Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque

The story moves on two timelines: first, an old notebook that Melissa, now a widow unable to sleep at night, writes in; second, the childhood she spent with a neighbor girl named Mary Lou Siskin. Melissa writes these memories in pencil, secretly, so no one will see — memories she's never shared with her husband or children.

As children, Melissa and Mary Lou loved sneaking into forbidden, abandoned farms — the old Medlock farm, the Minton house. Though their families insisted "of course there are no such things as ghosts," they also warned, evasively, that "a stranger, or even someone you know" might be lurking there — a warning whose real meaning Melissa will only understand much later.

Mrs. Medlock lost her mind and was institutionalized after finding her husband dead in the barn. The girls cautiously, step by step, explore the abandoned farm, peer through windows, throw stones at hungry cats, and even joke once about burning down the barns — a scene that shows the fine line between childhood play and real danger.

Melissa's mother tries to keep her away from Mary Lou — "that girl is a bad influence," she says, dismissing the Siskin family as "lower class." But the two girls' friendship continues in a strange, intense, sometimes cruel form: they hurt each other, then reconcile, with Melissa treating Mary Lou almost as a sister.

At one point in the chapter, the author slips in a detail almost in passing, nearly hidden: the Minton house is noted as the place where Mary Lou's body would later be found — mentioned before anything has even happened, as if it were a simple geographic detail, yet it's a line that chills the reader.

What comes after this is the work of the story's second half — Mary Lou's secret boyfriend Hans, her gradual estrangement from Melissa, and finally her tragic fate. So we're stopping here, and we recommend you read the story yourself. But if what you've read so far interests you, you can check the spoiler section below.

• The narration shifts freely between past and present — Melissa's adult voice constantly intrudes on her childhood memories.
• Oates hides critical information (like Mary Lou's fate) inside seemingly casual, throwaway sentences — an attentive reader catches it.
• The collection belongs to the "grotesque" genre — classic horror elements (an abandoned house, ghost talk) are fused with real psychological depth.
• The author's afterword ("Reflections on the Grotesque") lays out the book's theoretical framework, though it isn't covered in this review.
• The translation (Alev Bulut) conveys Oates's fragmented, associative sentence style well.