Helena Fairfax

It’s time for another authors’ Round Robin and for the month of October, we have the perfect topic…

Scary stories for Hallowee’en

If you’ve been following my blog for a while you’ll know I don’t read much horror. When my children were teenagers, they couldn’t believe I’d never sat through a horror movie all the way through. Like a fool, I let them persuade me to watch Scream, because they told me ‘it was funny’. I never even got through these terrifying opening ten minutes !

With that said, I’ve read and really enjoyed some classic scary stories. There’s a couple I haven’t read yet on the following list, but they’ve been highly recommended, and are now on my list for Hallowe’en.

Hope you enjoy the selection!

Three classic horror stories

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin. Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, ushering in Halloween a week early. A calliope’s shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. Two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes…and the stuff of nightmares.

Few novels have endured in the heart and memory as has Ray Bradbury’s unparalleled literary masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes. Scary and suspenseful, it is a timeless classic in the American canon.

The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

There are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will’

Hailed as one of the most distinctive and compelling literary voices of her era, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is praised today for her ground-breaking, feminist writing.

In The Yellow Wallpaper a woman frantically paces the empty nursery at the top of a secluded mansion. Her husband John, a physician, is of no comfort and she can’t bear to sit with the new baby as his crying makes her much too nervous. And then there’s the putrid, yellow wallpaper which seems to shift and creep around the room before her very eyes…

Lost Hearts, by M.R. James

You can read this creepy story by M.R. James free on Project Gutenberg, or else his collection of terrifying ghost stories are available in this Penguin edition

In 1811, Stephen Elliott, a recently orphaned eleven-year-old boy, is invited to stay with his much older cousin, Mr. Abney, a reclusive expert on the magico-religious practices of late antiquity. Arriving at Mr. Abney’s remote Lincolnshire mansion, Aswarby Hall, Stephen swiftly bonds with the housekeeper, Mrs. Bunch, who tells him about a itinerant Italian boy and a gipsy girl Mr. Abney had taken in previously, both of whom mysteriously disappeared.

Three contemporary horror stories

The Reformatory, by Tananarive Due

“The Reformatory is one of those books you can’t put down. Tananarive Due hit it out of the park.” Stephen King

Jim Crow Florida, 1950.

Twelve-year-old Robert Stephens Jr., who for a trivial scuffle with a white boy is sent to The Gracetown School for Boys. But the segregated reformatory is a chamber of horrors, haunted by the boys that have died there.

In order to survive the school governor and his Funhouse, Robert must enlist the help of the school’s ghosts – only they have their own motivations…

Diavola, by Jennifer Thorne

Anna only has one rule for the annual Pace family vacations: tread lightly, and survive.

It isn’t easy when she’s the only who doesn’t seem to fit in. Her twin brother Benny goes with the flow so much he’s practically dissolved, and her high-strung older sister Nicole is so used to everyone―including her blandly docile husband and two young daughters―falling in line that Anna often ends up chastised for simply asking a question. Her Mom is baffled by Anna’s life choices (why waste her artistic talent at an ad agency?), and her Dad―well, he just wants a little peace and quiet.

The gorgeous villa outside a remote Tuscan town seems like the perfect place to endure so much family time―not to mention Benny’s demanding new boyfriend, Christopher. If her family becomes too much to handle, then at least Anna can wander off to a wine tasting or lose herself in an art gallery. That is, until strange things start to happen―strange noises at night, food rotting within hours, dreams that feel more like memories. Then, the unsettling warnings from the locals: don’t open the tower door.

But Anna does open it. And what she releases threatens to devour her family―that is, if her family doesn’t tear itself apart first.

Instruments of Night, by Thomas A. Cooke

Mystery writer Paul Graves, a man with a painful past, has come to an artists’ retreat in New York’s quiet, picturesque Hudson Valley. But his purpose for being there is not a pleasant escape. He’s been tasked with something more unusual.
Long ago, when Riverwood was a private estate, a teenage girl was murdered there—a crime that remains unsolved to this day. Now the victim’s elderly mother is dying, and her final wish is to learn what happened to her daughter. For the sake of this grieving woman, Graves has been asked to craft a story that answers her questions and provides a sense of closure. But he may have to choose between truth and kindness . . .

Horror stories for children and young adults

Wait Till Helen Comes, by Mary Downing Hahn

Twelve-year-old Molly and her ten-year-old brother, Michael, have never liked their seven-year-old stepsister, Heather. Ever since their parents got married, she’s made Molly and Michael’s life miserable. Now their parents have moved them all to the country to live in a house that used to be a church, with a cemetery in the backyard. If that’s not bad enough, Heather starts talking to a ghost named Helen and warning Molly and Michael that Helen is coming for them. Molly feels certain Heather is in some kind of danger, but every time she tries to help, Heather twists things around to get her into trouble. It seems as if things can’t get any worse.

But they do—when Helen comes.

Clown in a Cornfield, by Adam Cesare

Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. 

On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.

Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now. 

The Classic Fairy Tales, by Iona and Peter Opie

Finally, if you really want to be scared witless, try one of the classic fairy tales in this fabulous illustrated collection. I’ve had a copy of this book ever since I was a teenager. Who first thought of telling children bedtime stories that would keep them awake, terrified?

The stories are thrilling, from Bluebeard to the monstrous Hansel and Gretel, and the illustrations are horrifying. Enjoy!

And the most horrifying…

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I hope you’ve enjoyed my selection! If you’re hungry for even more horror, here’s my Hallowe’en book selection from a few years ago. And please click on the links below to discover the choices of my fellow authors. Happy Hallowe’en!

(Featured image of girl reading at Hallowe’en by Anindita Erina Khalil from Pixabay)

Sally Odgers  https://behindsallysbooksmark2.blogspot.com

Connie Vines  http://mizging.blogspot.com/

Bob Rich  https://wp.me/p3Xihq-3zR

Skye Taylor  https://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea