Halloween is an ancient practice which stems back hundreds if not thousands of years. The most common consensus for who created Halloween is the Celtic people who originally named it Samhain (a Gaelic term pronounced sah-win). Originally people believed that during the fall (October) the earth would begin to die and thus the barrier between the spirit world and physical world would blur. To combat this they would dress in costumes, light bonfires, and carve faces into turnips to ward off evil spirits. During the late 1800’s the horror genre began to arise, giving birth to some of the most loved stories of today. Fast foreword to 2024, costumes have yet to cease, and pumpkins are the new turnip. Now, to end the spooky season here is a collection of short horror works to read.
1. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving
2. “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe
3. “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe
4. “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe
5. “The Signal Man” by Charles Dickens
6. “The Call of Cthulhu” by H.P Lovecraft
7. “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell
8. “The Monkeys Paw” by W.W Jacob’s
9. “Chickamauga” by Ambrose Bierce
“I’ve always thought that reading almost anything by Edgar Allen Poe during Halloween is just perfect,” said junior Kieran Walsh.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote and lived quite the life. He created 69 short stories and 48 stories over the course of his short 40 years of life. Although it was, for the most part, quite grim with an even more depressing ending that remains mostly a mystery since they found him semi-conscious wearing someone else’s clothing outside of a bar where he was then raced to the hospital to soon be pronounced dead, Poe’s stories have continued to resonate with fans of the genre more than 200 of years after his untimely death.
“I’ve never been too fond of scary stories, but a great writer who makes somewhat scary stories that I can stomach is Agatha Christie who wrote mysteries like And Then There Were None,” said senior Gianna Cusano.
Agatha Christie was a mystery writer who is famed for having her novels being chock to the brim filled with suspense and mystery. If there is any author who is effective for those who dislike being scared but still wants the thrill of a horror story, Christie’s books may be a good fit for them.
In closing, the shortest horror story ever written was created by Frederick Brown in 1948 and it reads, “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door…”
