I love autumn. I love Halloween. I love spooky stuff. Most of all, I love horror. Horror movies are easily my most watched genre so I figured committing myself to an October of horror reading would be a fun easy theme to stick to. Sigh, I was wrong. I don’t actually read a lot of horror on the regular. I never find it scary. There’s something that doesn’t quite translate with a scary book. The pacing is too slow and there is no ominous music putting you on edge right before something jumps out and startles you. Books can be creepy, gross, and disturbing but I rarely find them scary.
You can get a little closer with graphic novels and comics. The grotesque images help find that horror feeling. But it’s still lacking the other components that come with watching a horror movie in the dark. Of course, maybe I’m just desensitized as I would say I rarely find movies scary anymore either.
So why did I commit to a full month of reading nothing but horror?! Well, peer pressure probably. But mainly because I didn’t think that pigeon holing myself into my favorite genre would become a chore. These are all books that I would have gotten to eventually anyway, just all crammed into one month instead of spread out over a couple of years. The thing is that every time I eyed a non horror book that I want to pick up it felt like I was cheating. I prefer to pick my next book right before I read it, not have a list of homework to complete before the deadline of Halloween. I love horror but I miss my Marvel comics and am excited to return to some more comforting images of Daredevil swinging through Hell’s Kitchen soon.
Thank you all for going on the Spooktober journey with me. I have two books left and will be doing a full rundown soon. Horror will not be completely abandoned in the future but I will be spacing it out more.
Comment below with a book that actually truly scared you. I’d love to find one!
I am scared by absolutely everything. Seriously, it’s never taken much to freak me out. Around Halloween (and my birthday, which was yesterday), I like to read mildly spooky, nostalgic stories. Since you liked a book I just posted about, I thought that I’d suggest my list of children’s Halloween stories (always a work in progress) for a little nostalgia.
https://forgottenstoriesweb.wordpress.com/book-lists/holiday-books/halloween-books/
You don’t even have to go to the library for most of these because many of them are available online at Internet Archive. (If you’ve never used Internet Archive before, you need an account to check out books, but it’s free, and you can read the books directly in your browser. They also have movies and old computer games.)
Probably the creepiest one I’ve reviewed so far is The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury. The cartoon version spooked me as a kid, and when you think deeper about the implications of the story, it gets creepier.
https://forgottenstoriesweb.wordpress.com/2019/10/17/the-halloween-tree/
Actually, the more I think about it, this book would probably have made a pretty good video game. You have the main characters pursuing their friend through Halloweens past while trying to keep Moundshroud from stealing his soul/pumpkin and simultaneously answering random trivia questions about the history and traditions of Halloween. I’m surprised no one’s done it before.
I’ve also been putting together a Halloween-themed website, if you’re interested. I’m working on a costume page, too, but it’s not finished yet.
https://halloweenideas.neocities.org/index.html
Happy Halloween!
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Thanks for the great recommendations! That does sound like it would be a good game!
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I remembered a couple of other scary books that I reviewed, which I forgot about the other day. These books aren’t specifically set at Halloween, but they make good Halloween stories:
The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright – If you were young in the 1980s or 1990s, you may already know this one. Dolls in a dollhouse reenact a murder that occurred in the family years before.
https://forgottenstoriesweb.wordpress.com/2017/11/01/the-dollhouse-murders/
Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp – The ghost of a selfish girl inhabits a garden gazing globe and threatens to possess her young niece. The book sometimes feels a little preachy on the subject of spoiled children, but Emily was a seriously disturbing, creepy child ghost.
https://forgottenstoriesweb.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/jane-emily/
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I think I’ve heard of the dollhouse murders before. Great recommendations!
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