Exhumed - 13 Tales Too Terrifying to Stay Dead is a crackerjack collection of short horror stories with an Introduction by top Goodreads reviewer Jeffrey D. Keeten.

For a tempting taste of the terrifying, here are two prime Keeten quotes coupled with my comments before I shift to share reflections on three frightening tales from this Gravelight Press publication.

"What we like about horror is the way fear lights up our brains like a pinball machine on tilt and forces us to feel more alive." Thanks, Jeffrey! What a great image - our brains lighting up the way a pinball machine lights up when we shake the sides and flip the flippers too violently. TILT! And that key word - "horror," along with key phrase "feel more alive." Let me address these keys one at a time:

Here's a famous H.P. Lovecraft quote: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Of course, fear thrives on our mind projecting into the future, specifically, very bad things, even horrific things happening in the future, things like confronting a ghost or suddenly feeling hairy fingers squeezing our neck.

All of us have pictured ourselves as the victim of such ghoulish, ghastly shocks and a writer of horror stories will work a reader's imagination to the point where we can feel the bony hands around our neck or see the apparition in vivid detail and be chilled from first sentence to last. Ahh, the horror, the horror.

One thing's for sure - chokehold or ghost would count as one of our most intense, most memorable experiences, exactly what makes us feel totally alive. As Joseph Campbell tells us: “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive."

Jeffrey goes on to say: "The terror that reading tales of horror inspires does not stay locked in our minds, carefully controlled like a caged beast, but escapes into the shadowy nooks of our dwellings, to lodge in the creak on the stairs and unsettle us with the tap tap tap on the window glass." Oh, yes, these stories will not only transform you but they will invariably also transform the objects and happenings around you. Now that's sweet storytelling power!

Link to a YouTube video where Jeffrey reads his Introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWyR-FDhxgk&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2TJoD1Hu8Dmqq3PxmLOfPsnpUZRXtayrIbA-RDvOoEpDW36FiSeChwO8w

THE DOGGONE GHOST by Bernie Brown
A delicious tale about an obsessive compulsive young salesman, the head salesman, working in men's suits at a large department store. The name of Mr. Perfection is Marvin Truelove.

Hints of both Edgar Allan Poe and H.G. Wells as Marvin comes face to face with...well, you'll have to read for yourself. However, I can share a quote that serves as prelude to the concluding scene:

"For the third time that year, the suit on the meticulously dressed mannequin - a double-breasted Yves Saint Laurent cotton-wool blend adorned with matching shirt and tie - had been replaced with something entirely inappropriate.
A bikini.
It was, in fact, the yellow polka dot variety popularized in that dreadful Brian Hyland song from Marvin's youth."

Oh, Marvin, the wild, frenzied, chaotic energy of Dionysus has a way of extracting revenge on those unfortunates who try to tame life on their own terms.


Bernie Brown

THE STUMPVILLE AFFAIR by James Goodridge
Horror meets action/adventure in this riveting yarn that's almost too good to be true. Here's a snip from the first pages:

"The creature snatched at him as razor-sharp fangs bit into Mason's right arm, snapping it off at the elbow. Blood, bone, and muscle mass splattered about in the moonlight. Mason's lower arm sailed end over end into the air, finally landing atop the weathered house roof. As shock set in, August Mason howled in pain, body quivering. His cries reverberated into the village of Stumpville before trama took him into eternal darkness."

Are we talking werewolf here? For each reader to discover. Warning: do not read this tale if you have a heart condition.


James Goodridge

THE DARK AUGUR by Elizabeth Vegvary
"You don't hear him approach. He is not there, and then he is there. Standing at the tree line, the thin rocky border of land lying ragged and useless from the toes of his battered cowboy boots to where both of you are wading barefooted."

A tale of horror where there's no need of the supernatural - a strong dose of sinister and evil is all it takes, especially when those dark elements are combined with the threat of violence and sex as two girlfriends, age twelve, are isolated down by a river.


Elizabeth Vegvary