Horror Stories to Tell in the Dark

by Anthony Masters

The flames flicker. The night deepens. Something's moving in the shadows. Alone on the moors they gather round the fire, all waiting to tell their own horror story. Just listen?

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Anthony Masters was a writer, educator and humanitarian of exceptional gifts and prodigious energy. He was, in the parlance of his spiritual ancestors, the ancient mariners, that rare voyager "as gracious as a trade wind and as dependable as an anchor".

He leaves 11 works of adult fiction – notably, Conquering Heroes (1969), Red Ice (1986, with Nicholas Barker), The Men (1997), The Good and Faithful Servant (1999) and Lifers (2001) – and was in the process of completing another, Dark Bridges, which he thought would be his best. Many of these works carry deep insights into social problems that he gained, over four decades, by helping the socially excluded, be it by running soup kitchens for drug addicts or by campaigning for the civic rights of gypsies and other ethnic minorities.

His non-fiction output was typically eclectic. It ranged from the biographies of such diverse personalities as Hannah Senesh (The Summer that Bled, 1972), Mikhail Bakunin (Bakunin: the father of anarchism, 1974), Nancy Astor (Nancy Astor: a life, 1981) and the British secret service chief immortalised by Ian Fleming in his James Bond books (The Man Who Was M: the life of Maxwell Knight, 1984), to a history of the notorious asylum Bedlam (Bedlam, 1977).

Reviews

[Am Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this title by chance and was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the tales within. It's a collection of 9 short horror stories, told by a group of young friends sitting around a campfire at night. Some of them are supernatural in nature, while others are psychological. All are concise, well-written and conjure up vivid imagery of the characters and scenes involved. There is a good build-up of tension which is usually satisfactorily resolved. Some of the tales have predictable endings, but still deliver a sense of satisfaction. The author was from England, so the stories are very British in setting and language.

[Natsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another compilation of some short horror stories. Not bad, but I still prefer the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.