November 3-4, 2012: Crowd-sourcing American Scares

[This week’s series has been, well, obvious. Your thoughts on American scary stories—real or fictional, artistic or historical, fun or horrifying, and anything else you can think of—have helped me assemble a weekend post that’s all treats and no tricks. Boo!]
Vince Kling reminds us not to forget M.R. James, and Jeff Renye mentions James’s “Casting the Runes” and follows up by highlighting R.W. Chambers’s collection The King in Yellow (1895).Kisha Tracy reminds us of Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds scare, which aired on Halloween eve in 1938.Rob Gosselin points to one of America’s scariest real-life stories, the case of Lizzie Borden.On Twitter, @VendettaStudieshighlights the supernatural works of Washington Irving, especially “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”and “Rip Van Winkle.”Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What would you add to these ideas?11/3 Memory Day nominees: A tie between William Cullen Bryant, whose poems and journalism helped establish and define American literature and identity in the Early Republic; and Walker Evans, whose photographs helped chart the worst and best of Depression-era America.11/4 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two 20th century figures who heavily influenced American culture and society, if in profoundly different ways, Will Rogers and Ruth Handler.