Review of PRE-APPROVED FOR HAUNTING AND OTHER STORIES by Patrick Barb, Keylight Books, Nashville, TN, 2023

www.turnerpublishing.com

 

This selection of short stories is the kind of horror your mom told you not to read before bed. No matter your age, Patrick Barb’s imagery is bound to haunt you not only with his inventiveness and attention to authentic human relationships but also with those maggots in a child’s mouth, the Baby Carriage Lady, and the Homer Simpson mask.

 

Varied in length, style, and seasonal setting—and I think generational appeal—these horror and ghost stories brim with telling detail. All are underscored with dread and most with scads of gore. Vomit and blood flow all too freely, which I can handle in print but cringe at on screen.

 

As if these bizarre and sometimes absurdist renditions of our worst nightmares and fears about ghosts, cannibalism, serial killers, abduction, hazing, apocalypse, and monsters are not enough, Patrick often introduces a creepy jack-in-the-box pop of humor: “… God bless the alcohol tolerance of the suburban housewife in the wild.”

 

A few of these pieces mirror elements of Stephen King’s masterpieces and some are darkly parodic—“Miss Beverly, did someone mass shoot Melvin?” But for its craftsmanship and ongoing twistiness, my favorite is “Pre-Approved for Haunting,” a beautifully-constructed ghost tale set in “The glowing hum of suburban domestic tranquility [that] always frightened me more than any fog-filled cemetery.”

 

It’s a gem, but I’m pretty sure the maggot story will stick in my craw forever.