erin mccann |Verified account

A Christmas story about my brother: he's four years older, and always had a kick-ass collection of horror films and books. If it was scary and obscure, it was probably in his room. I, meanwhile, was the kind of kid who had nightmares after seeing Jurassic Park (raptors).

But, well, he had all these great books! So sometimes I'd go in his room and browse for something that seemed interesting and not too scary. One such book was a horror anthology from the 70s.

It was called something inelegant like just 'best horror stories 1970-1980.' I zeroed in on one story: TED Klein's Events at Poroth Farm. This story, when I read it at 15, terrified me. For years.

Sometime after I read it, my brother moved the volume into another box of books and we have no idea where it ended up. Or it just vaporized back into the hellfires where it came from. Either way.

Quick description of this story: "it combines that weird sense of otherworldly dread with a parasitic creature that is half Alien and half The Exorcist," as one Cthulhu fan site tells it https://angryscholar.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/the-cthulhu-mythos-pt-1-the-events-at-poroth-farm/ …

So we're at 2000 or so. It's years since I first read the book, and years before the internet made everything easier to find. The sense of dread and nightmare it engendered has stuck with me.

I casually look for the collection of short stories in used book stores all around the country. My brother knows this. He also knows I check his room whenever we're back home just in case it's rematerialized from the Upside Down.