Book Review: Ghost Stories for Starless Nights
Review by Casey Douglass
Ghost Stories for
Starless Nights is a new horror anthology from DBND Publishing.
It features 22 ghostly tales and, upon reaching the final page, you
realise how varied and inventive this collection of stories really
is. Some are more gory than others, others are simply strange, yet
others are humorous and a bit whimsical. You are unlikely to get
tired of the ghostly theme either, as the interesting twists adopted
by each author always seem to refresh your literary palate ahead of
the next tale.
The book begins with a
mood-setting poem by Baylee Friday, one that opens the reader up to
the idea that hauntings can arise in more than one form. After this
tasty appetiser, the stories begin, each throwing up something
different to the previous one. There is a haunted mirror, a
death-race for bikers, a time and geography-looping brush with a
demon, a possessed writer, even some strange cursed windows. I find
myself wanting to talk about so many of the stories, but I'll limit
myself to the three or four that really stood out for me.
After Life by Clark
Boyd is a tale about a rich and spoiled man who finds himself
unexpectedly struggling in the after life. The tale has a
Beetlejuice-esque feel to things, especially in the way that
newly dead people are assigned places to haunt by a kind of afterlife
job centre. The humour made me chuckle too. There is a certain
exchange between the dead man and his undead job advisor, which sees
him consigned to haunting a stall in a mens toilet, giving rise to
the line: “It’s kind of hard to scare the shit out of someone
when they’re already shitting!”
The Inheritance by Marc
Joan follows a guy who has to clear out his departed, reclusive
uncle’s old rural cottage. Reading this story actually made me feel
a little cold and miserable, as the bleakness of the scenery and the
chill of the old cottage is wonderfully described. It also likely
helps that it’s based in Norfolk and The Fens, which was a pleasant
surprise as it’s rare to come across a story set in a landscape
that isn’t too far from me. The uncle’s cottage contains very
little, except bizarrely, a digital photo frame that only contains
one picture. Spoiler alert: It’s not porn. There is also a creepy
scarecrow in the field behind the cottage. Strangeness then
transpires...
One of the strangest
tales for me was Brown Cat Blues by Vaughan Stanger. It’s a story
about someone going away for a long trip and worrying about how their
neighbour’s cat very possibly could’ve sneaked inside their home before they
closed the door, as is its habit. This creates a ghost-projection of
cat anxiety, and it makes this tale feel a little like Casper the
Friendly Ghost meets Schrödinger's cat. It’s very well
written, and it stands out to me as one of the more curious tales in
the book.
I mentioned cursed
windows in my summary above so I’d better mention the tale they
originate from: Beyond the Glass by Phil Stressman. A couple are in
the process of building their new house. One night, the husband
arrives home with some strange windows that he found near an
abandoned property in the area. The glass is odd, distorted, but they
take a liking to the windows and use them as their own. It isn’t
until the neighbours find out where the windows came from, and more
importantly, the wife realises that the view through them isn’t quite as it should
be, that she begins to fear that the windows are cursed.
The final story I want
to mention is Dominic by Sam Hicks. It’s set in a student house in
London. One day, a strange pinkish plate is discovered, one that
keeps being set at an extra place at the table. The women living
there joke about it, they start to say that it’s for “Dominic”,
and begin coming up with light-hearted conversations about him. Things take
a strange turn when these exchanges start to bring up jealousy and
rivalry, and events in the house go downhill from there. I really
enjoyed the inventiveness of this story, the way a joke evolved into
something quite horrible. It was a very satisfying tale.
Ghost Stories for
Starless Nights is an easy anthology to read. While some stories
are longer than others, it didn’t feel like any of them outstayed
their welcome. The change in setting and tone of each story makes it
a great book to dip into as well, reading a few tales in a sitting
rather than reading it from cover to cover in one or two sessions.
There will be stories you like better than others, but for me, there
were no bad stories, just ones that I found less interesting than
others. I could have written about another four or five stories
above, which means at least half the book spoke to me, which is
revealing in and of itself. If you fancy reading some inventive,
bleak, strange and funny ghost stories, you’d do well to check out
Ghost Stories for Starless Nights.
I was given a review
copy of this book. Thanks to Promote Horror for arranging it.
Book Title:
Ghost Stories for Starless Nights
Book Author:
Anthology
Publisher: DBND Publishing
Released: May
2020
ISBN:
979-8636973249
Current Price:
$6.13 (Kindle) / $14.99 (Paperback)
