Laird Hunt

Tales of the Dark

American Midnight

“Scary stories bang at our deep bells, the ones that live in the pit of our stomachs, at the base of our spines.”
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A spine tingling and blood chilling collection of scary stories, best read at the deep dark of the night when the veil between the real and the supernatural feels perilously thin.
American Midnight takes off with Poe’s “The Masque of Red Death” to set the tone, particularly poignant at the moment for its social-distancing and plague vibes, and moves on to other wonderfully wicked stories like that of a midnight stroll in the woods with the devil, a spooky ghost story of dreadful visions told by the fireplace, and a night of unexpected terror at an old house (Mark Twain is really full of surprises in this one!)
Overall, Shirley Jackson’s Home and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper were absolute masterpieces of terror and tension, and shone in this collection.
Apart from the final story in the book, which was an unexpected disappointment of painfully contrived story-telling and complex narrative gibberish in an otherwise amazing collection, American Midnight is a must for horror-lovers like myself, to feel the thrill of a good scare!
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(I have received this book as an ARC from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

American Midnight Tales of the Dark

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