Flight or Fright - A Short Story Collection - Spooky Reads
I used to travel a lot when I was younger, we moved every two years and we were constantly exploring the world. It was super great. I’d been flying since I was 3 and it never bothered me. But the older I got, and the more paranoid and anxious I got, flying became a fun new fear I’d never experienced before. I sit in my chair as the plane takes off thinking, HOW HAVE I SPENT MY WHOLE LIFE TRUSTING THIS GIANT METAL TUUUUUBBEEE. And then I spend the entire flight trying not to throw up and trying not to think about how I am totally trapped.
“...is there any human activity, any at all, more suited to an anthology of horror and suspense stories like the one you now hold in your hands? I think not, ladies and gentlemen.”
So yeah, flying sucks.
Stephen King and Bev Vincent agree and they put together a short story collection of 17 terrifying tales revolving around flights. It’s called Flight or Fright and is now available in paperback and hardcover anywhere you can purchase books.
Overall, this was a pretty great collection. I rank it based on the percentage of stories I loved vs didn’t like. For this collection there were 5 I didn’t enjoy, and 12 I loved. Which overall, means I ranked this collection a 4 out of 5.
I’m not going to drag the stories I didn’t enjoy because ya’ll know we don’t stand for that here. BUT I will share the stories I loved:
Cargo - E. Michael Lewis
I’ve actually read this one before in another collection but it’s a great read the second time. It’s a man on a cargo flight transporting bodies from the tragic Jonestown massacre. While he’s on the flight he starts to hear things coming from the hundreds of coffins, and his travellers are in pure panic mode. It’s a really clever concept and as you put together exactly where these bodies are from, your stomach drops. Much like it does during a terrible bout of turbulence.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet - Richard Matheson
This is, of course, a classic short story by one of the greats that has inspired many a retelling and TV episode. A man is on a plane dreading the long flight to LA. He takes a lot of pills, gets super bored, and stressed out and then starts to see a terrifying creature on the wing of the plane. Is he having a nervous breakdown? Or is there actually a creature? It’s up to you to decide. “Only inches away, separated from him by the thickness of a piece of glass, the man was staring at him.”
Lucifer! - E.C. Tubb
An incredibly dark tale. A man finds a ring and quickly discovers the terrifying truth of what it can do...it was a one-way time machine. He can rewind time by 57 seconds. That may not seem like a lot, but as the story mentions, “...but who needs luck when they know what is going to happen fifty-seven seconds in advance? Call it a minute. Not long? Try holding your breath that long. Try resting your hand on a red-hot stove for even half that time. In a minute you can walk a hundred yards, run a quarter of a mile, fall three.” Unfortunately, the ring has fallen into the hands of a damaged individual who uses the ring to commit horrific murders, only to reverse them and get away with it. When he’s flying and the plane crashes, he tries to save his life but waits a little too long and so he spends an eternity falling, falling, falling through the air.
The Fifth Category - Tom Bissell
A man wakes up on a plane to realize he’s the only one onboard and everyone has disappeared. (This actually just happened in Canada) This man had been accused of war crimes, the memos he wrote have inspired the torture at Guantanomo Bay. He has been advised not to leave America, but for some reason he can’t turn down a speaking event at a conference in Estonia. Unfortunately, for him, this leads to him being kidnapped and tortured using his own inventions. It’s fucked up ya’ll.
Diablitos - Cody Goodfellow
This is a great little tale about cultural appropriation and a white douche getting murdered on a plane because of it. The main character is a trust fund baby with no goals in life that led him to bumming around in South America. After three years he was broke and needed to make money fast so he began smuggling illegal art and selling it to his black market clients. But one day he steals a very old and very priceless wood carving mask from a woman and gets exactly what he deserves when the mask comes to life on a plane.
Air Raid - John Varley
This is a crazy sci-fi story about future earth and time travel. In the future, people come back to the past to save giant accidents including plane crashes. They do this by taking control of the plane, changing the way they look to match flight attendants and pilots on the plane, and then corral the passengers through a portal into the future. It’s fascinating and slightly confusing and by the end you genuinely don’t know what to think. Time travel is dope, but this future is incredibly dark.
You Are Released - Joe Hill
You know what one of my biggest fears is, other than planes? Nuclear war. So you know why this story is so terrifying? Because people are stuck on a plane during a nuclear war. Everyone is on this normal flight on a normal day, when suddenly there’s a nuclear explosion, and as the world below them begins to unravel. America begins to fight back, shooting off rockets and nuclear warheads all around them. The plane has to make the decision - where the fuck do they go? It’s a terrifying and incredibly well written tale that freaked me the fuck out. “Sorry about this, ladies and gents. Uncle Sam needs the sky this afternoon for an unscheduled world war.”
Warbirds - David J. Schow
This short story puts a bit of a supernatural twist on the air raids in World War II. A young man is trying to find out more about his Dad who fought in WWII, and he is meeting with soldiers who were with him during that time. They were part of a bombing team and this interviewee believes that there was something else during the air raids, a giant terrifying creature called a Warbird. He tells the story of when he first experienced it. “I think we woke something up back then, with all that conflict. All that hate. All those lives, feeding the war. Something that big doesn’t just stop, there one day and gone the next. I think maybe it got gorged and fat, and it went to sleep for awhile.” But this man believes it has come back to take what it’s owed.
The Flying Machine - Ray Bradbury
Taking place in A.D. 400 it follows Emperor Yuan of China who finds out one of his people is flying. And when he looks up he sees a man with paper wings. The man lands and the Emperor is fearful, he asks who knows about the wings and the man says no one, he just invented them and he’s ecstatic about the opportunities. The Emperor has the inventor killed, “But there are times...when one must lose a little beauty if one is to keep what little beauty one already has. I do not fear you, yourself, but I fear another man.” It’s incredibly powerful.
They Shall Not Grow Old - Roald Dahl
Another war story, this one incredibly sad and fascinating. A pilot goes missing for days, finally returning to his team’s relief. But to him, he’s only been gone a few hours. He tells a harrowing tale about flying high into the clouds only to encounter a thick white cloud and bright blue sky that shows hundreds of planes in a line flying slowly into the distance. He finds himself in the line, the plane flying itself. At first he feels nothing but calm and waves at the pilots in the other plane, but soon panic takes over and he fights for his life to get out of this train. Was it heaven? Was it hell? Who knows, but it’s a powerful story.
Murder in the Air - Peter Tremayne
MURDER MYSTERY ON A PLANNNEEE! This was fun. A dead body is found in the plane bathroom seemingly dead of a gunshot to the face, probably suicide. Luckily, criminologist Gerry Fane is on the plane and he’s going to solve this crazy murder. We’ve got two suspects and only a short amount of time before landing!
The Turbulence Expert - Stephen King
It’s MA BOIIIII! Of course there’s going to be a Stephen King story in here. And what’s most terrifying about flying? When turbulence hits. But what if there were people who would be put on flights that were destined to have insane turbulence that could lead to crashing, but somehow magically these specific people absorb the turbulence and keep the plane safe. One man who has this job, and an older woman meet on a plane where he saves everyone on-board by absorbing the turbulence. She’s intrigued, and he offers her the job. Completely unique and a fascinating thing to think about.
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Written by Charlotte
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