Childhood frights

As you know, I have a countdown to Halloween on this blog, but this year I decided to have one, albeit not as regular, on Facebook as well. So as no Halloween season would be completed without it, I decided to plug the ghost stories of M.R. James, accompanied with this picture of the copy I have of his work. One of my friends (I won't name her but she reads this blog) asked me if these were the bedtime stories I read for my newborn son. I replied: "No, he's a bit young for that and his mother would not allow me. I'll wait until he is five or something." I think this deserves to be a new great unknown line. Because albeit I don't intend to tell him such horror stories that young, I know children love to have a good fright for fun. In spite of an early fascination for horror stories, I only managed to discover them when I was a teenager as my own mother could not forbid me to read them anymore. I only found out the likes of M.R. James as an adult and I do think I missed something I could have discovered before. So I do not intend to be overly protective with my son regarding this, if he shares the same fascination I had.