On the scary read program

Maybe I am getting ahead of myself, but it is now and has been since about mid-August or so my officious countdown to Halloween. Which means that I have started reading horror stories and as time goes by I will read more and more. As much as my status as a new daddy allows me, of course. This year, I have added to the reading program the stories of F. Marion Crawford. I recently bought this book with some (all?) of the supernatural stories he wrote. And no, I did not choose this book because of its cover (albeit what a great scary picture!). I discovered Crawford reading The Upper Berth in The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, which was one of my favourite of the anthology. I then read in another anthology For the Blood is The Life, a vampire story which confirmed my interest in Crawford's work. In both stories, the horror is not merely psychological: it has plenty of borderline gory elements that convey not only unease, but good old horror, if not terror. The evils in his stories can be as physically violent as they are malevolent. So I will read eagerly.