Many people think of Halloween as a holiday for children–replete with candy and colorful costumes, cartoonish ghouls and goblins adorning storefronts and suburban lawns. And to an extent, this is true. Others see Halloween as a canvas on which to paint their blood-soaked nightmares and dark fantasies, and again, to a certain extent, they are correct as well. Halloween is often celebrated at opposite extremes, of wholesomeness and of abject terror. But some, like yours truly, prefer to chart a middle course. We enjoy a good chill down our spines, but we prefer the fear of the mind rather than of the viscera. For us, who would rather curl up with a heart-pounding tale of the macabre than navigate a labyrinth of smoke machines and rubber masks, I humbly present your Halloween reading list. These five stories are sure to chill you to your very soul. If you haven’t read any of these classics, there is no better time than the Halloween season.
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
An enduring classic of the Gothic Horror genre, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is also considered by some to be among the very first science fiction novels. Unlike other Gothic Horrors, it eschews references to the supernatural and focuses only on the wonders and terrors wrought by contemporary advances in science. This is arguably one of Frankenstein’s greatest strengths as a novel, as it allows Shelley to explore the dicey ethical questions surrounding technological progress–particularly the question of whether a man is fit to play God.
For those who have somehow managed to evade any knowledge of this pillar of the Western canon, allow me to offer a brief synopsis. Victor Frankenstein is a scientist who becomes secretly fascinated with harnessing the power of science to produce wonders. He discovers a technique to animate lifeless tissue and decides to take on the ultimate challenge of creating a (more or less) human life. The details of how exactly he builds the creature are left obscure, although the popular interpretation is that he pieced the creature together out of cadaver parts. Though his experiment is a success, he is immediately horrified by his creation and flees at the sight of it. His unnamed monster, spurned by the only individual in the world who could possibly love or understand him, pursues him to the ends of the earth, slaughtering his friends and loved ones as a means of revenge. However, upon finally coming across the lifeless body of his creator in the North Pole, the Creature experiences a profound sense of loss and isolation, and sets himself adrift on a funeral pyre, so that the world will no longer be plagued by his wretched existence.
Fascinatingly, the Creature (despite his heinous crimes) is ultimately portrayed in a more sympathetic light than Victor Frankenstein himself. The Creature is thoughtful and well-spoken and wishes only for Frankenstein to provide him with the love that he feels all beings are due to their creator. Frankenstein, meanwhile, is shown as weak-willed and irresponsible, having made the decision to create a life out of mere curiosity, and without being prepared to do it justice in the world. Thus, the true horror of Frankenstein is not the monster without, but the monster within.
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker’s horror classic Dracula is arguably the forerunner to all modern vampire literature. Though Stoker did not create the myth of the vampire, the elements of the vampire mythos (some borrowed, some invented) that he evokes in this stirring novel have become the foundation for the vast majority of vampire lore since its publication. In the story, the suave and eccentric Count Dracula has decided to move from his remote castle in Transylvania to be among the “teeming millions” in London. He employs the services of an English lawyer named Jonathan Harker to help settle the affairs of his estate, but Harker soon becomes suspicious of his strange behavior. He and his friends enlist the help of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, who identifies Dracula as an old and powerful vampire. Together, they work to systematically destroy all of Dracula’s places of rest in England, before eventually pursuing him back to his original castle and slaying him for good. This is accomplished just in time to save Harker’s bride, Mina, who has been bitten by Dracula and is herself slowly transforming into a vampire.
The elements of the modern vampire mythos that Dracula has cemented in the cultural consciousness are almost too many to count. He can summon wolves on command and can transform himself into a wolf, bat, or mist at will. He is nocturnal, avoiding the sun and sleeping in a coffin of his own funeral earth during the day; he must be invited into a new place before he can enter it; he must be killed by a stake through the heart; he is weakened by crucifixes or other holy relics, and he has the ability to turn humans into vampires by feeding off them. Because of this, Dracula is an essential read for any fan of the vampire genre.
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man is perhaps one of the darkest stories penned by H.G. Wells during his long and prolific career. It follows the final days of Dr. Griffin, an optical scientist who has discovered a process to change the refractive index of all materials to that of the surrounding air, thus rendering them invisible. In a fit of misguided fervor, Griffin tries this incredibly painful process out on himself, only to discover that the difficulties of being invisible outweigh the benefits he had imagined. Griffin, who was an amoral individual at the best of times, is now forced by desperation into even more dire measures in pursuit of his basic necessities. He steals, assaults, threatens, commits arson, and even attempts to kill several people while attempting to secure the materials necessary for his research to make himself visible again. Perhaps most terrifying of all, when he realizes that he is unlikely to ever achieve that goal, he contrives to go on a “Reign of Terror” against all of England, using his invisibility to deal swift, unsuspecting death indiscriminately to the nation’s inhabitants. The end of the story sees his shot, his frail body slowly becoming visible again as the life drains from him.
The Invisible Man is a particularly hair-raising story because it paints a picture of a man driven mad by power and desperation. Tempted by the alluring prospect of traveling unseen through everyday life, Griffin makes a hasty decision to make himself a guinea pig for his own experiments and is then driven to terrible lengths in his quest to cope with his mistake. It serves as a chilling parable of the old truism, “be careful what you wish for.”
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
– Robert Louis Stevenson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde is the quintessential Victorian horror story. An upstanding and respectable scientist, Dr. Henry Jekyll, whose inner battle with his own odd predilections drove him to seek a scientific way of separating the good and evil sides of his nature. He produced a serum, which he discovered, upon taking it, would transform him into an entirely new individual, free from all burden of conscience. This new person, whom he named Edward Hyde, was a small, ugly man, in keeping with the Victorian belief that physical stature and appearance are linked with one’s moral character. As Hyde, Dr. Jekyll is free to indulge the worse side of his nature, without worrying about the consequences ever affecting the reputation of Dr. Jekyll. However, to his dismay, he soon found that he was changing into Mr. Hyde involuntarily, and with increasing frequency. One night, as Hyde, he murders a Member of Parliament with a heavy cane and is now slated to be hanged if he is ever apprehended. Dr. Jekyll feverishly attempts to re-create the original serum, hoping that it will forever subdue Mr. Hyde within him, but deduces to his horror that the original batch of materials was likely contaminated with trace amounts of some vital other chemicals, the identity of which he has no way of discovering. Faced with the likely prospect that he will soon become Mr. Hyde permanently, he writes his confession and takes his own life in his study.
As terrifying as this tale is, it was even more frightful to the Victorian mindset. Victorians had very strict ideas of proper conduct in polite society, which led the society as a whole into a crisis of public appearance versus private desires. Dr. Jekyll began life as an average, upstanding citizen, with ostensibly no more moral quirks than the next man, but whose stature in an upstanding profession caused him to channel these quirks with disastrous results. It also touches upon the Victorian anxiety about scientific progress–science, creator and destroyer both, whose power isn’t fully understood, and whose innovations exist apart from traditional understandings of morality. Like Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde illustrates the theme that Mankind is too weak to hold the reins of the beast upon whose back we ride.
Macbeth – William Shakespeare
Certainly one of William Shakespeare’s most grim and sinister plays, Macbeth holds such an eerie power over readers that, in theatre circles, it is considered bad luck to even speak its name. Thespians refer to it only as “The Scottish Play.” It is a dark tale of power and prophecy, of ambition and murder, of madness and vengeance. The eponymous Macbeth, the Thane of a local Scottish province, encounters three witches, who hail him as the future King of Scotland. After seeing another of their predictions come true, he immediately begins to harbor ambitions for the throne. He tells his wife, Lady Macbeth, who ridicules him for his indecision, and hatches a plan to get the king’s guards drunk, murder the King, and frame the guards for the murder. This is accomplished, but the villainous pair soon find that they have only taken their first steps down a long and bloody road–those who have a legitimate claim to the throne, as well as those who are suspicious of Macbeth, must now die also. Throughout this horrifying ordeal, Lady Macbeth’s nerves begin to crack: where she was once cold-blooded and ambitious, she begins to become fearful, tormented by dreams of bloodstains that she cannot wash off, and confessing her crimes in her sleep. Macbeth is uneasy too and consults the witches once more. They assure him that “no man borne of woman” will be able to harm him, which he takes as proof of his invincibility. The forces of his enemies rally against him, and he encounters his once-ally, Macduff. He boasts of the witches’ prophecy to Macduff, who reveals that he was born via Cesarean section, and thus was not “borne of woman.” Macbeth realizes too late that he has misinterpreted the witches’ words, and is summarily beheaded by Macduff.
Macbeth is, probably without question, Shakespeare’s creepiest and most ominous play. The three witches, who represent the inexorable forces of Fate, toy with Macbeth callously, deliberately leading him down the path to ruin. His wife, who cajoles him into committing regicide, cannot herself stand the guilt of what they have done, and both she and Macbeth are prey to gruesome hallucinations. And of course, who can forget Macbeth’s most haunting soliloquy on the callous nature of life and death:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
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