Winner of the Third Annual Scariest Horror Story Competition, Yamayū, has spent over twenty years collecting real-life hauntings from across Japan. Now, these spine-tingling accounts are brought to life by Kensei Hokamoto, whose chilling artwork cuts straight to the heart of human fear and madness.

Grim Night Tales has story by YAMAYU and art by Kensei Hokamoto. English translation is done by Kevin Yuan and lettering by Carl Vanstiphout. Published by Seven Seas Entertainment (February 17, 2026). Rated OT.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

I have one very important question for you all: why does the girl on this cover look like Draculaura from Monster High? It's an odd choice, and there was a Monster High anime back when the franchise first came out, so it could be deliberate. It also has almost nothing to do with this book, but it kept distracting me, especially because there wasn't much in these tales that was particularly scary.

It's certainly not for lack of trying. Most of the setups are genuinely eerie, if not wholly original. For my money, the creepiest scenario involves subpar housing built specifically for elderly people with no remaining family. The apartments were built stacked on top of each other with no airflow or climate control, and naturally, all previous tenants died. The implication is, of course, that an unscrupulous person built the housing with the express purpose of collecting rent and allowing the elderly to die. This hits a bit close to home, since last year I had to help find and move my parents into assisted living, and let me tell you, there are definitely some places out there that make this scenario feel plausible. The actual haunting bit of the story was much less upsetting than the idea of the apartment building in the first place.

Another story relies on the old haunted doll trope, and its most successful panels are when the vengeful spirit of the doll forces a woman's legs to be run over by a moving truck – the art and sound effects are more unsettling than the entire rest of the chapter. That goes for the haunted apartment as well; one panel of the man's daughter outdoes the entire rest of the piece. This was also one of several that I had read other variants of before, which honestly isn't all that surprising. This sort of ghost story has been a staple of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark oeuvre since at least the middle of the last century. That's also the case for the smiling story, but I found that one more effective, simple for the grounding in bullying.

As for Draculaura girl, she's the frame narrative – a girl named Rei who has a man trapped in a love hotel, where she's forcing him to listen to her stories. Fortunately, I am not in a similar position, and while these were decent enough fun, I'm more than happy to see myself out.

Kennedy
Rating:

A two-sentence horror story for all of you:

Everything was quiet. BUT THEN A SKELETON POPPED OUT.

If you found that scary, congratulations, you're going to have a great time with Grim Night Tales, whose spook-level is pretty much on par with that. I seriously can't emphasize enough how un-scary every single one of the allegedly spooky stories in this anthology is, and how I'm not even being hyperbolic when I compare it to something you'd hear on a grade school playground. I'm honestly taken aback at how amateurish these stories are.

Generally, all these stories boil down to, “Something kind of weird happened, and then a ghost appeared.” That's it. No tension, no drama, no connective tissue, nothing. “Well, that's okay,” you might find yourself thinking, “I don't mind if the stories themselves aren't too great if the vibes are right.” Alas, you don't even get that silver lining. The art feels stiff and lacks enough style to make up for that. The atmosphere building, similarly, just isn't there. These don't feel like scary stories, so much as they do just plain stories, where ghosts or the supernatural just sometimes are present. It's staggering how basic and rudimentary they feel.

A content warning: One of the stories in here revolves around a suicide. But aside from that, these stories aren't even particularly gory, psychological, or heavy in their subject material. I triple-checked that the rating on here is older teen, which, apart from the aforementioned suicide-related story, feels pretty questionable. Apart, again, from the suicide one, these all feel like they could've been made for a younger audience—at the very least, that would explain why they're so simple.

So basically, what I'm getting at is that there's nothing in here for readers who want to be scared, nor for readers who want some lighter horror fare. The spooky, Halloween magic just isn't here. The only thing scary here is the sheer volume and magnitude of better horror one-shots that are available out there.