Sunday, January 27, 2013

Seriously Creepy Fun

When's the last time you were actually scared by a ghost story?


If you're ready to risk that dread enjoyment again it is my privilege to entreat you to sample the work of Soren Narnia.

I first encountered The Complete Knifepoint Horror when I entered a Goodreads Giveaway drawing for a copy.  The cover art alone is the stuff of nightmares.  I didn't win, but every time I saw the image on the cover - something horrible recoiling from something even more horrible* - I was drawn back to it.  I did a little digging and learned that it's available in all the usual places in all the formats one expects these days.  If you visit his website the author will even give you a copy, just so there is no rational reason not to come to where he is.

Still, the best - or worst - way to encounter Soren Narnia's stories is to have them read to you.  Me, I listen to Knifepoint Horror at night, in the dark, with my bedsheets pulled up to my chin, just the way I enjoyed such stories as a child.  The drained deadpan confessional tone the readers bring to the stories is unnerving. There are times I don't dare open my eyes for fear of what I might be standing over my bed or sitting the corner of my room.  My fitful sleep, and my night terrors, have not been the same since.

Soren Narnia has written many other stories, but first I must survive my exposure to this anthology.

There is no turning back.  These stories will leave little indelible burn marks on your soul like the afterimage that floats on your retina after you look at the sun a little too long.  Your decision.

*Image credit: I think the cover art is a detail cropped
from a Hieronymus Bosch painting but I don't the have stomach to find out for sure http://www.hieronymus-bosch.org/