Three Spine-Tingling Reads… For Adults Only
I asked my Twitter followers for their favorite childhood Halloween memories and all of them were the essence of innocent pleasure: mushing pumpkin pulp between their fingers, swapping candy with siblings, and my favorite contribution: “My dad came home with the original light sabers the first year they were out as a surprise.”
Tim Burton understands the childhood attraction to the macabre. He made a kid's musical about a corpse.
As little children, we believed in vampires, werewolves and ghosts. As adolescents, we pretended to believe. As adults, we grasp at the memories of how it felt to believe. And one of the most characteristic delights of childhood Halloween is the glee at being terrified by the unreal, and believing in ghosts.
I remember the years when I slept every night with the sheets pulled tight around my neck because of a Goosebumps book I’d read about vampires; but now the nighttime fear that haunts me most is of leaving the front door unlocked. These days I’m a sad Sherlock Holmes, discovering that behind every mystery are the same old human vices.
Maybe that’s why, as an adult, I reach for bone-chilling literature when I want to recapture that childhood feeling. In a uniquely adult way, the best horror writers pry open the neat machinery of the grown-up brain and activate the squirming illogical fears inside. We might not be able to believe in ghosts anymore, but we can believe in fiction. Dracula, Frankenstein, and the works of Edgar Allan Poe are old friends in this season, but below are a few fine works of horror that are less well-known. Each inspires a thrill of terror that opens like a chasm to the bottom of our most universal and mysterious fears.
Next: A Bone-Chilling Tale from an Unlikely Spookster…
Some perhaps slightly lesser known tales that petrified me would be “Pigeons From Hell,” a short story by Robert E. Howard; a short novel by William Hope Hodgson titled “The Ghost Pirates” and Edwin Bulwer-Lytton’s short, “The House and the Brain (The Haunters and the Haunted).”
Thanks for the suggestions.
Oh gosh, I think I was around 11 when I read “Haunting of Hill House”. I lived in Brooklyn. I remember sitting outside at the top of the stoop, in the doorway to the second and third floors, on a beautiful afternoon… and I had to move further down towards the street so I wouldn’t be too afraid to keep reading. The movie scared me too, but there were some very creepy scenes in the book that weren’t in the film. After re-reading it as an adult, I think one of the sneakier tricks Jackson pulled was to make Eleanor a sympathetic character, and tell much of the story from her point of view, so when Eleanor veers off into madness it’s easy to just keep going along with her.
Edith Wharton has some good ghost stories, too, with a subtle “hmmm… what if…” vibe. It’s all about what gets into your head in broad daylight, and then comes slipping back in when it’s dark, and you feel alone.
The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions is creepy/scary. So are all the stories by M.R. James.
It is not a ghost story but just as horrifying, is a short story also by Shirley Jackson called The Lottery.
Let me put in a good word for the creepy stories of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930). Her collection, The Wind in the Rosebush (available for download via the Gutenberg Project) has 2 of my favorites, Luella Miller and The Lost Ghost.
Last Hallowe’en I purchased Russell Kirk’s compiled ghost stories, “Ancestral Shadows”. Wow! The stories all have a similar strain–modern life upsetting ancient balances, and people in the here-and-now paying the price. The best part of the stories is the mood and setting: half-deserted towns, lonely country churches and squalid urban slums. I heartily recommend the book, but not at bedtime…
“The Friends of the Friends” by Henry James is also titled “The Way It Came”. That’s how you will find it on gutenberg.org.
A book on Amazon called “Monster Story” is an excellent werewolf story. No romance with the monster, though.
The Tell-tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe is a favorite of mine except it isn’t really a ghost story, is it. Our ninth grade history teacher played a recording of Richard Burton reading the story on Halloween. Awe inspiring.
Don’t forget “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs, and “The Open Window” by Saki.
The Descent by Jeff Long is the scariest book I ever read. Highly recommend.
Anything by KAFKA
Any of Dan Simmons’ work in the horror genre is worth reading. Especially Summer of Nights and Carrion Comfort. I’ve not read The Terror yet, but hear it’s fabulous.
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