Here is the reading of a poem by Edith Wharton, set on Halloween night. Not to be confused with a short story of the same writer, with the same name. which I have blogged about here. Nevertheless, the poem is also a sort of ghost story (a ghost poem?) and it is quite eerie in its own right, if not a tad scary. Tell me if you shiver listening to it.
This is my fourth (fourth!) countdown to Halloween post today, but I am feeling inspired. An there is so little time left until my favourite holiday and so much to read, watch, blog about and overall enjoy. So I wanted to recommend a ghost story for you, which I mentioned before here. If you like classic ghost stories and ghost stories that are perfectly seasonal, I suggest you spend some time tonight to read Kerfol by Edith Wharton. It's set in autumn and it is full of atmosphere. It aslo shows that to create unease and fear, you don't need walking corpses. And you'll see there that ghosts can take many forms, even the most inconspicuous.
For
today's countdown to Halloween's post, another reading suggestion: The Oxford Book of
English Ghost Stories. Maybe my favourite anthology, although this may be a case of first love: this was the very first anthology of ghost stories I ever bought, back in 2006, before this blog, to get myself into a Halloween mood. It made me
discover so many authors: M.R. James, E. Nesbit, Edith Wharton, Algernon Blackwood, to name a few. It covers two centuries of
ghost stories, so its a great book for a crash course in ghostly
fiction. It has been for me anyway. Obviously, it has a great deal of classics. And since many stories
are set during Christmastime (as traditionally this is when ghost
stories were published), you can carry on reading it after Halloween.
Today’s countdown to Halloween reading suggestion: The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. Wharton was an American novelist who wrote in the
tradition of English ghost stories (one of the reasons why she is often
found in anthologies of classic ghost stories). If my previous recommendation was all modern blood and gore in (mostly) modern settings, this one is all about
subtlety: the ghosts are but shadows and faint presence at the corner of
the eye. It can be nevertheless very scary in an eerie way. Many of the
stories being set during autumn, they
are all the more fitting for an Halloween read. But the relevance does
not stop there: you will find All Souls (which I recommended back in 2016), a story that is actually set on Halloween,
although the day is not named. It’s about a witch gathering which we do
not see, but which deprives a wealthy woman of her staff and leaves her
alone in her secluded house. It might be purely coincidental, but I
think you can find echoes of Wharton‘s All Souls in modern stories such
as The Haunting of Hill House and The Shining. But they are all worth reading.
For today's countdown to Halloween post, I thought I would plug a particularly fitting ghost story for you to read and re-read in the coming weeks. I blogged before about the ghost stories of Edith Wharton, which I enjoy for many reasons, among them the autumnal settings of many of these stories. Well, I finally finished reading this book and I discovered one particular story that is not only fitting autumn, but fitting Halloween itself. It is aptly named All Souls' and is mainly set on Halloween. Not to be confused with her poem of the same title. Unfortunately I have been unable to find it online so far, so you might have to purchase the book. Without giving too much away, All Souls' is about the dangerous and supernatural essence Halloween is meant to have, even though the holiday is never named. There are souls all right, and a good deal of witchcraft, maybe a haunted house, but interestingly enough it is the absence that creates the unease and finally the terror. There is very little, if any, blatant supernatural manifestations in All Souls'. This is typical with Edith Wharton, who wrote very subtle horror, with no gory effect or screaming monsters jumping at you. But the stillness and isolation of the setting in this time of year is enough to create one of the most efficient scary stories I read in a long while. So you must absolutely read it this month. You won't regret it.
This is tonight's countdown to Halloween post and I thought I would start with a reading suggestion. I am reading this book at the moment, the ghost stories of Edith Wharton. I am enjoying it quite a lot. She wrote very subtle ghost stories, where terror appears, but is not in your face as it is usually now with modern writers. I guess it is the old fashioned way, the horror that you perceive at the corner of your eyes. M.R. James was amazing at it, but even he used at some point its share of gore and violence. That said, she is a great atmospheric writer. And there is one thing that makes me appreciate her stories greatly: while many ghost stories written in her time were set during the Christmas season (a tradition that dates back from generations), her stories are so far set at least partially during autumn. And she really brings the season's menacing atmosphere. In Kerfol for instance, you have a line like this: "The grey-trunked trees sprang up straight to a great height and then interwove their pale-grey branches in a long tunnel through which the autumn light fell faintly." I love it. So that is my new reading recommendation.
The recent gloomy weather, which seems to have changed yesterday and today, made me think about Halloween and long for it. When summer does not seem to be showing up at all, one ends up longing for autumn. I am like this anyway. Because my mind was set on Halloween I thought it was the right time to beef up my library with horror stories. So I Gothic Short Stories, which is, well, an anthology of gothic short stories, as well as books of stories by Edith Nesbit and Edith Wharton. I am building up quite a nice personal collection, although I am far from a connoisseur yet. Which leads me to this post's topic: anthologies are often made of the same stories I will find somewhere else. This one is interesting, but many of the stories I have already read before, mainly in other anthologies. This is why I decided to buy the stories of Nesbit and Wharton. But many authors of horror, especially gothic horror, are now little known and rarely get published on their own. So I will have to keep on buying anthologies. Maybe one day I will become the editor of one.
