F. Marion Crawford for Halloween

For tonight's (third) countdown to Halloween post, a reading suggestion: the stories of F. Marion Crawford. One of my favourite, I must say, as Crawford is not shy of using gory effects and violence, but never to the detriment of atmosphere and suspense. It is never gratuitous. The one I first discovered is The Upper Berth, which is about a drowned corpse haunting the cabin of a ship, but you also have For the Blood is the Life, which is a classic vampire story and The Screaming Skull which is a ghost story about a... well, a skull that screams. And bites. And kills. Deliciously dark stuff. Now, I must confess, I haven't read The Witch of Prague yet. Because it's more magical realism and fantasy than proper horror, or so I have been told, and because I was kind of hoping to read it the city where it is set one day. We did discuss taking holiday there last year and before. That said, I might make it part of next year's countdown TBR, early in the season.

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.