Standout stories are Gordon B. White’s “Ranger Ronin Presents…,” about two brothers lured into a bizarre “dojo” which trains children to enter the Eyeless Man’s world; Merrin J. McCormick’s “Two Unexplained Disappearances in South Brisbane,” the title of which says it all; Ben Rock’s “Ecstatica,” about a cultish New Age group whose recorded teachings expose its members to the Eyeless Man; and Bob DeRosa’s “Deep Focus,” about two college film students who unexpectedly capture the Eyeless Man in a documentary film project. (DeRosa’s story, with its film students and the creeping insanity their project causes, is the most explicitly Slender Man-like story in the whole collection, recalling the plot of the popular Marble Hornets YouTube series.)

You can read Jeff's full review at Horror DNA: https://www.horrordna.com/books/video-palace-in-search-of-the-eyeless-man-nick-braccia-michael-monello-book-review

Thank you to the publisher for this one. I was intrigued by the synopsis of this one, although the execution was a bit lacking for me. The book was ok, but it failed to grab me

I reviewed this with the Night Worms review team and it was a blast. I love books with true crime or horror podcasts. I immediately subscribed!

The hurdle with a collection of stories based on a particular urban legend, wether it be new-school or old-school, is that there is a bit of a commonality that blurs the lines between them. Making the particulars hard to stand out. There are some really solid stories here, and on their own they may hit a little harder, but as part of a collective like this there’s a constant feeling of knowing where the narrative is going, even if this turns out to not be true. Is there a name for this phenomena?

Maybe I did this book a disservice by not familiarizing myself with the podcast source material, but there’s only so much time in the day.

Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man, a solid read. With The Satanic Schoolgirls by Meirav Devash and Eddie McNamara as my MVP selection. Overall entertainment value: 3/5 Thank you to Tiller Press for the review ebook and Night Worms for the book party opportunity.

Video Palace is a collection of short stories about The Eyeless Man, all interconnecting through an overarching story of a man investigating The Eyeless Man and trying to collect peoples encounters with him. This follows a story from a podcast, about a man who watches a mysterious VHS and goes missing.

Having not listened to the podcast of Video Palace, I feel like I missed the starting connections to these stories, and it would have definitely been more interesting if I had taken the time to listen to it first. But, despite that, the stories were still a lot of fun for me, and ultimately you can read this without knowing about the podcast first - I think it just loses a bit of the background by doing so.

The overarching story of the professor collecting these stories was interesting, I enjoyed the way it tied everything together to make it feel like a novel rather than just a medley of stories mashed together. While each story is completely different, knowing they are all connected in some ways does make it really easy to fly through the stories to see what happens, and how The Eyeless Man is affecting people.

I will say I didn’t find this to be overly creepy. The Eyeless Man doesn’t really inspire fear, or concern for me, but that’s through no fault of the writing. Many of the stories were atmospheric, and tense, but it just wasn’t even to make my skin crawl. Others might feel differently, and maybe the podcast would add that bit of creepiness.

Overall a fun little collection of stories, but I definitely think the right reader will get a lot more from it than others. Podcast listeners who know the original story will get the most from it, but those that like that idea of a media driven entity haunting people will also find this to be not only extremely fun, but quite philosophical as well.

This was an entertaining anthology of sorts recounting different people’s interactions with a made-up urban legend of the Eyeless Man. Some of the individual stories had some serious creep factor to them and are all generally told from people on the outskirts of the individuals that directly experienced TEM. It’s also done in kind of an essay/documentary style so some of the names and events sounded so real that I actually looked up a couple of the Dr.’s names just to make sure they weren’t real people.

There isn’t really a consistent story told throughout and you will not get a tied-up story in the end where you actually understand TEM or what he’s after. Which honestly adds to the creep factor. I also found out after reading the book that it was basically a novelized version of an actual podcast called “Video Palace” which I will be listening to. I enjoy listening to creepypasta podcasts and so I’m sure I would enjoy this. Plus, you get a little bit of a different experience when you have voice actors portraying the characters.

All in all this was a fun read and one I would recommend to people who enjoy creepypasta type of stories.

ARC received via Netgalley. All opinions are expressly my own.

I was so excited when I found out one of my favorite podcasts was getting a book! It’s so much fun to expand on worlds you’ve fallen in love with and this book did an excellent job of that!!

Everyone who enjoyed the Shudder podcast will appreciate and enjoy this anthology that continues right where it was left off. This collection of stories captures the EXACT feel the podcast gave.

Maynard Wills continues Mark Cambria’s research and we get new events and stories as the professor slowly succumbs to the madness. Mark’s girlfriend Tamra tells us what has happened since his disappearance. We still don’t know what happened in the piano shop basement.

This is top tier horror and I enjoyed the hell out of it. If you haven’t experienced the podcast yet, I would get on top of that. I do not enjoy podcasts at all and it sucked me in.

this was a really good collection of stories, I loved the theme of the collection. Each story was great and I really enjoyed reading this book.

This book is a perfect "spooky season" read. Some of the stories really felt like something ripped out of a true-crime Reddit forum, and I had to remind myself the stories are based on urban legend. Even writing this review and revisiting the book gives me the chills. If you consider yourself a purveyor of true-crime, urban legend, or horror, this book is for you. This is the perfect Halloween read late at night while home alone, listening to the house settle but convincing yourself something is coming for you...

Video Palace, a creepy podcast from the Shudder channel, results in the disappearance of its host and in this book, it fuels an obsession for “Dr. Maynard Wills”. Who is the Eyeless Man? He’s a man – but not a man, a creature – who pops up in urban legends and folk horror starting in the 20th century. The ways he appears vary, the ways he influences people vary (but almost always end up with suicide and or/death), but one thing remains the same: he comes through media. TV usually, but sometimes radio, VCR tapes, even grainy FB videos. And once he’s got his hooks in you, you won’t get away. The scariest part? You won’t want to.

This book contains eleven short stories – “real life” encounters with the Eyeless Man, all interspersed with journal entries from Dr. Maynard Wills and his assistant, Daniel Carter, as they delve deep into the search for the Eyeless Man. The stories are creepy, if a bit redundant in the end. You can only read about the same scary guy so many times. But each story stood well on its own, well written and cringe-worthy (in a good way). My suggestion would be to spread this book out over a few weeks or months, reading a few stories and then moving on to something else, coming back to this one periodically until its finished.

This book is an example of the new immersive storytelling movement, presented as real and honestly seeming real at times, to the point that you look warily at your television and are tempted to look up some of these things online to see if they really happened….except the internet is media, too isn’t it?

We’re all doomed. O Ta Keta.

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Video Palace: In Search of the Eyeless Man releases October 13, 2020.)

If you thought the Slender Man was a good spook, you haven't seen anything yet. Introducing the Eyeless Man. No one knows who he is. No one knows what he is. No one knows where he comes from. He is known only as the Eyeless Man.

He comes to you through generic white video tapes. He comes to you through the static. He comes to recruit you to the Stack. He comes to take you and your soul. It doesn't matter how young or how old. He knows your weaknesses. He will use them against you.

Those that have experienced the Eyeless Man and were seduced by his rhetoric disappeared never to be seen or heard from again. I take that back. They may have been seen sporadically, incidentally, even quite possibly, if there is benefit to the Eyeless Man, but not likely. Those that were able to pull away from the Eyeless Man went on with their lives. They did not walk away unscathed. He leaves an impression. One that does not go away. One that settles deep inside places, not to be forgotten. Never to be forgotten.

This book is suspenseful, eerie, foreboding, down right creepy, and oh so good. I loved the formatting. The book is written as journal entries with the stories titled by each individual's name submitting their experience. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it. Exactly up my alley. Most definitely my cup of tea.

Now that I am cliched out....Read this book!!!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review.

This is a great collection of short stories, found a few authors I'm going to be looking into more. I didn't want to put this book down.