Joe Citro Resurrects His Early Short Fiction

Seven Ways Seven Days Gets You Through the Week:

Trustworthy local reporting. Piping‑hot food news. Thoughtful obituaries. Must‑do events. Stuck in Vermont videos. Eye‑opening personals. All the fun stuff: horoscopes, crosswords and Ask the Rev.

Support Your Paper!

In his 1842 review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story collection Twice-Told Tales, Edgar Allan Poe laid out his definition of a short story. Namely, it should be short — readable in one sitting — and more unified in tone, mood and scope than a novel. “During the hour of perusal,” quoth “The Raven” author, “the soul of the reader is at the writer’s control.”

For the past three decades, Joe Citro, 77, has served as Vermont’s preeminent chronicler of spooky Green Mountain lore. Through painstakingly researched accounts of child vampires in Woodstock, winged cryptids in St. Albans and red-eyed monsters in Bennington, he’s captivated the hearts and imaginations of generations of readers. With his new book, False Memories & Eldritch Interludes, Citro is coming for their souls. (But only for an hour or so at a time, and then he promises to give them back.)

Published in September and illustrated by Vermont artist Corey Furman, the book is the most complete collection of Citro’s short fiction to date. Its seven entries include stories that appeared in prestigious literary magazines and anthologies; they range from the first short story Citro ever published, for his high school newspaper in the mid-1960s, to his last, for Seven Days in 2002.

In an afterword to each tale of mysterious hill folk, abusive husbands or cursed Chinese restaurants, Citro pulls back the curtain on the real-life events that inspired it — or, in some cases, followed its publication. Like the time one reader, angry that a certain story hewed too close to real life, showed up to a reading with a gun. No shots were fired, and no one was harmed, though Citro remains spooked to this day.

“I was looking over my shoulder for a long time afterward,” he writes. “Even now, I’m not sure I can drop my guard…”

Most of Citro’s memoir-ish “eldritch interludes” are less dramatic but no less revealing, offering a window on the formative influences of a man who’s spent a lifetime scaring the bejesus out of his readers.

“When I’m talking about my fiction, the thing people ask me most often is ‘Why would you even think of that?’” Citro said recently from the sitting room of his Windsor home. The collection, he went on, is a chance to demystify his storytelling, particularly for those who may wish to write themselves. “It reconstructs the process of constructing the fiction from fragments of my own life,” he said.

“I call the book False Memories,” Citro continued, “because I think really what short stories are — maybe what all fiction is — is just a reconstruction of a memory, an elaboration of it, morphing a bit of life into fiction.”

Citro has never been held hostage to bargain for his eternal soul, like Carl Congdon in “Soul Keeper,” a story that was first published in 1990 and later made into a short film by a team of locals. But each of his stories contains bits and pieces of himself, none more than “Kirby” (see sidebar) about a childhood friend who was much more than he seemed.

“There’s a lot of my real-life adolescence in that story,” Citro said, adding that many of its people and places were drawn from his hometown of Chester. “If any of these stories can be said to have depth, I think that one does.”

Before he became known as Vermont’s “Bard of the Bizarre” through his haunted history writings, Citro was a successful horror novelist. False Memories is part of his effort to get his fiction back in circulation. From 1987 to 1994, he released five novels, including his first and most successful, Shadow Child. All but his last, Deus-X, have been rereleased in expanded editions, including The Gore earlier this year.

Citro is currently at work on a nonfiction project that, while not about ghosts or UFOs, will be typically macabre, he promised. He expects False Memories to be his last short story collection.

“I don’t write short stories anymore,” he said. “I’m too long-winded.”

From “Kirby”

Almost immediately I heard the most soul-shattering cry of terror I’ve ever heard in my life.

Stevie Petty came staggering backward from the alley. When he was clear of the opening, he turned. His face was white as chalk dust, his eyes wide and glazed. His mouth hung open; the muscles in his cheeks looked like they were paralyzed.

Then he started to run, his chunky arms and legs pumping like crazy. I can’t recall ever seeing a human being move so fast. When the guys surrounding me saw their leader beating a retreat in obvious terror, they moved after him, bumping into each other and crying out as if the horror were contagious.

My eyes were glued on the mouth of the alley, and I started backing away, not sure if I dared turn my back on it long enough to run.

In a moment, Kirby walked out of the alley. His happy face was wrinkled in a bright smile and he was laughing with obvious delight. “Thought I was su’pose to meet you at the soda fountain,” he said. Then he giggled like he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.

Over Cherry Cokes, and during the rest of the school year, I tried to get Kirby to tell me what he had done to Stevie Petty in that alleyway. All he’d ever say was, “I never touched him.” …

The original print version of this article was headlined “Back From the Dead | Vermont horror author Joe Citro resurrects his short stories and reveals the real-life tales behind them”

This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4 2025.

Got something to say?

Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!