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“That’s what we always fear the most: the things we can’t see, and the things we don’t yet understand.”

Author: Darcy Coates

I’m a novel girly, so usually I don’t find myself attracted to short story collections, even those by a favorite author. I came to Ghost Camera more through false advertising than anything else. It’s not clear that Ghost Camera is a novella followed by seven other short stories and one other novella. Normally, I’d be mad, but I actually loved this collection and all of the stories.

The signature tale from which the collection derives its name concerns two friends who acquire a strange, old camera. It’s one of those kinds popularized in the 80s and 90s that instantly develop and deliver out a picture (sigh, I was never cool enough to have one). Only these pictures appear to have strange figures in them. As a matter of fact, this camera is a portal between worlds, and the more you use it, the angrier you make the dead who are highlighted in its flash. Of course, by the time our protagonists find this out, they are in way over their heads, and only a desperate series of actions could potentially save their lives.

The next novella, which occurs at the end of this collection, called A Box of Tapes, follows a young mother who moves to a new house and finds a box in her daughter’s closet full of VHS tapes. The box has a note, “Don’t watch. You’ll regret it.” She watches. And she regrets. This one has echoes of The Ring. The mother becomes involved in decoding the series of clues left on the tapes and, with the help of a friend, tries to put together the pieces before it’s too late.

The seven other stories in this collection offer some of the best, weirdest, and most captivating images and ideas. My favorites were Untamed Things, Death Birds, and The House on Boxwood Lane. In Untamed Things, two women survive a remote plane crash and help one another through the snowy woods, all while they are being tracked by something ancient and evil. This story is the best of the entire collection, even better than the lead novella, and its Twilight Zone vibes make readers alternately thoughtful and terrified.

Image by Çiğdem Onur from Pixabay

The House on Boxwood Lane is a surreal children’s fairytale where a house full of presents, never before seen, lures in local children. The house’s intentions are just as obvious as they are ultimately horrifying.

And finally, Death Birds introduces a new species of man-like-birds who appear when death is near. These birds appear to eat something unseen from the dead and are a newish phenomenon. When they start showing up in mass to a hospital, it becomes evident that a catastrophe is soon to happen. But can the omen of the birds be used to stop the bloody disaster?

Other stories in the collection include Payment for the Dead, where some desperate graverobbers uncover a necromantic secret, The Run to Broken Ridge Lighthouse, where an urban legend and a bunch of teenagers collide, Remains, where a woman seeks to keep her unfaithful husband, and Cathedral where some creepy church statues take some action.

The entire collection is pure, quality Coates, integrating empathetic (albeit stupid) characters confronted by the spectral, supernatural, and downright horrible. Coates’ characters make all predictable horror-movie mistakes, but we don’t mind, because the stories capture and captivate, the language painting a picture we can both see and feel. Coates dips from the ordinary, daily nature of sunshine on playgrounds to the darkest fears of the human heart, high in the snowy mountains at dusk, and along the way she takes us on an amazing journey. Highly recommended!

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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