Greetings and felicitations, monster kids!
Here’s the idea: it’s Halloween month, we all need a distraction from the real-life horrors of the Trump administration, so I figured we could do our own book-club-type thing. Or an advent calendar of the damned, maybe. Reading is good for you, reading horror is especially good for you (especially in October), and the Internet – for all the bad things it does – does provide access to a lot of literature that’s absolutely free.
I read a lot of this stuff, so I know of some stories that people who have lives aren’t as obsessed by horror fiction may not have encountered, and somebody besides just me should be benefiting from my studies. So I’m going to link you to a story a day. Unless I cheat and do two stories a day. All you have to do is bookmark the diary, click the day’s link and read it each day, and… you win! If you want, come back here and discuss what you read in the comments (that’s not required but it’ll make it more fun). The comment section is also a good place to pass along recommendations of your own, and I’m always looking for those, so don’t be shy.
I wanted to make this easy so I stuck to only stories that I could find for free on the Internet. I would have loved to throw in some Robert Aickman (particularly “Ringing The Changes” ) and some Thomas Ligotti (especially “Gas Station Carnivals” and “The Clown Puppet” — I swear that “Gas Station Carnivals” has the ability to plant false memories in your head, because the absurdity in it will feel vaguely familiar) and “Canavan’s Back Yard” and “Slime” by Joseph Payne Brennan. It also hurt not to include some Richard Matheson (“The Distributor” will wreck you, and “Graveyard Shift” is also incredible), and T.E.D. Klein’s “The Events At Poroth Farm,” Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks” and “River of Night’s Dreaming,” plus Stephen King and a lot of other things… but, alas, I couldn’t find them online and I didn’t want to break copyright laws by scanning them myself. Your town should have a library, though – hit ‘em up. If I’ve done a good job with these selections, you’re going to want more, anyway. I recommend printing these out, but I'm old-school. It just seems weird reading Victorian-era stuff on a computer... but, if you're cool with that, have at it.
I tried to stick to things that not everyone would be familiar with, which is why there’s a lot of obvious classic things missing from the list. No Edgar Allan Poe, for instance – I love the guy, but we’ve all read “The Tale-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” by now, right? (If not, those are online and you should definitely read ‘em). I thought about throwing “Bernice” in just because a lot of people missed that icky tale of tooth-fetishism, but, I dunno, I found enough other good stuff. Some things here horror fans will still be familiar with (I can hear people going, “Do you think we haven’t heard of ‘The Willows’ or Lovecraft?”) but threw them in just in case. I leaned heavily on the Victorians, partially because that’s where my own taste lies, but also because more of their works are public domain. But (to my surprise) I found a few newer things and even stuck in a few nasty ol’ pulp stories. If the style of the older stories doesn’t appeal to you, tough it out – once you get a taste for them, you’ll want more.
I tried to relegate the longer stories to weekends when you’ll have more time to settle in. A few of those are novellas. “Carmilla,” for example, sometimes gets published independently.
At the end I’ll put a link to some stuff I wrote myself (because I’m shameless) but I didn’t include those on the day-to-day list (because I’m not that shameless). If you want extra stuff, please indulge. I’ll also stick in some extra links to a few more classic stories, just in case you’ve already read the story listed for that day and want to substitute something else instead.
Anyway, enough babble, I think you get it. Here’s the reading list:
October 1 (Tuesday)
“Smee” by A. M. Burrage
Some guests at a party decide to play a hide-and-seek game in a house that’s haunted. You figure out where this one’s going pretty early on but the writing’s so good that the final punch is still chilling even though it’s expected. Creeps guaranteed.
October 2 (Wednesday)
“On The River” by Guy DeMaupassant
A masterpiece of spooky atmosphere. When his anchor gets stuck on something, a guy has to spend the night on a foggy river. The ending just makes it all even more eerie. This one’s haunted me since I was a kid and my dad just told me about it. (If you want more, "The Horla" is also pretty great, and reflects Maupassant’s own encroaching madness at the time he wrote it.)
October 3 (Thursday)
“Lot 249” by Arthur Conan Doyle
Some college guys have problems with a creepy fella in their dorm who keeps a mummy in his room. He says it’s for “study” but they’re pretty sure he has darker uses for it. Doyle is as good at horror as he is at Sherlock Holmes, displaying an effective restraint and suggesting more than he shows, keeping the horror in the shadows or behind locked doors, making your mind fill in the blanks. The “something passing on the stairs in the dark” scene is chilling. If you like Doyle, he wrote a lot of horror. “The Captain of the Pole Star” is recommended if you liked Dan Simmons’ The Terror and want to see what an early take on that might have looked like.
October 4 (Friday)
“The Crown Derby Plate” by Marjorie Bowen
The desire to complete a set of plates bought at an estate sale leads a woman into a horrific situation when she pays a visit to a lonely, nasty-smelling eccentric in an old house. Unsettling for sure.
October 5 (Saturday)
“The Beckoning Fair One” by Oliver Onions
This one may be familiar, since a lot of people consider it the greatest ghost story ever written, but just in case you’re the “just-doing-this-for-Halloween” type I figured I should expose you to it. A guy trying to write a play rents a room that he should have avoided. It’ll certainly get to you when you discover the source of a sound he keeps hearing…
October 6 (Sunday)
“The Shadow Over Innsmouth” by H.P. Lovecraft
You should really read everything by Lovecraft (go invest in one of those nice leatherbound copies you keep seeing at Barnes & Noble), but this is the one I come back to most often, just because of the atmosphere, which is unique. A decaying seaside town of ill repute, where the residents have more wrong with them than just inbreeding, hides a horrible secret that builds to inexplicable eeriness. It’ll change the way you see small towns by the sea.
October 7 (Monday)
“Clytie” by Eudora Welty
Southern gothic reeking with madness, even if it’s not strictly horror. The rotting-minds-in-rotting-mansions feel of it gets close enough to a nightmare, though, and if nothing else, you’ll fall in love with the writing. Faulkner gets all the credit, but Welty is Mississippi’s real main gift to literature in my book. Sorry the only copy I could find online is so crappy, formatting-wise, but bear with it, it’s worth the effort. Speaking of Faulkner, I’m not always a big fan of him, but “A Rose For Emily” is a creepy masterpiece, so if you have the time and inclination, read two stories tonight.
October 8 (Tuesday)
“Fishhead” by Irvin S. Cobb
While we’re down South, here’s some atmospheric backwoods horror. A couple of racist rednecks set out to kill a weird swamp-dweller who seems more catfish than human… and they learn that he has friends. Warning: has some racist words thrown around, but don’t worry, the people using ‘em get their comeuppance.
October 9 (Wednesday)
“The Room in the Tower” by E.F. Benson
A man keeps having terrible dreams about staying in a tower room… until real life catches up with his nightmares. Benson’s a heavyweight in Victorian ghost story writing and he’s at his best here. I had trouble limiting myself to just one story of his; he’s another you really need to invest in a complete collection of his stories, which, fortunately, can be gotten very cheaply. “The Face,” “Negotium Perambulans,” “Caterpillars,” “Mrs. Amworth,” and others are also very much recommended.
October 10 (Thursday)
“The Companion” by Ramsey Campbell
I was so happy to find this online I can’t even tell you. It’s a very creepy off-kilter-point-of-view story about a haunted, nervous loser who spends his vacations going to run-down “fun-fairs” and carnivals. At one disappointing, almost-abandoned seaside carnival, he decides to ride The Ghost Train. And, oh, he really should NOT have done that. Darkly moody, and displays Campbell’s skill at getting special effects on paper, and connecting to your subconscious. Campbell’s writing can be so strange it’ll make you feel like you’re on LSD, and will disturb you without your even knowing why. I wish I could find more of his stories online. If you go in search of more of his stuff, I especially recommend “Call First,” “The Brood,” and “Again.” (“Again” will mess you up. That thing, aaaaagggh! So freakin’ dark). Campbell varies when it comes to novels, but his short stories tend to be brilliant. You could do worse than picking up a collection or two. This has most of the best stuff.
October 11 (Friday)
“Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers
Feel free to substitute “The Yellow Sign” for this, or read both – I had to toss a coin to decide which to go with. “Repairer of Reputations” is just so strange that I chose it. It’s set in a future (1920’s!) America where the world has been poisoned by an evil book, The King In Yellow, which drives its readers insane. And our narrator’s practically got it memorized. He and his cohorts are planning an apocalyptic coup d’etat that will put the Earth under the mystical King’s rule… but it’s soon clear that the narrator’s an insane megalomaniac and his perceptions can’t be trusted (at least, that’s what we hope). Extremely weird, paranoiac tale seething with hints of a far more frightening story under the surface which isn’t being told. Relentlessly dark nightmare-logic full of sinister implications. “The Yellow Sign” is a bit more direct, but contains some of the sickest imagery you’ll find for its era. I don't think you'll forget the bit about the finger. Just about everything else Chambers wrote besides these two stories was frothy junk, so you can consider him a two-hit wonder. But with hits like those, it should be enough for anybody.
October 12 (Saturday)
“Carmilla” by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
Classic vampire tale that’s been the source of nearly as many films as Dracula. A girl’s new friend may be a centuries-old vampires. There’s a surprising-for-its-time undercurrent of lesbianism. One of the horror heavyweights, but I wanted to make sure everyone was exposed to it. If you always meant to read it, now’s the time.
October 13 (Sunday)
“The Mole Men Want Your Eyes” by Frederick C. Davis
Okay, this is gory junk and I’m not going to pretend it’s anything else, but… how could you not want to read a story with that title? This is direct from one of the 1930’s “weird-menace shudder pulps” and it’s the real-deal kind of stuff that warped your grandparents when they were kids. It’s not going to be mistaken for art of any kind, it’s trash, but, sometimes you want McDonalds for dinner, and sometimes you want a story with a lot of ripped-out eyeballs and gruesome misery. In case you don’t, though, the far-more-genteel “A Room In A Rectory” by Sir Andrew Calecott may be substituted (it’s creepy but the prose is a bit tough).
October 14 (Monday)
“The Night Wire” by H. F. Arnold
Strangely disturbing tale of telegraph messages sent in the middle of the night from a doomed (and possibly nonexistent) town that’s been besieged by a rotten fog seeping up from a churchyard. Has an unsettling feel, like a bad dream you sort-of remember.
October 15 (Tuesday)
“The Loved Dead” by C. M. Eddy
Okay, this is pretty hardcore, even now, and caused such an uproar by upsetting Weird Tales’ readership so much that the controversy saved the magazine from folding in 1924… while almost getting it banned. Possibly ghost-written by H. P. Lovecraft, this is the nasty narrative of a necrophile whose lust for corpses to sleep with can’t be satisfied by working in the morgue, leading him to stalk the populace with a razor. This is gonna weed a few people out. If you don’t want to spend a few minutes inside the sick mind of a necrophiliac, substitute some E. F. Benson or M. R. James instead, no one will blame you.
October 16 (Wednesday)
“O Whistle And I’ll Come To You, My Lad” by M.R. James
Speaking of M.R., here he is. Yes, this is one of the all-time classic ghost stories, but it’s so good I can’t stand the thought of anyone possibly missing out on James. He’s another one of those ghost story writers where you really need to just buy a collection of all of his stories, which, again, is luckily pretty cheap. It’s hard to pick just one of his stories. I keep a complete collection of his stuff (this one, in fact - it's a beautiful little thing, hardback and just a bit bigger than a Gideon Bible) beside my bed in case I need some get-back-to-sleep reading. (This volume is also good -- it's got all of James's stories, plus a whole lot more, including several of the authors posted here). I’ve read them all dozens of times and they never get old. This one, in particularly, might make you afraid of doing your laundry…
October 17 (Thursday)
“The Bus” By Shirley Jackson
I was going to go with “The Summer People” but that one sometimes gets taught in English class, while the uber-creepy “The Bus” has slipped through the cracks somehow. It’s a disturbing, nightmarish episode in which a disagreeable old lady (who may be senile) encounters part of her past when she’s put off a bus in an unfamiliar town… and her past wants no more to do with her than her present. Dark and dreamlike, you won’t shake it for a while… if ever. (“The Summer People,” by the way, is also a masterpiece and will fill you with dread… but of what, you may never know. A couple decide to stay at their vacation cabin past Labor Day, and… no one ever does that. And neither should they.)
October 18 (Friday)
“The Graveyard Rats” by Henry Kuttner
A grave robber finds he has some very nasty competition. Nothing pretty about this punch-in-the-face pulp story, but it touches on several primal fears with no mercy given, and does it with style.
October 19 (Saturday)
“Novel of the White Powder” by Arthur Machen
You know how your medicines have an expiration date? You’ll be heeding that when you’re done with this very nasty tale. Ye godz. This one is so grisly for its time period it’s almost bewildering. If you liked Stephen King's "Grey Matter" you might be ready for this.
October 20 (Sunday)
“The Pear-Shaped Man” by George R. R. Martin
Another one I was surprised and overjoyed to find online. Didja know the Game of Thrones guy did horror? Well, he does, and he will bother you. An artist moves into a new apartment and becomes obsessed by a weird, unpleasant neighbor – a chubby, unclean creep who lives on Cheez Doodles and Coke and wants to show her his “things.” The way he invades her life creates an unidentifiable menace that will make a hell of an impression. Read it and you’ll start seeing pear-shaped men everywhere. Since it’s Sunday and you have time, you’ll also like “Sandkings” by the same author, about a guy who has fun tormenting his strange little insect-creatures… until he pushes them too far.
October 21 (Monday)
“The Bell in the Fog” by Gertrude Atherton
I’ll admit that I don’t really know why this one is so creepy. Maybe you can figure it out. But, creepy it is. A famous author (obviously patterned on Atherton’s friend Henry James, who must have been weirded out by this because it’s not exactly flattering) with pedophile tendencies is obsessed with the portrait of a little girl he finds in the gallery of an old house he bought. Then he finds a real little girl who looks exactly like the painting and becomes so enamored of her that he wants to adopt her. The past and present seem to converge. This is a tough one to figure out because it’s very subtle and multi-layered… but it has a melancholy spookiness that’s hard to understand, even though it works. For those who like their horror quiet.
October 22 (Tuesday)
“The Voice In The Night” by William Hope Hodgson
A ship is visited by a rowboat from a nearby island, whose occupant refuses to be seen. There’s a fungus amongus… Really creepy. If you have time, you can read a whole novel by Hodgson online, The House on the Borderland, about a guy battling weird pig-men who come out of a hole under his house. Eventually time stops and the world dies for a while as centuries pass in minutes. Hard to make sense out of part of it, but, it’s easier than trying to read The Night-Land. “Voice in the Night” is much more straightforward. If you like it and think, “Gee, I’d like some more ocean-related fungus stories, Hodgson seemed pretty obsessed by the idea, so try “The Derelict.”
October 23 (Wednesday)
“The Quest for Blank Claveringi” by Patricia Highsmith
If you don’t find snails icky, this one may not work on you. But since everybody finds snails pretty icky, I betcha it will! Another one I was surprised and happy to find online.
October 24 (Thursday)
“Lonesome Ben” by Charles Chesnutt
This isn’t strictly horror, and is more of a “tall tale” by an early African-American author… but I love Chesnutt’s stuff, and this one’s always haunted me a bit. It’s meant to be humorous at the end, but there’s nothing funny about the nightmarish plight of poor Ben, a runaway slave without much to eat but mud. This involves dialect and some politically incorrect language, so if you can’t handle that even from an early Black author, you might pass on this one. But you’d be missing out, because Chesnutt was a genius. All of his stuff is recommended, not just the “conjure tales.” "Dave's Neckliss" — about a cruel and unusual punishment that drives an innocent man mad — is another one that's supposed to be "funny" at the end, but which I find horrifying at the core.
October 25 (Friday)
“The Clock” by W. F. Harvey
“Mujina” by Lafcadio Hearn
We’re gonna do two today, because they’re both really short. The first is “The Clock,” in which a person sent to retrieve a clock from a supposedly-empty house almost encounters… something. I’m not sure what, but it’s skin-crawlingly creepy and I’m not even sure why. It’s a masterpiece of carrying all the horror through sound, and it’s a short little nightmare that’s gonna bug you.
“Mujina” is a Japanese folk-tale with one hell of a final shock image. Try not to picture it too hard…
October 26 (Saturday)
“The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood
Another “I’m not really sure why this is so creepy, but it IS” story. Two guys camping on a river which is overrun by willows pass into an area where the space between dimensions is worn thin, and they attract the attention of whatever’s on the other side. The atmosphere of menace and dread grows, even though you’re not sure exactly what you’re scared of. It’s not really an easy read but it’s one of those I go back and re-read every few months. An important part of any horror fan’s education.
October 27 (Sunday)
“Pigeons From Hell” by Robert E. Howard
CREEPY swampland horror from the creator of Conan. Dudes stumbling down the stairs of abandoned antebellum mansions with a hatchet stuck in their head… and that’s just for starters. “Pigeons can’t be scary!” you say? Find out how wrong you can be! As a bonus, “The Worms of theEarth” is also online, which is a Bran Mak Morn sword-and-sorcery tale but with some of the darkest horror aspects you can imagine – crawling hands, dark sorcery, you name it.
October 28 (Monday)
“The Screaming Skull” by F. Marion Crawford
It was a toss-up between this and “The Upper Berth” but I went with this tale of a skull who doesn’t let death stop its need for vengeance. I read this when I was far too young to be reading it (in the classic Great Tales of Terror and The Supernatural, which I nagged my mom to buy me when I was about five – everybody needs this book in their house, it should be mandatory) and it messed me up good. “The Upper Berth” is also very creepy, with inhabitants of a ship’s stateroom troubled by something cold and damp…
October 29 (Tuesday)
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman
Oh, man, the madness in this story… it stays unsettling no matter how many times you read it. Early feminist horror in which a woman is taken to an old estate to get over some post-partum depression, and is given the worst room possible by an obnoxious “I-know-best” husband who just doesn’t listen. An obsession with the wallpaper – and a woman she thinks is creeping behind it – drives her to madness. Chilling every damn time.
October 30 (Wednesday)
“The Spider” by Hans Heinz Ewars
A student moves into an apartment where the previous residents hung themselves from a bar in the window. He feels certain that he won’t do the same, and decides to keep a journal of his experiences in the room. And it’s going to scare you to read it.
October 31 (Thursday)
“In Kropsfberg Keep” by RalphAdams Cram
“They Bite” by Anthony Boucher
It’s Halloween so we’re ordering a double. I just couldn’t stand to leave either of these out of the main running.
In the first, a couple of smartypants ghostbusters insist on spending the night in the ruins of a haunted castle and end up facing far more horror than they bargained for. The plot is standard but the payoff is strong, effective, and grim. Classic.
In the second, a man working in the desert sees "Carkers" -- legendary little creatures at the corner of his vision. Unfortunately for him, they don’t stay there. And they like blood. Damn spooky.
Some other stories that could just as easily have been included:
“The Signalman” by Charles Dickens – a worker on a trainline keeps seeing a figure. Creepy atmosphere.
“The Judge’s House” by Bram Stoker – add rats to a haunted house and you’re just sure to scare a reader.
“How Love Came To Professor Guildea” by Robert Hichens (a parrot sees things that his owner can’t… and a loathesome unseen idiotic thing seems to have a crush on him)
“The Mark of the Beast” by Rudyard Kipling (sounds like a werewolf story, but it’s something much creepier)
“Brickett Bottom” by Amyas Northcote (a couple of girls taking walks in the country see an old house that’s not supposed to be there. One starts visiting it. She shouldn’t. Effective. I especially like that one of the girls has bad vision and can’t really see the house clearly.)
"The Listener" by Algernon Blackwood (A man's new apartment seems haunted... and it is. Creepy payoff).
“The Haunters and the Haunted, or The House and the Brain” by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Some ghost hunters get their nerves rattled trying to find out what’s haunting a notorious house. Creepy!)
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Okay, that does it for the official stuff, but, while I’ve got your attention, here’s my self-promotion. You don’t have to read these, but if you do, feedback always helps me, so, have at it:
Long Tall Sally – a guy moves into a new apartment and discovers that the sounds he’s been hearing may be due to an unseen roommate... a particularly creepy one. This seems to be the favorite of the people who’ve read my stuff, so I’ll list it first.
Out By The Turbines - when their car breaks down on a Mississippi backroad, a couple of guys decide they'll get to civilization faster by following the powerlines through the fields. But then they spot signs of an active blood cult, and the sun is going down…
The Nonsense - a breakup with her frightened boyfriend leaves a girl alone with their unwanted, unseen roommate, who's very busy, very eccentric, and... dead.
The Night Is Filled With Maniacs - a girl working in a late-night convenience store is already having a bad night because her co-worker never shows up. Then a creepy guy named Gus shows up and insists on keeping her company, which makes everything so much worse.
The Guy-In-The-Hallway Show - a guy who's bored during his high school classes notices a kid in the hallway making faces and doing silly mime acts through the classroom door. But it's not silly for long.
All The Angels Are Sleeping Now - some people get stranded in a late-night parking lot with the woman in a nightgown who was trying to ride a kiddie horse outside the nearby Dollar General. Kind of like Cujo with a crazy woman. This one's dark even for me, so, you're warned.
Pray For Agatha, Burning In Hell - a movie buff learns that a college film club is showing a print of a legendary horror film that was believed lost. Of course he has to go. And he shouldn't. This is me trying to get Ligotti-ish with the dream-logic and mess with the reader’s subconscious a bit.
Bodies Not Recovered - Kids planting trees to stop landslides dig up the roof of a house that was buried in a previous one. They break through and decide to explore the rotten buried house... and find out something really bad happened down there, which isn't over yet. Another friend told me this is "not for lightweights" and wouldn't let his wife read it because he didn't want her getting nightmares, so I was kinda happy about that.
Creak - a guy buys a wooden arm at an antique store. Not long after, he finds another at an estate sale... and then more wooden body parts start showing up, because something wants to be put together. Dream-logic weirdness.
Scribblebones - a guy visiting his childhood home realizes that the son of the couple living there now has the same creepy imaginary friend that he used to have...
We Will Meet On That Beautiful Shore - I'm going for a Lovecraft "Innsmouth" vibe, but without borrowing anything from the mythos. One of those "questing scholars pokes around too much in a seaside town and meets YARRRRGGHHHHHHH!!!!!" kind of deals. When I finished it I realized I probably had another story besides Lovecraft’s in my head while writing this, too... I won't spoil it by saying which one, but you're welcome to guess.
Playmate of the Month – a would-be pickup artist picks up a girl who’s maybe better at games than he is.
Some Kinda Hate - a man gets some highly disturbing revenge on the guy who raped his daughter.
The Damp Basements of Heaven - while walking across campus, a guy sees someone staring up at him through the grate of a storm drain. He decides to do a little urban exploration of the tunnels and learns that there are some crazy things under his campus, and it's not a good idea to try finding out about them.
Up The Stairs Where The Windows Are Painted Black - A man tries to rescue kids from a burning house and is told that there's a baby upstairs, but that it's a bad baby and he should probably let it burn. He doesn't listen.
Shrouded In Rain - whenever it rains, a girl sees an old boyfriend who went missing-and-presumed, standing out in it.
The Screaming Head of Sister Mary Agnes - a relic of a saint starts talking about the afterlife. I'm pretty sure this would be enough to get me excommunicated and I'm not even Catholic.
Shik-Chuff - a guy wakes up in the middle of the night to find a crazy neighbor burying something in his yard. He's warned not to dig it up. People in horror stories never listen.
Gone Shootin' - this isn't a horror story, it's a (hopefully) badass biker-chick crime story, but, it's there and a bunch of people die and I like some of the dialogue, so, why not?
Anyway, that’s everything. Have fun!