Horror By The Book

While I try to figure out whether this is the Halloween I stop being the only person on earth who hasn't seen The Shining, I now share with you a few of my reading choices for the season:

The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James: I was debating putting E.F. Benson on the list instead, but for creepiness James just edges out Benson (exception: if you find giant bloodsucking elemental slugs the scariest thing ever, disregard this advice and go straight for the E.F.) James's antiquarians are forever finding eerie mysteries in the mundane activities of life-- buying books, traveling, doing a spot of research, visiting friends, or just finding stuff lying on the ground. And his writing eloquently evokes an atmosphere of dark-paneled old houses that makes these stories perfect for autumn evenings.

Museum of Terror, Volume 3 by Junji Ito: I've talked about this gentleman before in my review of Tomie, and the first two Museum of Terror anthologies collect the Tomie stories. This third book, however, is a collection of random spook stories from a superior imagination, and the last one in particular, set during World War II, gave me the sort of shivers Twilight Zone used to when I was a kid.

Waking the Moon and Black Light
by Elizabeth Hand: This pair of novels defies categorization -- horror, religious fiction, high urban fantasy -- and tells the story of the Goddess and her consort manifesting in the world we know. In both cases a young heroine must cope withe the manifestation and decide whether to align herself with the deity(ies) or with the old boys' network of scholar-sorcerers known as the Benandanti.
Hand's prose is stunning, and the books are filled with that rare commodity: a long descriptive passage that doesn't derail the action. Black Light falters at the end, but both are worth checking out for an exploration of the space where the divine and the monstrous commingle.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read With the Lights On: Out of print, obviously, this anthology is available at Half.com. I first read this book when I was about eight years old, and even remember somehow conning my teacher into letting my bring it to my hardcore Baptist school as a small child. It's as disturbing now as it was then: a couple find an arm on a lonely Mexican road. A voodoo doll carries a monkey's-paw-like curse. An explorer finds out the faerie folk are real...with a twist. Great stuff.

Spooky Tales: I own the only copy I've ever seen, but this anthology of ghost stories for children has a lot going for it, including stories that run the gamut from scary to funny, tales from some classic authors of the genre, and neat little illustrations, one of which has freaked me out since I was 12.

Happy Reading!