The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories Review

Twenty-six terrifying tales set on the scariest night of the year!

Treat yourself to some very tricky stories! Halloween . . . All Hallows’ Eve . . . Samhain . . . Día de los Muertos . . . the Day the Dead Come Back . . . When the barriers between the worlds are at their weakest—when ghosts, goblins, and grisly things can cross over into our dimension—then for a single night each year the natural becomes the supernatural, the normal becomes the paranormal, and nobody is safe from their most intimate and terrifying fears.

The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories brings you a dark feast of frightening fiction by some of the most successful and respected horror writers working today, including Ramsey Campbell, Neil Gaiman, Joe R. Lansdale, Helen Marshall, Richard Christian Matheson, Robert Shearman, Robert Silverberg, Angela Slatter, Steve Rasnic Tem, and many more, along with a very special contribution by award-winning poet Jane Yolen.

Skyhorse Publishing  | Better World Books |  Amazon

Emily’s Review

“You know why you wear the costumes. People you meet in the smoke might not be who they say they are, and they can hear the words inside you.” – Storm Constantine

The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories is an anthology of 26 Halloween-related stories edited by Stephen Jones. Halloween stories are very fun to read, and there was so much creativity in this book. The book opens with an introduction about the history of Halloween, and I enjoyed reading the quick overview before digging into the stories.

While I didn’t love every story, there were so many awesome ones that I fell in love with. Many of the authors were new to me, such as Alison Littlewood, Cate Gardner, and Sharon Gosling. I’m looking forward to checking out more work from many authors in this book.

My top 5 stories by women in The Mammoth Book of Halloween stories were Before the Parade Passes By by Marie O’Regan, The Ultimate Halloween Party App by Lisa Morton, I Wait for You by Eyglo Karlsdottir, White Mare by Thana Niveau, and In the Year of Omens by Helen Marshall. I’ve read stories from Lisa Morton before, but the rest were first time reads for me.

One problem I had was that the authors had introductions before each story. If I was reading a few stories in a row, it became a bit distracting at times. I like reading the introductions and explanations, but I prefer to read them at the end so that it doesn’t have an effect on my reading of each story. It’s just my personal preference, but it made the stories feel disconnected since they didn’t flow from one into the other.

If another one of these anthologies is released in the future, I will definitely read it. I enjoyed the variety of authors, and being introduced to many I had not read before.