Gerhardt Schuette > Recent Status Updates

On Chapter 6

Encountering Ken Liu's "Thoughts and Prayers" in this collection is like remembering an old wound. A horror story of our time that describes the aftermath of a mass shooting. Places us within the victim's family. No supernatural being or even shooter is used to evoke discomfort. Just the anonymous commenters who are certain this was all staged.

-Favorite Horror Stories of 2023

The back half of these stories truly did impress. Laird Barron's "Tiptoe" has convinced me to give his whole body of work another chance. From the game the story gets its name from to the relevations the main character has about his father, this may have been the star of the collection. Link's "Skinder's Veil" was a fun scare-lite fairytale to close a Jackson-inspired collection.

-Favorite Horror Stories of 2023

In the middle of this collection, 3 stories make a perfect run. Tremblay's "The Party" plays with the social danger of being the only one not in on a joke. Jones "Refinery Road" depicts the feeling of a moment in youth you can never escape like your tied to the train tracks. Ford's "The Door In The Fence" is a weird tale of a woman who reinvented herself in ways no one can fathom.

-Favorite Horror Stories of 2023

While each of the author's featured here are successfully adapting some aspect of Jackson's work, some do so in ways that are more memorable. Hand's "For Sale by Owner" recreates the liminal space of Hill House in a house along a hiking trail. McGuire's "In The Deep Woods" & Khaw's "Quiet Dead Things" explore rural towns as both refuge from adulthood & places of unspoken secret fears

-Favorite Horror Stories of 2023

Sarah Pinkser's "Two Truths and a Lie" shook me fundamentally to my core. Deeply unnerving, and the rare item from these collections feeely available online:
https://www.tor.com/2020/06/17/two-tr...

A story about memories we forget from child and those we invent. No content warnings come to mind: Uncle Bob's Show has warnings to spare for all of us.

-Favorite Horror Stories of 2023

"The Pill" by Meg Elison caught me off guard as a true horror story in the midst of some perfectly mild and interesting speculative fiction. Perfectly uncomfortable and terrifyingly likely in some of it's saddest predictions since being written. Late to the party but still a timely read about our societies obsession with obesity.

-Favorite Horror Stories of 2023

"The Pill" by Meg Elison caught me off guard as a true horror story in the midst of some perfectly mild and interesting speculative fiction. Perfectly uncomfortable and terrifyingly likely in some of it's saddest predictions since being written. Late to the party but still a timely read about our societies obsession with obesity.

-Favorite Horror Stories of 2023

Two final gems round out the collection as they play on time, trauma, and what we owe to our own flesh and blood. "Halloo" offers a glimpse of a daughters return to an unwelcome home and "Cuckoo" greets the parents of an unwelcome child that the earlier take in this collection. "Church in the Mountains" deserves an honorable mention for finding horror in that show you swear you saw once..
-Best Horror Stories of 2023