100 Fiendish Little Frightmares

This is an anthology of very short horror stories. Most are about five or six pages, with a few even shorter than that. They span several decades, from the 1920s to the late 1990s, when the collection was published, so there's a fair variety of styles. Despite the title, most of these are really

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not particularly frightening. A surprising number seem to just describe some random, not necessarily horrific, encounter with the supernatural -- often involving ghosts -- and are, at most, vaguely creepy in their intimation that the world is full of strange and unexplained things. Many of the best of them are interesting mainly because they feature some clever Twilight Zone-style twist that, despite the dark subject matter, I often found myself thinking of as "cute."

They're decent stories, generally speaking. Out of all one hundred of them, there were probably only a handful that I really disliked, which isn't bad, especially since horror tends to be something of a hit-and-miss genre for me. On the other hand, there weren't many more than a handful that I thought were especially memorable and effective, either. Which unfortunately means that it adds up to a mildly unsatisfying whole. It's all perfectly readable, but it lacks, well, punch. And if there's one thing very short horror stories should have, it's punch.

I will admit, though, that the fact that I tended to read these in large gulps probably didn't help much. I'd recommend spreading them out, otherwise you run the risk of becoming jaded, and at some point you'll likely find yourself going, "Yeah, yeah, something horrific is going to happen now. I bet I can guess what it is. Yup, I was right. Well... on to the next one." And that doesn't do anybody any favors.

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