Hallowe’en Reads

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Mood: ‘Night On Bald Mountain’, ‘Danse Macabre’, Swan Theme from ‘Swan Lake’.

Eine Kleine Update

Much has been going on since my trip back to Alaska. So much so that I have had precious little time since returning to do much more than keep up with it all and do my best to take care of myself, as I really cannot afford to come down with any sickness. I do plan on writing about that Alaska trip, of course, but as the last few weekends I’ve been back in North Carolina have been decorating and preparing for Hallowe’en and now being firmly mentally ensconced in that holiday, and also treating my mind with the tricks of Hallowe’en reading, I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite Hallowe’en reads with any of you who care to know.

Onward into that good ol’ Hallowe’en feeling!

Hallowe’en Classics

There are those classic Hallowe’en movies we all love to watch every year, and whereas it is ‘easier’ to watch a movie that to read a book it is based upon, or at least takes much less time, there are still very few movies that can evince the feelings and emotions that the particular book can create. In that vein 🧛🏻 of thought, here are some of my personal favorite classics, of which at least one I try to revisit each year.


Presented in the form of journal entries and news articles, this has to be my Number One all time favorite! This was when vampires were terrifying beings, evil incarnate and (in my opinion) perfect! None of this sparkly or moping semi-hero crap. This is the Original Vampire, and I highly recommend a read (or listen, these days of audio books)!


All of the above are best to be read than to see any of the movies that have been made of them, as good as some of them arguably are. The Castle of Ortranto is likely mostly unknown to most of us, but the Gothic style and mystery of it, though not strictly Horror, is a fun read. I envy those who read it the first time. The Phantom of the Opera is maybe to least accurately portrayed in film of all of these, with just maybe Frankenstein beating it out. (There are several versions of Frankenstein that the author released and over the years acquiring many copies, I am sure I’ve read more than one, but nothing I can recall stands out in my remembrance, so any of them should still be a great read.) The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a surprisingly quick read, but still well full of excellent Hallowe’en creeps! Seriously, if you haven’t yet read these, I encourage you to do so. They scintillate!

The Edge of Insanity

Do you enjoy the kind of scary fiction that makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, even a bit queasy and closer to the edge of losing your mind, even? Have you ever thought maybe how you would react in any scary or frightening situation, maybe even something in your favorite scary movie? What if it was something so terrifying and utterly unbelievable that it broke your mind and made you insane? You have? Well, and there a few authors I can heartily recommend!
The less well-known of the two is Clark Ashton Smith.


Smith was a prolific writer, mostly to the pulp magazines of the early 20th Century. There is a fantasy element to many of his stories, but they mostly tend towards what might best be described as ‘fever dream’ reading. His descriptions are fascinating but bizarre, sometimes in the extreme. Different and bizarre worlds, sometimes breached by wizards, others by scientists or space ‘travelers’. He is a little hard to explain, unless you are familiar with one of those who influenced him…


Dunwich. Arkham. Innsmouth. Providence. The Dreamlands. Cthulhu. All of these places and things or beings and their dark histories came from the mind of H.P. Lovecraft. These were perhaps the first stories of their kind that the otherworldly evil of The Old Ones and their appearance actually would drive one insane. Can you even imagine something that could do that? Would you even want to?
Personally, I never try to read too much of Lovecraft and never too close to my bedtime or ai give myself dreams that are very uncomfortable or all the way into nightmares! Again, he was a master of descriptions, characterization and mood. He was pretty prolific in his writing as well, and it may be of interest to know that there are those who believe that the basis of what Lovecraft was waiting about was not really fiction….

Honorable Mentions

Before ‘The X-Files’ there was Jules de Grandin, an indefatigable investigator of the weird, unknown and supernatural, along with his assistant Dr. Trowbridge. What? You’ve not heard of them? 🤔


Seabury Quinn was another of those prolific pulp writers, and I mean prolific! There are five over-400-page collections of his Jules de Grandin stories, and as already stated the best descriptor of these tales would be X-Files-esque. There are hundreds, but each one is a pretty quick read.


This is a trilogy, obviously, of a small group of CIA operatives who, you may have guessed, look into the bizarre and supernatural. I will be honest and say I’ve only got into the first pages of the first book, but it was enough to push me to get the final volumes post haste!


If you enjoy a bit of humor injected into your spooky readings, then this series is for you. Inspector Hobbes is unhuman. He and Andy Caplet, a kind of a speaking Mr. Bean, are thrown together in the first book of this series (called Unhuman), there are all kinds of ghosts, ghouls and vampires in the unknown underbelly of London, and Inspector Hobbes sometimes needs to…educate Mr. Caplet on the etiquette thereof, with humorous results and with an excellent humorous turn of phrase by Mr. Martin throughout.

Presently Reading…

Things, as I have written above, have been pretty hectic, and so my reading time has been greatly curtailed this season. I have eschewed many of my traditional reads and just chosen two titles two devour this go-round, though I may fit a few more in before Thanksgiving.

This first of these is


As you might see looking at this original cover, this is a story that opines what would happen if Dracula was never defeated? Mr. Newman has an incredible grasp of history, of literary and historical figures of the time and seamlessly fits it all together in a fascinating tale. I am perhaps 100 pages into it and have already planned on acquiring the other titles in the series, of which there are several.

The second is


Peter Levenda is mostly an investigator into secret societies and so forth and has written many non-fiction books on the subjects. This is his first fictional novel and deals with a government conspiracy of which H.P. Lovecraft is a part. This is as far as I have gotten in the book so far, but once again it has tickles my fanciful brain enough already that the two follow up novels are on my ‘to buy’ list!

That One Book…

There is one book that has become a tradition for me for the month of October.


This book is in the form of a day-by-day diary for each October day, ‘written’ by the dog Snuff. Every decade that a full moon occurs on Hallowe’en, there is a group of Openers that attempt to open the gates to the realms of the Great Old Ones, and they are opposed by a group of Closers who try to stop them. This book is full of characters out of history and literature, many never referred to by actual name, such as ‘Jack’, ‘The Count’, ‘the Great Detective’ and ‘Mad Monk’.

This year, I am listening on Audible, but I listen to each day on that day of the calendar and I have done this almost every October since the release of the book.

Yep, I recommend it, even if you’ll need to do a bit of reading to catch up! 🎃

Ulalume: A Ballad

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
Here once, through an alley Titanic,
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll—
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole—
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.
Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
Our memories were treacherous and sere—
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year—
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber—
(Though once we had journeyed down here)—
We remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn—
As the star-dials hinted of morn—
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn—
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.
And I said—"She is warmer than Dian:
She rolls through an ether of sighs—
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies—
To the Lethean peace of the skies—
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes—
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."
But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust—
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:—
Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly!—let us fly!—for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings till they trailed in the dust—
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust—
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.
I replied—"This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendor is beaming
With Hope and in Beauty to-night:—
See!—it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright—
We safely may trust to a gleaming
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom—
And conquered her scruples and gloom:
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb—
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said—"What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume—
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"
Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crispèd and sere—
As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried—"It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed—I journeyed down here—
That I brought a dread burden down here—
On this night of all nights in the year,
Oh, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber—
This misty mid region of Weir—
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber—
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
Said we, then—the two, then—"Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls—
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—
To bar up our way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds—
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds—
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
From the limbo of lunary souls—
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the Hell of the planetary souls?"

I hope all are doing well and I bid you peace!

libris:
These are great suggestions to get into the spirit of the season!  I'll have to check out Inspector Hobbes, that sort of book is right up my alley!
bradmax:
@libris Glad to be of some small literary assistance! 🙂🎃

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