There's No Such Thing as Ghosts, Right?

There's no such thing as ghosts, right? Try telling that to Lilian Chesterfield, her associate Dave, and Captain Moses Akinyemi, a retired military medic. These are the central characters in The House at Phantom Park by Graham Masterton. You may as well add Alex Fowler to that list because, in this particular story, he's the first to encounter the spirits inhabiting St. Philomena's, an abandoned hospital that is soon to be turned into luxury apartments.

Alex's encounter with the spirits leaves him in excruciating pain that seems to have no end. Not even medications and an induced coma can keep him from giving voice to the pain. Amongst his howls, groans, and tormented screams, he keeps asking for Captain Akinyemi, a man he's never met but someone he seems to know very well. When Moses arrives, we learn that Alex claims to be a Corporal Terrence Simons, a man Moses treated in Afghanistan, but Moses insists he's never met the man before in his life.

Meanwhile, back at St. Philomena's, enter Charlene"Charlie" Thorndyke, Alex's replacement, who, while making her rounds of the abandoned hospital, also has an encounter with the spirits that leaves her in a statement of rigidity, as if she'd been carved from stone. At the hospital, she also asks for Moses, although she uses the name Mingus, a nickname he had while serving in Afghanistan. The mystery only deepens when Alex and Charlie die, but not before passing on their afflictions to their caregivers. What is the connection between the retired army medic, these two young surveyors, and the abandoned hospital? Moses intends to find out and pays a visit to St. Philomena's, where he encounters Lilian and David, who are being tormented by all the usual haunted house trappings -- slamming doors, moans, groan, and whispers. David is convinced te place is haunted, and Lilian believes steadfastly that the events are being caused by locals who are against St. Philomena's being turned into luxury apartments. Together they set out to solve the mystery of St. Philomena's.

The House at Phantom Park contains all the trappings of a typical haunted house tale, but Masterton takes it several steps further, creating a hellscape for the tortured spirits inhabiting the hospital that's rather heartbreaking. The characters, for the most part, are likeable enough, although Lilian was getting on my every last nerve, which is a shame, as she in the centralmost character, and she also happens to be the least believable of the entire cast. Masterton maintains an steady pace with the narrative, with only the occasional hiccup, and by that I mean there's some needlessly repetitious lines and statements that are close enough together as to be noticeable, which can sometimes cause a distraction. And while I'm assuming Masteron uses it to establish setting/timeframe for the story, all the references to Covid come across as a heavy-handed means of doing so, especially since Covid has nothing to do with the story itself. At the first mention, you shrug and think, Okay, so this is present day, more or less, but when it's mentioned again and again, the reader is left waiting to see how it's going to tie in to the story, and it never does. However, these few speedbumps, while noticeable at the time, weren't enough to pull me out of the story.

All in all, I enjoyed Graham Masterton's The House at Phantom Park, and I would recommend it if you're looking for a haunted house tale with a twist. Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

 

Tries too Hard to be Shocking

This title has been floating around the book groups on Facebook for a while now, and, considering how I feel about animal cruelty (even in fiction), I had some reservations about diving in. It was never far from my radar, though, and this year is the year I decided to take the plunge.

I wasn't sure what to expect going in, as I had heard no particulars about the book, only that it was vile, disgusting, gross... You get the picture. Folks said the same thing about Duncan Ralston's WOOM and Chandler Morrison's Dead Inside, both of which were, while extreme, not as bad as I was led to believe. Well... Matthew Stokoe's Cows certainly delivered, but not in the ways you might expect.

There are two parallel storylines in Cows, one more extreme than the other. You have the domestic story, which tells of Steven's dysfunctional home life, with a mother who hates him and who he, in turn, hates, and an ancient dog on its last legs. There's the love interest, an equally disturbed and dysfunctional young woman who lives in the same building. And then there's the worklife at the slaughterhouse, where Steven appears to thrive. And while the domestic side of the tale is disturbing in its own right, the work storyline is where the story goes off the deep end. Among the debauchery that takes place within the walls of the slaughterhouse, there's a talking cow that has somehow evaded slaughter, as well as a whole herd of cows living beneath the streets.

I'm not going to go into story too much, as I don't think you'd believe me if I tried. Suffice it to say, you need to read (actually, you really don't --but if you choose to, don't say I didn't warn you) this to believe it. I'm sure you'd much rather have another question answered, and that is, Was it as disgusting and vile as folks have made it out to be? Yes. And therein lies the MAJOR problem I had with Cows.

The story in and of itself wouldn't be bad if it had been told in a straightforward manner, but add in the atrocities and it ends up having the opposite effect of what's intended, becoming instead something of an exercise in eyerolls. It seems Stokoe's focus in Cows is to outdo what he's done previously in his attempt to gross you out, to one-up himself, and you can't help but laugh. You certainly can't take it seriously. It all becomes a tad predictable (in regards to his relationship, I called that ending the moment the romance began), and it becomes a game, trying to guess what gross misdeeds the author will come up with next. And because of this, the writing comes across as juvenile, the thing junior high students will write and titter about in the corner of the library. The vile acts that occur within the novella lack the organic nature found in other extreme horror works that I've read, in that they don't arise naturally from the narrative, but rather come across as forced, crammed in like puzzle pieces in the wrong places.

Would I recommend it? Not particularly. Why? Because reading is supposed to be pleasurable, and I found nothing pleasurable about Cows. However, if you feel you need to read it because of its cult status, then by all means, go ahead. I won't try to dissuade you. But as for extreme horror, there are other, better-written works out there in which to invest your time.