A Novel Idea

Happy Halloween world! My treat to you: some recommendations on scary short stories. Read on…

Everyone needs a good (little) scare now and then – just to get the blood pumping. A nice safe scare is to be had for all ages in a ghoulish tale.

I’ll declare right now, I’m not super keen on horror, although dark fantasy I can cope with. I’ve read some Steven King, no Dean Koontz. But as a fourth or fifth grader I became hooked on what seemed at the time to be some very scary stories.

Do you like to read spooky stuff?

Neil Gaiman recently floated the idea of giving a book on Halloween. He’s calling it ‘All Hallow’s Read’: http://www.allhallowsread.com/

It made me recall those books that so captured my young imagination momentarily. I’m talking R.L. Stine and Richie Tankersley Cusick.

Here are two I remember vividly (the covers not the story lines):

Images courtesy of http://richietankersleycusick.com/

While I don’t seek out terrifying tales anymore, they do creep into my reading. If you are in the mood to be utterly freaked out, try these:

The Sandman by E.T.A Hoffmann

The Story of the Demoniac Pacheco by Jan Potocki

Note: both can be found in Fantastic Tales edited by Italo Calvino

Read well. Read often.

V.

(C) Copyright of the author. 2010.