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Exhumed is my humble attempt to read and review every short story and novel excerpt ever published by Cemetery Dance<\/em> magazine. In their 33+ years of publication, there have been a total of 577 (and counting!) pieces spread out over 77 issues. Since each Exhumed post covers just two stories (one \u201cold\u201d and one \u201cnew\u201d), I think I\u2019m going to be doing this for a while. I sure hope you\u2019ll join me along the way. And, by the way, I\u2019m always looking for requests, so go forth and comment which story you\u2019d like me to unearth.<\/p>\n Normally at this point I\u2019d jump into the nuts and bolts of the stories I\u2019m reviewing this time around, but this time around I have something very different for you. In recent months I\u2019ve had several people ask how I can review the really old stories when those issues are so hard to find. Do I own them all? Does Cemetery Dance hook me up? It\u2019s a great question with a rather complicated (and, dare I say it, entertaining) answer.<\/p>\n So, if you\u2019ll indulge me for this one time, instead of reviewing a couple of CD stories, I\u2019d like to tell you how I got here. (I promise to get right back to reviewing stories next time).<\/p>\n That may have been the very best singular buck I ever spent, because over the next couple of weeks I carried that magazine everywhere I went. I remember sacriligiously folding it hotdog style and stuffing it into my back pocket (please don\u2019t hate me\u2026 I didn\u2019t know!) on my way to the pool where I sat for 8 hours a day lifeguarding for extra cash. I remember devouring the author interviews. I remember feeling a flash of excitement when I saw the title \u201cStephen King News\u2026\u201d and I remember smirking with approval when I decoded the acronym created from \u201cThe Mothers And Fathers Italian Association.\u201d But mostly it was the stories. They were so cool. So dark. So loud in my head while still managing to echo in my heart. I read each one of them at least three times. And even though I\u2019d been a fan of Stephen King for nearly 20 years at that point, by the end of that summer I fell in love with horror fiction all over again, and of course I was already a lifelong fan of Cemetery Dance<\/em>. Long before I turned the last page for the first time I had decided I needed to find as many of the other 51 issues (it said \u201cIssue #52\u201d right there on the cover) that already existed, and actually maybe that should be all of the other issues. Yeah. I would find and read them all. I would have a complete collection of something awesome. That\u2019d be so cool. I would be so cool.<\/p>\n 8 and 1\/2 years.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how long it took me.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if the obsession developed slowly over that time or whether it had popped fully to life the instant I saw that bloody seashell, but “obsession” is the only true word for my condition. It remains to this day, and it\u2019s ingrained enough within me to say it\u2019ll never die because it\u2019s now a small but significant part of me. An element of the fabric that makes up who I am is Cemetery Dance<\/em> magazine, and I\u2019m OK with that. Hell, I\u2019m proud of that.<\/p>\n When I started collecting, I had never thought much about the term \u201cOut Of Print,\u201d and I certainly didn\u2019t understand how Richard Chizmar was just a kid barely out of college when CD #1 was printed. I definitely didn\u2019t appreciate how small a print run of 1,000 copies really is. I bought all the in-print issues directly from Cemetery Dance, of course. And it was also a great place to get a complete list of back issues plus an understanding of those special titles (ie: from \u201cVolume One, Issue 1\u201d up to \u201cVolume Eight, Issue Four\u201d) which identified the first 29 issues. I became well acquainted with ABEBooks.com. I went into dozens of used book stores, suddenly loved going to yard sales, and spent literally hundreds of hours creating searches and scrolling through ebay, Amazon, Craigslist, and other online stores and trading sites. The only thing that slowed me down was taking the time to read them all, cover-to-cover, as fast as I possibly could.<\/p>\n I actually regret doing that, by the way. I sped through many of them so fast that the details faded from memory as soon as I was a dozen pages into the next one. In retrospect, I wish I would have enjoyed them as a slower pace, taking the time to ingest each one and give it the attention it deserved. Probably this little guilt trip was the initial seed for Exhumed itself. \u201cIf I ever write about it,\u201d I told myself, \u201cI\u2019ll simply have to re-read them all.\u201d (More on that later.)<\/p>\n But, as the saying goes, the hits kept coming. Every story seemed to open my mind even further to what made horror fiction so amazing. Every interview was a glimmer of light — sometimes through a window, sometimes a mirror — into the complicated world of my own writing. Every dated Stephen King \u201cupdate\u201d was a pleasant blast of nostalgia for the time I read that very same book or watched that very same film adaptation.<\/p>\n Along the way (and despite my nagging guilt for speeding through so many great issues), I started to notice patterns. How the stories in older issues tended to be shorter and filled with more gore and grue\u2026 how newer stories tended to be longer and more psychological. But they all scared me and gave me that extra little appreciation of my own mortality, my own psychology. Certain stories, and sometimes certain authors who CD would repeatedly publish had a way of jolting the norm into something new. I began to realize many of the name-brand authors I had known for 20 years had been mere fledgling writers when their pieces appeared in Cemetery Dance.<\/p>\n In the back of my mind I started to think about an article or maybe a whole thesis paper about that gradual change of the genre over time. About how certain authors, certain styles, or even certain historical moments played influence to how horror fiction was written and enjoyed. It would be a long time before I revisited that idea (I had a collection to complete, dammit!), but it never left me. Always tickling the back of my brain, I refined the idea over the years and continued to let it simmer.<\/p>\n When I officially started collecting them in 2007, Cemetery Dance had published 57 issues. I managed to get about half of them pretty quickly. I\u2019d say it took six or seven months to get that far. I was usually buying in bulk and getting many double copies and even a few triples. I\u2019d keep the ones in the best condition and re-sell the duplicates to help afford my next find.<\/p>\n But soon after that it became hard. Really hard. Like\u2026 another year to find another dozen unique issues. And another year beyond that to find six or seven more.<\/p>\n I got lucky a time or two\u2026 I remember I nabbed #3 in a lot of ten issues (I already owned all of the others in that lot, but \u201cHey, #3 is there and that\u2019s all I need!\u201d), and just a couple weeks after that I found #2 for sale all by it\u2019s lonesome on Craigslist. It took around six years to hit my plateau, though, and that\u2019s where my actual purchasing came to a screeching halt. I had just four more issues to go and was becoming convinced I\u2019d never find any of them, ever. Which issues? Well, #1 of course, but also 6, 7, and 12. I had to look up those actual numbers just now, but those cover images are seared into my brain after the thousands upon thousands of little image icons I poured over for months on end, always looking and praying for a match.<\/p>\n For a full year, I got nothing.<\/p>\n Not one hit.<\/p>\n Not one of them for sale, anywhere, at any price.<\/p>\n There were plenty (and I mean hundreds!) of hits for Issue #67, by the way (those algorithms are just mean sometimes), but never #6, and never #7. And certainly never #1. I didn\u2019t like #12. He didn\u2019t seem like he belonged to that single-digit bunch. But #12 was just another of my nemesis for a long, long time. I had been reduced to calling rare book stores as far away as California (I live in New Jersey) and never getting so much as a close call.<\/p>\n And then, in the space of 5 months between October of 2014 and March of 2015, one-by-one, I found them all.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember how or exactly when I found #12. October is all I remember. It was in another bundle, I think. What I remember most is that it felt like a dam breaking\u2026 like it would actually be possible to find the other three.<\/p>\n The next one I found was #1. The Golden Goose. The Mythical Unicorn. It all happened so fast I barely remember the sequence of events. I was doing my weekly search on eBay and somebody had just put up #1. And I mean just. I think the listing had been live for fewer than six hours, or something insane like that. I don\u2019t remember the starting bid ($25 maybe?), but I\u2019m pretty sure there was a reserve price. More importantly, there was a \u201cBuy It Now\u201d option for $100, and I couldn\u2019t click the god damned buttons fast enough. When it arrived a week later, I was gobsmacked that the person had simply stuck it in a paper post office mailer and nothing else. Not a board backer, not a bubble wrap, not even a secondary envelope inside the mailer. Nothing. And yet it arrived safe and sound and uncreased and yes I totally know I stole that item from that seller. (A couple months after my collection was complete, one of my auto-searches pulled up an issue #1 for sale at an estate auction and it went for $200. And today\u2019s going rate — if you can even find them — is even higher than that. (See pic below.)<\/p>\n Down to the elusive #6 and #7, my searches became revitalized. I looked at more and more obscure sites. I called more and more rare book dealers. I actually did find a copy of #6, but the store wanted an astronomical price — $500 — and I had to hang up, broken hearted. It was in February — a little after Valentine\u2019s Day, I distinctly remember — when I opened yet another auto-notification for another item selling on eBay matching my search criteria. I was 99% sure it was going to be YET ANOTHER copy of And it was another \u201cBuy It Now\u201d sale. I bought it for the low, low (no, VERY low) price of $5. (Some people have no idea what they\u2019re doing.) Then, just two weeks later in early March, I opened another, completely unrelated eBay auto-notification and found myself staring at my personal white whale, my last one: Issue #6. I spent $48 despite the eager sniping attempt of not one but two would-be eBay trolls. But I out-smarted them both, having put in my ultra-high bid of $200 from the outset. I don’t know if the e-trolls knew what they were looking at. But I did. And I was finally as cool as that bleeding seashell image.<\/p>\n Wanna know what the complete collection looks like?<\/p>\n PHOTO NOTE: This amazing selfie is from 2016. In it are issues 1-73. I really should re-take this pic now that there are a couple more issues.<\/p>\n But wait, there\u2019s more…<\/p>\n My story could end there, but in 2016 something really amazing happened that makes all of the above even more cool.<\/p>\n And then in 2018 there was something arguably even cooler than that.<\/p>\n First I need to briefly go back to 2013. That was a pretty big year for me as a writer. In 2013 I:<\/p>\n It\u2019s that blog I need to acquaint you with right now. It was called \u201cThe Guilty Author\u201d and I kept it up for a year and a half between November of 2013 and May of 2015. I wrote 31 posts in those 18 months, and the title basically tells you about the content. In short, I had a lot of story ideas but wasn\u2019t writing them, though it turns out I had plenty of time and energy to bitch about it. Most of that blog was a necessary catharsis, but along the way I stumbled upon a few important ideas. Chief among them was that I was good at reviews (I know because people liked reading them). My very first, in fact, was one of my biggest hits. It was nothing anywhere close to going \u201cviral\u201d, but for my meagre little blog, it actually attracted real attention. Entitled \u201cCD Story Review #1,\u201d it was posted in April of 2014.<\/p>\n In total I wrote and posted 11 \u201cCD Story Reviews\u201d over a 13-month period before \u201cThe Guilty Author\u201d fizzled out (more on that below). For those who are curious and\/or have been wondering why Exhumed is missing a few of the oldest stories, here they are. (All of them are from CD Issue #1).<\/p>\n CD Story Review #1: \u201cBody Perfect\u201d (William C. Rassmussen)<\/a> For the record, I\u2019m a bit upset I didn\u2019t finish CD #1 by reviewing the 12th and last story from that issue. My OCD is screaming at me for leaving a thing unfinished. But I had a really good reason!… I had a better offer.<\/p>\n Right around the time I started writing \u201cThe Guilty Author\u201d, I wrote a short story I thought was pretty good. In fact, at the time I thought it was the best thing I\u2019d ever written. Right or wrong, I must have at least been on the right track because it found a publisher almost immediately and then went on to win a couple of small awards as well. (That story, btw, is called \u201cBombardier\u201d, and if you ask me I\u2019ll gladly send you a free PDF. Just leave a comment so I can privately get your email, etc.)<\/p>\n The publisher was Fiction Vortex, and after my story was published I honestly kind of forgot about them for a while. Then one day I got a notification for a writing contest they were running. I entered, lost, but must have caught their attention yet again because just a couple months after that I was contacted asking if I would be interested in turning my \u201cBombardier\u201d short into a full-length novel. Needless to say, this was extremely exciting for me. I said “Yes” without even considering the ramifications (meeting deadlines\/abandoning the self-published trilogy I was only two-thirds finished with\/figuring out how to turn a short into a full novel), and began working on it. In the process of all that additional work, \u201cThe Guilty Author\u201d pretty much died.<\/p>\n Somewhere along the way, however, the Fiction Vortex people got word of my then-defunct blog, looked into it, and asked if I would also be willing to write one for them about the horror genre in general. I have never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so in 2016 \u201cThe Bone Pile\u201d was born. It only ran for a year, and many of the 15 posts I made were updated repeats of the \u201cGuilty Author\u201d CD reviews, but there was one that was special, though I didn\u2019t know it at the time.<\/p>\n As mentioned above, a really special thing happened in August of 2016. Here\u2019s that story\u2026<\/p>\n So one night I\u2019m busy working on a Bone Pile post and my wife asks me how it\u2019s going, specifically wondering if I was getting any more interesting comments on the new blog. And I had gotten one just that day, actually. The post was titled \u201cAn Intro to Cemetery Dance<\/em> Magazine\u201d and it was exactly what it sounds like. In that post I gave a brief rendition of me slowly collecting all of the issues. The comment I had received was a new reader to CD who had done what I had done\u2026 read exactly one issue and immediately decided to gorge on the entire collection. My wife, as she so often does, surprised me by taking the conversation in a totally different direction. \u201cYou should send that post to Richard Chizmar,\u201d she said. \u201cI bet he\u2019d get a kick out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Normally I\u2019d scoff at such a bold notion (I was shy as a child and holdovers will always be there) but for some reason that day was different. Maybe it was a newfound confidence thanks to my experiences with Fiction Vortex, but I actually thought to myself that it sounded like a good idea. So before I could think my way out of it, I wrote a short message explaining how much I loved his magazine, mentioned my two blogs and the post I had recently made about Cemetery Dance and then included a link to the post. I was expecting to be ignored. I was hoping for a \u201cThanks for the plug, Keith! That\u2019s really cool.\u201d What I got blew my mind\u2026<\/p>\n The \u201cBrian\u201d in Mr. Chizmar\u2019s message was, of course, Brain Freeman, the then editor-in-chief of the the magazine. And two months later Exhumed was launched. I hope to be doing it for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n Pretty cool, huh?<\/p>\n But I also teased with you with \u201csomething arguably even cooler than that\u201d in 2018.<\/p>\n A tall order, I know, but here is that story\u2026<\/p>\n As many of you probably already know, Richard and his son Billy Chizmar co-authored a haunted lighthouse story called \u201cWidow\u2019s Point.\u201d (It\u2019s really good, btw\u2026 you should go get it<\/a>!) Anyway, they did a local book signing in or near Forest Hill, Maryland, where the Chizmars live\u2026 And I happened to be only two hours away just outside of Trenton, New Jersey\u2026 And my wife was away for the weekend so I had nothing particularly important to do\u2026. So I packed my suitcase and drove myself to the book signing. And while I was there\u2026? Yeah, during the Q&A I just casually mentioned that \u201cOut in my car I have a suitcase with every single issue of Cemetery Dance Magazine and my question is how many of them can I get you to sign for me today, Richard?\u201d<\/p>\n Do you want to talk about cool? Then look to Richard Chizmar. He beamed and immediately said \u201cEvery one of them!\u201d<\/p>\n Every.<\/p>\n Effing.<\/p>\n One of them.<\/p>\n Rich (can I call him Rich yet? Probably not\u2026 Mr. Chizmar, then) told me that day that he\u2019d only seen six or seven complete collections, and he also confirmed he\u2019d never signed a complete collection. So, what you\u2019re looking at in the picture above is a genuine one-of-a-kind collection. The only one in the world. Every single issue of Cemetery Dance<\/em> magazine, and all of them signed by it\u2019s creator.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no wonder I\u2019m obsessed with reviewing all the CD stories I can, don\u2019t you think? I mean, readership aside, I just owe to the guy, don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n So that\u2019s my little love story about Cemetery Dance Magazine. I\u2019m still obsessed, still reading and salivating each new issue, and still consider myself one of the luckiest fans in the world. Every story I read (and re-read) is like falling in love all over again. Every review I write is like a love letter. And every person I meet who is another fan (or whom I can convince to become one) is like a long-lost member of my family. And that\u2019s you, dear reader. You\u2019re my family.<\/p>\n Thanks for listening. On the next installment of Exhumed I\u2019ll be back to my old reviewing tricks. Specifically, that\u2019ll be each of the following tales:<\/p>\n \u201cNight Game\u201d (William Relling Jr.), from CD #2 I do hope you have the opportunity to read along with me. (And remember to get your copies of the CD issues still in print<\/a>).<\/p>\n Until next time\u2026Bonus Content! Me & CD, a Brief History of an Unlikely Love Affair<\/h5>\n
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I discovered Cemetery Dance<\/em> magazine in the summer of 2006 while rummaging through some yard sale or other. My wife was a few tables over looking for usable clothes and kitchen gadgets, and I busied myself flipping through a long row of old books and a couple boxes of magazines, not expecting very much. As predicted, nothing was catching my eye, and I was on the verge of pestering my wife to hurry up so we could go get some ice cream, when I saw it\u2026 At the bottom half-inch of a box otherwise filled with quilting and business mags, I suddenly uncovered an incredible image: a lone seashell on a beach with blood pooling out of it, saturating the innocent sand beneath. I was baffled. I was mesmerized. I remember thinking something like, “Do people really print stuff like this?” And, a heartbeat later, \u201cWhat in the world is inside?\u201d On the top-right corner was a little green sticker and the handwritten price: \u201c$1\u201d<\/p>\n![\"CD](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/2-CD1-on-ABE-Books.png?resize=853%2C397&ssl=1\")
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Issue #67\u2026 And there it was, #7. No “6” in the listing, and the cover image was magically, beautifully there: That white-haired zombie guy crawling out of his grave.<\/p>\n![\"K.](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/5-Me-Complete-CD-Collection.jpg?resize=853%2C480&ssl=1\")
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\nCD Story Review #2: \u201cA Breathe of Fresh Air\u201d (Edgar F. Tataro)<\/a>
\nCD Story Review #3: \u201cThe Double\u201d (Steve Rasnic Tem)<\/a>
\nCD Story Review #4: \u201cForever Angels\u201d (Ronald Kelly)<\/a>
\nCD Story Review #5: \u201cLeg Man\u201d (Chris B. Lecher)<\/a>
\nCD Story Review #6: \u201cFury\u2019s Child (David B. Silva)<\/a>
\nCD Story Review #7: \u201cRock of Ages\u201d (John B. Rosenman)<\/a>
\nCD Story Review #8: \u201cThe Departing of Debbie\u201d (Anke M. Kriske)<\/a>
\nCD Story Review #9: \u201cThe Janitor\u201d (Bentley Little)<\/a>
\nCD Story Review #10: \u201cAn Island Unto Herself\u201d (Barry Hoffman)<\/a>
\nCD Story Review #11: \u201cThe Officer\u2019s Club\u201d (Roman A. Ranieri)<\/a><\/p>\n![\"screenshot\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/6-Me-Richard-convo..png?resize=853%2C726&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n![\"K.](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/7-Richard-Billy-Me-complete-CD-collection.png?resize=334%2C350&ssl=1\")
And he did.<\/p>\n
\n-K. Edwin Fritz<\/p>\nNext Time<\/h5>\n
\nand
\n\u201cOrange Grove Court\u201d (Jason Sechrest), from CD #77<\/p>\n
\n-K. Edwin Fritz<\/p>\n