Book Review: The Last Haunt: An Oral History of the McKinley Manor Massacre by Max Booth III

“Horror doesn’t care about logic. It doesn’t care about realism. Its only job is to frighten you, and it will do whatever it takes to finish the job.”

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Set in the Pork Basket, Texas, The Last Haunt chronicles the events surrounding the McKinley Manor Massacre, a grisly Halloween night slaughter on the grounds of Gus McKinley’s extreme haunted house. Through accounts from a range of people, the storyline presents a quiet, conservative, deceptively angelic small town scandalized by its resident horror enthusiast.

A former Marine and lifetime loner obsessed with horror movies, Gus is labeled as “abnormal,” “a weirdo,” and “a pervert” by those around him, designations he cements by opening his own haunt, which graduates from family-focused and innocent to an adult-centered, live-streamed, nationally recognized destination with a cult following and long waitlist. Staffed by miscreants clad in pillowcase masks, the full-contact experience quickly lives up to its extreme label by incorporating pre-participation contracts along with torture, savagery, and other shocking tactics designed to terrify, brutalize, and exhaust participants. And when the Manor reopens a year after a tragic death, the evening turns out to be as mysterious as it is savage and deadly.

This novella is a gritty, dread-infused page-turner that’s so candid, crass, uncomfortable, and riveting that it’s impossible to put down. The unique oral history/mockumentary structure heightens the storyline’s tension and mystique while giving the narrative a true crime feel, and the reader immediately becomes immersed as the story explores society’s carnality and morbid propensity for death, violence, and the macabre. It’s a disquieting, repellant, compelling, creative, and binge-worthy tale perfectly penned for spooky season.

Thank you to Cemetery Gates Media and BookSirens for providing an e-ARC of this forthcoming novella, which is slated for release later this month.

❤Amanda