Originally posted on Just Geeking by.

Content warnings: Common themes throughout this anthology include death, murder, violence, trauma, and psychological horror. There are also some scenes of abuse, child abuse, animal death, racism, xenophobia, and sociopathy.


I picked the ARC for When Things Get Dark up because I had heard the name Shirley Jackson multiple times this year. I’m not familiar with her work, which might come as a shock to some of you, especially if you’re a big horror fan. I tend to dip in and out of the horror genre, I flirt with it on occasion and read very specific horror subgenres. My main one is urban fantasy, my more specific ones are horror short stories, ghost stories and Victorian horror. In all that mix, I missed Shirley Jackson completely. As a British reader it’s not unusual for me to find that what’s popular or well known to American readers is completely unknown to me.

Either way, you may be wondering why on earth I wanted to read this anthology, since I have never read anything by Shirley Jackson. Well, that’s because this isn’t by Jackson, it’s inspired by her. It’s also an anthology edited by the amazing Ellen Datlow who’s anthologies I’ve read to date have always been brilliant. There are also several authors in this anthology whose work I’m already familiar with. On top of that, horror anthologies are something I love. Inspired by a famous horror author or not, I was going to enjoy something in this anthology, no matter what. Adding all of those up, and it seemed like a good idea to me.

So, how did I get on? I found out that while I may not have had a name for Jackson’s particular brand of horror, I was already well familiar with it. It’s the type of horror that slithers into your mind and under your skin, that makes you ask things because the story doesn’t actually supple the answers. Was that house really haunted? Or was it cursed? How many people had died there? Do you want to know….? Are you sure?

The stories in When Things Get Dark range in contents, some are typical ghostly hauntings or pure horror, while others focus on the psychological nature of human nature and how horrific people can be. Some of the stories are a mixture of the two. The common theme running throughout them all is the urban setting. These are about everyday people living their lives. There’s nothing supernatural about them, nothing extraordinary about them or their lives until these events happen. It emphasises the terrifying thought that this could happen to anyone, that these people could be anyone. Mrs Jones across the road could be harbouring a deep dark secret, and you’d never know… this is definitely not the type of anthology for people who suffer from paranoia.

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When Things Get Dark is an anthology of purposely written stories inspired by or in tribute to Shirley Jackson. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that although I consider myself a fan of speculative fiction, I had never read any anthology curated by the legendary Ellen Datlow, the editor of this volume. Now, I can understand better why her name is held in such high esteem in the publishing community – this book is a real cracker. For a start, the contributing authors are all well-regarded, prize-winning writers. It would be unfair to single out specific authors, since practically all of them are household names in the horror and speculative fiction community. So here is the full list of the eighteen featured stories and their respective writers:

Funeral Birds – M Rickert
For Sale by Owner – Elizabeth Hand
In the Deep Woods; The Light is Different There - Seanan McGuire
A Hundred Miles and a Mile – Carmen Maria Machado
Quiet Dead Things – Cassandra Khaw
Something Like Living Creatures – John Langan
Money of the Dead – Karen Heuler
Hag – Benjamin Percy
Take Me, I am Free – Joyce Carol Oates
A Trip to Paris – Richard Kadrey
The Party – Paul Tremblay
Refinery Road – Stephen Graham Jones
The Door in the Fence – Jeffrey Ford
Pear of Anguish – Gemma Files
Special Meal – Josh Malerman
Sooner or Later, Your Wife Will Drive You Home – Genevieve Valentine
Tiptoe – Laird Barron
Skinder’s Veil – Kelly Link

As is wont to happen in such anthologies, some stories may be more striking than others, but none are duds. Perhaps more importantly, despite the different styles and approaches typical of each specific author, the result is a cohesive one which breathes the same atmosphere of Shirley Jackson’s writing. In her introduction, Datlow explains that she wanted the contributors to “distill the essence of Jackson’s work into their work, to reflect her sensibility.” She identifies as the defining elements of the classic author’s approach “the strange and the dark underneath placid exteriors… comfort in ritual and rules, even while those rules may constrict the self so much that those who must follow them can slip into madness”.

These themes do underlie many of the stories, which often find horror in domestic life by revealing disturbing undercurrents in parent/child relationships – for instance in the creepy Tiptoe by Laird Barron or Joyce Carol Oates’ Take me, I am free. Some of the stories adopt a realistic worldview, others are overtly supernatural. Some of the best pieces, however, are not really one or the other, but are more whimsical in nature, bordering on symbolism/magical realism. Such is the case with the closing novelette, Skinder’s Veil by Kelly Link, in which a housesitter gets more than he bargains for, including encounters with anthropomorphic animals. Or Josh Malerman’s Special Meal which, despite having no supernatural element to it, was, to this reader, the scariest, most nerve-racking of the lot.

Datlow states that she did not want authors riffing on Jackson’s own works. Some of the featured stories however do appear to be very obviously referring to specific stories or novels by Jackson. Unsurprisingly, the Haunting of Hill House is channelled in a number of haunted house tales, such as Elizabeth Hand’s For Sale by Owner and Seanan McGuire’s In the Deep Woods; The Light is Different There. Ghosts of other sorts appear in Money of the Dead by Karen Heuler, Refinery Road by Stephen Graham Jones and M. Rickert’s Funeral Birds. Quiet Dead Things by Cassandra Khaw has the same small-town horror feel to it as Jackson’s notorious The Lottery. Sooner or Later, Your Wife Will Drive You Home by Genevieve Valentine is a thoughtful piece of feminist Gothic, but also references The Bird’s Nest by naming all the female characters with variants of Elizabeth. The plot of We Have Always Lived in the Castle invites mentions of poison and poisonings (as in A Trip to Paris by Richard Kadrey and Something Like Living Creatures by John Langan).

Titan Books have got a winner here: a thrilling encounter with the uncanny courtesy of the some of the best contemporary horror writers.

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The horror books of Shirley Jackson rely much more on the imagination of the reader rather than descriptions of blood soaked body parts, and in that respect I find this type of horror much more acceptable. “When things get dark” is a compilation of 18 stories by many well respected names and as in most collections of this type some are stronger than others. The beauty is that if a particular episode is not to your liking then very soon you will be moving forward to the next chapter and indeed the next guest author. I enjoyed all 18 stories but in particular story 1 Funeral Birds where Lenore returning from the funeral of Dolores finds that all did not go quite as planned. There is some sweet dark humour and one rather stunning nasty shock to be revealed. The 2nd story of note is “Quiet Dead Things” by Joyce Carol Oates, a rather chilling story of a child abandoned.The prose throughout is direct, clear and simple to understand making for really enjoyable reading, and worthy of a very solid 4 stars! Many thanks to the good people at netgalley for a gratis copy in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written. ( )

This was a really strong collection of stories written as tribute to Shirley Jackson - she's not just her own horror genius, but inspires the best in other authors, too. ( )

This might be one of my favorite collection of stories I've ever read. As a tribute to Shirley Jackson, it captured that vibe of strangeness and pain just under the surface of normalcy in so many ways. They are weird, unsettling, haunted, and comforting. Cassandra Khaw's contribution might have been my favorite, but each and every one is an author I'm now following, if I wasn't already. ( )