August 13, 2002
The Ultimate Halloween
Marvin Kaye, Editor

Collection of Halloween stories, by different authors, picked for the anthology by Marvin Kaye. Not bad, not bad. I really enjoyed “Auntie Elspeth’s Halloween Story or The Gourd, The Bad & The Ugly” by Esther Freisner, where an old bitty in a nursing home has been saddled with her grand-nieces and nephews for the afternoon and isn’t at all happy about it, so she decides to tell them a nasty story about what REALLY happens to pumpkins when they become jack-o-lanterns. In fact, the stories I liked most all had young-child themes, which may seem surprising, but really isn’t. I’m nostalgic for that scared-little-kid feeling one gets with scary stories, so I actually enjoy reading these kinds of stories, where the main character is a kid between 10-12 years old (well, that wasn’t the case with that first one, as the pumpkin was the main character), and the story, even though about a kid, is told from an adult point of view, FOR adults.

Another good example is “Pumpkinhead” by Al Sarrantonio, where a strange, scapegoated child turns out to be much more than she seems, and “The Halloween Man” by William F. Nolan – my favorite in the collection - about a young girl terrified by her fear of the mythical, soul-stealing Halloween Man, and unable to tell anyone about it.

There are a couple I didn’t care for, like “The Banshee’s Comb”, an Irish tale. The language and dialect were just too bulky, and the story was too long.

I wish there were more Halloween collections, and the kid-oriented ones (again, from an adult point of view) are definitely the best. ( )