Every Christmas I read Charles Dickens’ - A Christmas Carol, and every Halloween I read a spooky book. This month’s read is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë. I haven’t hit the spooky yet, but it is early days.
Here, however, is a list of books that I have read over different years that are well worth a read and definitely on the spooky spectrum of literature.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
I cannot say enough amazing things about Ray Bradbury; he is one of my top five authors.
The story follows two best friends, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, both 13 years old, in their small Illinois town one week before Halloween. Their lives are changed by the arrival of Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, a sinister travelling carnival led by the tattooed ringmaster, Mr Dark.
The carnival preys on the townspeople’s deepest regrets and desires, using a magical carousel to grant wishes, either ageing riders forward or backwards, but at a terrible, enslaving price.
Jim, who longs to be older, is tempted by its dark magic.
Charles, Will’s father, realises the carnival is an ancient evil that feeds on human misery, and they battle to defeat it.
The book is full of Bradbury’s beautiful prose and character development, as well as being dark and sinister.
Frankenstein
Most of the people who think they know what Frankenstein is about, don’t. If you have seen the film or read the comic then you know nothing, because it is so much more than what you think.
It centres on Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but ambitious young scientist obsessed with conquering death and discovering the secret of life. Driven by his reckless pursuit of knowledge, Victor succeeds in bringing a creature made of assembled human parts to life.
However, immediately upon its animation, Victor is horrified by the Creature’s grotesque appearance and abandons his creation. The Creature, initially innocent and yearning for connection, is met with universal fear and rejection from humanity, including his own creator.
The novel is a cautionary tale that explores the dangers of unchecked scientific ambition, the ethical responsibility of a creator, as well as being about belonging and companionship, and the search to fit in somewhere.
It is a book I read every couple of years and take something different away from, and possibly my most recommended read to my friends.
The Passage
Prepare yourself for a vampire epic unlike any other. The Passage by Justin Cronin, though the first in a trilogy, stands powerfully on its own. This is a dark, horrific vampire story. Twilight this is not.
The book takes place over two different eras, which can confuse some readers when they first read it. The initial chapters introduce a desperate U.S. government project, code-named “Project Noah,” which seeks to develop a drug for extreme longevity and healing.
This research involves injecting a deadly virus, mutated from a rare bat species, into a group of twelve death-row inmates. The experiment spirals catastrophically out of control, transforming the inmates into powerful, vampire-like creatures who break free and ignite a global pandemic.
Then we jump to ninety-three years later and discover what the world became. Civilisation has crumbled, and what remains is a primal landscape ruled by fear of the “virals”, the infected, superhuman predators.
The story centres on a small, self-sufficient, walled colony of human survivors in California. As their protective systems begin to fail, a small group of young people, fighting for humanity’s survival, must venture out into the dark and dangerous world. From there we meet some of the characters from the first section of the book.
As well as containing a cast of really rich and diverse characters, the book genuinely has some nail-biting moments that make you stare between your fingers to read.
Dracula
No list would be complete without mentioning the original vampire novel, Dracula. Bram Stoker is the master of building suspense to terrifying moments. Told as a series of letters, the book follows the journey of Jonathan Harker.
Harker is an English solicitor, travelling to the remote Transylvanian castle of Count Dracula to finalise a real estate deal. Harker soon discovers his host is an ancient, unnatural being with sinister plans, and realises he is a prisoner.
Dracula secretly relocates to England to spread his terrifying curse, preying upon Harker’s fiancée’s friend, Lucy Westenra. When a mysterious illness begins to afflict Lucy, her friends, led by the brilliant vampire-hunter Professor Van Helsing, unite.
They must confront the horrifying truth about the Count and embark on a desperate, international chase to destroy the vampire before he can establish an empire of the undead.
The book is stronger in the first half than the second, but well worth a read if you have not.
The Rats
The books I have mentioned so far have been scary, but none scared me or gave me nightmares quite as much as James Herbert’s, Rats. Whether it is because they are a specific phobia of mine or not, this book made it much worse.
James Herbert, in my opinion, was seriously underrated as a horror writer, as several of his books have genuinely terrified me, but Rats was the first I read.
The novel centres around Harris, a local art teacher who is among the first to witness the horrific scale of the problem when one of his students is brutally attacked by killer rats. The mutated breed of black rats is unusual in size, ferocity, and intelligence. They also possess a terrifying hunger for human flesh.
As the government struggles to grasp the true nature of the threat, Harris finds himself drawn into the desperate, gruesome fight to survive. He and others must race to uncover the dark origin of these ravenous creatures before the monstrous, rapidly multiplying swarms can devour the last vestiges of civilisation.
There are moments in this book where you simply have to walk away and think of unicorns to survive.
Honourable Mentions
If you do not have time to commit to a full novel this month, I have a couple of honourable mentions that are short stories. Over the years, I have read many short stories, but these are two that have stayed in my memory as being truly horrific.
The Veldt by Ray Bradbury tells of the Hadley family who live in a futuristic, automated house that caters to every need, from tying shoes to cooking meals.
In the centre of the home is a state-of-the-art Nursery, a virtual reality room that creates any environment the children imagine. When the room becomes a fixed, unsettling scene, the parents become concerned, and they have every right to be.
My second short story recommendation is The Case of Lady Sannox by Arthur Conan Doyle. The story focuses on Douglas Stone, a brilliant and arrogant young London surgeon. Stone is openly having a scandalous affair with the beautiful and high-society Lady Sannox. However, when her husband finds out, he wreaks the ultimate revenge. I will say nothing else so as not to spoil it.
So there you have it, seven suggestions that I would strongly suggest reading during spooky season.
Tell me in the comments, what’s your favourite spooky read?
Until next Monday: Read to learn. Read to escape. Read to smile.