I’ve been on the hunt for good ghost stories and horror. So far I’ve turned up four very different books, each interesting in its own way.

1. First I read Anoka: a Collection of Indigenous Horror by Shane Hawk. The title makes it sound like retellings of old folk tales or legends, but this collection is original work. People are really interested in diverse points of view and work by underrepresented groups right now, so this book has gotten a lot of press and glowing reviews. I was expecting to be amazed and this collection didn’t really deliver for me. Shane Hawk is a new writer and I could really tell, for good and ill. The good here is that Hawk has some really original ideas and imagery to offer. He also has a lot of ambition, trying to weave hard questions about identity and deep statements about the challenges of indigenous people into his stories. The bad here is that, as sometimes happens in early efforts, Hawk tries to fit so many ideas and images and themes into the stories that often they feel jumbled and confusing and some of the horror gets lost because of it. The first story, Soilborne, is the tightest and most interesting and the stories get more random as the book progresses. There are good moments in each, though, so I have real hope that over time Hawk will learn to focus and edit future stories into some truly exciting and original horror.
2. Next I tried The Cipher by Kathe Koja. This is an older novel, from 1991. This one felt very ’90s to me, full of lost twenty-somethings looking for something to give their lives meaning. Two friends find a mysterious hole in a storage closet that seems to transform anything that touches it, usually with deadly results. They become obsessed with what this hole is, what it means, what ways it might transform them, and eventually their obsession attracts a cult following. The combination of cosmic mystery and body horror and incredibly petty squabbles between unlikeable people really combined to create a kind of filthy fascinating dread. I’m not sure I actually liked this novel, but I finished it and it’s stuck with me.
3. Then I read The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons. This one was even older, written in 1978. There were parts that felt a bit dated, like the casual drinking and driving and the characters trying to not act shocked about homosexuality or having a Jewish guy move in next door. These moments didn’t especially bother me–the main characters are all rich southerners trying to preserve a sort of traditional elegance while also trying to be cosmopolitan and accepting, and I enjoyed watching them struggle with that. For the most part, this book is very genteel and the horror is very subtle and psychological–the main characters become absolutely sure that the house next door is destroying everyone who lives there but it’s so easy to explain it all away as just bad luck and human weakness. If there’s such a thing as a soothing, cozy ghost story this is it. It was a pleasant read.
4. The last one, which I finished this evening, was The Elementals by Michael McDowell. This was a fun read. Like The House Next Door, The Elementals is also about rich southern people. This is more of a light spoof on Southern Gothic stories–is all this trouble the haunted house’s fault or was this family cursed way before the house was built? After the death of the family matriarch, her son and several other family members and their long-time personal assistant decide to take some time away at the family’s summer retreat way down on the tip of the Alabama Panhandle. Their summer retreat is a trio of identical houses all by themselves on a beautiful white sand beach. Everyone knows, though, that something evil lurks in the third house. It falls to the assistant Odessa and the teenaged niece India to protect the family from this evil. This book is full of colorful characters to love and hate and the lurking evil is quite spooky and mysterious. I really enjoyed watching India and Odessa’s relationship develop as they team up to protect the family. I thoroughly enjoyed this story.