Polar Horrors by John Miller

3.5 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

The majority of these stories were written as people began to explore the frozen extremes of our planet. The adventurers who risked everything to discover what was at these latitudes bought the daring exploits back and the writers of the day explored the terror of the unknowns in their own way. There are six stories set in each of the North and South Poles and there is something for everyone in here

North
The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon written by James Hogg
I wasn’t that enamoured with this story. It wasn’t very horrific, just very melodramatic. I thought it was fairly unplausible as the main character tames a polar bear. The writing is a bit laboured and not overly clear. It is almost the length of a novella too.

The Moonstone Mass by Harriet Prescott Spofford
This is an unsettling story set in the Arctic. There are strange happenings. The compass stops working and the characters have a feeling of disconnect to the world as the battle against characters that causes them utter horror.

The Captain of the Polestar by Arthur Conan Doyle
A whaling ship in the far north is hoping to harpoon some whales soon to pay their way. They don’t see any whales, but the men keep reporting a ghostly apparition that ends up spooking the captain of the ship. I think I preferred the Conan Doyle story that I read in Cornish Horrors

Skule Skerry by John Buchan
I thought that this was a very atmospheric and dramatic story of a man on an island who is there to spot migrating birds. After being pummelled by a storm, he is on the ragged edge of survival when he glimpses something that shocks him to his core.

The Third Interne Idwal Jones
A very very short story about three assistants who had died. The guy who survived was sure they had been murdered but there was no proof. Apart from the voices…

Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard by Aviaq Johnston
A modern story about a shadow glimpsed in a blizzard. It is very well-written and genuinely terrifying!

South
A Secret of the South Pole Hamilton Drummond
A ghost ship that has sailed all around the sea is discovered. The crew are all dead and the thing that still killed them is still on there…

In Amundsen’s Tent by John Martin Leahy
I thought this story was the closest to horror in this book. There is a severed head and a diary documenting the last days of the team as they encounter something that inhabits this Antarctic landscape.

Creatures of the Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis
A very strange tale that is based on eugenics. Someone is hoping to create a god-like people to repopulate the earth. Strange and always disturbing as most things about this subject are.

Bride of the Antarctic by Mordred Weir
A classic creepy ghost story. Very short and very well written.

Ghost by Henry Kuttner
A modern haunting from an old but dangerous ghost that has been brought back by modern science. But is it manifesting? One character heads to the Antarctic to perform an exorcism with the hope of ridding the station of the ghost. An interesting story and premise for a plot

The Polar Vortex by Malcolm M Ferguson
I really was struck on this story. It is a cross between a scientific diary and a man reaching the very edge of his sanity.

The stories included within can vary in quality, but the thing I like most about this series is that it brings to my attention writers who I have genuinely never heard of or read. If you are collecting these and haven’t got a copy of this, get it!