THE CENTURY'S BEST HORROR FICTION #65: A review of "The Shadowy Street" by Jean Ray

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Pelan usually has good sense. In the rare instances where he fails, there are usually enough good points about the story where it is redeemable. This is one of the really, really rare ones where he fails entirely.



Ray’s story is yet another polite horror tale, and while the idea of it is actually kind of cool, the execution is downright awful. An unnamed narrator in the frame discovers a couple of manuscripts, written by completely different people in different languages, about what happens when ghosts invade Hamburg, or at least one particular alley in Hamburg.


In the first, a group of people are listening to a friend who says she’s terrified of her lodgings (but doesn’t know why). They make fun of her a bit, and when she goes upstairs to bed, the others decide they were too hard on her. They go up to accompany her, only she’s vanished into thin air.


This is only one of many mysteries that night, as more and more people vanish, strange crimes occur, and a deluge of suicides plagues the town. The unnamed narrator of this first half is convinced that ghosts have invaded this part of Hamburg and are responsible for all of this mischief.


In the second half . . . well, does it matter? Not really. Everything you have read about this story so far sounds interesting, but the execution is so dry and emotionless that it’s actually one of the most boring stories in this anthology. It doesn’t even bear spoiler alerts. Nothing is spoiler-worthy here. It’s hard enough to get to the other side of the frame without dying from perpetual yawns.


Skip it. It’s not Pelan’s worst choice, but it’s up there.


[This story first appeared in GHOULS IN MY GRAVE and cannot be read online at this time.]