Read @ Joe’s

Memorials is a slow-burning tale written with hair-raising perfection and tube sock glory. Although set in 1983, this Seventies-style horror is more Texas Chainsaw Massacre creepy than the adventurous Stranger Things. Yet, Memorials could have totally bypassed the demonic afterthought and kept the terror more human in nature ala Deliverance and been just as strong. Or even stronger.

Three likable college students – Billy, Troy, Melody – come up with a ridiculously-cool project idea: a documentary about roadside memorials out and about in Pennsylvania Appalachia. For Billy, this is a personal project as his parents were killed in a roadside accident; their memory an active, on-road memorial. While the trio might be secretly looking for ethereal ghost stories, they really want to uncover the grounded humanity behind it all. 

They have a plan and a van. Bagged nachos and radio tunes. Blue skies ahead. 

Then they start seeing the symbols. A figure carved on the makeshift crosses and markers. Wrapped in twigs. Secret. Satanic. And scary. 

Title: Memorials (2024) Author: Richard Chizmar Publisher: Gallery Books Book jacket: A group of students encounter a supernatural terror while on a road trip through Appalachia. Joe says: Memorials is a slow-burning tale written with hair-raising perfection and tube sock glory. This is a book that deserves a wide audience and needs to be shared.

Written by Western Pennsylvania native Richard Chizmar, Memorials is a Spielberg-by-way-of-King road trip with naive outsiders trying to steal a look on the shadowy inside, completely unprepared for the monsters they find. Chizmar pits the good against the unknown, has family square off against family, and tests the boundaries of friendship. Slow and scary like a zombie crawl, Memorials gives vile shape to those blurs on the periphery. 

More so than the nearly-obligatory monster at the end of the book, Memorials succeeds in presenting an us against them mentality. Setting the narrative in 1983 might be a personal choice for Chizmar, but the calendar selection perfectly clicks in place for a thematic delivery. The mid-to-late eighties presented a time when new technology was transforming from the forefront to the doorstep. Walkmen and VCRs and home video cameras. Cordless phones and answering machines. The get-it-fast-and-now concept was a precept Generation X took to heart. This precursor to the digital age saw the old ways push out even further in mainstream arenas such as the Christian and Catholic Church, but even older ones as whispered in folklore and handed down traditionally. Billy, Troy, and Melody represent this new, forward generation not only physically – Billy is local and white; Troy is Black and from the city; Melody, a strong and smart Latino – but spiritually. After all, their project is to record haunting grief on video.

Chizmar builds the threat conventionally. Clues are presented piecemeal and sometimes are offered as a reward for leveling up. Billy narrates it all. His golly-gosh-jeez innocence is sometimes heavy handed but Billy and his friends are fun and relatable as is their page-turner of a journey. And even if the ending is slightly more of a Scooby-Doo reveal than an EC Comics dungeon of gore, Chizmar successfully advances his characters in a manner meaningful to the adventure shared. 

Memorials is a book that deserves a wide audience and needs to be shared. Even if on the side of the road.