Legends of the Mountain State, edited by Michael Knost


Legends of the Mountain State is one of those rare books that brings someone my age (my mid-forties) back to my childhood. It conjures up memories of how I'd lie beneath the covers at night with a flashlight, reading scary stories long after I was supposed to be asleep. It returns me to those days when my friends and I would sit outside at night, maybe by a campfire, maybe just in someone's backyard, and we'd tell each other tales about men with hooks for hands, which houses in town were haunted, and how someone's big brother had a friend who once saw a big, hairy creature roaming through the woods.

In other words, Legends of the Mountain State is a collection of old-fashioned stories meant to do only two things: send shivers up your spine and entertain you.

Editor Michael Knost has put together a great list of authors for this first in a soon-to-be ongoing series: sandwiched in between the foreward by Rick Hautala to the afterward by Gary Braunbeck are 13 delectably creepy tales by some of the genre's best writers, including Thomas Monteleone, Joseph Nassise, Kealan Patrick Burke, Tim Waggoner, Bev Vincent, and Scott Nicholson.

The concept of Legends of the Mountain State is simple: each writer had to take one of the many supernatural legends based in West Virginia and expand on it. The book covers everything from ghosts and haunted houses to UFO sightings and the infamous Mothman. Not that the thirteen tales here in any way made a dent in the Mountain State's cornucopia of the strange; there are dozens of other myths, folklores, and tales left unexplored - good fodder for a series where the next two volumes are already pretty much guaranteed.

I think my personal favorite was Joseph Nassise's "Money Well-Earned," where a hitman is hired to take out the legendary Mothman. But in the process, he learns a secret about the creature that may just stay his hand.

In Thomas Monteleone's "Images in Anthracite," a son discovers his father is haunting the old homestead, and he has a message to deliver from the past to the present.

Another fun read was "Afterdamp," by C. Cameron Fuller. A cold-case investigation leads to a series of gruesome murders, all potentially linked to an evil spirit unleashed by a coalmining disaster a hundred years ago.

Knost does a good job of giving the readers a wide spectrum of supernatural scares, so whether you enjoy ghosts, monsters, or serial killers, you'll find something in here to your liking. And since all the stories are based on supposedly true events, readers who have a thing for books about local 'true' hauntings and unexplained events will get a kick out of this collection as well.

If I have any complaints about Legends of the Mountain State at all, it would have to be that at only 13 entries, it's far too short. I finished it in one evening, and then found myself annoyed that I'd have to wait until later this year for the next volume to come out.

Pick up this book when you get a chance, and take a trip back in time to when the little boy or girl inside you couldn't wait until nighttime to break out the flashlight and read.







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JG Faherty is a writer of dark fiction. His most recent credits include Cemetery Dance #58, MagusZine, All Possible Worlds, and the Garden State Horror Writers' 2007 anthology, Dark Territories. He was the inaugural Fiction Editor at Doorways Magazine, and writes regular columns, book reviews, and interviews for the Horror Writers Association newsletter, FearZone, and several other online and print venues. You can visit him at www.jgfaherty.com.