SOUNDTRACK:
[READ: October 26, 2025] “Brief Scenes of a Noxious Nativity”
It has been six years since Ghost Box III came out….
After years of demand, the Ghost Box is back! Patton Oswalt’s much-beloved spooky-story anthology returns for a fourth edition, with the same trademark production details—magnetized box lid, anyone?—that Ghost Box fans have come to expect.
As always, working with Patton on Ghost Box IV was a dream, and we can’t wait to show you the nightmares that he’s wrangled and stuffed into the box this time around.
It’s unusual that I simply do not get a story. And I absolutely did not get this one. Or maybe I don’t get why it was written. It’s very short (3 pages in this tiny format) and it shows two scenes.
In the first scene, a rock hits a hill. Something cracks open and a little molecular net–an elaborate hydrocarbon making its first appearance in nature–floated out. She floated through the rock to the water and was swallowed by a fish.
In the second scene a backhoe hits a bluff–maybe the same hill?–and another microsomething escapes.
On a second reading I get that I think this microscopic invader is potentially going to destroy the world. But it was so oddly written that I ‘m not really sure. Ah, I see that this is excerpted from a larger work. So that makes sense because this felt like the set up to something. Although I won’t be seeking out the novel.
Interestingly, Shea wrote a story in Ghost Box II that I loved. Every story is different.
I Just Read About That... 