Vampire Hunters: An Incomplete Record of Personal Accounts from Speculation Publications

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Vampire Hunters combines several things that I love - found fiction, creepy atmosphere, history, and monstrous vampires. This collection is dark, gripping, and genuinely scary. Beginning in ancient Greece and continuing to the modern day, these twenty-two tales offer a rich variety of vampire lore told through a collection of letters and diary entries compiled over the centuries. Presenting the stories as historical records only adds to the unsettling nature of the work and adds a sense of realism few books possess.

Tying all these stories together is a sort of bonus tale. The book is divided into sections and at the front of each one is correspondence from one curator to the next. The main difficulty with found fiction is the question of “why was this recorded”? The individual stories do a good job of this on their own. This framing story really adds to the suspension of disbelief that this is a real curated history.
This is an excellent anthology for vampire fans of all types. I do recommend heeding the content warnings before diving in, but there are still plenty of stories for everyone to enjoy.

As with any anthology, some stories resonated with me more than others. Some of my favourites include: 

Strix by George K. Angelou - Bit of a bias here. I love anything Trojan War related and this dive into one of the darkest parts of an already dark story was delightful.

The Sherwood Papers by Dale Parnell - This one really drew me in and was genuinely scary.

Be Careful What You Wish for by Henry Herz - a fun twist on The Headless Horseman story.

All the Devils at Once by Gwendolyn Kiste - this story was the perfect balance of funny and scary.



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