Chapter 36 - The Halloween Tree

Maybe it is Halloween or just October which lends itself to spooky books. I do not generally enjoy Horror as a genre. Psychological thriller is more my style when it comes to these kind of books but when the nights get dark, the cold winds blow, and branches scrape the windows, I like a good spooky read. I stopped reading Stephen King long ago as he made me lose sleep. So I then tried to find good spooky books that I didn't have nightmares about.

I have a tendency when planning my Halloween read to fall back on old favorites and a favorite author of fantasy and macabre is Ray Bradbury. Best known for his books Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles (both scary in their own ways) Bradbury wrote a number of scary short stories which can be found in The October Country. According to Bradbury, light represents good, dark signifies evil, and with October the world turns dark so an October Country in one where "...noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay." If you enjoy The October Country then you might also like Something Wicked This Was Comes, also by Bradbury.

A few years back a friend recommended that I read Dracula by Bram Stoker during the month of October. It was, he said, a book he re-read every year. Before he mentioned it, I had not read Dracula since high school and now it has become a yearly read for me too. The movies cannot do justice to the novel written in 1897. Certainly Stoker didn't invent the vampire but his descriptions have been used time and again as interpretations of the vampire life and theme.

Another classic scary book in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. This book is about a paranormal investigator who invites three people known to be psychically sensitive to Hill House to study supernatural activity. As the story develops the house seems to prey on the psychological frailties of one of the guests.

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix is another good scary book although a more recent addition to the horror genre. Best high school friends Abby and Gretchen bond over a trip to a haunted house which leaves Gretchen possessed by a demon named Andras. While Abby tries to convince others that Gretchen is possessed, Gretchen becomes more and more evil. Abby decides she will try anything even exorcism to bring her friend back.

The Night That Finds Us All by John Hornor Jacobs is a book that I haven't read yet as it was just published (October 7) but it has been described as a "seductive, nautical nightmare." Samantha Vines is trying to get her own boat repaired and back in the water. When offered the job to captain a massive 100 year old sailboat from Seattle to England for "very good" money, she jumps at the chance. It is only when a crewmember goes missing and another has a terrible accident that Sam thinks perhaps the money isn't good enough for the now sinister job.

Any recommendations for me? Do you like spooky? Let me know!

I'm taking a few weeks off to move forward with scratching things off my life list. See you in November!