Last year’s selection of Spooky stories for Halloween was great fun, so we’re back this year with more.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is one of the creepiest short stories I’ve read, with parts that remind me of those disturbing modern Japanese horror flicks. Absolutely one of my favorite short stories ever, much less favorite scary stories.
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and PERHAPS—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
That it is from 1892 makes it even more remarkable, but it is also semi-autobiographical. After reading the story, check out this article by the author from 1913, “Why I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”.
You can’t go wrong with Edgar Allan Poe on Halloween, and how about a quick triptych of terror, courtesy of Project Gutenberg?
Head over to the “First Project Gutenberg Collection of Edgar Allan Poe”. It includes the sublime stories “The Cast of Amontillado” and “The Masque of the Red Death”, as well as the classic poem “The Raven.” Guaranteed to put you in the mood for All Hallows’ Eve.
The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.
A Stable for Nightmares is a collection of stories by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Sir Charles Young, et al. The following is from the first story in the book, “Dickon the Devil”:
The peat and furze were pretty soon left behind; we were again in the wooded scenery that I enjoyed so much, so entirely natural and pretty, and so little disturbed by traffic of any kind. I was looking from the chaise-window, and soon detected the object of which, for some time, my eye had been in search. Barwyke Hall was a large, quaint house, of that cage-work fashion known as “black-and-white,” in which the bars and angles of an oak framework contrast, black as ebony, with the white plaster that overspreads the masonry built into its interstices. This steep-roofed Elizabethan house stood in the midst of park-like grounds of no great extent, but rendered imposing by the noble stature of the old trees that now cast their lengthening shadows eastward over the sward, from the declining sun.
The park-wall was gray with age, and in many places laden with ivy. In deep gray shadow, that contrasted with the dim fires of evening reflected on the foliage above it, in a gentle hollow, stretched a lake that looked cold and black, and seemed, as it were, to skulk from observation with a guilty knowledge.
Games for Hallow-e’en by Mary E. Blain is a 1912 treatise on how to throw an awesome Halloween party.
Hallow-e’en or Hallow-Even is the last night of October, being the eve or vigil of All-Hallow’s or All Saint’s Day, and no holiday in all the year is so informal or so marked by fun both for grown-ups as well as children as this one. On this night there should be nothing but laughter, fun and mystery. It is the night when Fairies dance, Ghosts, Witches, Devils and mischief-making Elves wander around. It is the night when all sorts of charms and spells are invoked for prying into the future by all young folks and sometimes by folks who are not young.
In getting up a Hallow-e’en Party everything should be made as secret as possible, and each guest bound to secrecy concerning the
invitations.
Any of the following forms of invitations might be used.
Witches and Choice Spirits of Darkness
will hold High Carnival at my house,
…………..Wednesday, October 31st,
at eight o’clock. Come prepared to test
your fate.
Costume, Witches, Ghosts, etc.
Last year’s stories, still as good as ever:
Related Wikipedia articles:
