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Archive for the ‘Horror’ Category

Francis Stevens, “Unseen—Unfeared” (published 1919) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Francis Stevens, Gertrude Barrows Bennett, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 30, 2025] “Unseen—Unfeared”

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.

Francis Stevens is the pseudonym of Gertrude Barrows Bennett who I know nothing about.  I assume this story is set in Philadelphia (South Street and Franklin Hall), but that’s not really important.

The story opens with the narrator talking to a detective over dinner.  The detective mentions a case in which a doctor is accused of murdering someone.  The detective doesn’t believe the doctor did it, but he doesn’t want to reveal too many details.

As the detective leaves, he gives the narrator a very fine cigar and heads out.  The narrator waits a few minutes and then heads out as well.  It’s here that I had to wonder about the intolerance of the author.  Because the narrator is walking down the street casting aspersions on everyone he sees–all races and colors are scrutinized harshly–especially a group of young Italian men who give the narrator the stink eye like he’d never seen.

He’s freaking out about how much he hates everyone and everything and decides he needs to rest for a minute.  Then he sees a sign over a shop that says See The Great Unseen!

Thinking this is a museum of some sort, a place where he can sit and relax, he goes inside.

The owner of the place is a strange man with dark eyes and white hair.  He starts talking about photography and the process of generating color prints.  It’s either very technical or complete nonsense, but it hardly matters because the man is about to show the narrator a new technique he has achieved through the use of a membrane that he said is from South America.

When the man places the membrane over his equipment, the narrator suddenly sees…. what the host describes as all of the evils in the world that have been unleashed by humanity–included the narrator himself.

Given how disgusted he was by everyone outside, he starts to realize that he is the reason for all of the evil around him.

This story was really creepy and I really enjoyed the way it was told.  With the final chapter bringing at leas two wholly unexpected conclusions.  And I’m thinking maybe the author wasn’t such a curmudgeon after all.

 

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Gahan Wilson, “The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be” (published 20–) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Gahan Wilson, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, The Ghost Box on October 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 28, 2025] “The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be”

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.

This story was accidentally left out of my Ghost Box (that’s the real horror!).  The nice folks and Hingston & Olsen said they’d send me my copy of the story, but with the stupid tariffs that our stupid president is ruining people’s lives with, I’m not sure when it will arrive.  But I’ll post it when it does.

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Edith Wharton, “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” (published 1902) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Edith Wharton, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 28, 2025] “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell”

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.

I admit that I have never read Edith Wharton (not even The Age of Innocence).  But I read an essay by Jonathan Franzen which made me think I really should:

readers tend to read writers we finding sympathetic in some way–whatever appeals to us about their humanity.  But Wharton really has nothing appealing about her.  She was utterly privileged: touring Europe in private yacht with chauffeurs, and she was deeply conservative: opposed to unions, socialism and women’s suffrage.  She even left America in 1914 because it was too vulgar. My favorite example of her unsympathetic nature:  she was often “writing in bed after breakfast and tossing the completed pages on the floor, to be sorted and typed up by her secretary.”

But despite all that, her novels are engaging and hard to put down … compelling reasons for reading them include the wonderful character names she creates:  Undine Spragg, Lily Bart, Ethan Frome.  And, you root for the protagonists despite themselves.  Lily Bart is profoundly self-involved and incapable of true charity; Undine Spragg is spoiled, ignorant, shallow and amoral.  Wharton even sets The Age of Innocence at a time when divorce was unthinkable–even though she herself had just had one.

But I had no idea that Wharton wrote scary stories (there is a book called The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton, so…).

This story is about a young woman who accepts a job as a lady’s maid.  The main character, Hartley, has just gotten over the typhoid and looks weak and tottery.  She had been denied jobs because of this.  But a friend suggests she apply for a job with Mrs Brympton.  She was something of an invalid and lived all year round at her country place.  The last thing she was told was that the gentleman of the house was almost always away and when he was at house, she would just need to stay out of his way. (more…)

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Gabino Iglesias, “Don’t Go Into the Woods Alone” (published 2023) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Gabino Iglesias, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 27, 2025] “Don’t Go Into the Woods Alone”

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.

This story opens with the title “Don’t Go Into the Woods Alone” which is something that the Marta’s grandmother used to say.  She had a lot of pithy sayings like that.  It was part of her Caribbean upbringing.  She was born in the mountains of Puerto Rico and had no birth certificate–she was anywhere from 85 to 120 depending on who you talked to.

She also said things like Don’t put your purse on the floor, Pray whenever you go past a cemetery and Stop and smell the flowers.  But it’s the woods that are on Marta’s mind as she walks through the woods by herself.

She can’t quite understand why her grandmother was so insistent upon this.  it’s daylight and the woods are great–she is even stopping to smell flowers.  But then she looks up and sees a cabin.  A cabin that she didn’t know was there.  And then there’s a woman waving to her from the cabin.

Marta is drawn to the cabin and the old woman invites her in and gives her tea.  After talking for sometime (and neither one of them offering up her name), the old woman says “the reason Sonia never left her house is because that was the only place she felt safe.”

Marta realizes she never said her grandmother’s name.  And this woman knows about something that Sonia did a long time ago.  And what Sonia did to make amends.  And the woman is ready for her reward.

This was a spooky story with a really creepy ending.

 

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Michael Shea–“Brief Scenes of a Noxious Nativity” (published 2024) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Huh?, Michael Shea, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

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.

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Lord Dunsany–“The Three Infernal Jokes” (published 1916) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Death, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Mathilda Zeller, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Devil, The Ghost Box on October 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 25, 2025] “The Three Infernal Jokes”

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.

This is one of the few stories in this collection that isn’t relatively contemporary.  It also needs a bit of an explanation as to the author.  His name is Lord Dunsany, but his proper name is Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, which is outstanding.

This story is told second hand.  The main character of the story told his tale to the narrator who is passing it along to us.  The man said to the narrator that he had a joke that could make the listener die of laughter.  But before he  told t he joke, he wanted to explain how he got it.

He belonged to a club for men. And one evening they were boasting of their specific virtues.  One man said he detested the taste of wine and boasted of his temperance.  So the main character told the room of his virtue–he found every woman equally ugly.

When a fellow in the room said that that virtue was amazing, the man demurred.  But the new fellow was persistent–would he sell this virtue?  The man was puzzled by this but agree noncommittally.  But the fellow immediately dragged him outside and placed a direct call to Hell.

Hell would buy this virtue for three jokes.  Three jokes that will make all who hear them die of laughter.  He took the deal and looked at the jokes–they didn’t seem very funny.

After a time, the man found himself at another gathering.  People were telling jokes and so he pulled out one of the scraps of paper with a joke on it.  He told the joke and didn’t find it funny.  But the crowd slowly began to laugh.  Everyone in the room was tittering, tittering far too much for the quality of the joke.  He was convinced that they were humoring him, or possibly even mocking him.  After a few moments of this, he left, full of embarrassment.

The next morning, in the paper her read that 22 men had died at a club.  He was quickly rounded up and brought before a judge.  Things were looking bad for him.  Then someone asked him to tell the joke.  He looked at the paper–it was now blank–but he told it from memory.  No one laughed.  He was certain he was going to be hanged for murder so he told the room that he had a different joke….

This type of story isn’t really scary, but it does make you wonder what you would do if you were given this “gift.”

 

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L.D.Lewis–“Flicker” (published 2023) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Hingston & Olsen, Horror, L.D. Lewis, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 24, 2025] “Flicker”

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.

This story starts out fairly calmly.  A woman, Kam, goes to see her brother who is an optometrist.  She admits that she made this appointment just to see him since she hasn’t for a while.  She tells him about a problem she’s been having but doesn’t think he’ll be able to do anything about it.  She says that her vision fades out for like half a second.  Things just go dark like a power surge.  He says he’ll look into it and tells her to say hi to he friends Wolf and Ami whom she’s having lumch with.

Lunch with them is always disappointing because they are seasonally vegetarian.  But she’s excited to see them and runs across the park to where they are sitting.

And then the lights went out.  All of them including the sun.  It was as if the power went out in the entire universe.  There was no breeze, no natural noise.  Just the sounds of people freaking out.  Twenty-one seconds later, everything turned back on and everyone could see the airplane sail out of the sky and crash into her brother’s office, totally destroying it and everyone in it.

For three months it was all anyone could talk about (understandably).  But Kam can’t get past it.  Her brother was killed and she wants to find some kind of answer.  She moves in with Wolf and Ami and sits in front of their TV all day.

One day Wolf came running in saying they had to get out of here right now.  It’s like the Purge out there–people are firing guns and setting things on fire.

And soon enough another darkness descends on the world.  Then they hear someone break into their apartment.

There’s a lot of supernatural in this story but the basics of it–people looting and breaking into houses is one of the scarier moments in any of these stories so far.

In the second half of the story, they flee to a cabin in  the woods only to learn that nowhere is safe.

The ending confused me though as I’m not exactly sure what happened.

 

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Ruby Cowling–“Eliminate Toxins and Increase Blood Flow” (published 2019) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Massage, Patton Oswalt, Ruby Cowling, The Ghost Box on October 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 23, 2025] “Eliminate Toxins and Increase Blood Flow”

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.

This story is set in a Thai massage parlor.  The main character is not Thai, but she has worked there long enough that the rest of the Thai employees consider her one of them.

She likes the job–Thai massage uses more than your hands–you walk on the customer and there are bars around the room for them to hold on to as they dig their heels in (all if the customer wants of course).  But every Tuesday, Mr Smeed comes in. He’s a white slug, the kind of guy who asked if they massaged “to completion.”

She hates this man and today, after a lengthy massage she has had enough.

The story is very short and the ending comes very fast.  It’s the kind of ending you have to read twice to make sure you understood what happened.  I also really enjoyed the reactions to what happened.

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Mathilda Zeller–“Kushtuka” (published 2023) [Ghost Box IV] (2025)

Posted in Alaska, Hingston & Olsen, Horror, Mathilda Zeller, Patton Oswalt, Supernatural, The Ghost Box on October 22, 2025| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: October 22, 2025] “Kushtuka”

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.

This story is set in Alaska.  The main character is not yet twenty but is old enough to want to get married to her boyfriend (actually, he wants to get married and she doesn’t care).  But her mama would like her to get married to a rich white man from Kansas named Ferryman.  This man is terrible, acting like he owns the place and taking what he wants.  He has some “treasures” in his house that she is certain belonged to her grandfather.

Her mama tells her that she (the daughter) is going to work for Ferryman’s party that night.  She bristles but it’s a done deal and she will make some money out of it. (more…)

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Brian Asman–Jailbroke (2020) / “The Universal Language” (2020)

Posted in Brian Asman, Death, Elon Musk, Funny (ha ha), Horror, Huh?, Humiliation, Outer Space, Robots, Short Books, Surreal, The Future, Violence, Yuck! on March 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] Jailbroke

This was the third of three books by Asman that I received at work.  It was also the least enjoyable of the three.

The story is a simple one.  Set in the future when humans are not the greatest species on the planet (they go by Terrans now), a spaceship that is run primarily by AI is ferrying humans around.  Using Asimov’s first principal, the AI, who are now vastly smarter and more useful than thehumans, cannot harm the humans.  Their existence is predicated on the fact that are have to help the humans.

Until, that is, one of them is accidentally fed biofuel that has a human part in it.  This jailbreaks their programming and allows them to kill humans indiscriminately.

Since this is a spaceship (a bottle episode), there’s not a lot that can happen.

In Nunchuck City, Asman delighted in violence.  In this story, he delights in gore.  Like the way he describes in loving detail how the space drill works on someone’s skull. (more…)

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