As the leaves continue to change colors, readers everywhere are settling in for the best season for books — autumn. More specifically, as the calendar creeps past mid-October and Halloween looms overhead, every cool breeze can send a chill down your spine, and every little movement in the corner of your eye could be a ghost story waiting to happen. It’s the perfect time to get cozy with a book and a pumpkin spice latte.
For many, it can be difficult to find the time to read because of all the fall festivities to plan and schoolwork to complete. However, there are plenty of short horror books to get you into the Halloween spirit — whether you’re an avid reader trying to get closer to your annual reading goal, a casual reader, or someone who wants to start reading more.
“We Have Always Lived in the Castle” by Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson has become undoubtedly associated with Halloween due to her variety of disturbing or supernatural stories. Many may know her through her short story “The Lottery,” which has found its way into many high school English classes but is far from her most iconic work.
“We Have Always Lived in the Castle” is longer than a short story but short enough to be a smooth read at 146 pages in Penguin Books’ most recent publication of the novel.
Here is how the book is summarized on Goodreads:
“Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.”
A copy of the book is available at OU Libraries. Additionally, if you’re interested in watching a television series adaptation of Jackson’s work, check out The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix.
“Carmilla” by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu
Although Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” has become an iconic figurehead of vampirism in literature and become the first character people think of when they think of vampirism, another literary bloodsucker predates Stoker’s novel by over 20 years — Sheridan le Fanu’s “Carmilla.”
Here is how Goodreads summarizes the novella, which sits at an accessible 108 pages:
“In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest – the beautiful Carmilla. So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion.
But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day… Predating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.”
The novella is available digitally through OU Libraries.
“The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James
Although Henry James is known for some of his longer works — “The Portrait of a Lady” and “The Bostonians,” to name a couple — his most famous is by far the shorter “The Turn of the Screw,” published in 1898.
The mass-market paperback edition of the novella sits at a mere 121 pages. Here’s how Goodreads summarizes its plot:
“A very young woman’s first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate… An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows — silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer.
“With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls. But worse — much worse — the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.”
If you like the story and want to think about it more — or would prefer something to watch instead of reading — check out The Haunting of Bly Manor on Netflix from the same creators of The Haunting of Hill House.
