Sidney Williams's Blog - Posts Tagged "october-reads"
Halloween Reading
Someone asked on Facebook about a favorite film for getting in the Halloween mood.
House on Haunted Hill came to mind for me, black and white version of course. It's creepy fun, and I always try to catch it early in the season and sometimes have it on silently on my TV when giving out candy, in years when trick or treating's not ill advised.
If you adhere to the purest tropes, and this is a bit of a ***spoiler*** if you've never seen the film, it's technically an old dark house tale and not a haunted house tale.
It has skeletons dangling about and other strangeness, but, well, it spins toward what Tzvetan Todorov dubbed the fantastic uncanny. It's Scooby Doo. Seemed like a ghostly mariner but it really Old Mister Harrigan.
Does a tale have to be supernatural to be great for Halloween? I think Something Wicked This Way Comes is a fun Halloween story, especially with it's October opening. Bradbury's just great October reading in general, and there's The Halloween Tree. Wonderfully dark fantasy.
Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which may or may not be a haunted house story, is, to me, also wonderful for October-time. It's so atmospheric and filled with fraught and dread.
Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle is definitely an old dark house story. Yet, its grim secrets, familiar magic and manipulations have a great October-season mood as well.
A Night in the Lonesome October and Night in the Lonesome October have similar titles but are like opposite sides of the coin.
The Zelazny book, broken into 31 chapters, is great to read each year and offers a Lovecraftian tale with familiar figures by allusion including Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. It's narrated by Jack the Ripper's dog who observers a recurring chess game of opposing summoners.
The Laymon story, set in a small town, is more about human evil, but it has some wonderfully chilling moments and is permeated by October atmosphere on late nights.
I've never written a haunted house tale, but I guess Dark Hours is technically an old dark house tale.
It's about a heroine trapped in the basement of her school library after closing, and she faces a game of traps and puzzles perpetrated by a masked prankster with twisted goals. It was great fun to write if a bit claustrophobic.
House on Haunted Hill came to mind for me, black and white version of course. It's creepy fun, and I always try to catch it early in the season and sometimes have it on silently on my TV when giving out candy, in years when trick or treating's not ill advised.
If you adhere to the purest tropes, and this is a bit of a ***spoiler*** if you've never seen the film, it's technically an old dark house tale and not a haunted house tale.
It has skeletons dangling about and other strangeness, but, well, it spins toward what Tzvetan Todorov dubbed the fantastic uncanny. It's Scooby Doo. Seemed like a ghostly mariner but it really Old Mister Harrigan.
Does a tale have to be supernatural to be great for Halloween? I think Something Wicked This Way Comes is a fun Halloween story, especially with it's October opening. Bradbury's just great October reading in general, and there's The Halloween Tree. Wonderfully dark fantasy.
Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which may or may not be a haunted house story, is, to me, also wonderful for October-time. It's so atmospheric and filled with fraught and dread.
Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle is definitely an old dark house story. Yet, its grim secrets, familiar magic and manipulations have a great October-season mood as well.
A Night in the Lonesome October and Night in the Lonesome October have similar titles but are like opposite sides of the coin.
The Zelazny book, broken into 31 chapters, is great to read each year and offers a Lovecraftian tale with familiar figures by allusion including Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. It's narrated by Jack the Ripper's dog who observers a recurring chess game of opposing summoners.
The Laymon story, set in a small town, is more about human evil, but it has some wonderfully chilling moments and is permeated by October atmosphere on late nights.
I've never written a haunted house tale, but I guess Dark Hours is technically an old dark house tale.
It's about a heroine trapped in the basement of her school library after closing, and she faces a game of traps and puzzles perpetrated by a masked prankster with twisted goals. It was great fun to write if a bit claustrophobic.
