Spooklights

by Jonathan Raab (Editor), Doctor Gaines, Colin Scharf

Sometimes marriage can be an unholy union. Peanut butter in your hair keeps the Bugman away. When a malevolent spirit chases you down a dark street, don't hide in a portapotty. Lamb's blood over the door will fix your problems, or dog's blood'll do-but you gotta love that dog. Things that aren't meant to die don't stay dead, even after you cremate them. Corpse dust can cause terrible hangovers. Masks hide more than just flesh. Some drugs are more potent than others. That strange transmission on the radio? Maybe it's best if you ignore it. Nine tales of literary terror from authors around the country. Nine reasons to lose some sleep. If you see the Spooklights, it's already too late.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror

134 pages, Paperback

First published August 8, 2014

About the author

Jonathan Raab is the author of The Secret Goatman Spookshow and Other Psychological Warfare Operations, The Crypt of Blood: A Halloween TV Special, Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization, and more. He is also the editor of several anthologies from Muzzleland Press including Behold the Undead of Dracula: Lurid Tales of Cinematic Gothic Horror and Terror in 16-bits. You can find him on Twitter at @jonathanraab1.

Reviews

[Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Altogether an interesting small press collection of short horror stories, some intriguingly experimental, some tongue in cheek. While the stories themselves are a bit uneven, they draw from a surprising variety of themes and influences making for a good mix of different styles and ideas. A few use overt and covert references to Lovecraft, while others draw from the close to home horror of family, or crime. There is definitely some very adept use of atmosphere to up the creepiness, particularly of rural locations, though many of them are quite gruesome and not very subtle in their use of horror. Still, a good and quick read for a dark autumn night. My favorites were probably Colin Scharf’s “Spooklights,” a surreal, hallucinatory account of a musician's search for his missing family, drawing on high weirdness and with no easy explanations, and Toni Nicolino’s “Dark Matter,” a creepy, evocative, exploration of being haunted by one’s family background with some of the strongest characterizations in the collection. I would be interested to see more work for many of the writers included as they continue to explore the macabre, the spooky, and the dark.

[Bo · Rating 2 out of 5]

More misses than hits.

A horror anthology of varied quality. I can only say I thought two stories stood out and the rest, while no train wrecks, didn’t excite me at all.
The two stories that stood above the rest were Vodun by Michael Bryant & Beyond the Walls of Static by editor Jonathan Raab. The one thing those two stories have in common is that they felt more classically written than the rest which often had more modern writing styles applied. Maybe it’s just my own biases but I can’t say I love when modern writers constantly compares the supernatural to technology like describing something like vhs static or such.

[Patti · Rating 3 out of 5]

***Received via Goodreads Giveaway***

A decent collection of short stories, some really bad, some OK, some good. None really grabbed me but it was a nice way to spend some time.

[Mudassar Khan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kind of liked this book and kind of didn't. But their were too many characters and had different story.