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?
Cindy Young-Turner 