By Jackson Decheck

The beginning of October is also the end of the summer season, green leaves changing to warm palettes of red, orange, yellow, and common brown. To celebrate, a small Internet community begins a countdown: 31 horror stories in 31 days.

This community is known as the CreepyPasta community, where users come together to write and share their own horror stories for enjoyment. C.K. Walker is one of them. Walker, real name Rebecca Klingel, started her writing career in Reddit forum “NoSleep,” releasing stories that were instant hits. Her most well-known work, “Borrasca,” won the 2015 NoSleep Award for Scariest Story.

Walker’s reputation skyrocketed after “Borrasca” and granted her opportunities to work with Hollywood projects. She has writing credits for “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

Before “Borrasca,” she was a self-published amateur author and has a four-volume series called Cold Thin Air. I joined the CreepyPasta community’s countdown by reading the series and reviewing this Spooky Season.

And after reading the first volume, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. The first volume has 11 stories, with the last one “The Lost Town of Deepwood, Pennsylvania” being split into two parts. The first few stories were riddled with grammar and misspelling errors, and with endings that felt more like shock twists rather than foreshadowed revelations.

Many of the stories are basic and focus on childhood memories relived in adulthood. There is nothing wrong with a basic premise, and Walker’s early amateur writing does give the stories passionate charm.

“Deepwood” was certainly the standout for this volume; Best friends Katie and Jamie go into the woods in search of the missing town of Deepwood, only to find a dark presence. A statue comes to life and threatens to erase from even the memory of existing entirely.

Volume One of Cold, Thin Air was an interesting look into a successful author’s early career at the least and underwhelming at most. The simple misspellings and grammar errors sapped the early stories of their charm and scare factor. I would only suggest this volume to read “Deepwood” and “The Creek” as they make the collection worth its $6.99 paperback price point.