I thought I would post some oldies but ghoulies books suited for Halloween. Besides Dracula and Frankenstein, these are some of my favorites or books/movies that I have read and or seen or want to read and or see.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
About: " First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own."
There is also a 1963 movie adaptation that is pretty scary!
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe
About: The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry."
There are several movie adaptations of some of these stories. Vincent Price is the main character in several of them. He is always good in scary movies.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
About:
"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. "
There was a 1974 television adaptation that I saw. Pretty creepy. There are two movie versions also; 1999 and 2009.
Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot #39) by Agatha Christi
About: "A teenage murder witness is drowned in a tub of apples... At a Hallowe'en party, Joyce—a hostile thirteen-year-old—boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the 'evil presence'. But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double-murderer.."
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
About: " A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two inquisitive boys standing precariously on the brink of adulthood will soon discover the secret of the satanic raree-show's smoke, mazes, and mirrors, as they learn all too well the heavy cost of wishes - and the stuff of nightmare. "
There was a 1983 movie adaptation. The title even sounds creepy. I have heard of this but not read it or seen it. There may be a reason.
Ray Bradbury also wrote several Alfred Hitchcock and Suspense television episodes, (both favorites of mine) and had his own show, The Ray Bradbury Theatre.
The House with a Clock in It's Walls by John Bellairs
About: Orphaned Lewis Barnavelt comes to live with his Uncle Jonathan and quickly learns that both his uncle and his next-door neighbor are witches on a quest to discover the terrifying clock ticking within the walls of Jonathan's house. Can the three of them save the world from certain destruction?"
This was published in 1973 and just recently a movie was made and is out in theatres. This is also listed as a YA book so would be good for kids. I do want to see the movie.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
About: "Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps.”
Well, I don't know about all that, but basically Dorian Gray has a portrait painted of him and makes a deal with the devil for eternal youth. As long as nothing happens to the portrait, Dorian remains ageless. ( I never was a fan of dissecting books and looking for hidden meaning. Sorry. I read for the story.) I read this book in high school, and found it spooky. There is also an excellent movie adaptation from 1945. Hurd Hatfield plays Dorian Gray. Other cast members that you may be more familiar with are Donna Reed, Angela Lansbury (Murder She Wrote), and Peter Lawford. Yes I love old movies. I have seen this several times.
Hell House by Richard Matheson
About: " Can any soul survive? Regarded as the Mount Everest of haunted houses, Belasco House has witnessed scenes of almost unimaginable horror and depravity. Two previous expeditions to investigate its secrets met with disaster, the participants destroyed by murder, suicide or insanity. Now a new investigation has been mounted - four strangers, each with his or her own reason for daring the unknown torments and temptations of the mansion."
This is pretty creepy. I read the book, again as a teenager, and have seen the movie (1973) many times.
The Legend of Sleep Hollow by Washington Irving
About: " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a short story by Washington Irving contained in his collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., written while he was living in Birmingham, England, and first published in 1820. With Irving's companion piece "Rip Van Winkle", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is among the earliest American fiction still read today.
The story is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a lanky schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, only daughter of a wealthy farmer. As Crane leaves a party at the Van Tassel home on an autumn night, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who lost his head to a cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head." Crane disappears from town, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones, who was "to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related".
There are several movie adaptations of this book. A 1949 Disney adaptation, 1979 with Jeff Goldblum and Dick Butkus (really?), and 1999 with Johnny Depp.
Last but not least...
It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown by Charles M. Schulz.
About: "Adapted for the first time since the late 1960s, this 35th anniversary tie-in to the Peanuts' classic television special features Linus giving up trick-or-treating on Halloween to await the arrival of the Great Pumpkin in the pumpkin patch."
This is shown on television every October and I watch it every year. I love it. :)
Happy Halloween!
OK, now it's changed and I can comment - ha! Did you know that there is a new Netflix adaptation of the Shirley Jackson book? Think it just came out today. I'm thinking about watching it.
ReplyDeleteOh I will check that out. We usually watch all those old spooky movies the week of Halloween. Thanks!
ReplyDelete