The story selection is outstanding. There isn't a stinker in here. The Halloween reminiscences are pretty uneven. Some authors obviously put some heart and effort into it and others seemed to treat it as an uninspiring chore. ( )

This book is a lovely holiday companion piece.

I am a seasonal reader. When the days become noticeably shorter, usually August here in my hometown, I start reading material of a supernatural, horrific type. This goes on until after Halloween, through the dark days of the winter solstice. After the solstice my head turns towards all those lovely floor plans, both the Victorian kind published by Downing, Sloan and Bicknell as well as all the more recent floor plans available online.

This is an essential volume in the library of everyone whose favorite holiday theme is black and orange. At times it is as nostalgic and sticky sweet as candy corn, at other times as bleak and atmospheric as a harvested cornfield guarded by one lone eerie scarecrow.

If only this book would emanate the aromas of candle wax, dead leaves and scorched pumpkin when the pages are opened.............it would be a perfect world. ( )

Rereading snippets of this book for the season reminded me how solid and informative an anthology collection can be. The jewels in this book are various authors' recollections of their personal Halloween stories, in addition to many great horror tales. Highly recommended, whether this edition or the later reprint editions not put out by Cemetery Dance. ( )

Not bad. Even some of the (ostensibly all nonfiction) reminiscences by authors are quite good.

The inclusion of F. Paul Wilson's "Buckets," though, is the most egregious example of editorial misconduct I have ever encountered. Whether one likes it or not, it is far too politically charged (crudely so, at that) for a purported Hallowe'en/spook story and casts a pall on the rest of the book. That they even considered it in the first place was a travesty of Hallowe'en/spook story anthologizing. ( )

This is a nicely atmospheric, if uneven, collection of Halloween-themed stories. There are some classics here, like "Heavy Set" by Ray Bradbury, and a lot of stories I hadn't read before. I think one of the reasons I ended up not being particularly thrilled with the collection is that it's HUGE and after a while the themes start to get really repetitive. I also was not a big fan of the "My Favorite Halloween Memory" sections, which were short essays from horror writers about Halloween. Some of them were really well written: funny, scary, or poignant by turns -- but I really wish the editor had given them some kind of guideline like, "Please don't mention how Halloween isn't what it used to be because of razor apple scares, etc." I swear, at least 75% of the essays mentioned this, and it started to really drive me crazy.

So I guess my overall take on this book is that it's a good seasonal collection, but you might want to space it out over the entire month of October, instead of reading it in a few days the way I did. ( )