I received Ghoulish Tales Issue 2 in exchange for my honest review. As a fan of Max Booth III and other works coming from Ghoulish, I was excited for a chance to dive in.
The second issue of Ghoulish Tales features stories & essays from Saswati Chatterjee, Jen Conley, Lor Gislason, Jess Hagemann, Justin Lutz, Lena Ng, Shannon Riley, E. F. Schraeder, Danger Slater, perfect kiss strickoll, Jennifer Elise Wang, and Stephanie M. Wytovich. Cover art by Betty Rocksteady.
What an awesome collection of bite size horror fun! I found so many smiles and chills in these pages and cannot wait for more.
Lets start with the popping art from Betty Rocksteady. Absolutely adorable and fun which reflects the pages within. In fact, there’s more art in the Ghoulish ads inside and it makes each page turn a joy.
While I enjoyed all the pieces inside Issue 1, two stuck out to me the most. “What it Takes to Swallow a Dog” by Stephanie M. Wytovich and “The One with the Gas Station” by Shannon Riley. I found myself thinking about them and chatting about them with friends long after closing this book.
The One with the Gas Station is horror genre Clerks fan fiction – and I say this as a compliment. Watching Dante, who shouldn’t even be there today, deal with cosmic horror and uncanny dopplegangers gave me such nostalgic vibes even though I’ve of course never read this story before. I immediately read it to my partner since both of us are Clerks fans and we had a really good time with it.
And that ending? That existential spiral into the abyss? Oof. Well, in the words of Randall Graves, “Have some chips, you’ll feel better.”
What it Takes to Swallow a Dog was probably the best possession(?) short story if not THEE best short story I’ve read in a long time. It was such a tight read – every word felt necessary and at the end there was really nothing left to say or share. It felt perfectly complete – a rarity among short stories for me. Then there was the story itself.
This one went dark. It hit the two main themes that make me recoil – mental health crisis, child/infant death – and hit them hard. I was riveted, wondering just how awful the situation would get, and Wytovich did not hold back.
I found myself thinking about this long after I read it, staring at the ceiling when I should have been going to sleep. It fucked me up and I loved it.
If you are a horror fan, you need to go grab this collection. Come back and tell me how much you enjoyed it and which story was your favorite.
