Hallowed Days
Daniel Hale
JournalStone Publishing (November 20, 2020)
Reviewed by N. Richards
Sixteen gloriously imaginative and seasonally entertaining stories, are spread over 160 supernaturally tense and mind bending short stories by author Daniel Hale from Spooksville, Ohio. I have never been to Ohio personally but it seems to have a lot of spooky attractions, and now it has a famous spooky son in Daniel Hale too.
This is the second “collection” of short spooky stories relating to dark fantasy and horror. Daniel also has a podcast called Woken Word, as well as several anthologies.
The collection is superb in its use of language and subject matter from Halloween, Christmas, Wicca, Solstice knives! Yep. you read that right.
The stories are concise, captivating, and the characters within each of the completely unique tales are truly believable and charismatic. They kind of leave you wanting more and wanting to reread.
There’s an otherworldly aspect to all things previously mundane here, a quality and appreciation of the bright ethereal as well as the dark macabre side of the human experience. “KRAMPUSNACHT” in particular reads like it was written in the 1800s, and is written in verse, amongst other stories that bring the strange and bizarre into everyday life in a style that’s totally his own.
Unique, gritty, and stylish. A more seasonal read I couldn’t hope to have the pleasure of.
