Turn Down the Lights

Acts of violence bring a being of darkness to life. An undead threat menaces a Western outpost. A drunken prank turns deadly. A man secretly following a trio of local oddities gets more than he bargained for. A mistreated young woman returns home for her doll. The horror stories of an 8-year-old boy are chronicled by one of his fans.

Turn Down the Lights is a collection celebrating the 25th anniversary of Cemetery Dance’s first issue. One of the premiere horror magazines in print, Cemetery Dance is a breeding ground for vivid, rich horror of all sorts, and Turn Down the Lights assembles many names familiar to the Cemetery Dance audience, like Stephen King, Norman Partridge, Ed Gorman, Peter Straub, and Steve Rasnic Tem.

Every short story magazine out there is a labor of love and passion, and Turn Down the Lights channels that on every page by featuring some dynamite stories. Sure, a few of them didn’t really connect with me, but the ones that did — like Brian James Freeman’s heartstopping “An Instant Eternity” — are stories I will return to often in the years to come.

Here’s hoping 25 years is just the beginning.