John Grover ‘Creatures and Crypts’ Review

Written by: Drake Morgan

John Grover’s Creatures and Crypts is a book to sink your teeth into on a dark night. There are twenty stories featured here and they run the horror gamut. Zombies, ghouls, nightmarish unnamed things, sinister plants harkening back to Hawthorne, restless spirits, and even the Grim Reaper himself!

This is my first taste of Grover and I like what he serves up. His writing is eloquent, subtle, and disturbing. Rather than gross the reader out with guts and gore, he chooses to crawl under the skin in the sort of horror I truly appreciate. In “Lord Humphrey’s Daughter” for example, we have a much-loved daughter capable of great evils. She does not use her powers for deliberate harm. Or does she? “Scritch, Scritch” is enough to keep one from ever sleeping again. I am now quite  sure there is a thing in my wall too. Grover makes you believe. He makes you think. “Man’s First Child” is a challenging tale of choices, souls, and dark possibilities. The ambiguous ending left me pondering very sinister possibilities for humanity. “Mother and Daughter” is an exploration of familial ties of the bizarre and supernatural kind. There are few monsters Grover does not feature here and a few you might he had not!

People die here. There is enough murder and mayhem to satisfy any horror fan. But Grover makes you fear the night. He makes you fear the shadows in the corners. His is the sort of horror that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. With twenty stories, there are bound to be those that miss the mark. I had my favorites and the not-so-favorite, but Grover’s style is such that a reader will walk away satisfied. Perhaps terrified might be the better word here. Open the crypt and do step inside for this one.

Order the book here.

Rating: 4/5