Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination, A Formative Read

I have a lot of books that played a role in my literacy voyage. These include Roald Dahl’s Young Adult/Adult novels to R.L. Stine’s Goosebump series and others. But there are a few that really got me rolling on loving horror and the occult. One of which was Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Alex Hamer.

This was a book that I read many, many times. I can remember reading this book as a kid at my parents’ house. In fact, one of my middle school teachers let me read a few chapters from this book to the class one afternoon. What a memory!

We are going to talk about this book today because it is an excellent collection of folklore and mythology. It also spans the gamut of gruesome to horrific. Hopefully this inspires you to pick up a copy wherever you can find one. While formative for me, it can be inspiring for you!

Synopsis of Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Ghosts and Madness

Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination is a clever book. It comes from the author’s ability to play with myth and folklore. There are truly horrific tales that come from the annals of world history. Yet, it is clever in construction. Each chapter begins with a short history lesson or synopsis that pulls the reader into the story. It’s also clever in scope, spanning the world through stories most of us have heard and new ones that we won’t soon forget.

To get a good example of how this book operates, we need to look no further than the first chapter, which is titled “The Bleeding House Mystery.”

It begins:

“The strange disappearance of Buford and Ellen Penrose was a haunting, unsolved mystery for eight years…until the awful night when blood began dripping from the ceiling of their home, sending the gathering of fashionable dinner guests fleeing in horror.”

Now, if that doesn’t intrigue you in the least then I am not sure how else to pique your interest. The author packed this book with memorable haunts. And they page after page is laden with exciting narratives.

Buried Alive

The stories in Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination continue in grisly entertainment in the proceeding chapters. “Ghostly Escorts” tells the tale of lost ships at sea. Ships that are filled with phantoms. Meanwhile, “The Pleading Ghost” presents perhaps the scariest way to expire—premature burial. It spares nothing in its revelation of a poor young woman suffering her last moments on Earth. She is confined in a coffin six-feet under. Though her struggle is never revealed–she fought until her last breath.

It reads:

“The hair that remained on the skull was disheveled and the knees were bent as if in an effort to force open the coffin lid. Worse, much worse, there were bloody, parallel scratches on the wood of the inside coffin lid, and a single fingernail was still imbedded in the soft pine.”

Additionally, there are stories of the occult in Egypt and psychics predicting their own deaths. There is also one of my favorites: the story of the bloodthirsty Sawney Beane family. They were a family so grim that they terrorized and cannibalized the Irish hills of Galloway for years. Eventually, King James’ army came to the hills and arrested the family.

Final Thoughts on These Strange Tales

I love hearing stories about ghosts and monsters because there is a rawness and realness to what humans believe they have experienced. Oral storytelling is excellent as well. That realness extends itself to Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination, because there is something conversational that likens each story to homespun horror, as if the author is in the same room next to a roaring fire regaling an audience with the macabre.

While it may sound dark–and it is dark–it’s actually a really fun book that filled many of my days with delightful fright. Regardless, if you can imagine a young Michigander weened on Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King, then you might understand why this book is important to me and my reading journey. Even these days, I will absent-mindedly pluck it off the bookshelf and flip through the pages. The stories are just that intriguing.