This creepy little collection of short stories all focuses on one thing: that eerie dichotomy between the living and the dead. Seven tales of ghosts and spirits, and things that definitely go bump in the night because they’re not ready to move on quite yet. Dark and atmospheric, each selection is uniquely suited for keeping the reader up late at night with all the lights on.
The title story, “Being Dead,” starts off in an unusual way: a paperboy in 1930’s New York is killed when a suicidal man leaps from a window. Understandably irked by the whole thing, Johnny chooses to remain on Earth as a spirit, and sulk for a while. Will he let anger and a thirst for revenge get in the way of the afterlife?
In “October Chill,” a young woman has to come to terms with her inevitable death. When a ghost from the past enters her life, she’s forced to reconsider whether she really wants to fight to live. “The Ghost,” on the other hand, is a succinctly short story of a ghost who just can’t resist scaring away those who enter its home. “Dancing with Marjorie’s Ghost” is a story with a moral, as an abusive husband gets exactly what he deserves after his wife passes on. “Shadow Brother” deals with the return of a ghost with some unfinished business and the family secrets that affect such an event. “For Love of Him” is an especially strange tale, about a young man who inadvertently gets caught up in a love story that played out decades ago yet whose power still lingers to this day. Finally, :Drop by Drop,” the longest story in the book, is also the most skin-crawling, in my opinion. A teenage girl who’s just moved to the country suffers repeated visits from an angry ghost, and the secret that links them is more horrifying than expected.
All in all, this is a great collection if you like ghost stories, and don’t mind the stories lingering in your mind long after you’ve closed the book and turned off the lights.