Halloween – Cindy Young-Turner

Two-sentence horror stories

Happy Halloween! I love the spookiness of this time of year. It’s the perfect time to curl up with a good book, and even better if it’s creepy or gothic. I don’t like gore, but I do like a lot of the classics. Weird tales. Atmospheric horror. I decided to read some appropriately themed books this month and just finished Nod by Adrian Barnes, which is all the more terrifying if you are an insomniac. A strange and frightening vision of the future. And yeah, it does have its share of gore. Bad things happen when most of the world stops sleeping. I’ve now started Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Goodreads has done some Halloween events and book recommendations this month. One of the recent ask the author questions was to write a two-sentence horror story. I’ve read some good ones and decided to try it. Enjoy!

At last, every spider in the house was dead, their crushed bodies unceremoniously flushed. Then I heard a clacking sound behind me and turned to realize just how wrong I was.

The dancers glide across the moonlit field, bending and turning with graceful movements, watching me with eyes full of longing. When I am dead, I will join them.

Fog rolls in and shrouds in moon. In the pumpkin patch, we shiver, for the Great Pumpkin has finally come and we must pay for each jack-o’-lantern.

Happy Halloween! If you have a two-sentence horror story, please share in the comments!

Haunting reads

Fall is here. There’s a chill in the air (maybe, since the weather keeps going from hot to cold here), leaves are turning red and gold, and the nights are growing longer. Halloween will be here in less than a day. I have candy and pumpkins at the ready. And nothing says Halloween like a spooky read. Here are a few old and new favorites.

The Girl With All the Gifts: I don’t read a lot of zombie books, but this one is really different. I’d say it’s more of a literary zombie tale. Very unique. And it will make you think long after you’ve finished it.

Ghosts by Gaslight: This is a collection of spooky short stories. If you like gothic, Victorian reads, check this one out. Some stories were better than others, but I found a few gems.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: Not necessarily scary, but it does have a fantastical, creepy vibe. I haven’t seen the movie but really enjoyed the book.

The October Country: My first introduction to Ray Bradbury and still one of my favorites. Lots of spine-tingling creepiness here. “The Emissary” and “Uncle Einar” are still memorable after all these years.

Dracula’s Brood: You can’t go wrong with classic vampire tales!

Something spooky this way comes

I’m from Massachusetts and fall is by far my favorite time of year. There’s something about the beautiful red and yellow foliage and the changing of the light that turns everything gold. I love going apple picking and getting some many apples that you’re “forced” to make all kinds of apple treats–pies, bread, applesauce, baked apples, apple crisp, you get the idea. It’s the time of year to start hunkering down and getting ready for the long winter to come. There’s hot apple cider and pumpkins and hayrides and, of course, Halloween.

There’s a kind of magic in the air during fall, and particularly in October. You can almost feel like the walls between the worlds are growing thin and anything is possible. It’s a good time of year to get out the spooky stories. I recently read Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes as part of a group read on Goodreads. He’s a brilliant writer and he does creepy and psychological horror very well. I highly recommend it. Of course, almost as soon as I started the book our local carnival arrived. Yikes. I’m sure it was perfectly harmless, but I did not attend. Bradbuy’s October Country, the first book of his that I read, is a collection of deliciously eerie stories that are also perfect for this time of year.

I much prefer psychological horror to the gory kind. My imagination can scare me quite well. Authors like M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, and Algernon Blackwood have written some terrifying short stories. And “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs made me want to turn on all the lights after reading it (although there was a brilliant spoof on The Simpsons that takes away from some of the original’s power when I picture Homer holding the monkey’s paw to make a wish).

What are some of your favorite fall activities? And what do you read when you’re looking for a good scare?