Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown: A Treasury of Bizarre Tales Old… (1993)

"The Others," by Joyce Carol Oates (1987): 8
- A little ditty. And one, I'm sure, fun to toss off for someone like Oates--you have the idea [man notices gradually more and more dead people until he himself becomes one of them] and you write it up, making sure to include some noticeably ‘writerly’ touches (the ambiguity of the marriage relationship [is she dead too?] and the obfuscations of the wife's dialogue [“you take everything so personally”]) and something whizz-bang enough to set it apart (the concluding sentence about the one solitary figure, “white-faced”, walking against the crowd at the end) and, voila, there you have it: a Joyce Carol Oates genre story. Ba-da-boom ba-da-bing.

"Tap Dancing," by John Gregory Betancourt (1991): 4.25
- A nothing story full of nothing turns and nothing ends; who is the audience for something like this, something I can only assume was written in the 1980s? That being: an aged, washed-up dancer regains her desire for the stage following a magical encounter with the newly deceased lead singer of a heavy metal band, who is apparently in purgatory and tasked with mending a few fences before moving on. Coming after that Collier "Evening Primrose" piece, this only further reiterates my assumption that I just have no idea what is actually considered the substantive innards of a “horror” story. Is it simply just the depiction of the supernatural, outside of any more thorough engagement with the thing itself?

Woooooo! Said in a high-pitched wavery note. ( )

A good collection of supernaturally based fiction including some rather surprising authors. ( )