The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories: Terrifying Tales Set on the Scariest Night of the Year! Edited by Stephen Jones. Skyhorse Publishing, 2018.
Featuring twenty-six stories (and one poem), and weighing in at over 500 pages, Jones’s anthology certainly fulfills its titular claims of prodigiousness. Some of the High Holiday highlights within:
From its baroque title to its weird and unsettling imagery, James Ebersole’s “The Phenakisticope of Decay” (concerning trick-or-treaters’ encounter with a sinister low-tech cartoon-viewing device) reads like a product of Thomas Ligotti’s Nightmare Factory. The story’s ending perhaps falls a bit short of the mark, but that doesn’t detract from the macabre magnificence that precedes it.
Storm Constantine’s “Bone Fire” burns bright as the author rekindles Halloween’s Celtic roots. This tale of demons, fairies, and pagan celebrations is both beautifully written and suffused with sharp plot twists.
I love science-fictional variations on the Halloween tale (e.g., Al Sarrantonio’s “Red Eve”; Caitlin R. Kiernan’s “Whilst the Night Rejoices Profound and Still”), and Lisa Morton’s “The Ultimate Halloween Party App” can now be added to that short list. Morton’s story of rampant terrorism and neurotechnological misdeed downloads a rollicking monster mash into readers’ imaginations.
Set in Finland, Michael Marshall Smith’s “The Scariest Thing in the World” invokes Halloween in a more philosophical manner, and the referent of its title is not some facile frightener. The narrative simmers and simmers…until it reaches its explosive final line.
Thana Niveau’s “White Mare” presents Americans abroad and accosted by an angry mob of villagers on Halloween night. The strange customs maintained here in the English countryside are enough to make the festivities in The Wicker Man seem like a gathering around a cozy campfire.
These are all original pieces, but the strongest entries in the anthology (which opens with Neil Gaiman’s classic Bradbury homage, “October in the Chair”) are its reprints. Angela Slatter’s “The October Widow” combines an intimate tale of love and loss with hints of an autumnal apocalypse. Renowned for his darkly comedic voice, Joe R. Lansdale reminds us what a harrowing raconteur he also is in “The Folding Man”–a supernatural take on the “black car” legend. Ramsey Campbell establishes himself once again as the master of the creepy detail in “Her Face,” and Christopher Fowler’s narrator “Lantern Jack” regales listeners with the history of a haunted (especially on Halloween) London pub built on an ancient, ignis-fatuus-producing peat bog.
As is the case with most Jones anthologies, non-American authors dominate the table of contents here. So for those residing in our macabre republic, this collection might prove not quite what was expected (there’s rare display of U.S. settings/holiday observances). But while The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories ultimately does not stack up to last year’s Ellen-Datlow-and-Lisa-Morton-edited anthology Haunted Nights (reviewed here), it still warrants top-shelf slotting in the Halloween fiction lover’s library.