Hi, it’s me. The Wolfman.
Why did I pick the Wolfman as my Halloween alter-ego? I have no idea, but I agree: Frankenstein’s monster and Count Dracula were much cooler.
As for book monsters? Now we’re getting somewhere! It’s difficult to pick five horror novels and five horror short stories, but it’s Halloween—my favorite day of the year—and I had to give it a shot. So here it is: the not-so-definitive list of the Wolfman’s favorite horror novels and short stories.
- The Travelling Vampire Show by Richard Laymon
- ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
- Adams Fall by Sean Desmond
Richard Laymon’s award-winning 2000 novel follows three sixteen-year-olds on one August day in 1963, when the adults-only Travelling Vampire Show comes to town. Like a cross between Stephen King’s “The Body” and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, Laymon’s novel is memorable for its nostalgic, dreadful atmosphere and blackened humor. Rather than relying on monsters and violence, The Travelling Vampire Show instead focuses on the three main characters and takes otherwise-normal situations and makes them bizarre enough to sustain suspense throughout its pages. This is a beautifully-written and horrifying book that will make you long for those summer days you spent as an insecure teenager.
Readers often point to The Shining as being Stephen King’s most frightening book, but I think that honor goes to ‘Salem’s Lot. Though it’s basically a novelized version of those countless horror comics King undoubtedly grew up on, it’s enjoyable because it doesn’t try to be anything more than pure, unadulterated horror, complete with violence, vampires, and a very spooky haunted house. King has always been at his best when he has a large cast of characters to work with and ‘Salem’s Lot shows why.
With books like The October Country and From the Dust Returned, Ray Bradbury has become Halloween’s unofficial laureate. Unforgettable characters like Jim Nightshade, William Halloway, and Mr. Dark make Something Wicked This Way Comes a veritable fountain of youth. It’s a wonderful reminder of how fascinating Halloween really is.
Though it’s more popular as the Roman Polanski movie of the same name, Ira Levin’s second novel was one of the first contemporary horror novels to become a bestseller. Like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Rosemary’s Baby takes age-old superstition—in this case, witchcraft—and plants it firmly in modern times. The book’s blasphemous overtones and religious themes paved the way for classics like William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist.
It’s difficult to sustain a ghost story over the course of an entire novel, but Sean Desmond manages to pull it off with Adams Fall. I was pretty jaded as a horror fan by the time I encountered this book and was pleasantly spooked by its creepy Gothic atmosphere. Like Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Adams Fall relies on psychology and ambiguity to disturb readers—it’s not entirely clear if the narrator was really being haunted or if he was just suffering guilt over his roommate’s suicide. Desmond does a wonderful job chronicling one Harvard senior’s life as it slowly falls apart.
I’ve always thought that some of the best horror comes in the form of the short story. Who can forget authors like Ambrose Bierce and Charles Dickens? But picking five of my favorite short stories was considerably more difficult than picking five horror novels; like most lists, it’s more a matter of having too much to choose from.
- “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs
- “The Dunwich Horror” by H.P. Lovecraft
- “The Man in the Black Suit” by Stephen King
- “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe
- “The Lost Ghost” by Mary Wilkins
I first read this story in eighth grade and it’s always been my favorite horror short story. This one has all the ingredients that make horror fun to read: great characters, a dollop of mystery, and a shocking ending that set the standard for all horror stories to follow. This is the story that started my decade-long obsession with all things horror.
H.P. Lovecraft is probably the best of the bad writers from the pulp era, and “The Dunwich Horror” solidifies his reputation for being an unclassifiable author. (What exactly did he write? Horror? Science fiction?) There’s a certain mystery that comes with reading a Lovecraft story: despite the fantastic elements that go along with his writing, it’s not too difficult to imagine that perhaps he had it right all along. Sure, a lot of his fiction is garbage, but that’s part of the author’s appeal.
Like Lovecraft, “The Man in the Black Suit” is hard to classify—it’s not horror in the strictest sense—but it did mark a turning point in Stephen King’s career: he won the prestigious O. Henry award for this story. Call it literary horror, but with “The Man in the Black Suit”—which he would later follow with Bag of Bones—King began to be taken seriously as a writer. He’s not going anywhere and now with Lisey’s Story, he’s proving that he just gets better with age.
There’s not much to say about Edgar Allan Poe that hasn’t already been said; he exemplifies the American Gothic tradition. Any one of his short stories would be perfect for Halloween (and no Halloween would be complete without one), but “The Tell-Tale Heart” is my favorite of Poe’s fiction. You can’t go wrong with “The Fall of the House of Usher” or “The Pit and the Pendulum,” either.
I love ghost stories and “The Lost Ghost” is one of the spookiest I’ve ever read. While nothing particularly malevolent happens in this story—the little girl is actually helpful—Wilkins takes the idea of a haunting and amplifies the creepiness considerably. Reading “The Lost Ghost” is like reading three stories in one, but Wilkins deftly juggles all the elements to make a very atmospheric whole.
As for my favorite movie monster? I’m going to have to go with Max Schreck’s Graf Orlok from Nosferatu. Seriously: has there ever been a creepier vampire than that guy?
Happy Halloween!
Add comment October 31, 2006