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The Year I Worked at Dreadwood: Notices From Dreadwood Properties
“We hope this message finds you well. We are writing to address the recent and understandably distressing reports concerning an uninvited individual who has been entering residential units without consent and, in some cases, reportedly engaging in physical contact of a highly inappropriate nature—namely, biting the necks of tenants and, in several accounts, consuming their blood.”
So begins The Year I Worked at Dreadwood, a collection of formal tenant notices that spiral from deadpan absurdity into full-blown cosmic horror.
Property management is never easy—but at Dreadwood, it’s a waking fever dream. From werewolves in the laundry room to portals in the closet to emotional support Chupacabras in the lobby, one overworked property manager must keep things calm, keep the letters professional, and somehow keep a straight face.
What unfolds is a deadpan chronicle of cryptids, cursed objects, interdimensional mishaps, and corporate protocol under impossible pressure.
Told entirely through official building notices, this genre-defying collection blends horror, comedy, and absurd bureaucracy into something wholly uncanny—a Kafkaesque sitcom written during a full moon. Think The Office meets The Twilight Zone, told in the dry, epistolary style of The Screwtape Letters.
Whether you’re a tenant, a property manager, or something stranger, The Year I Worked at Dreadwood is here to remind
Whatever’s haunting your unit—
Management is working on a solution.
Lloyd Anderson
Former Property Manager, Dreadwood Properties
So begins The Year I Worked at Dreadwood, a collection of formal tenant notices that spiral from deadpan absurdity into full-blown cosmic horror.
Property management is never easy—but at Dreadwood, it’s a waking fever dream. From werewolves in the laundry room to portals in the closet to emotional support Chupacabras in the lobby, one overworked property manager must keep things calm, keep the letters professional, and somehow keep a straight face.
What unfolds is a deadpan chronicle of cryptids, cursed objects, interdimensional mishaps, and corporate protocol under impossible pressure.
Told entirely through official building notices, this genre-defying collection blends horror, comedy, and absurd bureaucracy into something wholly uncanny—a Kafkaesque sitcom written during a full moon. Think The Office meets The Twilight Zone, told in the dry, epistolary style of The Screwtape Letters.
Whether you’re a tenant, a property manager, or something stranger, The Year I Worked at Dreadwood is here to remind
Whatever’s haunting your unit—
Management is working on a solution.
Lloyd Anderson
Former Property Manager, Dreadwood Properties
125 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 30, 2025
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 27, 2025
I usually don’t go in for flash-fiction collections or horror-comedy, so I will freely admit that I was a little sceptical before starting this book. I’m glad I did, however, because it was a genuine joy to read.
The book follows a series of supernatural events occurring in and around an apartment complex known, appropriately enough, as Dreadwood Properties. This is a place plagued by everything from vampire infestations to samurai duels, but rather than telling these stories from the point of view of the residents, it’s explained through a series of polite notes from the property manager, Lloyd Anderson, who is also listed as the author of the book.
Over the course of a year, this much-tested employee deals with everything from territorial Yetis to Emotional Support Chupacabras, negotiating legal solutions with visiting vampires (who insist that the apartment building as a whole counts as a single dwelling), and ensuring that particularly noisy exorcisms take place outside the designated quiet hours (10:00pm to 8:00am, if you’re wondering). It’s an incredibly well written book, which, while funny, deals quite seriously with the tropes that it’s discussing.
The narrator keeps a consistent, completely deadpan style throughout the book, formulated in the crisp, clear style of a professional, irregardless of content. Over time, of course, the strain begins to wear on the poor fellow, and his sign-offs become increasingly depressed towards the end, but for the majority of the book, he soldiers bravely on.
The overall impression is a well composed, well written collection that keeps you chuckling, but still treats the many themes and references quite seriously. Irregardless of whether you are into isekai, alien abduction, or cursed objects, «The Year I Worked at Dreadwood» has something for you, and given that the stories are as short as they are, they can easily be read whenever you have a moment free.
The book follows a series of supernatural events occurring in and around an apartment complex known, appropriately enough, as Dreadwood Properties. This is a place plagued by everything from vampire infestations to samurai duels, but rather than telling these stories from the point of view of the residents, it’s explained through a series of polite notes from the property manager, Lloyd Anderson, who is also listed as the author of the book.
Over the course of a year, this much-tested employee deals with everything from territorial Yetis to Emotional Support Chupacabras, negotiating legal solutions with visiting vampires (who insist that the apartment building as a whole counts as a single dwelling), and ensuring that particularly noisy exorcisms take place outside the designated quiet hours (10:00pm to 8:00am, if you’re wondering). It’s an incredibly well written book, which, while funny, deals quite seriously with the tropes that it’s discussing.
The narrator keeps a consistent, completely deadpan style throughout the book, formulated in the crisp, clear style of a professional, irregardless of content. Over time, of course, the strain begins to wear on the poor fellow, and his sign-offs become increasingly depressed towards the end, but for the majority of the book, he soldiers bravely on.
The overall impression is a well composed, well written collection that keeps you chuckling, but still treats the many themes and references quite seriously. Irregardless of whether you are into isekai, alien abduction, or cursed objects, «The Year I Worked at Dreadwood» has something for you, and given that the stories are as short as they are, they can easily be read whenever you have a moment free.
Displaying 1 of 1 review