I’m pretty sure I heard about Lore when I was in the spooky podcasting phase, though I don’t remember ever listening to the podcast. But oh well, it never hurts to check out a book that’s already on my TBR list.

Lore is a collection of stories about supernatural creatures and phenomena, with the book being organised thematically (things related to nature, things about the afterlife, about dolls, etc). It’s a bit hard to pin down the topic because some chapters read like more general overviews of creatures like vampires and people being buried alive, while others focus on specific cases like the case of Mary Roff or the legend of Owl’s head. I also noticed that the first few chapters tended to be more general while later chapters focused on specific cases.

The style of the book is very conversational, which means that it wasn’t very spooky at all. Some incidents were scarier than others but overall, this felt like engaging in a conversation with a friend in a cafe rather than being scared around the campfire. Whether or not this is good depends on your personal comfort with regard to scary stories.

After reading this, two things stick out:

The first is that everything here is incredibly Western-focused. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised but because I saw more than a few references to our deepest fears, our habits, etc, I expected the book not to limit its scope to Western culture. Or perhaps that’s the intro sections being far to general for the actual cases; I definitely did not have this thought while reading the transcripts of Dark Histories, probably because the introductions there are more about the case than the human experience.

The second is that the chapters are all rather short, which means I’m often left wanting more. Mahnke also has the habit of trying to end things on a surprising note (i.e. you thought the story was over BUT ACTUALLY…) which means that the cases tend to end more abruptly. If you want to consider the evidence for and against something, well you’re probably better off getting individual books on the incidents mentioned here. It was also a bit of a strange contrast because sometimes it felt like Mahnke was a sceptic but the endings felt like it was coming from someone who believed in the supernatural.

Overall, though, I thought this was a fun and quick read. Mahnke has managed to uncover a lot of interesting cases and does a good job of whetting the reader’s appetite for more information. I’m probably going to give the podcast a listen after this book, so I guess it’s done its job?