“A Wunderkammer of Story Oddities: On Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts” by Mathias Clasen is a perfect-bound chapbook published exclusively for Brian James Freeman’s Patreon supporters in June 2026 as part of Lividian Story Box: Volume One. This Limited Edition one-time printing features a full-color front cover, inside cover, and interior illustrations by François Vaillancourt.

Excerpt from the Chapbook:
In the Renaissance, an early form of a private museum called a Wunderkammer—German for “cabinet of wonders”—flourished among European elites. The contents of such Wunderkammer tended toward the exotic if not outright weird, such as a dried mermaid and the horn of a unicorn. (The mermaid was a forgery and the horn a narwhal’s tusk, but still.)

Joe Hill’s short story collection 20th Century Ghosts is a Wunderkammer of fantastic story treasures. The book deservedly racked up major accolades, including the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection and the Bram Stoker Award for Best Fiction Collection. It was initially released in 2005 in a limited print run by PS Publishing and later picked up by HarperCollins and other major publishers to be released in an inexpensive paperback—and of course, the hauntingly well-done 2021 movie adaptation of “The Black Phone” brought with it a tie-in edition of the book.

Hill had been writing stories for a long time when 20th Century Ghosts came out, and he had been selling some of them since the late 1990s—including “Better Than Home,” which is the oldest artifact in this particular Wunderkammer. It’s also a slightly odd one in that it’s straight-up realistic literary fiction—a fairly mundane item among bizarre artifacts; a taxidermied jay, say, perched between the finger bone of a long-dead saint and a cursed medallion lifted from an ancient grave…

Publication Format:
This Patreon supporter exclusive chapbook is perfect bound, printed entirely in full-color, and signed by Mathias Clasen and François Vaillancourt. Limited to a print run of 600 copies. Shipped with the other chapbooks in Lividian Story Box: Volume One.