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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 21

I wish some enterprising and visionary director would turn this into a feature film - it would almost certainly be successful. One of my favorite John Langan tales.

Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 21

I think it has to do with the many layers of verisimilitude Langan works in to the stratified narrative, plus it’s (at least partly) religious horror, and that works well on me. I love the “found footage” aspects of the story, too.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 21

This is my 2nd time reading this (the first was in Datlow’s BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR, VOL. 10) and it’s just as powerful. I read a lot of horror & like other avid readers of the genre am somewhat inured to its effects. This story scares me. It did the first time I read it and no less the second time.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 21

“Lost in the Dark” by John Langan. Org. pub. HAUNTED NIGHTS, ed. Ellen Datlow, Lisa Morton, Blumhouse Books, 2017. Read in LOST IN THE DARK AND OTHER EXCURSIONS by John Langan, Word Horde, 2025.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 19

I read this for the podcast (Whiskey and the Weird), so don’t want to say too much here, but what I will say is this story smacks of being written by a P.K.!

Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 19

“The Face of the Monk” by Robert Hichens. Org. pub. BYE-WAYS, by Robert Hichens, 1897. Read in HOLY GHOSTS: CLASSIC TALES OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL UNCANNY, ed. Fiona Snailham, pub. British Library, 2023.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 18

Naturally, he saves the day in grandiloquent style. Fun, but in the Scooby Doo sense, and not as entertaining as the more ghostly and ghastly tales.

Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 18

The unique thing about it was that deGrandin was not engaged to solve the mystery, but stumbled upon it himself: a creepy dude keeping young girls in a coven-like atmosphere, trying to cheat them out of their inheritances and their lives.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 18

I love the Jules deGrandin stories, faults and all. They almost never fail to bring a smile to my face, and I have fun every time I read one. That said, I enjoy the supernatural tales more and this one had a mundane solution.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 18

“The Great God Pan” by Seabury Quinn. Org. pub. in Weird Tales, October 1926. Read in: THE HORROR ON THE LINKS: THE COMPLETE TALES OF JULES DEGRANDIN, Vol. 1, pub by Night Shade Press, 2017.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 15

This was a good story, a bit creepy, a bit fun, & kind of a soft intro to Langan for new readers. It’s a cursed object story that places the reader in the captain’s chair - how you respond is up to you, but I came away from it feeling a bit guilty. I’ll read this collection in order, & I can’t wait!

Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 15

The opening salvo in the newest John Langan collection is short, punchy, not as funny as Victor Lavalle let on and his great introduction, and written in a guilt-inducing second person. Langan is likely my favorite contemporary horror author, so a new collection is caused for rejoicing.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 15

“Madame Painte: For Sale” by @johnlangan.bsky.social, org. pub. In BEHOLD! ODDITIES, CURIOSITIES, AND UNDEFINABLE WONDERS, ed. by Doug Murano, Crystal Lake Publishing, 2017. Read in: LOST IN THE DARK AND OTHER EXCURSIONS by John Langan, pub. @wordhorde.bsky.social, 2025.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 12

I wish the ending was a bit more grim though. It was all rather too neatly tied up for my liking.

Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 12

This one, though, is a banger of a story. A student at “Old College,” Oxford uses a mummy to commit foul deeds. Great academic atmosphere, charming banter, which is now sometimes unintentionally humorous, and lots of pipe smoking.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 12

(though “Lost in a Pyramid” was published in 1869 by Louisa, May Alcott, & before that “The Mummy’s Soul” by an anonymous writer in 1862, & in 1868 “After Three Thousand Years” by Jane G. Austin) so whoever claimed that was likely ignorant, but perhaps just discounted stories authored by women.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 12

Here’s one that’s been on my list for a while – argued by some as perhaps the first English language mummy story…

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 12

“Lot No. 249” by Arthur Conan Doyle. Org. pub. in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, September 1892. Read in: HAUNTINGS: TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL, ed. Henry Mazzeo, pub. Doubleday, 1968. Illus. Edward Gorey

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 12

“You are in a small pool of muddy grey light at the bottom of the stairs from the painting, and you think to yourself, either I am in the painting, or the painting has escaped its canvas and become part of the real world, or I have somehow been transported to the place the artist used as his model.”

Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 12

Kiernan messes with the reader’s perception by shifting subtly between second and first person. There’s more not written in the story perhaps than there is written, but that chasm of imagination is fun to cross.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 12

I’m reading this collection in order and this is my favorite story in it so far, but it’s early days yet. Cursed or dark art stories always capture my attention and this story throws in (obliquely) a curio shop to boot.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 12

“Still[er] Life, From Hunger” by Caitlín R. Kiernan. Org. pub. In Sirenia Digest #173, June 2020. Read in: BRIGHT DEAD STAR, pub. Subterranean Press (@subpress.bsky.social) , 2025.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 11

The color is a dreadful choice to begin with, but the way the character is painted as just as much of an addict as her heroin-using neighbor, “Number Twelve”, is so good. And then the ending - is she alive? Very few could make me care about a story about a dress, but here we are.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 11

It’s full of the angst we all feel when we’ve ordered something we really want and then have to wait for. The agony of the delay in clicking the “purchase” button was very real and beautifully composed. But Awad infuses this normal story set-up with so much dread it’s delicious.

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Ryan Whitley @frryanwhitley.bsky.social · Aug 11

Award wrote BUNNY, one of the most WTF novels I’ve read, so when I saw she contributed fiction to this issue of the New Yorker, I had to read it. On the surface, this is a banal story about a woman waiting on a dress she ordered off the Internet.

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