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Literally Dead: Tales of Halloween Hauntings Kindle Edition
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Do you love All Hallows' Eve? Ghost stories? Tales from beyond that leave you feeling unsettled while walking to the kitchen at night? The orange-and-black vintage Halloween aesthetic? Haunted houses with shuttered windows?
Edited by Gaby Triana with John Palisano, this anthology of 19 short stories by some of the most terrifying names in horror is the perfect collection for a dark and stormy October night. Featuring tales to make you hide under the covers by: Jonathan Maberry, Gwendolyn Kiste, Catherine Cavendish, Tim Waggoner, Jeff Strand, Sara Tantlinger, Lee Murray, Alethea Kontis, Lisa Morton & more.
JONATHAN MABERRY - "When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead Across Your Dreams in Pale Battalions Go"
LISA MORTON - "Halloween at the Babylon"
TIM WAGGONER - "No One Sings in the City of the Dead"
JEFF STRAND - "Ghosts of Candies Past"
LEE MURRAY - "The Ghost Cricket"
GWENDOLYN KISTE - "A Scavenger Hunt When the Veil is Thin"
SARA TANTLINGER - "How to Unmake a Ghost"
ALETHEA KONTIS - "The Ghost Lake Mermaid"
CATHERINE CAVENDISH - "The Curiosity at the Back of the Fridge"
SCOTT COLE - "Postcards From Evelyn"
DENNIS K. CROSBY - "Bootsy's House"
STEVE RASNIC TEM - "When They Fall"
CATHERINE McCARTHY - "Soul Cakes"
MAUREEN MANCINI AMATURO - "A Bookstore Made of Skulls"
HENRY HERZ - "The Ghosts of Enerhodar"
JEREMY MEGARGEE - "Always October"
DANA HAMMER - "A Halloween Visit"
DAVID SURFACE - "The Crawlers in the Corn"
EVA ROSLIN - "Pink Lace and Death Gods"
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateSeptember 21, 2022
- File size4858 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"One of THE best & most heartfelt anthologies I've read in a LONG time. Left in tears more than once, so emotional readers beware. It is an incredibly wonderful collection of stories! Bravo." - The Romero Theatre
"If you're looking for something Halloween-y to read this Halloween season, I could not come up with a more perfect recommendation for scratching that autumn itch." - Cat Voleur
"This anthology, the first Triana has ever edited, is the gold class of ghost story anthologies. It will stay with me for a very long time." - Theresa Derwin
"An exceptional collection of stories that is sure to become a Halloween classic." - Lenore Sagaskie
"I've read this collection a number of times. It turns out that it took three times through to be able to select a few favorites for this review. They are all just that good." - Matt Gleason
Product details
- ASIN : B09W22J622
- Publisher : Alienhead Press (September 21, 2022)
- Publication date : September 21, 2022
- Language : English
- File size : 4858 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 266 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #273,574 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #214 in Horror Anthologies (Kindle Store)
- #228 in Horror Fiction Classics
- #366 in Horror Anthologies (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
GABY TRIANA is the author of 21 novels for adults and teens, including Moon Child, Island of Bones, River of Ghosts, City of Spells, Wake the Hollow, Cakespell, and Summer of Yesterday. She's the co-author of YouTube ghosthunters Sam and Colby’s novel, Paradise Island, and her short stories have appeared in Classic Monsters Unleashed, Don't Turn Out the Lights: A Tribute to Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Weird Tales Magazine (Issue #365). She is also the editor of the bestselling horror anthology, Literally Dead: Tales of Halloween Hauntings and the upcoming Literally Dead: Tales of Holiday Hauntings.
The host of YouTube channel, The Witch Haunt, Gaby writes tales about witches, ghosts, and haunted, abandoned locations. She's ghostwritten over 50 novels for bestselling authors, and her books have won IRA Teen Choice, ALA Best Paperback, and Hispanic Magazine's Good Reads Awards. She also writes steamy romance under the pen name Havana Scott and paranormal women’s fiction under Gabrielle Keyes. In her spare time, Gaby practices bass guitar, sewing, and doing nothing.
FB: @GabyTriana.author
IG: @GabyTriana
YT: The Witch Haunt
New York Times bestselling author Alethea Kontis is a princess, storm chaser, and adventurer. She has authored over 20 books and 50 short stories, including AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First (Candlewick), Enchanted (HMH) and Prince Phillip’s Birthday Waltz (Disney). Alethea has received the Jane Yolen Mid-List Author Grant, the Scribe Award, the Garden State Teen Book Award, and is a two-time winner of the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award. She has been twice nominated for both the Andre Norton Nebula and the Dragon Award. Alethea also narrates stories for multiple award-winning online magazines and contributes regular book reviews to NPR. Born in Vermont, she currently resides on the Space Coast of Florida with her teddy bear, Charlie. Find out more about Princess Alethea at aletheakontis.com
Hello, my name's Catherine Cavendish and I write horror fiction - frequently with ghostly, supernatural, Gothic and haunted house themes.
NEMESIS OF THE GODS - An obsession beyond reason. A passion that transcends the grave. Dr. Emeryk Quintillus battles for possession of the long-dead Cleopatra and nothing will stop him from achieving his goal - not even death or the wrath of the ancient gods. For the first time, all three novels in this series - Wrath of the Ancients, Waking the Ancients, and Damned by the Ancients - are available in one volume
THE CROW WITCH AND OTHER CONJURINGS is my first short fiction collection and is out now from Weird House Press.
My new novel - DARK OBSERVATION - is published by Flame Tree Press. In the dark days of war-torn London, Violet has more to fear than bombs. From deep within the Earth, demonic forces are rising.
My other novels from Flame Tree Press are:
IN DARKNESS, SHADOWS BREATHE. Carol and Nessa are strangers with one thing in common, they are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions - bending and twisting time itself - where danger waits in every shadow
THE GARDEN OF BEWITCHMENT. Historical haunted Gothic horror set in the wilds of the Yorkshire moors - pure Bronte country - with a Bronte theme.
And - THE HAUNTING OF HENDERSON CLOSE. Ghostly horror set in Edinburgh's Old Town.
My novellas THE DARKEST VEIL, COLD REVENGE, MISS ABIGAIL'S ROOM, THE DEMONS OF CAMBIAN STREET, DARK AVENGING ANGEL, LINDEN MANOR, THE DEVIL INSIDE HER and THE SECOND WIFE are published by Crossroad Press.
My novels THE DEVIL'S SERENADE and SAVING GRACE DEVINE have also been released in new editions by Crossroad Press, as has my novel of the Lancashire Witches - THE PENDLE CURSE.
I live with a long-suffering husband and a delightful black cat who has never forgotten that her species used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt. She sees no reason why that practice should not continue. Who am I to argue?
When not slaving over a hot computer, I enjoy wandering around Neolithic stone circles and visiting old haunted houses.
Gwendolyn Kiste is the three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, Boneset & Feathers, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, Pretty Marys All in a Row, and The Invention of Ghosts. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vastarien, Tor's Nightfire, Black Static, The Dark, Daily Science Fiction, Interzone, and LampLight, among others. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, two cats, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com
When I was still a child and picked up my very first Goosebumps book by R. L. Stine, I knew I'd fallen head over heels in love with all things horror. It's a love affair that has only grown stronger over the years, a borderline obsession with stories that explore the darkest recesses of the human imagination. I guess you could say I'm like Thorny Rose in that way...always stalking down those special stories that have the ability to invoke a creepy-crawly feeling right down in the marrow of my bones.
As I grew older I discovered the work of some of my biggest inspirations like Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker...and the work of those authors sent me deeper down the path of the macabre. During my teenage years I had the little tradition of reading Stephen King's The Stand each summer to lose myself in the devastation of the superflu and marvel at the sadistic magnetism of Randall Flagg.
I've devoured horror fiction for as long as I can remember and reading the words weaved by the greats of the genre inspired me to begin writing. I wanted the opportunity to tell my own tales with the intent to terrify, to disturb; to capture the morbid curiosity of the reader just as my own was caught so early on in life.
If I've managed to inspire some of those feelings in you, my readers, then I feel that I've accomplished something just a little bit magical. There's still some magic left in this world, and I think it's most powerful when manifested in the form of words scrawled across many blank pages. Granted any magic contained within my work will be of the dark variety...but I wouldn't want it any other way. ;)
I live in Martinsburg, West Virginia with my little old pug Cerberus. When I'm not writing, I enjoy hiking mountain trails, weight training, getting tattooed and being a garden variety introvert in his late 20s. Oh, and reading too (duh).
Connect with me online:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/JMHorrorFiction
Instagram: @xbadmoonrising
From her 200 year old Welsh farmhouse, Catherine McCarthy spins tales with macabre melodies.
Along with many anthology appearances, her own work includes the collection Mists and Megaliths and the novella Immortelle (Off Limits Press).
There is more to come from her in 2023: a Gothic novel, A Moonlit Path of Madness (Nosetouch Press), a novella, Mosaic (Dark Hart Books), and a YA novel, The Wolf and the Favour (Brigids Gate Press).
Find her at https://twitter.com/serialsemantic or at https://www.catherine-mccarthy-author.com/
If absent, she will be hiking the Welsh coastpath or else huddled in an ancient graveyard, reading Poe.
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I love the idea of Mary Shelley writing a story to scare her friends, or of the Chowder Society in Peter Straub’s Ghost Story where the group takes turns trying to scare the pants off of one another. This collection has that feel to it where the reader gets to take a short journey into darkness with some of the best writers in the genre today.
I’ve read this collection a number of times. It turns out that it took three times through to be able to select a few favorites for this review. They are all just that good. Plot twists are one of my favorite devices and I was awed by the way that Sara Tantlinger pulled off the twist in her story “How to Unmake a Ghost”. It might not be a twist as much as it is a reflection, or a new, unexpected, angle on something familiar. Sara’s style is brilliant and I was captivated, three times it seems, by her tale. Step Seven pretty much smacked me in the face. I’m old enough to have experienced the deaths of most people I knew when I was younger. I wish I’d thought of things this way… very good read.
“Halloween at the Babylon” by Lisa Morton is another story in the collection that I very much enjoyed. I’ve lived in dark, old spaces and have suspected, at times, that I wasn’t always alone there. This story captures that feeling of dread and then multiplies it. Excellent tale!
There is a story in the book that I had a bit of trouble with as there’s a scene where… never mind you’ll have to read Tim Waggoner’s “No One Sings in the City of the Dead” for yourself. This story absolutely gutted me when I read it for a wide variety of reasons. The theme that stuck with me, albeit with a graveyard aesthetic, is human folly. It’s an artful endeavor to weave themes of love, loss, hope and abject terror into a very short story but this one does it seamlessly. I both love and hate this story but I suspect the author wouldn’t be disappointed by that reaction - beautifully done!
The last story I’ll individually call out is Jeremy Megargee’s “Always October”. This tale did, in fact, have a rather unpleasant (for the main character) twist at the end that very much surprised me. I’ve always suspected that death, like life, could be something multifaceted and this tale addresses that idea very well. I love the way it’s written as it takes a few times through to catch all of the nuance. I’ll be looking for more work from this author.
I was awarded an advance reader’s copy of this collection and it’s been very much my pleasure to read it. All of the stories in the collection are first rate. I have a few books of stories that I turn to in mid September to start setting the mood for the season. I’ll be ordering a physical copy of this book to add to rotation as I expect that I’ll revisit it many times. If I could add anything to a future collection I’d love to read a short, favorite Halloween memory by each author prior to their story.
Top reviews from other countries

Editor : Gaby Triana
Publisher: Alienhead Press
Release date: 21st September 22
With an introduction by terrific cover artist Lynn Hansen, an incredibly nostalgic and delightfully spooky piece of cover art, plus whimsical interior design ghosties * dingbats * by Marzy, I am in awe of the book I hold in my metaphorical hands. * reader, this is on Kindle *
Fair warning, this is a long review and I touch on every aspect of the book.
The first story, ‘The Curiosity at the Back if the Fridge’ by Catherine Cavendish is a slightly creepy yet strangely delightful story of a lonely child finally finding a break from poverty in Halloween and an almost Dickensian feast.
The tone of the narrator’s voice – and the denoumant – the imagery and the sheer absurdity reminded me a little of Tales of the Unexpected or The Hammer House of Horror TV series.
‘A Bookstore made of Skulls, Salem, Mass’ by Maureen Mancini Amaturo comes next.
If you love Halloween or anything spooky, odds are you will be aware of the tragedy that struck Salem Massachusetts in 1692. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to visit. To pay my respects and to indulge in a little kitsch.
The imagery and Halloween vibe is strong in this one. I’ve never read a story by Amaturo before. I can appreciate the writing, the pay off was disturbing if a bit low-key compared to the twisted build up yet, I also have an urge to re-read it.
Postcards from Evelyn by Scott Cole follows on.
Again, Cole is a new writer to me but another pleasing discovery.
In this story, Andy has moved into his inherited house and as Halloween approaches, he starts to receive vintage postcards asking if he’s coming to a Halloween party.
The date of these? 1910.
I loved the backstory to this one and it fit the cover to perfection.
The Crawlers in the Corn, by David Surface is next. Every now and again, you come across a writer, or a story, that makes you truly feel.
Occasionally you’ll react viscerally and think “holy sh..”.
This was the one.
When they Fall, by genre luminary Steve Rasnic Tem is a somewhat poignant and abstract story of many Halloweens, and Ralph who lives in an old gabled house avoiding the Trick Or Treaters.
Deftly written it has the kind of ending you want to read a few times just to take it in.
Always October – Jeremy Megargee
Oh god, boo .... Or boo hoo 😭 take your pick. Another new writer for me and one I will definitely seek out, because this story hit all the feels. It is indescribably beautiful.
How To Unmake a Ghost by SARA Tantlinger shares some elements with the Megargee story – and is just as beautiful and poignant as the former.
A Halloween Visit – Dana Hammer
We get some nice, light relief in this one, just a conversation between two people to start with, but I chuckled my way through most of it, and it was a great palate cleanser or intermission.
Bootsy’s House by Dennis K. Crosby is a bit light-hearted but also grim as hell.
Damon and Justus break into the mansion that used to belong to first the Elstons, the epitome of elitism, then Bootsy Robinson. Family man, philanthropist ... serial killer?
So, burglary, in a notorious possibly haunted house on Halloween.
This has all the spills, thrills and wonderful Chicagoan history you’d expect.
It’s a terrific urban legend, haunted house tale, with genuine creepy moments and a lot of smiles. At least if you’re a horror reader.
Soul Cakes by Catherine Mccarthy brings us wweet memories of a young Welsh woman and her Nan making Soul Cakes together. Another lyrical and poignant tale.
Ghosts of Candies Past Jeff Strand seriously had me laughing my particulars off.
To lighten the tone, it’s another palate cleanser, because you know, you may be a bit stuffed by now with stories and chocolate, so we have Jeff Strand, who never fails to amuse.
In this story, we have a debate about which one is better – retro candy or modern candy.
You may well bust a gut laughing at this one.
Halloween at the Babylon LISA Morton is a beautiful story set in an aged theatre where the ghost of a performer sits waiting – and a modern day ghost hunting team and medium are investigating. We get historical flashbacks, female solidarity and slowly a mystery is unravelled.
Ghosts of Enerhodar Henry Herz starts in a nuclear power plant in the Ukraine in the present.
This is a well researched, incredibly – strangely – heart-warming story, which uses facts and Urkranian folklore to create literary karma. I won’t say much, but it is a standout story in the anthology, cinematic in its atmosphere and I bloody loved it.
The Ghost Lake Mermaid ALETHEA Kontis has female ghosts, diverse characters, and is beautiful and funny. This is a stunning story of feminine power and choices. Buckle up buttercup, it’s a good one.
Pink Lace and Death Gods Eva Roslin is set on Halloween in New Orleans and Bianca finds the best costume ever for the party that night.
With mythology, history, and diaspora interwoven, this one had it all. I think this is one of my favourites in this anthology.
The Ghost Cricket by Lee Murray is a delightful, traditional morality tale, that adds a dash of humour amidst the darker aspects of the story. The ending is the proverbial chef’s kiss.
No One Sings in the City of the Dead by Tim Waggoner follows, and in true Waggoner style, is bloody and grim. And original as hell.
Halloween is known as that night that the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest.
In A Scavenger Hunt When the Veil is Thin, Gwendolyn Kiste, tells the tale of a woman who narrates the hunt she’s part of in a haunted house. It’s deftly written in second person present tense and has a very different feel to the other stories. Though it’s themes will be familiar to many female readers.
The final story is When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead Across Your Dreams in Pale Battalions Go by Jonathan Maberry.
I want to swear. I want to cry. I want to scream for Alex. For his brother Joey and all of the other young men in this story.
Most of all, one day, as a writer, I want to make a reader’s heart drop the way mine just has, near the end of this story.
So, holy cow...
I’ve had to read this book over a few days, to take breaks and absorb the stories.
This anthology, the first Triana has ever edited, is the gold class of ghost story anthologies.
It will stay with me for a very long time.
