Frightful Fall Reads: Old-School Classics

In the weeks leading up to Halloween, I thought it would be fun to recommend some of my favorite scary stories to read, and why I find them creepy. Today features some old-school classics.

1. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898)

• Ghosts
• Creepy children
• Practically deserted large old house in the middle of nowhere
• Unreliable narrator
• Psychological uncertainty

2-3. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818); Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

• Two of the creepiest, most iconic monsters in literary history
• Murder and mayhem
• Lots of lurking in the shadows
• Psychological fear
• Being stitched from the dead/rising from the dead
• Preying on innocents

4. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)

• Supernatural forces
• Twisted immortality with a price
• Creepy inanimate object

5. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)

• Murder and mayhem
• A haunting you can't escape from-not even in your own home
• The past never truly being behind you
• Psychological torture

6. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)

• Mysterious, eerie setting
• Isolated old house
• Supernatural possibilities
• Murder and mayhem
• The potential of a long-reaching curse
• Evil doings from the past
• Possible monstrous creature
• Overhanging threat of evil