Dark: Stories of Madness, Murder and the Supernatural

Note: I heard the audiobook version. "Horror" covers a lot of ground and so does this anthology. Some of it is psychological horror, some is supernatural and some is just gross. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" and W.W. Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are scary classics. They are well performed, even though I've heard other performances I've liked better. Graeme Malcolm does an outstanding job as a guest playing party games in a haunted house in A.M. Burrage's "Smee". Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Cafeteria" mixes ghosts and Yiddish coffeeklatch to good effect. "The Crown Derby Plate" by Marjorie Bowen is an old-fashioned ghost story, just good enough to be creepy. Iain Banks's "From the Wasp Factory" is more in the Silence of the Lambs, psycho-killer vein, albeit with a twist. I couldn't listen to the Will Self story, just disliked it that much (a rambling acid trip full of bathroom references). Blue Balliet reports a real woman's account of strange happenings in a New England house on Nantucket Island; this one is about a poltergeist. They aren't all scary (or even good), but I got a good spine-tingle from a couple of them. If you are a fan of horror stories and looking for something new, this would be a good sampler.