Night Terrors Vol. 7 by Warren Benedetto

Night Terrors Vol. 7 Reviews

• 
  Zain

  Another Great Pleasure!
  
  Lots of amazing stories filled with suspense.
  
  One of my favorites is by Ron Ripley. He’s previously introduced Jimmy Hsu in an earlier episode of Night Terrors.
  
  
  In this episode young Jimmy, from the town of Anger, decides to visit a pet cemetery. He meets some unexpected ghosts.
  
  The thirteen other stories are also very good and scary. You’ll see.
  
  Four stars. ✨✨✨✨
  
  
• 
  Philippa

  ARC received; what follows is my honest review.
  
  This was a highly enjoyable collection of horror stories. I particularly enjoyed the sheer variety of spooks (from underwater terror to haunted houses to winter itself). The styles also varied, with some of the stories striking quickly and viscerally while others had more of a slow burn.
  
  Rated four stars because one or two of the stories didn't quite click with me, but that's often going to be a risk with such a wide selection. Overall, I thought that this collection was well-chosen, and I was surprised to find that I had burned through the pages so quickly.
  
  My personal favourite stories (in order of appearance):
  
  A Sinking Feeling - Warren Benedetto
  Mistress Edge's House of Horrors - P. L. McMillan
  Trial by Water - Renee Miller
  A Cold Day in Helheim - Kohl Neal
  The Backward Man - Caleb Stephens
• 
  Shane Hawk

  I received an ARC and what follows is my honest review.
  
  This anthology was rad. I gave it four stars overall because some stories didn’t work for me, but that’s how most anthologies are.
  
  The standout stories for me are those below and each deserves a 5-star rating for the individual story:
  
  A Sinking Feeling by Warren Benedetto
  Ah! Claustrophobic sea horror. Beware the black tentacle.
  
  The Winter Cabin by Nate Lock
  Loved the whole team of experts studying a remote part of Alaska. Ah, not my eyes!
  
  Mistress Edge’s House of Horrors by P.L. McMillan
  Yessssss. Thank you for bringing mummies back to the realm of horror. Loved this one so much.
  
  Groundhog Day by John Wayne Comunale
  Creepy family traditions, eh? This was a fun romp.
  
  Trial by Water by Renee Miller
  Beware the blue statue. Oof, is it ugly!
  
• 
  Big Red

  Read on my Kindle. I received an ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.
  
  This was an incredibly fun collection of scary stories. While some of the stories fell flat for me either due to poor storytelling or grammar, several will remain with me for some time. If you're looking for a spooky collection from some new or lesser known horror authors, I highly recommend checking this out!
  
  A few of my favorites, in order of appearance:
  - Mistress Edge's House of Horrors, by P. L. McMillan
  - Trial by Water, by Renee Miller
  - A Cold Day in Helheim, by Kohl Neal
  - Coming Home to Mansion Hill, by C. B. Channell
  - The Backward Man, by Caleb Stephens
• 
  Cobwebby Eldritch SpaceReader Reindeer

  Fourteen terrifying stories to chill the blood in this newest volume in the horrifically spooky Series from those frightening folks at Scare Street. I'm still sporting chills! From Alaska to Maine and many other ports of call, plenty of chills and thrills and of course, horror most implacable (shivers).
• 
  Eugene

  Every time I pick up a new anthology, the same question creeps into my head: how fast am I going read this? It’s a strange question, to be sure, but not an unreasonable one. Where a full-length novel builds on a set of themes and characters over 300 or so pages, anthologies throw a complete story at you every ten to fifteen pages. If the stories are good, I often find myself only reading one or two at a time, then taking the next day or so to digest their contents before returning to read another. If the stories aren’t good, I will push through the anthology in a single sitting so that I can immediately toss it on the pile to pass on to someone I hate(get-got, Marianne). “Night Terrors, Vol. 7” is unique in that it is a rare anthology that disrupted my pattern. I absorbed it in a single sitting. And not because it was bad – oh no – I read it in one sitting because once these stories had their claws in me, I lacked the constitution to stop.
  
  “Night Terrors, Vol. 7” includes fourteen wonderfully unsettling tales from a plethora of talented authors. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of overarching theme (other than the pre-requisite of making me piss myself in terror), which is a welcome change. The oversaturation of Halloween/Winter Holiday themed collections leaves me empty, with the desire to throw myself into traffic.
  
  As I will soon explain, the scares are excellent, but allow me a quick moment to compliment the formatting. I’m reading on my Kindle, and whoever edited and/or formatted this collection deserves some recognition for just how effortlessly these stories flow from page-to-page. Some other collections have left me wondering if any uniformity in editing/formatting was attempted at all, judging from the presentation. So, that’s a nice thing!
  
  Either way, the stories are good! There are trolls, mummies, vampires, a backwards person(which will make way more sense once you read the story), and so much more! Like any good horror anthology, these stories serve-up one terrifying gut-punch after another. Yet, what really makes this anthology shine is quite simple: they’re short stories, and they know it. I’ve often found that horror short stories often begin life as longer novella or novel length stories that end up getting mashed into a messy package of 4000 words or less. The authors in such instances clearly aren’t happy with being forced to mutilate their creations in such a fashion, and it shows. Not here! Each story on offer is intricately crafted, and well-suited to the short story format, ensuring that binge-reading this anthology is a downright pleasure.
  
  
  P.L. McMillan leads the pack with her story “Mistress Edge’s House of Horrors”. The story finds up-and-coming reporter Kathy Marshall attending the opening of a new haunted house. The house itself was home to the enigmatic “Mistress Edge”, who was rumored to have dealt in some rather shady circles, went through men like they were going out of style, and died in a mysterious and grisly manner. The attractions within the house seem generic and uninspired, but as the reporter is drawn deeper into the house on a guided tour, she realizes that Mistress Edge’s legacy has been very well preserved. McMillan effortlessly constructs an oppressive atmosphere of tension and horror across one of the more expansive stories in the collection. I found myself holding my breath as the final pages unfolded. What’s more is that McMillian manages to infuse her narrative with a compelling bit of character development for Katy, which – as it develops – proves to be just as disturbing(if not more so) as the horror that dwells within Mistress Edge’s House of Horrors.
  
  “A Cold Day in Helheim” by Kohl Neal proves to be another great story in this collection. A married couple find themselves in the middle of a vicious winter storm. As the storm rages on with no end in sight, and the couple becomes increasingly isolated from the outside world, they begin to wonder if the storm’s causes are entirely natural. The environment described in this story is chilling(HAH). But, really, it’s winter here, and the fact that simply reading this story made me feel cold – even though I was sitting in my cozy apartment – is an accomplishment in and of itself. Furthermore, this story accurately distills the feeling of isolation that many of us felt(or are still feeling) over the course of 2020, but sidesteps using the events of the past year as a narrative crutch. There’s also a bit of Norse Mythology present, which is a welcome touch.
  
  “The Winter Cabin” by Nate Lock is another story that will lower your core temperature(proceed a your own risk), and begins with one of the most unsettling openings I’ve read in a while. I won’t spoil that for you here, but the story concerns Samantha and a team of researchers in the Alaskan bush. Christopher – another researcher – awakens Samantha in the middle of the night and begs her to come with him. He has something to show her. What follows is a rather grisly tale that is wonderfully initiated by its(shall we say “detached”) opening paragraph. Read it!
  
  These stories were my favorites, but there aren’t really any bad choices in the bunch. I’m usually an advocate of flipping through an anthology to find the stories that sound the most interesting to you on a personal level, but there’s really nothing wrong with reading this anthology linearly.
  
  Sadly, nothing is perfect, and that includes this anthology. Like I said, there really aren’t any bad stories here, and everything is perfectly readable. But several of the stories on offer resort to lengthy bouts of expository dialogue to reiterate narrative details that have already been effectively established earlier on. This can hurt the pace of some stories, and seems excessive at times. It’s almost as if some of the authors crafted an intricate puzzle, but don’t fully trust you to figure it out for yourself, so they force feed you the answers whether you want them or not. Which makes the puzzle less fun. And, honestly, ending on a speculative note is rarely a bad thing in horror short fiction. This – of course – comes down to personal taste, and I can’t see these elements being detrimental in any major way.
  
  And we’re done. Night Terrors, Vol. 7 is good – and often great! The stories included in this collection stretch across most horror genres, so it’s almost a sure thing that there’s something in here for everyone. But if you’re like me, and just enjoy good, pulse-pounding horror short stories, then this collection is of unparalleled value.
  
• 
  David

  In this volume of Night Terrors, the selections of monsters continues to expand. There is a story where winter itself is the monster - and having spent most of my life in the Great Lakes Region I can definitely relate to this notion. In a couple of them, the monster is ourselves. The bottom line is that you don't need ghosts or zombies or vampires to scare the feces out of a reader. What it does require is a well honed skill on the part of the writers to bring these beasties to life and the lineup here has this skill in spades. There may have been one or two of them that fell a bit short, at least according to other reviewers, but the overall quality of these stories is first rate.
  I think there is a huge need, and demand, for short stories. Don't get me wrong, I love novels (and usually the longer the better), but so much can be said in the short story format. The writers need to get to the point quickly and that eliminates the problem of having too much "fluff" in the story. Those who overlook short stories for whatever reason are missing much, in my opinion. These Scare Street anthologies are an excellent place to get introduced to the short story. Give them a try.