Tag Archives: Paranormal

October 28, 2022 · 1:00 am

A Review of Vespasian Moon’s Fabulous Autumn Carnival

Vespasian Moon’s Fabulous Autumn Carnival - A Long Short Story by Berthold Gambrel book cover. Image on cover is a drawing of a large yellow full moon with a black bat flying near the top of it in the sky. There are two jack o lanterns at the bottom of the cover near the title. Title: Vespasian Moon’s Fabulous Autumn Carnival – A Long Short Story

Author: Berthold Gambrel

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 18, 2019

Genres: Paranormal, Mystery, Romance, Holiday, Humour

Length: 54 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 5 Stars

Blurb:

Federal Agent Jane Raczyck is tired of her job. So is Sheriff Sixtus Davis, the head law enforcement officer in the town of Turpin’s Gulch. But when Raczyck’s agency sends her to work with Davis on combating the drug epidemic in the small Appalachian hamlet, the two are compelled to investigate the local carnival and its mysterious impresario… even though they’d much rather be doing other things together.

Review:

Content Warning: References to drug abuse, multi-generational poverty, and some of the negative consequences of living in an insular community like prejudice against and a deep distrust of outsiders. I won’t discuss these subjects in my review, and they were a minor part of an otherwise pretty lighthearted plot.

Small towns are supposed to be sleepy, peaceful little places where nothing weird ever happens….right?

The main characters were a hoot. Neither of them seemed all that emotionally invested in carrying out the roles in society that they were supposed to be fulfilling. Even when Jane behaved like a federal agent and Davis took his job as head law enforcement officer in Turpin’s Gulch seriously, there was still always an faint undercurrent of restlessness and snark in their personalities that always made me wonder how they’d break the unwritten rules of how they were supposed to act next based on their occupations and gender identities. This was exactly what the setting needed in order to thrive, and it made me wish I’d ignored my overflowing to be read list and jumped ahead to this tale when it first came out.

I loved seeing how the narrator broke the fourth wall and spoke directly to the audience when necessary. For example, this was how Jane was described: “Now, because standards of beauty vary greatly, let me simply say that she had whatever you consider to be the most attractive hair color and style, atop whatever you think is the ideal face shape, with skin colored in the precise shade of pigment you like the best,” and it made me laugh out loud when I read it. Of course the audience’s preconceptions and tastes matter when describing a beautiful woman, and it tickled my funny bone to see that addressed so openly.  Do keep an eye out for other unexpected moments like this while reading because i can’t possibly list them all in this review.

The paranormal elements of the plot were beautifully understated. Many of these scenes that included them could be explained away with rational alternatives to what some characters assumed was happening there. I love ambigious stuff like that, especially when it’s followed up with scenes that gently nudge the reader in the particular direction the author wants you go while still leaving room for other interpretations for those who wish to hang onto their own ideas about the origins of previous spooky moments. Yes, I’m being vague in this paragraph on purpose. If you want to know more, you’ll have to read this book!

While no prior knowledge of Appalachian culture is required to understand the storyline, readers who are from that culture or who have knowledge of it in other ways will find some gems here. I nodded and chuckled as I read certain passages because of how much they reminded me of certain people I knew when I was a kid or of cultural references that I rarely see mentioned in fiction.

Vespasian Moon’s Fabulous Autumn Carnival was everything I was hoping it would be and more.

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October 26, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Scariest Real Life Ghost Story

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Blurry black-and-white photo of a ghostly-white woman wearing a long-sleeved dress and wearing her black hair half over her face. Unless you count the loud footsteps that sometimes rumble up and down my in-laws stairs (but that are probably just coming from a noisy neighbour in the other home in their duplex), I have never seen or interacted with a ghost.

With that being said, my father had a frightening and bizarre experience one night while sleeping at my grandfather’s home about thirty years ago.

This home was built by my grandfather on land that has been in our family for generations. There have been no sudden deaths, acts of violence, or any other tragedies in that house or on that land for as long as anyone in the family can recall. It’s a peaceful place, and yet the story of the black-eyed woman still happened.

Dad was sleeping in bed next to mom when he felt the bed gently shake as someone sat on it in the middle of the night. He awoke to see his wife sitting on the end of the bed staring at him.

It took him a minute to remember that mom did not have black eyes. That is to say, the eyes of the woman looking him did not have pupils, irises, or sclera. They were coal black from beginning to end. She otherwise looked exactly like his wife.

He looked over to the side and saw his actual wife sleeping quietly beside him, so he reached forward to swat the black-eyed stranger away. His hand couldn’t touch anything solid where she sat, and yet she was still there looking at him.

”Get out in the name of Jesus!” He said to the black-eyed woman. She disappeared like a mist.

He was not able to fall back asleep again that night.

Let’s add a few more pieces of information to the mystery:

1) During that time, my parents were trying to decide whether to make some life-changing career decisions that would make it much easier for them to pay the bills and even save a little bit of money for the future. Saying yes to those opportunities would also increase their stress and decrease the amount of time they had for anything other than work and finishing college (for my mom) and mean our family would need to move a few thousand miles away from where we lived at the time.

2) My father has seasonal allergies that required him to take allergy medicine before bed in order to be decongested enough to sleep. He is also known to be someone who occasionally has trouble transitioning from sleeping to being fully alert, especially if he’s interrupted during deep sleep.

3) They belonged to a denomination that worried about evil spirits and demons more than many other faiths and denominations do. Avoiding and casting out these spirits were common topics of conversation in our social circles.

So this could have been a hypnogogic hallucination. That is to say, a hallucination that took place while his brain was still in the process of waking up. These types of hallucinations can include seeing, feeling, and hearing things that are not actually there because your mind is still dreaming at that time. They are not dangerous, just a quirk of the human mind.

On the other hand, my mother has a sibling who had night terrors and incidents of sleep walking when he slept in that room as a kid. Maybe it’s a coincidence, or maybe not.

No one else has seen the black-eyed woman at my grandparents’ home to the best of my knowledge, but this is the scariest real-life (possible?) ghost story I know. I will leave it up to all of you decide if you’d rather believe it was a spirit, a mental process that can be explained by our current understanding of psychology and neurology, or something else entirely.

Happy (almost) Halloween!

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October 20, 2022 · 1:00 am

Running to Safety: A Review of One Dark Hallow’s Eve

One Dark Hallows Eve by Eldritch BlacI book cover. Image on cover shows a drawing of two sinister glowing jack-o-lanterns sitting at the bottom of a hill on the night of a full moon. A house and a leafless tree sit at the top of the hill. Title: One Dark Hallow’s Eve

Author: Eldritch Black

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 22, 2015

Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Paranormal, Horror, Contemporary, Historical

Length: 43 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Beware it’s Halloween and the Pumpkin Men are coming.

It’s All Hallow’s Eve and Owen Weeks is not having a good day. Something’s stirring in the lake by his house, the dead leaves beneath this shoes crunch like bones, and even the brambles seem to twitch when he’s not looking.

Nothing’s right.

But things get a lot worse as Owen discovers a terrifying stranger hiding in an abandoned farmhouse. A dark spell is cast. Old magic, magic that raises a terrifying horde of nightmarish creatures.

As the monsters descend upon the village, Owen realizes there’s only one place left to go…across the lake. But can he survive the horror of the legends said to live below its muddy waters?

The clock’s ticking toward midnight, and soon it will be the hour of the Pumpkin Men and ancient terrors from a distant land.

One Dark Hallow’s Eve is a lost tale from Eldritch Black’s The Book of Kindly Deaths. Read it now and slip into a timeless world of dark fantasy and Halloween horror.

Review:

Content Warning: Skeletons and pumpkins who can walk.

Get ready for a gentle scare.

Twelve is an awkward age, especially on Halloween. You’re not a little kid anymore, but you’re not yet old enough for the parties that teenagers or adults sometimes attend that weekend either. I enjoyed the way this short story captured the weirdness of this in-between stage in life and how kids deal with the realization that what worked for them on previous Halloweens maybe isn’t quite what they should be doing this year. It’s not something I’ve seen covered very often in the horror genre, so it was refreshing to find here.

There were times in the plot when certain elements didn’t fit together, and yet the characters accepted all of the twists and turns without a second thought. I wish more time had been spent explaining what the characters were thinking and why no one questioned why their town was suddenly overwhelmed with monsters. Even a simple explanation would have nudged me to bump my rating up half a star or so, and a deeper one would had positively affected my rating even more.

The world building was well done. Obviously, the author didn’t have a lot of space here to go into great detail, but he made good use of every page he did have to work with to ensure that all of his readers knew the basics of what was going on and how this world was different from our own. I was both satisfied with his explanations and curious to know more. That’s a good sign in my opinion, and I will keep an eye out for what the author comes up with next!

This is part of a series, but it can be read as a standalone work.

One Dark Hallow’s Eve was a quick and spooky read.

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October 6, 2022 · 1:00 am

Cottagecore Horror: A Review of On Sundays She Picked Flowers

On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield book cover. Image on cover shows a drawing of a black woman’s head surrounded by blue water. She may be swimming and is looking out to the right with a serene expression on her face.Title: On Sundays She Picked Flowers

Author: Yah Yah Scholfield

Publisher: Oni House Press Corp

Publication Date: February 20, 2022

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, Historical

Length: 142 pages

Source: I borrowed it from my local library.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

“It took Judith thirty-four years to realize that if she wanted to be free of her mother, she was going to have to do the freeing herself.”

On Sundays, She Picks Flowers is about a woman named Judith who finally escapes her mother to the countryside of Georgia. There she makes a home for herself in a cottage given to her by a relatively kind innkeeper. And it’s there she begins her Sunday routine. And it’s there she learns of the beings in the woods. And it’s also there she meets Nemoira, the woman who changes her life in ways Judith never even thought of. This novel is an exploration of transformation, of metamorphosis, closure, retribution, nature, and healing.  In this southern gothic tale, you will see Judith become undone, redone, and become in incredible ways that is human and more than human. It’s a rollercoaster of emotion, dealings of familial trauma, love, and mystery. On Sundays, She Picked Flowers is a fascinating story that will keep you on your toes and make you fall in love.

Review:

Content Warning: Physical abuse, emotional abuse, gore, cannibalism, injury, murder, parent death, death, animal death, self harm.

Healing can be a messy and prolonged process.

Most people would be frightened by the idea of living in the middle of nowhere in a haunted cottage, but Judith was running away from something much worse than that when she moved into this violent little home sweet home. Her reaction to it happened within the first chapter or two, and it solidified my opinion of her as someone I wish I could meet in real life. Simply put, she acknowledged that it was odd for a house to throw furniture around or fiddle with the heating system in an attempt to get rid of its newest inhabitant, but she wasn’t about to let any of that silliness keep her from settling down and trying to make a happy new life for herself.

There were multiple grammatical errors that became more prevalent later on in this work. I’m the sort of reader who can overlook one or two of them, but they happened so regularly that they affected my star rating and made me feel obligated to mention them in my review. Another round of editing would have gone a long way in convincing me to choose a higher rating as there were so many other things I enjoyed about this book.

I’d like to strike a balance between encouraging people to read this novella while also warning you all that it is not for the faint of heart. Judith was painfully honest with the audience about the abuse she experienced in the first chapter or two, and some of those passages were difficult to read. Other disturbing scenes popped up later in the storyline, but nearly all of them served an important purpose for the plot and character development. The fear and suffering helped to explain why Judith was so haunted by her past even well into middle age and how she found a way to slowly move forward with her life.

My second reason for choosing a three star rating had to do with how awkwardly the ending fit into the themes that had been established earlier on. This was especially true when it came to the gorier aspects of the plot. It was never quite clear to me why some of those scenes were necessary when Judith had spent so much time distancing herself from her past and working to create a better future for herself. I would have loved to see some more exposition explaining the characters’ and author’s thought patterns here as there was never quite enough information for me to understand why the storyline veered off into the direction it did. These are things I’m saying as someone who genuinely wanted to choose a  higher rating but who had too many questions to ultimately do so.

One of my favorite themes involved the character arcs of physical objects. I can’t go into much detail about this without giving away spoilers, but the personal development of these objects was almost as satisfying as seeing how Judith rested and healed in a haunted and traumatized plot of land that most folks would probably run away screaming from. I’ve read a lot of horror, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this. The author excelled at digging into the thought processes and emotional lives of objects and other things that are normally not given much attention at all in these genres.

On Sundays She Picked Flowers was thought provoking.

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September 15, 2022 · 1:00 am

Dreaming of Happily Ever After: A Review of Somewhere in Time

Somewhere in Time by Fizza Younis book cover. Image on cover shows a drawing of a sun and stars superimposed on an actual photo of the night sky that has a few hazy clouds (or maybe galaxies?) floating through it. Title: Somewhere in Time

Author: Fizza Younis

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 31, 2020

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary, Historical

Length: 34 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

It’s a fairy tale retelling of the classic Sleeping Beauty, set between the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, the story has a darker paranormal twist, and no happily-ever-after within sight. But what the future holds for our beloved characters, Aurora and Prince Phillip, is yet to be determined.

Review:

Content Warning: mafia, murder, suicide, and a brief mention of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Get ready for a wild ride.

This tale was a delightful mixture of topics I’d never think to include in the same storyline like the mafia, the Covid-19 pandemic, and Sleeping Beauty. I admire authors who are willing to take risks like this with their writing. It makes for an exciting reading experience for those of us who are well-versed in the fantasy genre and who can be difficult to surprise. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for what Ms. Younis writes next, although I won’t try to guess where her vivid and playful imagination might wander.

Fairy tales don’t have to explain everything, of course, but I found myself wishing this one had gone into more details about how the magic works in this world. For example, the reason why Aurora fell into her deep sleep never made sense to me. I could accept the magical veil that protected her and her stately home while she slept, but it sure would have been nice to know why this spell existed in the first place and under what conditions she might wake up. There were so many other changes to the classic Sleeping Beauty story in this retelling that I didn’t think I should make any assumptions about who or what might have caused these magical events. If the author had been clearer about this, I would have happily chosen a higher rating.

The ending made me yearn for more. I wanted to know how Aurora adjusted to the world after her long nap and what she was planning to do with the rest of her life. Given that this was a fairy tale, though, it did make sense to stop at that moment. Princesses have nearly always been traditionally been described as living happily ever after, and I’m hoping the same can be said about heiresses who wake up in the modern world. Who knows? Maybe we’ll someday get a sequel and find out for sure.

Somewhere in Time kept me guessing until the final sentence.

 

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September 8, 2022 · 1:00 am

Rooting Out Evil: A Review of Secrets of the Under Market

Secrets of the Under Market by Krysten Harlow book cover. Image on cover shows a glowing yellow coin with yellow lights orbiting it and some sort of archaic writing on it. Title: Secrets of the Under Market

Author: Krysten Harlow

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: May 4, 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 73 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Mortal Instruments meets Hellboy in this riveting urban fantasy series that is a prequel to the Visions of Darkness Trilogy.”

He was born into a rare demon-hunting lineage…

All his life, Max Damiano has trained with his family and waited for his arcane talent to awaken. On the morning of his fourteenth birthday, his wish is granted: he is a telekinetic.

Now he can fully take part in the family’s Work of keeping the world safe from demons, remnants of a long-gone universe, the Qlippoth, whose very existence is inimical to our world’s reality. His first assignment? To investigate the disappearance of a dozen children in the New York City area. In the center of the disappearances is the New York Under Market, a market for the arcane community run by the transglobal Underwood Corporation.

Concerned that their Market is at the center of these alarming disappearances, the Underwood Corporation hires Max and two of his siblings, Tom and Sadie, to investigate. Will they be able to catch the demonic malefactor in time?

One thing is for sure, it will not go quietly.

Review:

Content Warning: spiders, the kidnapping of human children, and the killing and dismemberment of demons. I will not mention these topics in my review.

Never underestimate a demon.

Character development is one of those writing things that can be trickier to display in a relatively short work like this one than it would be in a full-length novel. I mentioned this first so that my next sentence would have some context to it. Seeing how Max changed as a result of his adventures was delightful. He behaved just like any fourteen-year-old should as far as his emotional and cognitive development went, but I also saw exciting glimpses of the adult he would soon become. Honestly, that’s all that’s needed in the beginning of a series. I’m glad the author included them while still leaving plenty of room for further development in future instalments.

I would have preferred to see a faster pacing in this novella. There were times when my interest in it wavered because of how long it took for the next action-heavy scene to appear. Introducing the characters and setting was obviously important, but I did find myself wishing that those descpritons and conversations had been broken up more often by conflicts with demons or similar events. The author had plenty of material to work with, and I would have happily gone with a much higher rating if the pacing had been sped up.

The world building in this novella was extensive and impressive. I actually stopped reading a few chapters in to confirm that I hadn’t accidentally started halfway through the series. There was so much attention paid to the countless little details that make a fictional world come to life in my imagination that it was hard to believe this was the introduction, and I mean that in the best possible way. This isn’t an easy thing to accomplish in a prequel by any means. Ms. Harlow should be proud of how seamlessly she wove everything together.

Secrets of the Under Market made me smile.

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September 1, 2022 · 1:00 am

Reasonable Assumptions: A Review of The Interview

The Interview by Liz Tuckwell book cover. Image on cover shows a drawing of a red headed woman being interviewed by two black-haired people. There is one red ajar door behind the person on the left and one closed door behind the person on the right. Title: The Interview

Author: Liz Tuckwell

Publisher: Green Griffin Books (Self-Published)

Publication Date: August 6, 2021

Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 22 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

 

Melissa’s being interviewed

… for a job she never applied for

… and she doesn’t know the name of the company

The interviewers ask some very strange questions before offering her the job of Junior Executive.

Even stranger – they insist every candidate, whether successful or not, leaves by one of two doors at the end of the offices.

What lies behind the doors?

Something unexpected and supernatural.

You’ll enjoy finding out what it is. Get it now.

Review:

Content Warning: Motorbike accident.

How would you respond to a frustrating and illogical job interview?

Yes, the premise of this short story will probably be easy to figure out for anyone who has read or watched something similar in the past. I’ll have to dance around the twist during the course of this review, but what I liked about Ms. Tuckwell’s approach to it was how she explored Melissa’s reactions to things like being asked if she had a boyfriend or needing to sit in a waiting room for a long time before the actual interview began. Little moments like these can reveal a lot about someone’s personality and character, both of which were displayed clearly to the audience.

I did find myself wishing that the interview itself had included some harder questions. It seemed a little odd to me that her interviewers veered off into unrelated topics when they were trying to figure out if Melissa was the right fit for what she was interviewing for. If only there had been a scene at the end that explained their thought processes here. I would have loved to understand why they chose the questions they did instead of many others that may have made their point clearer.

The ending was delightful. Even though I knew what was coming in advance, I still loved seeing everything play out the way I thought it would. It also left plenty of room for a sequel if the author ever decides to write one. While this was satisfying on its own, I’d definitely be interested in learning more about how the interview process worked and what happened to people after all of the data had been collected and analyzed.

The Interview was a thought-provoking read.

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August 25, 2022 · 1:00 am

Making Their Moves: A Review of Empty Smiles

Empty Smiles by Katherine Arden book cover. Image on cover shows a drawing of an evil running clown. Behind him are two children running away from him while carrying two blue balloons each. Title: Empty Smiles (Small Spaces #4)

Author: Katherine Arden

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: August 9, 2022

Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Mystery, Horror, Contemporary

Length: 256 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

New York Times bestselling author Katherine thrills once again in the finale to the critically acclaimed, spook-tacular quartet that began with Small Spaces.

It’s been three months since Ollie made a daring deal with the smiling man to save those she loved, and then vanished without a trace. The smiling man promised Coco, Brian and Phil, that they’d have a chance to save her, but as time goes by, they begin to worry that the smiling man has lied to them and Ollie is gone forever. But finally, a clue surfaces. A boy who went missing at a nearby traveling carnival appears at the town swimming hole, terrified and rambling. He tells anyone who’ll listen about the mysterious man who took him. How the man agreed to let him go on one condition: that he deliver a message. Play if you dare.

Game on! The smiling man has finally made his move. Now it’s Coco, Brian, and Phil’s turn to make theirs. And they know just where to start. The traveling carnival is coming to Evansburg.

Meanwhile, Ollie is trapped in the world behind the mist, learning the horrifying secrets of the smiling man’s carnival, trying everything to help her friends find her. Brian, Coco and Phil will risk everything to rescue Ollie—but they all soon realize this game is much more dangerous than the ones before. This time the smiling man is playing for keeps.

The summer nights are short, and Ollie, Coco, Brian, and Phil have only until sunrise to beat him once and for all—or it’s game over for everyone.

Review:

Content Warning: Scary clowns, kidnapping, a sprained ankle, and a little blood (think the amount that can be staunched by what you’d find in the typical home first aid kit. It wasn’t gory).

Summer carnivals are supposed to be cheerful places, so why is this one so scary?

The character development was handled nicely. Coco and Brian were reluctant to tell the adults in their lives what was really happening during their previous encounters with the smiling man even when they were in terrible danger. I’ll leave it up to other readers to discover all of the details of how they responded, but I was pleased to see how seriously they took their safety this time around. It’s always nice to read stories about people who grow and change as a result of their past experiences. We all make mistakes sometimes, but there is something to be said for folks learning from the past and trying to improve the way they react to scary unexpected things.

One of the biggest unanswered questions in this series has been the smiling man’s motivation for everything he’s done to Coco, Brian, Ollie, and the other people he has interacted with. I started reading with high hopes that he’d explain why he chose these particular people as his victims and what he wanted to accomplish. Without giving away more than the mildest of spoilers, I was disappointed with the vague answer that was provided here. After spending four books getting to know him and coming up with my own theories about why he behaved the way he did, I was really hoping for more closure. If only the author had made her intentions clearer in this area. Was it a reference to how people in real life also do terrible things sometimes without anyone ever figuring out why? Am I expecting too much from something written for kids? Despite this being branded as a quartet, is there secretly a prequel on the way that will explain his origins and desires? I can only hope that prequel idea will really happen!

I have always enjoyed reading about the friendships between these characters. Their bonds were strengthened in this book in all sorts of wonderful ways, some of which included fun callbacks to their earlier adventures. It made me smile to read about characters who genuinely liked each other and would do anything to help their friends. I saw glimpses of the teens and adults they may become someday in the way they behaved at their current ages.

This is the fourth instalment in the Small Spaces quartet. Be sure to read Small Spaces, Dead Voices, and Dark Waters first as there were many references to those tales that will only make sense to people who are caught up on everything.

Empty Smiles was deliciously spooky.

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August 18, 2022 · 1:00 am

A Review of Horror Anthology – Wicked Pond Collection

Horror Anthology - Wicked Pond Collection by Jeffrey Legendre book cover. Image on cover shows a purple person with purple hair standing in a pond that’s surrounded by lush green trees. She might be swimming or maybe just standing there?Title: Horror Anthology – Wicked Pond Collection

Author: Jeffrey Legendre

Publisher: Vivid Dreams Books (Self-Published)

Publication Date: March 5, 2021

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Paranormal, Historical, Contemporary

Length: 37 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

Review:

It is well known that the crust of the earth protects us from the molten inter lava beneath it. Within this lava hides the souls of the underworld and hades. But there are portals through the crust. Portals that were opened long ago and then forgotten or abandoned by the people looking to harness the power of the creatures coming out of them. Because the evil that seeps through these portals cannot be contained woe to any man or beast that should encounter such a portal because their days on this earth are numbered. 7 Stories of Horror and Suspense Following the Wicked Pond series.

Content Warning: Death of an animal (not a pet), sexual assault, and murder.

Not every pond is a peaceful one.

This will be a long review because I wanted to discuss all seven stories in this collection. Do be sure to read them in order as events and characters from the beginning were sometimes referenced later on.

“The Pond” was an excellent place to begin. It followed a Native American man who was attempting to hunt a deer so his future wife would have food while they journeyed back home to his tribe. I can’t go into much detail about his experience with the pond when he briefly washed his hands in its water, but I did appreciate his sensible and cautious reaction to bizarre circumstances. That’s the sort of behaviour I always like to see in a protagonist!

Howard was having trouble finding customers for his new business in “The Book” even though he’d grown up in the community and assumed that this would encourage locals to hire him for their bookkeeping and accounting needs. I must admit that his negative attitude and the chip on his shoulder made it difficult for me to like him until I realized that they may have been clues about what was really going on. Then again, maybe he simply wasn’t a very nice guy. Let’s all decide that for ourselves.

Doctor Clarendon first appeared earlier, but he had his heyday in “Fairies” while treating a patient named Walter who insisted he had just seen a nude blue-skinned woman swimming in the pond who made it impossible for him to think of anything else. The ending of this tale disturbed me due to how Walter’s behavior changed after this encounter. I could never tell if his versions of events were genuine or if he was making them up to get out of trouble.

In “The Dogs of Dunncraft,” a monk named Brother Craig was called to a local cottage by a horrified woman who wanted him to dispose of the contents of a basket that was covered in a red cloth. When he found two puppies sleeping there, he decided to try to find a family to adopt them. I’ll leave it up to other readers to discover where the plot goes from there, but I was amused by his determination to do right by these puppies and by how reluctant the folks were around him to have anything to do with them.

I struggled to understand “Like Father…”.  It showed what happened when a young couple named Ron and Jenny hired a local man to build a deck for them that was never completed. Their reaction to this frustrating event defied logic. If only the narrator had given us more clues about what was going on in Ron’s mind when he realized all work on his deck had ceased. This would have been a solid read with more context and character development.

A distracted pilot named Amanda accidentally crashed her plane in “Flying High.” This was something that happened only a few paragraphs into her adventure, so I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to include it here. I found myself wondering why she agreed to fly when her mind was so filled with other troubles, but I’m sure that’s something that happens to pilots just like it can to the rest of us at times. What I did wish was better explained was why she didn’t try to eject herself from the plane once she realized it was going to crash. Yes, it was dangerous, but it sure seemed safer than crashing straight onto the ground!

After reading about the many different ways the pond had harmed other people, ”Fishing” made me shake my head. Who would ever try to go fishing in a magical body of water that seemed to have a grudge against humanity in general? I kept following Chet and Darrel’s story as I tried to figure out the answer to that question. Surely they should have known better! Other readers can decide for themselves what they think, but I was satisfied with what I eventually came up with.

In general, I noticed quite a few grammatical errors, misspellings, and other typos in this collection. With another round of editing and some further plot and character development, I would have been comfortable picking a higher rating than the one I ultimately chose.

Horror Anthology – Wicked Pond Collection was a spooky summer read.

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June 29, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Real Life Event That No One Would Believe

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

An empty city street that has warm sunlight streaming down onto it and the brick wall of a building on it.

This isn’t our street, but it evokes the same emotions as you’d find there.

This story happened about five years ago when my spouse and I were walking down the street on a warm, sunny day on our way home. We were as alone as people could be on a busy city street when the weather is nice and everyone is out and about.

Suddenly, I felt and heard something hit my right forearm. (It didn’t hurt, but it was a surprise). My spouse heard and felt it, too. It may have brushed between us and bumped both of our arms, but neither of us could see anything on the ground below us even after searching diligently.

“That was weird,” we said as we proceeded to go home.

The last few minutes of our walk were ordinary. After we’d arrived home, removed our shoes, and washed our hands, we heard something scuttling on the walls.

I’m being precise when I choose that word. It sounded like an agile little mouse clicking sharp nails against the wall as it climbed up and down it impossibly quickly. Our heads both moved in the same direction as we followed the sound up and down over the wall and then over to the door where it made a scratching sound on the door like it wanted out. It was eerie.

”Do you want to get out again?” my spouse asked it.  There was more scuttling on the walls while he opened the front door.

“We didn’t mean to bring you home with us,” he said. “You’re free to go.” The scuttling sound rapidly moved around wall around the door as if it was leaving, and it was gone.

Let’s eliminate some possible explanations for what happened:

No, neither of us were under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or any other mind-altering substances. We don’t imbibe the latter at all.  I used to enjoy a glass or two of wine once every few years, but I now have medical reasons to avoid it entirely.

There were a few other people on the street that day who were half a block away, but even if one of them had thrown something at us I can’t imagine what invisible item or creature that scurries up walls and can probably fit into someone’s pocket realistically exists in our world.

Yes, we sometimes hear sounds from other apartments when people move furniture or drop things, but these sounds were very clearly coming from inside of our apartment only a few feet away from where we were standing.  I could hear the sound of individual little nails on its paws (talon? hand?)  tapping against the wall as it ran around looking for an exit.

 

So that is my odd little story. If anyone has a rational explanation for it, I’d love to hear it. I sure haven’t been able to figure it out. I have it tagged as a Real Life Ghost Story simply because I wasn’t sure how else to classify it.

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