Using a title like THE 13 BEST HORROR STORIES OF ALL TIME is always bound to stir up some controversy, since what constitutes the “best” is so subjective. A more apt description for Leslie Pockell’s compilation may be 13 NOTABLE HORROR STORIES OF ALL TIME, ALL BUT TWO OF WHICH ARE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. But I’m just nitpicking; either way, this is a great collection.

It’s amazing how many of these stories I read as part of English class in junior high and/or high school: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” I had no idea my education was so cool! It’s fairly safe to say all of these four are indisputable classics of the short story form, horror or otherwise. Even after multiple readings and many more years, “The Lottery” never fails to give me chills. “The Yellow Wallpaper” still creeps me out, even if I can’t understand exactly what the hell is going on in the ending. Several critics have referred how powerful and unsettling the ending is, but its meaning has forever eluded me. Anybody out there who can end this mystery for me, please post a comment!

Bram Stoker’s lost chapter from DRACULA – “Dracula’s Guest” – appears, as does Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Bottle Imp,” as mischievous and clever as its titular character. H.P. Lovecraft and H.G. Wells are here, but each with stories – “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Country of the Blind,” respectively – that are far from their finest or even most well-known, in my estimation.

Rounding out the collection are ghost stories from Oliver Onions, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James and J. Sheridan Le Fanu, each effective even in their old age. But for me, the real find of this book was Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan.” It’s been anthologized several times over, yes, but this my first exposure to the shapeshifting monstrosity, and I found it to be a disturbing, suspenseful masterpiece. Its inclusion here signals Pockell knew what what s/he was doing in assembling this baker’s dozen.