It’s Festival Time!

We’ve been so utterly busy for the last few weeks, so I am looking forward to this back half of October when our schedule lightens us a little and we have some time to savour some of the things that we didn’t have to plan but just have some tickets to. We started things off with a walking ghost tour, which are my lovely spouse’s particular favourite. It was so nice to be outside in the night air and just listening to stories. We need some more nights like that.

A Double Feature

I couldn’t decide which modern short story compilation I wanted to review this year, so it’s going to be a double feature. Make Sure You’re Around After You’ve Gone, which is a collection of ghost stories, and Through the Night Like a Snake, which is a collection of horror stories specifically from Latin America. The former includes some classic stories, and I was delighted to find one of my favourite spooky writers — M R James — in the pages. The later collection has another one of my favourite spooky writers, this time modern, that being the very chilling Mariana Enríquez.

Modern Ghost Stories with Classics Too

I really love the breadth of the selection in Make Sure You’re Around After You’ve Gone. There are some modern masterpieces like Isabel Yap’s ‘Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez?’ — an urban legend among high schoolers that comes to terrifying life, and David Lowery’s ‘Haunting House’ — a tale of a house that is haunted by the ghost of another house.

Then there are the classic writers and their timeless spooky stories like Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Daemon Lover’ — about a woman abandoned by her lover who she is unsure existed at all, and M R James’ ‘Medieval Ghost Stories’ — a grouping of stories about spooky churchyards and the ghosts that haunt rectories.

There truly is a story here for everyone.

A Collection of Latin American Horror Stories

I love a collection of stories from different literary traditions. Specifically Latin America never ceases to amaze me when it comes to horror in terms of both style and originality. In Through the Night Like a Snake, Two Lines has assembled a stellar collection of both stories and translations designed to keep you up at night in the best way possible.

My particular favourites were Mónica Ojeda’s ‘Soroche’ about four friends who go to the mountains and have differing accounts of both each other and exactly what happened while they were up there, and Lina Munar Guevara’s ‘In the Mountains’ where time twists and turns in horrific ways.

One More Spooky Week

So the final countdown is finally here. One more post and then Halloween will be done and November will be beginning. It feels like time is going by so quickly and I am trying not to be anxious about it, and the coming winter. It’s okay. I just need to take a moment and breathe and savour. And not dread November’s appointments.