“The Haunted Woodshed” (1961)

Harold R. Daniels was more of a crime fiction writer, thus perhaps it’s not surprising this is more like a mystery story, complete with nifty solution and happy ending. In some ways that makes it a relief in this These Will Chill You anthology, whose stories more have the capacity to become unpleasant with torture, putrefaction, etc. “The Haunted Woodshed” involves a murder and the search for a corpse and is often lurking on the edge of gruesome. It also telegraphs its main points so it’s not that good as a mystery either, a genre with which horror was often conflated in the postwar decades. The haunted woodshed of the title does not have a ghost, exactly, but only a bad vibe, although that might be close to the same thing. The main character is a retired schoolteacher, a woman approaching 60, who buys a property in a small town. Everything about it is perfect except the woodshed. When she looks into the history, she finds out the wife of the previous owner mysteriously disappeared not long before and the case is still open. The woodshed has a dirt floor but police dug it up and never found a body. Meanwhile there’s discussion of a community meat locker, a freezer space where locals can rent space and keep the meat they buy at quantity for better prices. No one stopping by for that night’s chops and cutlets seems to be factoring in thaw time, but anyway, you see what I mean about telegraphing. The mind goes to the obvious places. There’s still one more twist from there, then the corpse is recovered and the mystery solved. Huzzah! I like how Daniels goes to lengths for a specifically happy ending, for a feeling that may best be expressed, with sighs of satisfaction, as Awww. All’s well that ends well. It clarifies some differences between horror and mystery. The supernatural and/or “hunches” may or may not occur in either, and downbeat endings happen in both. But so rarely does horror have upbeat endings it almost writes them out of the category. At the moment, the only other one I can think of was written by Agatha Christie, straying from her usual territory but with her usual instincts.

These Will Chill You, ed. Lee Wright & Richard G. Sheehan (out of print)
Story not available online.