Amalia Gkavea
‘’Twilight, meanwhile, gave place to the first gathering night-the glow worms began to twinkle amid the darkness, and over a high cliff covered with fir trees, that rises out of the lake, gleamed the slender solitary crescent of the new moon. The time had passed away unobserved; but now the owls began to shriek, and the night-hawks burst, flapping their wings, from the covert.
Winter’s long darkness may be mystical and imposing, but summer is equally unsettling. Beneath its dazzling light lie long shadows and sultry evenings that coax even the cautious to lower their guard. Across Europe and beyond, folk calendars confirm this: on Walpurgisnacht, bonfires flare across Germanic hills to keep witches at bay; on Saint John’s Eve, Spaniards leap flames to ward off evil; Scandinavian Midsummer crowns lovers with flowers yet insists a maiden sleeping with seven wild herbs beneath her pillow will dream of her future husband; British folklore warns that foxgloves ring for fairies and that Stonehenge still hums with old blood-rites; and even Obon in Japan welcomes ancestral ghosts with lanterns floating down summer rivers. Such rituals remind us that the sunlit half of the year is as haunted as the dark.
Nothing underscores this better than actress Dulcie Gray’s tart reply to the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley: when he suggested sacrificing her at dawn in a Midsummer rite at Stonehenge, she dismissed him curtly, “I absolutely cannot—I don’t like getting up early.” In short, beneath the laughter and bright garlands, summer remains rich with unease, superstition, and the persistent whisper of things that stir in the light.
The First of May or Walburga’s Night (Caroline Pichler translated by R.P.Gillies):
An undoubtedly atmospheric tale of love, jealousy, obsession and witchcraft, set in a mystical spot of the Swiss Alps. Unfortunately, the language of the story has not aged well; the occasion of Walpurgisnacht wasn’t utilised, and the antagonist of the tale is much more interesting than the anaemic Alice.
The Suitable Surroundings (Ambrose Bierce): In an extremely cryptic story set in Cincinnati, a boy witnesses a man’s distress in the middle of a midsummer’s night, and we are offered a glimpse into the publishing industry and its hunger for horror stories. The ending is outrageously open for interpretation.
A Midsummer Night’s Marriage (J.Meade Falkner): Rich in Gothic atmosphere, this is a tale of travelling back in time in the haunting night of St. John’s Eve, of a doomed love and a broken man. It reminded me of an adult version of The Corpse Bride, a dance macabre between the land of the living and the realm of the dead and Protestant cruelty.
‘’The Spirit is me; I haunt this place!’’
The Looking Glass (Walter de la Mare): A garden that may be haunted becomes the meeting place of Alice and a strange elderly woman who seems to wait for her every afternoon. A very unsettling truth with a touch of Folk Horror and a moving closure…
Midsummer At Stonehenge (F.Britten Austin):
Arguably, the most common image associated with Midsummer’s Day is Stonehenge, one of the most mysterious and enticing wonders made by humans. This tale takes us back to the times of the Children of the Sun. A husband and a wife stand among the crowd that eagerly awaits the sun, enjoying the pleasures of early married life. A beautiful tale that pays homage to the people of the past who shaped History, some of them lost in the mists of time. A story rich in elegance, sensuality and spiritualism.
‘’For Hell has long claimed their hideous god. Long, long he dwelt among the hills, a brain-shattering vestige of an outworn age, but no longer his obscene talons clutch for the souls of living men, and his kingdom is a dead kingdom, peopled only by the ghosts of those who served him in his lifetimes and theirs.’’
The Black Stone (Robert E.Howard): Set in Hungary, this is the tale of an educated, inquisitive man who wants to verify the legends that surround a monolith taking place in Midsummer Night. Magyar Folklore is rather unique in Europe, and the monoliths are universally considered charged constructions. Here, its shadow speaks of barbarism and cruelty, and pure evil with one of the most hair-rising scenes of pagan orgies I have ever read.
‘’The dead may not - must not return!’’
The Withered Heart (G.G.Pendarves): This story paints not a warm, boisterous May but a May night of rain and cold and dark intentions. It is a dark tale of inherited malice and sin, of fighting against the corruption of your soul, of necromancy and pure evil, of the attraction between a spoiled woman and the intellectual who tries to resist his desire. A story that would give Poe a run for his money.
‘’It was the first day of May and witches were abroad in the night, she said - for it was a night of divination, a night of lovers.’’
May Day Eve (Nick Joaquin): It is May Eve - a seductive, mystic night in which girls perform divinations in front of mirrors to see their future husbands. It is a night of saints and sinners, a night when instead of your husband, you see the Deceiver right behind you…What starts as a sultry Gothic love story acquires a bitter, even tragic aura in the end. Some people are better off away from each other…
The Sale of Midsummer (Joan Aiken): According to a legend, such is the beauty of Midsummer Village that it exists for just three days each year. Two young men set out to find the truth, but each villager provides their own version of the story.
As these tales unfold, each offers a glimpse into the long shadows cast by Midsummer’s light: some rich in folklore and dread, others burdened by dated prose or aimless eclecticism. Taken together, they reveal a landscape of rituals, fears, and desires that stretch across centuries and cultures — proof that under the summer sun, darkness finds countless ways to speak. Yet even as the stories vary in power, one constant remains: the heavy hand of the editor, eager to remind us of his supposed daring and broad-minded curation, while often revealing only his shallow contempt for faith and tradition.
Johnny Mains boasts of being “eclectic to a fault,” but what shines through instead is smugness and the hollow superiority of yet another patronizing atheist who uses his platform to cheapen and sneer at Christianity while hiding behind the guise of inclusive curation. His editorial comments reek of self-congratulation and a fundamental contempt for the intelligence of readers, as if we should applaud every hackneyed line simply because he declares himself a champion of the obscure. Let us be clear: reading thousands of books does not make you a better editor—it makes you an efficient consumer. True discernment comes from respecting your audience and knowing when to shut up about your own tired ideology.
‘’Below him shadows were lengthening second by second, creeping across moor and marsh and up the sides of hills like vast grey ghosts. Standing on the brow overlooking the precipitous south end, he could see vague stone pillars set in a circle immediately beneath. In daylight, no doubt they would look mundane enough, but here in twilight their very vagueness seemed to promise life: at any moment they might begin to shuffle and dance. A half-forgotten tale about madens changed into stones for dancing on the Sabbath came back to him.’’
Night on Roughtor (Donald R. Rawe): A Cornish tale of will o’the wisps, moaning winds in the moors, ghosts, enchanted hills, piskies, spriggans, and three very foolish young men.
‘’He didn’t finish. The words were torn away from him on the rising wind which moaned now with a harsh eerie voice of its own…sighing and creaking through furze, stunted bushes and round the monolith shapes emerging beast -like through the thick air.’’
Where Phantoms Stir (Mary Williams): I won’t forget this story soon. Starting with a haunting encounter of a troubled man and a strange young woman as the wind rises through the mist, it soon becomes a terrifying symphony of unholy contact between this world and the next, the innocent sacrifice and the works of the Evil One and its horrendous crowd. Atmospheric and tragic, and my favourite story in the collection.
Foxgloves (Susan Price): There is nothing more frightening than walking alone at night, especially on certain nights of the year. Even the streetlights seem to hide dark corners in an area steeped in legends told to you by your grandmother. A sinister take on the urban legend of the Vanishing Hitchhiker and the myth of Rusalka. This story is full of haunting nocturnal descriptions of nature and the neighbourhood streets that urge you to both be alert and let yourself become absorbed by the beauty in this darkness.
The Midsummer Emissary (Minagawa Hiroko, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori): The story starts with a mysterious female voice whispering a message that makes no sense. Our young protagonist has visions of a mysterious dark haired woman and seems to be followed by an elderly lady. Each page gives birth to more and more questions in a very strange tale of omens, male prostitutes, sexuality and past secrets. I still can’t say I have fully grasped the purpose of the story, but it is weird. Essentially Japanese.
Heaven on Earth (Jenn Ashworth): A newly-married couple finds itself trapped in a tropical resort during the first wave of COVID. They are now the only guests, and their efforts to contact the British Embassy are to no avail. Despite the fact that they have one of the earthly paradises at their disposal, they become prey to forced inertia and the strange proximity that comes with quarantine, while the man is a typical example of the entitled British upper class. And when you realise what has actually happened, you stare speechless.
In the end, The Dead of Summer is a varied but often rewarding collection. Some stories shine with genuine atmosphere, strong folkloric roots, and unsettling imagery that lingers long after the last page. Others feel outdated or thin, but even then, they add texture to the broader picture of how humanity has wrestled with the long, haunted light of summer nights. For readers who appreciate folklore, ghost stories, and the lingering echo of the past in the present, this collection offers enough moments of true unease and subtle beauty to make it worth their time.
‘’ Midsummer's Eve too- an unlucky night to be out. It was one of the turning days of the year, according to his granny, like Halloween, Christmas Eve and May Day. They were the days when the year turned from winter to spring, from spring to summer, from summer to autumn and then to winter again. They were different from other days… more open. The nights were even more so. Ghosts walked on those nights that couldn't walk other nights. Things were seen on those nights that couldn't be seen on other nights. On those nights, magic worked. According to Granny.’’
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/
‘’Twilight, meanwhile, gave place to the first gathering night-the glow worms began to twinkle amid the darkness, and over a high cliff covered with fir trees, that rises out of the lake, gleamed the slender solitary crescent of the new moon. The time had passed away unobserved; but now the owls began to shriek, and the night-hawks burst, flapping their wings, from the covert.
Winter’s long darkness may be mystical and imposing, but summer is equally unsettling. Beneath its dazzling light lie long shadows and sultry evenings that coax even the cautious to lower their guard. Across Europe and beyond, folk calendars confirm this: on Walpurgisnacht, bonfires flare across Germanic hills to keep witches at bay; on Saint John’s Eve, Spaniards leap flames to ward off evil; Scandinavian Midsummer crowns lovers with flowers yet insists a maiden sleeping with seven wild herbs beneath her pillow will dream of her future husband; British folklore warns that foxgloves ring for fairies and that Stonehenge still hums with old blood-rites; and even Obon in Japan welcomes ancestral ghosts with lanterns floating down summer rivers. Such rituals remind us that the sunlit half of the year is as haunted as the dark.
Nothing underscores this better than actress Dulcie Gray’s tart reply to the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley: when he suggested sacrificing her at dawn in a Midsummer rite at Stonehenge, she dismissed him curtly, “I absolutely cannot—I don’t like getting up early.” In short, beneath the laughter and bright garlands, summer remains rich with unease, superstition, and the persistent whisper of things that stir in the light.
The First of May or Walburga’s Night (Caroline Pichler translated by R.P.Gillies):
An undoubtedly atmospheric tale of love, jealousy, obsession and witchcraft, set in a mystical spot of the Swiss Alps. Unfortunately, the language of the story has not aged well; the occasion of Walpurgisnacht wasn’t utilised, and the antagonist of the tale is much more interesting than the anaemic Alice.
The Suitable Surroundings (Ambrose Bierce): In an extremely cryptic story set in Cincinnati, a boy witnesses a man’s distress in the middle of a midsummer’s night, and we are offered a glimpse into the publishing industry and its hunger for horror stories. The ending is outrageously open for interpretation.
A Midsummer Night’s Marriage (J.Meade Falkner): Rich in Gothic atmosphere, this is a tale of travelling back in time in the haunting night of St. John’s Eve, of a doomed love and a broken man. It reminded me of an adult version of The Corpse Bride, a dance macabre between the land of the living and the realm of the dead and Protestant cruelty.
‘’The Spirit is me; I haunt this place!’’
The Looking Glass (Walter de la Mare): A garden that may be haunted becomes the meeting place of Alice and a strange elderly woman who seems to wait for her every afternoon. A very unsettling truth with a touch of Folk Horror and a moving closure…
Midsummer At Stonehenge (F.Britten Austin):
Arguably, the most common image associated with Midsummer’s Day is Stonehenge, one of the most mysterious and enticing wonders made by humans. This tale takes us back to the times of the Children of the Sun. A husband and a wife stand among the crowd that eagerly awaits the sun, enjoying the pleasures of early married life. A beautiful tale that pays homage to the people of the past who shaped History, some of them lost in the mists of time. A story rich in elegance, sensuality and spiritualism.
‘’For Hell has long claimed their hideous god. Long, long he dwelt among the hills, a brain-shattering vestige of an outworn age, but no longer his obscene talons clutch for the souls of living men, and his kingdom is a dead kingdom, peopled only by the ghosts of those who served him in his lifetimes and theirs.’’
The Black Stone (Robert E.Howard): Set in Hungary, this is the tale of an educated, inquisitive man who wants to verify the legends that surround a monolith taking place in Midsummer Night. Magyar Folklore is rather unique in Europe, and the monoliths are universally considered charged constructions. Here, its shadow speaks of barbarism and cruelty, and pure evil with one of the most hair-rising scenes of pagan orgies I have ever read.
‘’The dead may not - must not return!’’
The Withered Heart (G.G.Pendarves): This story paints not a warm, boisterous May but a May night of rain and cold and dark intentions. It is a dark tale of inherited malice and sin, of fighting against the corruption of your soul, of necromancy and pure evil, of the attraction between a spoiled woman and the intellectual who tries to resist his desire. A story that would give Poe a run for his money.
‘’It was the first day of May and witches were abroad in the night, she said - for it was a night of divination, a night of lovers.’’
May Day Eve (Nick Joaquin): It is May Eve - a seductive, mystic night in which girls perform divinations in front of mirrors to see their future husbands. It is a night of saints and sinners, a night when instead of your husband, you see the Deceiver right behind you…What starts as a sultry Gothic love story acquires a bitter, even tragic aura in the end. Some people are better off away from each other…
The Sale of Midsummer (Joan Aiken): According to a legend, such is the beauty of Midsummer Village that it exists for just three days each year. Two young men set out to find the truth, but each villager provides their own version of the story.
As these tales unfold, each offers a glimpse into the long shadows cast by Midsummer’s light: some rich in folklore and dread, others burdened by dated prose or aimless eclecticism. Taken together, they reveal a landscape of rituals, fears, and desires that stretch across centuries and cultures — proof that under the summer sun, darkness finds countless ways to speak. Yet even as the stories vary in power, one constant remains: the heavy hand of the editor, eager to remind us of his supposed daring and broad-minded curation, while often revealing only his shallow contempt for faith and tradition.
Johnny Mains boasts of being “eclectic to a fault,” but what shines through instead is smugness and the hollow superiority of yet another patronizing atheist who uses his platform to cheapen and sneer at Christianity while hiding behind the guise of inclusive curation. His editorial comments reek of self-congratulation and a fundamental contempt for the intelligence of readers, as if we should applaud every hackneyed line simply because he declares himself a champion of the obscure. Let us be clear: reading thousands of books does not make you a better editor—it makes you an efficient consumer. True discernment comes from respecting your audience and knowing when to shut up about your own tired ideology.
‘’Below him shadows were lengthening second by second, creeping across moor and marsh and up the sides of hills like vast grey ghosts. Standing on the brow overlooking the precipitous south end, he could see vague stone pillars set in a circle immediately beneath. In daylight, no doubt they would look mundane enough, but here in twilight their very vagueness seemed to promise life: at any moment they might begin to shuffle and dance. A half-forgotten tale about madens changed into stones for dancing on the Sabbath came back to him.’’
Night on Roughtor (Donald R. Rawe): A Cornish tale of will o’the wisps, moaning winds in the moors, ghosts, enchanted hills, piskies, spriggans, and three very foolish young men.
‘’He didn’t finish. The words were torn away from him on the rising wind which moaned now with a harsh eerie voice of its own…sighing and creaking through furze, stunted bushes and round the monolith shapes emerging beast -like through the thick air.’’
Where Phantoms Stir (Mary Williams): I won’t forget this story soon. Starting with a haunting encounter of a troubled man and a strange young woman as the wind rises through the mist, it soon becomes a terrifying symphony of unholy contact between this world and the next, the innocent sacrifice and the works of the Evil One and its horrendous crowd. Atmospheric and tragic, and my favourite story in the collection.
Foxgloves (Susan Price): There is nothing more frightening than walking alone at night, especially on certain nights of the year. Even the streetlights seem to hide dark corners in an area steeped in legends told to you by your grandmother. A sinister take on the urban legend of the Vanishing Hitchhiker and the myth of Rusalka. This story is full of haunting nocturnal descriptions of nature and the neighbourhood streets that urge you to both be alert and let yourself become absorbed by the beauty in this darkness.
The Midsummer Emissary (Minagawa Hiroko, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori): The story starts with a mysterious female voice whispering a message that makes no sense. Our young protagonist has visions of a mysterious dark haired woman and seems to be followed by an elderly lady. Each page gives birth to more and more questions in a very strange tale of omens, male prostitutes, sexuality and past secrets. I still can’t say I have fully grasped the purpose of the story, but it is weird. Essentially Japanese.
Heaven on Earth (Jenn Ashworth): A newly-married couple finds itself trapped in a tropical resort during the first wave of COVID. They are now the only guests, and their efforts to contact the British Embassy are to no avail. Despite the fact that they have one of the earthly paradises at their disposal, they become prey to forced inertia and the strange proximity that comes with quarantine, while the man is a typical example of the entitled British upper class. And when you realise what has actually happened, you stare speechless.
In the end, The Dead of Summer is a varied but often rewarding collection. Some stories shine with genuine atmosphere, strong folkloric roots, and unsettling imagery that lingers long after the last page. Others feel outdated or thin, but even then, they add texture to the broader picture of how humanity has wrestled with the long, haunted light of summer nights. For readers who appreciate folklore, ghost stories, and the lingering echo of the past in the present, this collection offers enough moments of true unease and subtle beauty to make it worth their time.
‘’ Midsummer's Eve too- an unlucky night to be out. It was one of the turning days of the year, according to his granny, like Halloween, Christmas Eve and May Day. They were the days when the year turned from winter to spring, from spring to summer, from summer to autumn and then to winter again. They were different from other days… more open. The nights were even more so. Ghosts walked on those nights that couldn't walk other nights. Things were seen on those nights that couldn't be seen on other nights. On those nights, magic worked. According to Granny.’’
My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/