Infernal Tramps: Tales of Weird Terror By Alex Grass Book Review

Horror does not always come with a warning. Sometimes it shows up at your front door looking completely harmless, and by the time you realise something is wrong, it is already too late.

Infernal Tramps: Tales of Weird Terror is a collection of seventeen short horror stories by “Alex Grass”, a writer who knows exactly how to make the ordinary feel terrifying. 

Spoiler-Free Plot:

Infernal Tramps: Tales of Weird Terror is a collection of seventeen short horror stories, each with different characters and plot twists.

The first story, “The Tezcat Apparatus”, starts with a man who accepts a free garden device from a strange old salesman who shows up at his door one afternoon. The gadget is meant to keep wildlife away from his vegetable patch, and it works exactly as promised. 

But when the same salesman returns each week dressed now as a technician, something about his visits starts to feel deeply wrong. What the man quietly observes from his kitchen window during one of these visits changes everything he thought he had signed up for.

The next story, “Infernal Tramps”, features a lonely drifter living rough in the hills above an old railway line, surviving on whiskey and solitude. One night, a strange vehicle appears out of the fog, and he witnesses something that should not exist. 

Despite every instinct telling him otherwise, he takes it in and slowly nurtures it back to health. But as weeks pass, his ward begins to change, and the world that sent it comes looking.

Another story, “Pujkamaunka Splash”, follows a grown man still haunted by the memory of a childhood video game that nobody else on earth seems to remember. He tells the story of the day he went to buy it as a twelve-year-old boy, riding to the mall in his grandfather’s station wagon with his dog, Pistol in the back seat.

What should have been an exciting shopping trip turned wrong in ways the boy could never put into words. He still cannot explain it. But he has never forgotten it either.

The collection does not stop there. Fourteen more horrific stories are waiting inside. Every single story in this collection brings its own chill, its own strange logic, and its own characters you will not forget.

My Take on Infernal Tramps: Tales of Weird Terror

For me, Alex Grass’s Infernal Tramps is the kind of collection that gets under your skin and gives you the chills. I personally love horror that does not rely on cheap scares, and this book delivers exactly that. 

One of the biggest themes I noticed running through every story is the horror of the everyday. For me, Grass does a great job with both his characters and his scenes, building dread out of ordinary moments and ordinary places until nothing feels safe anymore.

What I really loved about this collection is its characters. Even in the shortest stories, every person feels real. Their fears and choices feel real. The characters are well-developed despite the short length of the stories, each one carries fears and struggles that I personally found deeply relatable. 

What makes Grass’s characters stand out for me is their realistic reactions to fear. They do not behave like horror movie props. They behave like real people, and that is what made it so unsettling for me.

Some of these stories made me laugh before they made me deeply uncomfortable, and I think that balance is incredibly hard to pull off.

The writing itself is bold and clear. I found myself completely hooked from one sentence to the next. Grass masterfully builds suspense, drawing out the horror with carefully chosen words and pacing.

If I had one small critique, it would be that a few of the shorter pieces ended just when I wanted more. But honestly, for me, that is the sign of a writer who knows exactly when to stop.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves horror that is smart, strange, and genuinely unsettling. For me, Infernal Tramps is one of those rare collections that reminds me why I fell in love with horror in the first place.

Infernal Tramps is a fearless, funny, and deeply unsettling collection by a writer who finds monsters hiding in the most ordinary corners of everyday life. 

Trigger Warning: 

Graphic Violence. Body Horror. 

Age Recommendation:

The book is recommended for all 13+.

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