stephen’s stories.

To some of the stories themselves:

“Thirteen” is local legend and hell in a movie theater and hell in a high school relationship. “Brushdogs” is a dread-filled hallucinogenic account of a father and son out hunting that I think could/should be read as a companion piece to “Father, Son, Holy Rabbit” (appeared in The Ones That Got Away). “The Spindly Man” is clever and fun in it’s group story setting (and it’s reference to Stephen King’s “The Man in the Black Suit”) until it’s not so fun. “This is Love” made me hurt. I wish I wrote story with the title “The Spider Box.” “Snow Monsters” puts a spin on the bargain-story and this one made me hurt even worse. The title story “After All the People Lights Have Gone Off” is a tour de force ghost story with some images that genuinely left me shuddering in a heap. A heap, I say.

So, yeah, just go buy his book already.

*Stephen is a friend of mine. He does not resemble Frankenstein. We co-wrote a book together (available in Canada now, coming out soon in the USA). Like me he is tall and he hates pickles. It’s the pickles-hate that most threaten my objectivity. But! But! Stephen was a writer that I admired and was jealous of before I met him. I started haunting his email inbox after I read his genius DEMON THEORY. *)

**Dark House Press has also published the anthology The New Black edited by Richard Thomas and the very cool novel Echo Lake by Letitia Trent. Both books are more than worth your time.

[Berengaria · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

short review for busy readers:
A collection of 15 short creepy stories from Master of Spooky, Stephen Graham Jones. 2 are new, 13 reprinted from magazines and anthologies. Most are trying too hard, some go on for too long, a few are brilliant. None are truly frightening. Some would have been better as normal, not horror, stories.

in detail:
I agree with reviewer Bill Kerwin when he says of Jones "he sometimes relies too greatly on ellipsis and suggestion, producing passages that merely obscure without terrifying".

That's one of the primary "defects" in this collection. Jones illudes and infers so much, that events and character intentions become blurry, or even completely opaque, rather than illuminated. If you have to read a paragraph 2-3 times to kinda-sorta get the vibe of what's going on, that for me is neither scary, spooky or even enjoyable.

Another problem are the endings. Either they're overshot or simply stop at a seemingly random point. (I've noticed this with Jones' other short works, so probably a general difficulty.)

The only truly frightening image comes in the title story with a wheelchair-bound woman "sleepwalking". Yeah, that's not something you want to wake up to!

Here are the best ones of the collection, IMHO. All 4 and 5 star stories:

Doc's Story Dumb name for an excellent story about a family of werewolves and their mythology about what happened to the human mother of the youngest member of the clan.

The Black Sleeve of Destiny A kid buys a wonkily sewn hoodie with one sleeve longer than the other. The longer sleeve has some magical black hole properties to it that allow it to make objects disappear and reappear somewhere else in the kid's life.

Uncle A woman orders a series of strange products shortly before her death. Her husband finds them very helpful dealing with the now empty -- and newly haunted -- house. (She's baaaaack!)

Welcome to the Reptile House A beginner tattoo artist gets the chance to practice on corpses destined for the crematorium. Unfortunately, one of them happens to be a vampire who doesn't exactly like his freebie ink job. Woe to the artist!

Other decent ones that range from 3 to 4 stars include:
The Spider Box, Snow Monsters, The Dead are not and Second Chances.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up because it's just too good not to, at its best anyway

What you will get here, you who venture into Author Stephen's mind palaces-cum-stories, is a very thorough grounding in the liminal spaces where consensus reality (eg, the built reality of a rest stop, the hallway of a 3-2 tract house) meets the Otherlands. The spaces between the two are always rife with, ripe and round and fertile with, the kind of stories that begin one way and subvert that in the end. Endings are, to this artist, the culmination and completion of an arc. Underpinning Author Stephen's arabesques of not-always-white reality-cum-fantastically hyperreal action are carefully drawn geometries of story, carefully obscured by inevitable-seeming developments. Story logic is a strong skill of Author Stephen's, I haven't read one piece of his work that isn't absolutely, from giddy-up to whoa, internally cohesive.

This absolutely gorgeous book deserves its very own post. I received and gave it a quick review in 2015; but that was before I was consistently using the Bryce Method of going story-by-story and before I was calling so heavily on the authors' own words to make my points about the entire collection. So now I'm dusting off my handsomely designed and beautifully illustrated paperback copy to deliver myself of these ideas and opinions.

Which I deliver at my blog, Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud.

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We were just talking about how if you admit devils," Drake said, "then that means the door must be open for angels as well."

"Or more demons," the spindly man said, sitting back in his chair. "Inside every angel, there's a demon waiting to claw out, right?"*

This author certainly has a gift for milking the mundane, ho-hum trivialities of our everyday existences: seeing a movie, attending a book club, waiting to pick up your spouse from work. Under his skilled pen, our bland routines are opportunities for inciting nervousness. Horror fans expecting gore-spattered violence will be disappointed. Jones takes a more subtle approach. His is a slow oozing dread that creeps up on you, digs its claws in and hangs around for a while.

I didn't love every story in this collection. In fact, the majority of them neither chilled nor thrilled me, but the writing is so good, nothing less than four stars will do. Jones really shines in the longer stories. It's as if his style needs time to fester and take hold before it pounces.

One of my favorites was Doc's Story, a fascinating tale about a family of lycanthropes. It answers that burning question of what happens when a werewolf gets a tick on his fur. Two other goodies are the title story and Uncle. In this one, a man can't resist playing with a handheld infrared thermometer that was ordered by his recently deceased wife.

Later, I settled my red pointer on the late-show host's cheek. It made me feel like a sniper.

And then I checked the living room out.

The walls were warmer behind the set, cooler by the door. The lamp that I'd had on while eating was still comparatively hot. The late show host was on fire. The window was the Arctic, the ceiling indifferent, the carpet the same.

Then the audience on television exploded with laughter.

I nodded in acknowledgement, sighted along the top of the gun down the hall, to my bedroom, but stopped at Theresa's instead.

Everywhere else in the darkness, the temperature was hovering around seventy.

There was a spot right in her doorway, though.

It registered as body heat.

Brrr! I read that outdoors in eighty-plus degree heat and still got goosebumps!

I'll be reading more by this author.



*from The Spindly Man

[Mindi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really wanted to savor this one. Especially after I got a few stories into it, and I realized how good it is. But I've never really been one to savor. I binge. I gulp. I consume. And then I spend days thinking about something. I will be thinking about After the People Lights Have Gone Off for quite a few days.

First, that's just a fantastic title, and one of the many reasons I picked up this collection. Earlier this year I read Mapping the Interior and was so impressed with Jones's writing. That slim novella packed a punch, so I knew I needed to read more from him. I chose a few collections for my October reading this year, and I knew this would be one of the first ones I would pick up. I'm so glad I did.

Jones has a voice that is unique. It's literary and colloquial all at once. These stories contain fantastic writing that still manages to sound like a real person talking. I love that. It makes them feel so real and alive. There isn't a weak story in this collection, but there are definitely ones that will stay with me longer than others. The Spindly Man is about a book club that shares a truly frightening experience. I love that Jones used Stephen King's story The Man in the Black Suit for this one. Snow Monsters is a chilling tale about a bargain. I loved the setup for this story, and Jones's story notes about his inspiration for it. I've always studied those huge, dirty snow mounds too. Since I moved south it's been years since I've seen one, but this story brought all of that back. The title story is a haunted house tale that sincerely has some very creepy imagery that is forever burned into my brain. I'm partial to haunted house stories, and boy did this one deliver. Uncle is another one that had me a bit creeped out late at night. And I agree with Jones about those thermometers. I would buy one just to play around with it, but I would ultimately end up just freaking myself out. Solve for X is the kind of story that stays with you too. Pain and fear are fascinating things. And the human brain has endless possibilities. I love how Jones explored a connection between them.

Final thoughts: I need to read more from Stephen Graham Jones. This is an outstanding collection of stories. Jones can write about so many different things, and yet his voice is always present. His stamp, his uniqueness shines through in every paragraph. I'm officially a big fan.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid short story collection from the great Stephen Graham Jones!

Check out my book review on my channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml2TH...

[Stay Fetters · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Inside every angel, there's a demon waiting to claw out."

SGJ has been pushed on me. Pushed upon me enough to where my mind wanders as soon as someone says his name. Hell, they don’t even have to say his full name before I go off into la-la land. But here’s the truth about this one, the title alone got me hooked and I couldn’t look away after that.

Reading the introduction, I was led to believe that these stories were not only going to make my eyeballs bleed but scare the pants off of me. (Okay, I wasn't wearing pants to begin with...) I’m going to get a lot of shit for this but I’m just going to come right out and say it… this was okay (meh) and definitely not something to gush about.

I mean, am I missing something here? Should I shake the book to see if the missing pages of the Necronomicon fall out? Did I not see the magical spirit who haunts you after reading this? Please let me know if I didn't get the picture.

After the People Lights Have Gone Off was okay at best and a little boring. Not what I was imagining at all. The stories felt half finished with no complete thought. A lot of the stories just ended and I was left with this feeling of being duped. But it seems as if I'm one of the only readers who didn't enjoy this. What do I know? I'm just a big city girl living in a small town!

[Theresa (mysteries.and.mayhem) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm glad I had the chance to read After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones. It's a collection of some of his earlier short stories. I started listening on audio but honestly found some of the stories hard to follow, so I switched to reading a copy of the physical book from the library. When the library book hold came in, I was so glad I switched! There are some great illustrations in the book and the overall layout design adds a lot to the reading experience. Unfortunately, I still had a hard time following a few of the stories. Part of it is a "me problem." I always want answers. Why did that happen? How did that happen? What made him do that? Etc. Some of these stories just don't wrap themselves up with pretty little bows like that. But most of the stories I could follow with no issue at all and they were wonderfully spooky, creepy, and even disturbing.

I give After the People Lights Have Gone Off 4 out of 5 stars. If you can get your hands on a physical copy, and if you love horror, I strongly suggest you give this a read!

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is series of short stories. As I've stated before I'm not good in either reading or listening to short stories collections because I can't pick a part which story is which and everything smash tougheter. But this was a 3.7 stars. Enjoyed it more then others but pretty much had the same problem here but its not the books fault.

[Heidi Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the People Lights Have Gone Off is nagging at me for a review, and I'm not sure what to tell it. When, in his cover-blurb, Laird Barron likens the book to "a malignant grain of an evil dream," he's on to something. I keep thinking about certain of these stories in a kind of awe at how immediately they imprinted themselves on me, but others eluded or vexed me for reasons that probably say more about me than they do about Stephen Graham Jones' writing.

Let's start with what I loved. I loved that the collection contains gutting new twists on the dusty old vampire and werewolf genres; I loved the fact that two of the stories ("Xebico" and "The Spindly Man") are inspired rejoinders to other weird tales I'm fond of. I loved that SGJ can find the terrifying in the mundanity of a laser kitchen thermometer, an old fruit-crate or a thrift-shop hoodie. And I love that the title piece is looking like one of my favorite haunted house stories ever.

Thematically, though, not much love. There is an awful lot of grieving and coping (badly) and loss of all kinds going on here. In After the People Lights Have Gone Off grief is practically a character. There are stories about lost children, sick children, funerals, dead or sick or broken spouses, and also stories about the horrible deals humans make to keep death's darkness at bay. Though SGJ manages to inject the madness of grief with touches of humor and humanity, the vibe can get pretty heavy in the places most of us would rather not think about, where the terrible truths about loss live.

Maybe my indifference to certain stories, "Snow Monsters" and "Second Chances," for example, is that they didn't really poke my scary spots, as I'm not a parent or even particularly fond of children. (Some people think that makes me a sociopath, but I know they're just envious of all the "me-time" I get.) Other stories, like "This is Love," and "Brushdogs," I'll admit that I just don't get (yet). Both are also about lost children, in different ways, but what vexes me in both cases is the suggestion of repetitive time looping or doubling that I still just can't get my head around. (Which is funny, because I've read them both before in anthologies.)

I know this isn't my most coherent review, and that's because I'm not really done mulling the stories. I have to take After the People Lights Have Gone Off back to the library now, but I'm not likely to be done thinking about it for awhile.

[Glenn Rolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite of SGJ's works. He's such a great short story writer!

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

**NOTE** The little review below is of a story called "The Spindly Man," apparently now included in this collection, which I haven't read, but would like to.

A haunting accident, a book discussion, an unwanted visitor. It all leads to my favorite kind of scare--the psychologically eerie kind.

You can read it here: https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/the-s...

[Dona's Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to come.

[Rachelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The past is the past, sometimes it should stay there."

No surprise but I absolutely LOVED this one! Jones is steadily becoming a favorite of mine and if you love a collection of spooky shit, this one delivers!!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best collection I've read since Ballingrud's North American Lake Monsters. Favorites include Brushdogs, The Spindly Man, This is Love, and the title story.

[Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterfully written collection of weird fiction that's easy to get into yet still manages to deal with dark subjects and weighty issues. I just love the Stephen's style, his prose effortlessly paints vivid pictures in your mind of each scene making this whole collection very memorable and incredibly enjoyable. I'd highly recommend this!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Just, wow. I want to read everything Jones has written now.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A huge thank-you to Kathleen for sharing my kind of eerie tale, one that makes you think (and gasp a little).

Go enjoy it yourself:
https://www.thedarkmagazine.com/the-s...

[Davis Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another really good collection of stories that felt a little less confusing this time around. The titular story was one of the more hauntingly beautiful things I’ve read recently. I believe I’ve read ten of Stephen Graham Jones’ books this year and I’m still loving his writing style. Excited to read more of his work but nervous that I’m working through it too quickly and won’t know what to do when I have to start actually waiting for his releases.

[GD · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read a couple of stories by Stephen Graham Jones before, and one of them, which has a name that escapes me right now, about two boys and a girl reading about witches near a lake in the winter I think, and they throw the girl into the water kind of as a fun joke among all three of them, and she doesn't sink and screams and runs away across the water, holy shit that just gave me goosebumps writing that as I remember it again. FUCK.

For awhile I was giving this book three stars. Like in the story I mentioned above as well, Jones has a really vague way of describing things, and honestly like half the time I couldn't tell .you what was going on or how the story ended. He's at the quiet end of quiet horror, which is a genre I'm not usually a fan of. Another thing, I tend to read pretty fast, but I had to make myself slow down with this book, which I really did about halfway through, put it into low gear because his prose is kind of... mountainous? Rocky? Muddy jungle terrain? After I consciously held my horses, I really enjoyed the book a lot more. The title story is a fucking SCREAMER. Actually the main reason I bought this book was because the title was so fucking good, it just evoked something horrible. When that line comes up in the story, dear god, another set of goosebumps. The title story also had the scariest scenes, of a paralyzed woman sleepwalking, dragging herself across the floor, and biting her husband's hand when he reaches down to help her.

Most of the stories are a little to vague for me, but I have to mention one in particular that was a doozy, "Solve For X," I think it was called. Everything else in this book is of the quiet brand of horror, a drop of blood, a blurry face running through the woods, a loved one acting really weird. But this one, like, if horror were music, I'm more a fan of death metal than I am of Sigur Ros, which is what Stephen Graham Jones writes like. But holy shit this story was like a gore porn album, super explicit torture that goes on and on, almost plotless, and you realize that the guy doing the torturing, who also tortures himself when the game he plays with his captive doesn't go the way he'd intended, is trying to make her through torture push her mind into new areas of math? Maybe? In the story notes at the end of the book he says he originally had aliens come in at the end of this story but changed his mind, but I think that would have been totally awesome.

Anyway, here are some of my favorite lines from the book. Jones is a ridiculously skilled writer with a dry sense of humor.

"We hadn't had insurance on each other, but the other driver's policy had given me a big enough check, I suppose. Not enough to buy a person, but I could buy an ATV if I wanted. Maybe two. Or all the batteries I could carry."

"... his little brother - they were like different stages of the same kid."

"I left the camera on the slanted-frontward brick ledge in front of a liquor store window..." What's great about that last one, and a ton of others in the book (I was lazy highlighting for some reason), is it's a detail that I 100 percent know what he's talking about, and it's something kind of annoying, the front-slanting brick ledges of windows, but I never would have thought to add that detail in, but when he did, I'm like, whoa, I'm right there in front of the liquor store looking at the broken camera sitting on the ledge.

[Adriane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished reading this book a few weeks ago and have read maybe 3 other books since, but I felt like I needed to write a review about it only because it has left such a lasting impression on me.
The first thought that came to my mind after finishing just the first short story in this collection was “why the hell did I take so long to read a book by Stephen Graham Jones?”, and the thought kept coming back louder and louder with each story that I read. Recently, I have read so many short story collections that are all expertly crafted and exciting. This goes to show the incredible amount of talent in weird/horror fiction right now. Some of these collections are heavy and left me feeling hopeless and depressed; some are a lot of fun and left me hungry for more, while others are so intriguing to the point that they left me feeling dazed. While these are all desirable traits in horror and weird fiction, too much of a good thing can be overwhelming at times. All of this is just to say that what I enjoyed so much about After the People Lights Have Gone Off is that it is such a balanced collection. I really enjoyed all of the stories, and, even though each one of them has a different feel to it, they have all left their mark. I am also mind blown by Jones’ capacity of commanding the reader’s attention, almost as if he was right next to you telling you the stories himself. Oh well, do yourself a favor and read this book, you will not regret it; as for me, it is time to go because if I plan on reading everything that is out there by SGJ - and I definitely do! - then I have a lot of catching up to do!

[R.J. McCabe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve noticed Stephen Graham Jones new novel “The Only Good Indians” has been getting a lot of buzz lately, so, as I hadn’t read anything by the author, I decided to read the collection of short stories he’d written in “After The People Lights Have Gone Off” to see if his style was something I’d enjoy, as I, like many others, are always looking for new Horror authors , whose work I can devour.
After reading the book I came away a little disappointed, because while it’s clear S.G.Jones can write, I felt a little bemused after finishing each of the tales in this book.
All of the stories started off well but then ,for me at least, seem to fizzle out and left me looking for the ‘horror’ in these tales. Also, a few of them didn’t really make much sense, as if S.G.Jones knew what was going on, but didn’t want to share it with the rest of us.
I feel that good, short, horror stories can be very effective and, due to the length, tend to stay with you for years. Sadly, I don’t think I will be able to recall many of these tales in a month from now.
“Uncle” was my favourite story from the collection, with an intriguing set-up, but even with that one I found the ending to be a little flat.
I will still be reading “The Only Good Indians” as there is something about the authors style I do like. This collection wasn’t for me, but I’m sure many others will enjoy it.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with Jones' last collection, I really enjoyed some of the stories, but a few just didn't work for me at all.

The 4 stars is mostly for "Solve for X". It starts in torture porn-ish fashion, then Jones pushes it further and further till it ends up in completely different territory. I thought the ending was impressively executed. (Nitpick warning: wish "theorem" wasn't misspelled, sigh.)

[Adrienne L · Rating 4 out of 5]

After The People Lights Have Gone Off is an excellent collection that covers a wide range of horrors, all told in Stephen Graham Jones' unique voice.  Pretty much any trope you can think of finds its way into a story here.  There are hauntings, aliens, torture, and creatures of the night.  The added level of interest and creepiness is the oblique way these old standy-bys are approached with Graham Jones' deft style, which makes these stories very distinctly the author's own.  Like the tale at the center of "Doc's Story," nothing is really what it first appears to be. Favorites for me included "Brushdogs","Thirteen", "Uncle", and the title story which really gave me chills in the best way.

And now that I have to return my copy to the library, I really hope we get this collection reprinted soon so I can purchase one of my own.

[Fiona Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen Graham Jones really understands horror, the way that the most mundane and ordinary things can be twisted just slightly off kilter into something terrifying.

It's a fantastic collection, and one which is likely to satisfy the most jaded of horror fans.