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The Frolic
Short story from various Ligotti collections
15 pages, Unknown Binding
157 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Ligotti
197 books3,091 followersThomas Ligotti is a contemporary American horror author and reclusive literary cult figure. His writings, while unique in style, have been noted as major continuations of several literary genres—most prominently Lovecraftian horror—and have overall been described as works of "philosophical horror", often written as philosophical novels with a "darker" undertone which is similar to gothic fiction. The Washington Post called him "the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction"; another critic declared "It's a skilled writer indeed who can suggest a horror so shocking that one is grateful it was kept offstage."
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 16, 2024
This was one scary short story. Ligotti has such a weird way of putting a story together. Almost as if he is a lazy man and cannot be bothered writing a long novel with what is clearly an interesting idea. Yes, he is clearly inspired by Lovecraft. Stephen King's The Green Mile, published in 1993 has a prison guard being blessed by his interaction with an innocent inmate on death row. The Frolic, published in 1983, has a prison psychologist who is cursed by his interaction with an inmate with supernatural powers. The inmate tells the psychiatrist that he is holidaying in prison and can leave whenever he choses. I would not be surprised if this is soon made into an average horror film.
November 23, 2021
Disturbometer : 5-6 out of 10
Number 4 from the “most disturbing story ever” list.
Ligotti never really managed to grow on me, I’m not quite sure why. So as expected, I found this an unpleasant, rather boring read, where the ending stood out a mile long before I got to it. I did find it quite disturbing. The whole thing had an unsettling feel to it. The dialogue and the character’s reactions felt unnatural, somehow.
So it’s relatively high on my disturbometer, but not very high on my star rating system.
I’d perhaps even go as low as a 2 and a half, though I suppose that would be a bit stingy.
Number 4 from the “most disturbing story ever” list.
Ligotti never really managed to grow on me, I’m not quite sure why. So as expected, I found this an unpleasant, rather boring read, where the ending stood out a mile long before I got to it. I did find it quite disturbing. The whole thing had an unsettling feel to it. The dialogue and the character’s reactions felt unnatural, somehow.
So it’s relatively high on my disturbometer, but not very high on my star rating system.
I’d perhaps even go as low as a 2 and a half, though I suppose that would be a bit stingy.
August 2, 2020
"The Frolic", from Songs of a Dead Dreamer is a deeply disturbing short tale by Thomas Ligotti. After reading it, I found myself, subconsciously, double-checking my windows and door locks before bed. Ligotti's prose brings forth a sense of dread that reaches inside and keeps you in that troubled state for a significant duration of time. The story is quite simple--A prison psychologist has given up on his altruistic intentions of helping the mentally-deviant after a couple of sessions with a convicted delusional murderer. It leads to a conversation between him and his wife and slowly descends into an ending of horrific proportions. Ligotti induces the potential for extraordinary fear into an environment as uncomplicated as a regular evening in a family home. I recommend this short fiction to readers who relish introspective psychological horror.
July 20, 2022
Thriller short story that accidentally (accidentally?) shits on neoliberal New England doctors and punishes them via a child ********, lovely. I <3 Thomas Ligotti.
February 19, 2022
A friend suggested I read something by Ligotti, and this was the first story in the first book I found. I'm impressed by the way the author built suspense using such a mundane backdrop. I'm definitely interested in reading more of him.
October 3, 2025
HELP THIS WAS SO FREAKY NAHHH
September 3, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads #Horror Short Stories #Anthologies # Postmodern & Contemporary Horror
If The Last Feast of Harlequin is Ligotti at his most philosophical and expansive, The Frolic is him stripped down to pure, intimate dread. It’s an early story, but one that already shows his signature move: shifting horror away from cheap shocks and toward a suffocating sense of inevitability.
The setup is deceptively conventional. A prison psychologist, his family, and a convicted murderer—it sounds like the skeleton of a suspense thriller. In the hands of Stephen King, you might expect a carefully structured escalation, with characters fleshed out with human warmth before everything unravels. But Ligotti operates differently. His focus isn’t on plot mechanics or even on the murderer’s crimes—it’s on the abyss that seeps into ordinary life when evil is treated not as an aberration but as a force without context or resolution.
Comparatively, if King’s Quitters, Inc. plays horror as a sharp satire of modern anxieties, The Frolic is anti-satire—it strips away rational explanation and leaves the reader stranded in terror that cannot be domesticated. Where King’s monsters and villains often have rules, limits, or backstories, Ligotti resists giving us that comfort. His horror doesn’t just lurk in shadows—it thrives in vagueness, in the refusal of meaning.
Placed alongside The Boogeyman or The Raft, the contrast is striking. King often stages horror as a test of endurance—can his characters survive the creature, the event, or the curse? Ligotti instead makes survival itself questionable, not because of violence, but because meaning dissolves. In The Frolic, the danger feels both literal and symbolic: a murderer whose language, motives, and actions suggest that reality itself is porous and unstable.
Philosophically, the story echoes Lovecraft, but without the tentacles. The cosmic indifference is there, yet it’s localized in a prison cell and a domestic living room. Ligotti’s great trick is to take the banal—an evening conversation, a child’s bedtime—and let it unravel into existential catastrophe. If King is cinematic, Ligotti is theatrical: the dialogue in The Frolic feels almost like a stage play, every word a mask slipping to reveal something unutterable beneath.
From a postmodern angle, The Frolic feels like an interrogation of the horror short story itself. It denies closure, resists catharsis, and embraces ambiguity. This makes it kin to works by Joyce Carol Oates or Robert Aickman, where unease lingers precisely because the story refuses to explain itself. Ligotti doesn’t let the reader “solve” the horror—he ensures it haunts you instead.
Compared with The Last Feast of Harlequin, The Frolic is less philosophical essay and more gut-punch, but the thematic through-line is the same: human life is fragile theater, and the stage can collapse without warning. If Harlequin makes you dread the emptiness of ritual, The Frolic makes you dread the sheer randomness of malevolence.
Ultimately, The Frolic stands as one of Ligotti’s most chilling works precisely because it’s small, intimate, and merciless. It shows how horror can bypass spectacle and aim straight for the uncanny rupture—the feeling that something alien and incomprehensible has brushed against your world and left a mark you cannot erase.
If The Last Feast of Harlequin is Ligotti at his most philosophical and expansive, The Frolic is him stripped down to pure, intimate dread. It’s an early story, but one that already shows his signature move: shifting horror away from cheap shocks and toward a suffocating sense of inevitability.
The setup is deceptively conventional. A prison psychologist, his family, and a convicted murderer—it sounds like the skeleton of a suspense thriller. In the hands of Stephen King, you might expect a carefully structured escalation, with characters fleshed out with human warmth before everything unravels. But Ligotti operates differently. His focus isn’t on plot mechanics or even on the murderer’s crimes—it’s on the abyss that seeps into ordinary life when evil is treated not as an aberration but as a force without context or resolution.
Comparatively, if King’s Quitters, Inc. plays horror as a sharp satire of modern anxieties, The Frolic is anti-satire—it strips away rational explanation and leaves the reader stranded in terror that cannot be domesticated. Where King’s monsters and villains often have rules, limits, or backstories, Ligotti resists giving us that comfort. His horror doesn’t just lurk in shadows—it thrives in vagueness, in the refusal of meaning.
Placed alongside The Boogeyman or The Raft, the contrast is striking. King often stages horror as a test of endurance—can his characters survive the creature, the event, or the curse? Ligotti instead makes survival itself questionable, not because of violence, but because meaning dissolves. In The Frolic, the danger feels both literal and symbolic: a murderer whose language, motives, and actions suggest that reality itself is porous and unstable.
Philosophically, the story echoes Lovecraft, but without the tentacles. The cosmic indifference is there, yet it’s localized in a prison cell and a domestic living room. Ligotti’s great trick is to take the banal—an evening conversation, a child’s bedtime—and let it unravel into existential catastrophe. If King is cinematic, Ligotti is theatrical: the dialogue in The Frolic feels almost like a stage play, every word a mask slipping to reveal something unutterable beneath.
From a postmodern angle, The Frolic feels like an interrogation of the horror short story itself. It denies closure, resists catharsis, and embraces ambiguity. This makes it kin to works by Joyce Carol Oates or Robert Aickman, where unease lingers precisely because the story refuses to explain itself. Ligotti doesn’t let the reader “solve” the horror—he ensures it haunts you instead.
Compared with The Last Feast of Harlequin, The Frolic is less philosophical essay and more gut-punch, but the thematic through-line is the same: human life is fragile theater, and the stage can collapse without warning. If Harlequin makes you dread the emptiness of ritual, The Frolic makes you dread the sheer randomness of malevolence.
Ultimately, The Frolic stands as one of Ligotti’s most chilling works precisely because it’s small, intimate, and merciless. It shows how horror can bypass spectacle and aim straight for the uncanny rupture—the feeling that something alien and incomprehensible has brushed against your world and left a mark you cannot erase.
March 9, 2024
Like many souls, I was lured to the Ligottisphere by misanthropic McConaughey in True Detective, Season 1. Already intrigued by Lovecraftian horror and philosophical pessimism, I decided to sample this author. From an online recommendation, I began with “The Frolic.” Immediately, I detected the influence from Lovecraft: the viscous, at times beautiful, at times overdone descriptions; the eerie, grotesque landscapes; the themes of madness, philosophical unease, nightmares, and cosmic dread. Ligotti includes much more dialogue than Lovecraft, which I appreciated. It’s nice to get a breather from adjective-plagued narrations of eldritch scenery.
I identified with Dr. Munck’s vocational disenchantment (in my case, education, where the psychopaths are short and get released at around 3pm each day). As an art aficionado, I enjoyed the nod to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
The story has the feel of a Twilight Zone episode or Bradburyian nightmare. Maybe a little Borges in there, too. As with some of those tales, when I reached the end, I felt let down. I wanted more profundity and surprise. I was, however, fascinated by the creepy personality(ies) and bizarre speech patterns of Johnathan Doe. I wanted the premise and all the characters to be fleshed out more. Perhaps that is my bias toward novels and novellas talking.
A couple descriptions I found particularly beautiful or creative or true:
*the idea of a “smeary sonic print”—lovely!
*this psychological insight: “Until then their home had been an insular haven beyond the contamination of the prison, an imposing structure outside the town limits. Now its psychic imposition transcended the limits of physical distance. Inner distance constricted, and David sensed the massive prison walls shadowing the cozy neighborhood outside.”
Though I was disappointed by the ending, I was intrigued and entertained enough to continue scouring the Ligotti corpus. Onto the next nightmare…
I identified with Dr. Munck’s vocational disenchantment (in my case, education, where the psychopaths are short and get released at around 3pm each day). As an art aficionado, I enjoyed the nod to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
The story has the feel of a Twilight Zone episode or Bradburyian nightmare. Maybe a little Borges in there, too. As with some of those tales, when I reached the end, I felt let down. I wanted more profundity and surprise. I was, however, fascinated by the creepy personality(ies) and bizarre speech patterns of Johnathan Doe. I wanted the premise and all the characters to be fleshed out more. Perhaps that is my bias toward novels and novellas talking.
A couple descriptions I found particularly beautiful or creative or true:
*the idea of a “smeary sonic print”—lovely!
*this psychological insight: “Until then their home had been an insular haven beyond the contamination of the prison, an imposing structure outside the town limits. Now its psychic imposition transcended the limits of physical distance. Inner distance constricted, and David sensed the massive prison walls shadowing the cozy neighborhood outside.”
Though I was disappointed by the ending, I was intrigued and entertained enough to continue scouring the Ligotti corpus. Onto the next nightmare…
December 28, 2024
This was my introduction to Thomas Ligotti. I first heard of him as the inspiration for True Detective’s first season, and I can see the parallels. The cruelty of humanity, the metaphysical monologues, an ambiguity within the atmosphere.
This was a good sample of his work, looking to see what else he’s got in store. It was a simple story, predictable, inevitable. You’ve gotta start somewhere, and you’ve gotta end somewhere, so this is good a place as any. For whatever reason, I’m left with the feeling that Jonathan Doe could be lurking within the stories to come; his broken ontology leaves him open to possibilities, but i worry that the cameo’s of marvel & sanderson ruin the potential for it to be done well.
I am hoping that the cioran & schopenhauer influence goes beyond a general cynicism/pessimism.
This was a good sample of his work, looking to see what else he’s got in store. It was a simple story, predictable, inevitable. You’ve gotta start somewhere, and you’ve gotta end somewhere, so this is good a place as any. For whatever reason, I’m left with the feeling that Jonathan Doe could be lurking within the stories to come; his broken ontology leaves him open to possibilities, but i worry that the cameo’s of marvel & sanderson ruin the potential for it to be done well.
I am hoping that the cioran & schopenhauer influence goes beyond a general cynicism/pessimism.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 25, 2022
Picked up 'Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe' by Thomas Ligotti
This is the first story about 14 pages long.
First time giving the horror/weird fiction genre a chance. Given it's the spookiest month of the year :o
This story hit eerily close to home... excellently written, happy to not have wasted my money or time, can't wait to dig further into this world.
This is the first story about 14 pages long.
First time giving the horror/weird fiction genre a chance. Given it's the spookiest month of the year :o
This story hit eerily close to home... excellently written, happy to not have wasted my money or time, can't wait to dig further into this world.
June 7, 2023
A fine story with a cheap gimmick—Ligotti’s prose is inefficient and sometimes unnecessary, but there is SOMETHING there that makes me want to like the story more. Some moments and ideas that I cling to. So valuable, but flawed in very boring ways.
July 23, 2020
This story has stuck with me. It is true horror.
January 2, 2021
A thick and glistening world and its unwelcome penetration into a complementary thick and cold sonic chamber. Absolutely beautiful.
August 25, 2024
This is not the story that made me realize Ligotti is the best horror writer ever, but it is the story that made me realize he’s phenomenal.
August 5, 2021
Zrejme jedna z "najnormálnejších" Ligottiho poviedok. Ako vstup do jeho diela mimoriadne vhodná. Dusná, temná a na pôsobivosti jej neuberá ani odhadnuteľný záver.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews