When I was a kid, it was the black bound Time-Life Enchanted World volumes that commanded my attention: this, Ghosts (we’ll see that later in the week) and Tales of Terror (another time, alas).

This one is damn unsettling, collecting tales of things that prey on humankind by moonlight, like the several pages devoted to the story of the Croglin Grange vampire. Again, being written as if the event 100% happened was also 100% guaranteed to give a younger me a serious case of the willies, especially thanks to Mark Langeneckert’s paintings. Werewolves, hags, trolls, Grendel and less easy to define creatures also appear. If you’re looking for inspiration in order to sell a world full of monstrous dangers hiding in the dark, you could do a lot worse than this book.

The book is full to brimming with nightmarish art. You’re going to see a lot more of Matt Mahurin and Marshall Arisman this week. Arisman’s work for the series specializes in smears of garish color across corpse-like pallor, and often involve someone getting it in the neck. Mahurin’s a bit more understated, a bit more goth. I particularly like how that little bit of line work on the hanged man gives it a hyperreal quality of seeing the image blurry and in focus at the same time. He’s also responsible for that excellent Red Riding Hood illustration, which is another solid gold classic from the series on the whole.