This is the type of stories that die-hard horror fans are looking for. Sci-fi and horror combined, plus a dose of good old fashioned Stephen King-type horror. Awesome!

Opinion: Short story collections are usually filler reading for me. Read a story in between properly long novels. This book I just read straight through for various reasons. It opens with a good old zombie story that is not my cup of tea, but is well done, "Amerikanski Dead at the Moscow Morgue" by Kim Newman. "The Ruins of Contracoeur" by Joyce Carol Oates is one of my favorites. Its a story of a disgraced judge and his family being forced to move in a family inherited mansion out in the country, far from the political world of Washington. The kids have started seeing people without faces prowling around the grounds and children from the neighborhood are suddenly being murdered by a madman. "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Thomas M. Disch is also excellent and slightly suspenseful but not very horrific if you know what I mean. I really like the way this story was unfolded (and I cannot really describe it without giving things away). Another story that I found excellent was "The Grave" by P. D. Cacek. Its a story about a very wierd, psychotic school librarian, her relationship with her mother, and something she found on the way home from school one day, done with enough of realism to make it extremely creepy. "Itinerary" by Tim Powers was interesting but I did not follow it very well. I got lost in the details of this ghostly time-travel story, possibly as a result of my being tired when reading that story. "The Rio Grande Gothic" by David Morrell and "Angie" by Ed Gorman are two more great stories. "Rio Grande is about a cop who gets a little too curious about a certain intersection in Santa Fe where shoes keep appearing in the middle of the road. This was one of the longer stories but was very good. I don't know what to say about "Angie" other than I liked it and that is a little frightening. "The Tree Is My Hat" by Gene Wolfe was the first Wolfe story of any kind I have read. His story was just so-so to me...but in an interesting way. "Hemophage" left me wanting more. This story by Steven Spruill fits between 2 books of a trilogy and it feels like it. I really liked the everyman way that vampires are dealt with. "Rehearsals" by Thomas F. Monteleone was a pretty good about a blue collar worker who never made much of himself and the dreams he had as a youth. What happens to him when he gets a job at a theater as a janitor is pretty cool although not terribly scary. One of my favoritre stories in the collection was the last story "Elsewhere" by William Peter Blatty (The Exocist guy). A realtor gets a very big incentive to sell a dormant house with a haunted reputation. She gathers up some "experts" on hauntings and a writer to spend some nights in the house and prove it isn't so she can sell it. The character interaction is pretty good here, and even more so after the punch is delivered near the end. This story brought to mind a recent movie. So much so that I wonder if the movie got the idea from this story.

Neil Gaiman and Stephen King have stories published in this collection, King's "The Road Virus Heads North" I have read before. Some of the stories that I didn't like or disappointed me were "The Shadow, The Darkness" (too long and boring), "Knocking" (no real punch, just kinda blah), "Growing Things" (short and unscary), and "The Theater" (haunted vegetables above a bookstore. The rest of the stories were average, no real feeling either way for me.

Recommendation: If you are a fan of the genre or of any of these authors, read this. Zombie stories, vampire stories, creatures in the woods stories, evil heart of man stories, suspensful stories, it's all here. It is well worth it with many more likeable stories than not. 4 out of 5 stars.

ok ill jus start by saying this book left me wanting more story after story it kept me glued the entertainment level is astonishing i have recommended this book to all my friends and they all love it, a lil scare neva hurt anyone

I'll be honest and state that I bought this book because I am a Ligotti obsessive and this collection featured a new novella by Ligotti. "The Shadow, The Darkness" was everything I expected it would be and more; it's a tale of art being a manifestation of the most essential darkness in the universe. Philosophically and stylistically similar to the Teatro Grottesco tales from The Nightmare Factory, this novella alone makes the collection worth picking up for any Ligotti fan.
Other than that, there is not a single story worth reading in the collection. The King is uninspired garbage, a poorly executed haunted painting story bearing King's usual trademarks of purple prose and clumsy characterization (along with an ending that is completely predictable). If you want to read a haunted painting story that is truly effective, try Aickman's "Ravissante."
Many stories in the volume did not even contain any supernatural elements, such as Edward Lee's "ICU," a hideously overblown and distasteful piece on child pornography. The only way that this story inspires horror is by causing the reader to realize that trash like this gets published in the first place. I don't know about the rest of the reading population, but I don't find stories about the disgusting practice of child pornography to be entertaining in the least.
Moving on, Bentley Little's "The Theater" features haunted vegetables (how frightening)! But probably the worst piece in here is Lansdale's "Mad Dog Summer," which is a transparent retread of To Kill a Mockingbird. Lansdale transposes nearly everything from that novel: we find the two child protagonists (a boy and his younger sister), a mentally handicapped villain who turns out to be a good guy, a family of racist hicks and even an African American who is unfairly executed. Come on, Lansdale, if you are going to write a horror adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, you could at least inject some supernatural elements instead of adding an entirely unnecessary child molestation scene.
Even the other notable authors aside from Ligotti turn in mediocre pieces. Ramsey Campbell's "The Entertainment" is a lukewarm rewrite of Aickman's "The Hospice." Though I know Campbell is an admitted Aickman fan (and has even gone so far as to list "The Hospice" as one of his ten favorite stories), this homage is entirely superfluous, as it in no way improves on the original. Gaiman's offering is also pretty weak stuff, which was dissapointing as I know that Gaiman at least has decent taste in literature. Finally, Klein's "Growing Things" is enjoyable for its subtle horror but ultimately insubstantial.
My verdict: Ligotti fans should pick this up for "The Shadow, The Darkness," but I wouldn't recommend 999 to anyone else.

I wish it had some scary stories.