The World of Lore: Dreadful Places

Whatever creepiness there is in Mahnke’s podcast Lore is lost in translation in this third volume based on it (after 2018’s Wicked Mortals). Many of the 38 chapters begin sententiously (“Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to move on, the past manages to stay right behind you, chasing you like a shadow”); many end on a similar note (“Because sometimes... we have to become the monster in order to defeat it”). Ghost story devotees will find some of the entries familiar, as in the umpteenth retelling of the legend of the Monster of Glamis, a creature that stalks the Scottish castle of that name. Given Mahnke’s paranormal bent, some choices are unusual, as when he omits, in his account of the unexplained deaths of nine hikers in the Ural Mountains in 1959, the theory that a yeti may have been responsible. It’s never entirely clear whether the author wants anyone to consider that these stories are based on real events. Fans of the podcast will have fun, but others will find these short accounts of haunted places repetitive, cliché-ridden, and, worst of all, not scary. (Oct.)