HALLOWEEN READS (PART 3)

I kicked off my search for scary short stories by thinking about horror anthologies I grew up with. For me, The Dark Descent (1987, edited by David G. Hartwell) is the gold standard. When I first discovered that anthology in the early 90s, the stories that resonated most for me were Shirley Jackson’s “The Summer People,” Robert Aickman’s “Larger Than Oneself,” Charles Dickens’s “The Signal-Man” and Philip K. Dick’s “A Little Something for Us Tempunauts.” But, year after year, I keep coming back to this collection and appreciating different stories. Recently, I have rediscovered some exceptionally eerie tales: “The Ash-Tree” by M.R. James, “Smoke Ghost” by Fritz Leiber, “Night-Side” by Joyce Carol Oates, and “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood. I’ve read these before, but different stories speak to us more clearly at different times in our lives. I don’t think I’ll out-live the resonance of this particular anthology, so it’s the one I always recommend to fellow readers. There are so many classics tales here (including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls,” and Ray Bradbury’s “The Crowd”) and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

My friend Sidney Williams recently pointed me toward another comprehensive anthology that’s equally comprehensive. The Complete Masters of Darkness (1991), edited by Dennis Ethchison, is an anthology of stories selected by the authors themselves. In addition, each author provides a brief explanatory essay on why their chose the story—which, for me, enhances the reading experience. The usual suspects of modern American horror fiction are represented here (Bradbury, Matheson, Bloch, King, Koontz, Barker), plus several authors that are not generally associated with horror or whose stars have sadly dimmed. My favorite stories so far are “Neither Brute Nor Human” by Karl Edward Wagner, “Up Under the Roof” by Manly Wade Wellman, and “The Other Room” by Lisa Tuttle.

A shorter anthology that accomplishes something similar is My Favorite Horror Story (2000, edited by Mike Baker and Martin H. Greenberg). In this one, horror authors pick their favorite stories by other authors, and explain their selections. Joe R. Lansdale picks Robert Bloch’s “The Animal Fair”—the same story that Bloch himself picked for Masters of Darkness. Bloch is the only author other than H.P. Lovecraft to appear twice in this collection. (The other Bloch story is “Sweets to the Sweet,” chosen by Stephen King.)

2026 seems like a good year to rediscover Bloch. His work is the subject of a new nonfiction book called Psycho Century (which I reviewed HERE), and many of the anthologies that my writer friends have recommended to me feature a story by Bloch. 

Sidney Williams recently wrote about the 1974 anthology Gooseflesh! in his Wicked Horror column. He also recommends the 1976 anthology From the Archives of Evil, co-edited by Christopher Lee and Michael Parry, and specifically highlights Bloch’s short story “Talent,” about a six-year-old orphan who can perfectly mimic anyone... which becomes a problem when the child takes an interest in horror movies. “Talent” appears in the collection alongside tales by Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Henry Kuttner, Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, and Bram Stoker. 

Bill Camp, who writes a blog on classic horror, has also pointed me toward an older anthology—the 1955 book Terror in the Modern Vein, edited by Donald A. Wolheim. It features Bloch’s story “The Dream Makers,”—about a journalist who discovers a dark secret in a retirement home for old Hollywood stars—alongside stories by Lovecraft, Leiber, Bradbury (“The Crowd” again), Matheson, Charles Beaumont, even Franz Kafka. “The Dream Makers” is one of the best short stories I’ve read by Bloch, because it has a sense of childlike wonder to counterbalance the author’s trademark cynicism and sardonic tone. For me, its ending lands heavily in the age of AI. 

I found some additional Bloch stories in anthologies sitting on my own bookshelves. “A Good Imagination” appears in a forgotten 1966 anthology called Terror!, edited by Larry T. Shaw. It’s not a great anthology—I bought it mostly for the fantastic cover art and the Bloch story about a cruel husband and his cheating wife. “A Good Imagination” would have made a good episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. 

I also read “The Rubber Room,” a later-era Bloch story from 1983’s The Dodd Mead Gallery of Horror, edited by Charles L. Grant. It’s a good example of Bloch’s distinct brand of stream-of-consciousness psychological horror, following a madman’s anti-Semitic thoughts. Not a “cozy” read, especially in our current political climate, but I suppose that’s the point. 

Sidney and Bill had plenty of other good recommendations. Sidney’s list includes the anthology Horror Times Ten (featuring more Howard, Lovecraft, Bradbury, Bloch, plus August Derleth and… Max Brand?), Lovecraft’s collection The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Charles L. Grant’s Tales from the Nightside, T.E.D. Klein’s Dark Gods, and David J. Schow’s Seeing Red. Classic Camp’s classic picks include Alfred Hitchcock Presents More Stories for Late at Night (featuring George Langalan’s story  “The Fly” and Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life”), editor James Aquilone’s Classic Monsters Unleashed, Nightmare Press’s Retro Horror, and the new YA horror anthology Teen Screams, which features a story by Bill himself.

Valerie B. Williams, who released her own short story collection in 2025 (Penfold’s Menu of Magic and Malice), recommends the indie horror anthologies October Screams and Out There Screaming. Finally, J.S. Furlong and Charles Wood have both reminded me of the YA nightmare fuel collection Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark—which was as formative for me as The Dark Descent. Many of the stories in Alvin Schwartz’s collection of folk tales are burned into my brain, and I am constantly finding remnants of them in more modern horror stories. Which brings me to a subgenre that deserves its own post…

Stay tuned for Folk Horror recommendations.