Spooky. Spectral. Spirited.

I have never been a fan of scary stuff. Chalk it up to attending a fundamentalist Pentecostal church for the first 25 years of my life. That’s what happens when you have preachers screaming at you about eternal hellfire and damnation if you break even one of the encyclopedic rules of your denomination. Or at least that’s what happened to me. My brother Andrew leaned into the creepy, the Stephen King, the horror movies. I never understood it. The one exception? When that stuff embraces the liminal and mystical in clever and thoughtful ways – like Mike Mignola and his Hellboy comics.

So, I really enjoyed reading Other Worlds by Teffi. An underappreciated 20^th century author who wrote about life in Russia before the 1917 Soviet Revolution, she penned short stories that feel more like folktales or legends told around campfires to scare people before bedtime. Published by New York Review of Books, this collection bears the subtitle “Peasants, Pilgrims, Sprits, Saints,” and it marries the whimsical and weird with the domestic and day-to-day in darkly comic ways.

Her protagonists are usually children and could be interpreted as fictional versions of herself, her family, and her neighbors from childhood. Often set deep in rural 19^th century Russia, she writes about interacting with nature, doing chores, bathhouses, and other mundane activities, but it’s all infused with this curious sense of the unknown. If someone can’t explain what happened, then it’s attributed to some unseen specter that might or might not have ill intent. Then again, folklore throughout history and across cultures frequently take on mythical significance, even if it never rises to the level of religious. Sometimes, people of a given region simply have their own stories to tell about the past, their own superstitions that only make sense to them.

To be clear, Teffi didn’t try to tell ghost stories or scare people, but her writing has a mildly disturbing energy. Maybe it’s the understated Russian Orthodox trappings of her youth. Maybe it’s the untamed wilderness of the Russian countryside. Or maybe it’s her magnificent ability to create uncanny characters who are just a bit off-kilter from modern conventions. Whatever it is, the result is fantastical series of snapshots that can make you feel unsettled and uneasy – like you’re perpetually looking over your shoulder – even if you aren’t scared in the traditional sense.

But let’s just say that I could easily imagine Hellboy, Abe Sapien, and the rest of the BPRD traipsing around the hidden corners of this book.