The woods; an indiscernible canvas not unlike the depths of space or the ocean. A place where mystery, goblins, owls and other forested malevolence prevails, the woods are ripe for intoxicating our mind’s eye. Especially in the dark. Such is the precipice for Wildwood: Tales of Terror & Transformation From the Forest, William P. Simmons’ curated landscape of horror stories that all use forested mysteries as their easel. With stories by a slew of writers who hail from the early 20th century, Wildwood: Tales of Terror & Transformation From the Forest is a buffet of horror with forested interpretations that would give even Henry David Thoreau the Hershey skids.

There are stories like Saki’s "The Music on the Hill", in which Sylvia has just married Mortimer, a man raised in the timberland. He tells her of the woods being a place of worship for Pan, of noted folklore, who she soon sees has been relegated to worship not unlike that of a religious deity. She also learns, the hard way, that Pan is not one to disrespect, and such god-like relegations are more in the key of fear than worship.

Or "The Hollow of the Three Hills", written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which tells a folklorian tale of two women performing a ritual in the woods, not dissimilar to Macbeth’s "Wayward Sisters". Such incantations inspire unwelcome visions, among them a phantom funeral procession carrying a coffin amongst the trees.

One of my favorites is "The Man Who Went Too Far" by E. F. Benson, where we are brought to St. Faiths, a town that harbors a forest which no one will go to at night. Ever. The reasons for such avoidance are made more and more clear when an artist named Frank moves to said woods, and he’s quick to display a non-ideal brand of photosynthesis.

The stories have a variance as vast as a forest’s population; down to Elliott O’Donnell’s "Byways of Ghostland, Chapter V, Sylvan Horrors", a segment of a non-fictional exploration of the spiritual properties of trees themselves. O’Donnell was an early 20th-century ghost hunter who claimed to have been neck-throttled in his youth by a spectre, therein clarifying his own party-line to the previously-living. Most of his storied claims have been remembered as a touch below believable, but remain testaments to his ability as a storyteller.

In "Byways of Ghostland…", O’Donnell speaks philosophically of plants having spirits comparable to those recognized in humans. He claims to be able to see trees that once stood in the busiest of metropolises, still swaying amongst the concrete ruckus. Not only are their spirits present, but they’re often notably displeased and display occult misgivings. Such phantom trees also possess zombie-like qualities, with movement, personality, and a cache of phantasmal critters still inhabiting their innards.

He goes in-depth about other qualities, such foliage visitants possess, linking them to the human tragedies that had become associated with them. This is a fascinating essay that gives new light to possibly why dogs are apt to express urinary interest in specific vegetation.

This essay made me think a lot about my upbringing. I grew up in a town that was belligerently tree-laden. We were surrounded by woods pretty much anywhere we went, and I have a distinct impression of most forests being a void in which mysteries evolve and things disappear. Which made sense as to why the woods were also where people went when they wanted themselves to be invisible. In some of the less morbid of occasions, we’d snicker off to smoke weed, make out, drink beer, have campfires, hunt blue belly lizards, and just be gone from everything. The woods, dude. They were Never-Never Land.

Or Camp Crystal Lake depending on one’s experience. When people would vanish in my hometown (an occasion that was far from rare), the woods were the first places people looked, and such searches were rarely a walk in the park.

Wildwood: Tales of Terror & Transformation From the Forest is a fun exploration of the myths of the woods, igniting one’s imagination to no end. Also reminding me why I never built a treehouse in my youth, as I always figured it would just be one more thing in which the shadows could evolve. Okay, shadows and snakes. Those wiggly bastards were just begging for a roust to rule, I could see it in their eyes.