September has slipped into October, leaves are beginning to change \u2013\u2013 even as the Island has experienced a dazzling streak of weather, keeping summer feelings stirring in all of this. October is one long month leading to its end, Halloween, the holy festival for witches and heathens, a night when things stir and somewhere may be witches stirring mischief as they churn their potions: \u201cDouble, double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble\u201d (Macbeth).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been causing me to think of books that scare us, books looking into the dark and scary corners of the universe, and there have always been scary nooks and crannies to frighten us. Pliny the Younger wrote a ghost story set in Athens during the height of the Roman Empire. Grimm\u2019s fairy tales were, well, grim.<\/p>\n
Mary Shelley gave a twist to terror with Frankenstein playing god; hubris and torment mixed together in a tragic tale still haunting more than two centuries later, inspiring multiple film versions. A new one is just out, with Jacob Elordi offering a new interpretation of Frankenstein\u2019s creation. You can find a copy in our Banned Books section. Yup, it\u2019s banned in places.<\/p>\n
Vlad the Impaler, Romania\u2019s dark prince of gruesome endings for his subjects (King Charles III is a distant descendant), was the inspiration for Bram Stoker\u2019s \u201cDracula,\u201d still a darn good read. Want something a bit more modern in your literary desire for things vampiric? Try Ann Rice\u2019s \u201cInterview with the Vampire\u201d and its many, many children.<\/p>\n
Edgar Allen Poe still thrills us all these years later with his stories, like \u201cThe Masque of the Red Death\u201d (my personal favorite), \u201cThe Tell-Tale Heart,\u201d and \u201cThe Fall of the House of Usher.\u201d He\u2019s perfect for a stormy October night when the wind howls in off the water.<\/p>\n
Robert Louis Stevenson gave us \u201cTreasure Island\u201d; he also gave us \u201cDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,\u201d a cautionary terror tale if ever there was one.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The modern age has given us so many authors of great stories of the dark corners. Stephen King leaps to mind with stories that frighten me. If you like being scared: \u201cPet Sematary.\u201d The book, not the film. Or, now that school is back in session, the terrifying \u201cCarrie.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you are looking for something dark and claustrophobic, \u201cThe Haunting of Hill House\u201d by Shirley Jackson. The house wants \u2026<\/p>\n
Stephen Graham Jones is a noted contemporary writer whose books like \u201cThe Only Good Indians\u201d and \u201cThe Buffalo Hunter Hunter\u201d have never sold as well at Edgartown Books as his talent suggests they would. His is a unique voice, formed by his heritage, shaping tales to terrorize. A Native American, a winner of the Bram Stoker Award, Jones writes books that often contain characters who are outsiders, like the half-Indian Jade in \u201cMy Heart Is a Chainsaw.\u201d Jade\u2019s a movie fanatic; events in her gentrifying town mirror her favorite slasher films. No one will listen.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Toni Morrison, one of the literary giants of our time, wrote \u201cBeloved,\u201d a ghost story filled with the hauntings of actions done, regretted, shadows returning and leaving. Also found in our Banned Books section.<\/p>\n
We yearn to understand what we do not understand. Tarot cards have sold well in the bookstore ever since I\u2019ve been here. The cards come with answers to questions we have, yearning to know the unknowable, a thirst probably going back as far as humans do.<\/p>\n
A book for October might be Grady Hendrix\u2019s \u201cWitchcraft for Wayward Girls,\u201d set in a home for unwed mothers, who are ruled with an iron fist. A book of magic appears; things take a turn.<\/p>\n
Want to know a little about local hauntings? Pick up a copy of Tom Dresser\u2019s \u201cGhosts of Martha\u2019s Vineyard\u201d and discover local spots with a reputation for ghostly events, like the Newes from America or the occasional spectral event at the Christopher. And there\u2019s Holly Nadler\u2019s \u201cHaunted Island.\u201d The Vineyard has a good number of ghosts per square mile, it seems.<\/p>\n
We like to be scared; it\u2019s why we crack the covers of these books. And there\u2019s no shortage of them. October is just the month to pick one and curl up with it as the days get shorter and the wind gets stronger, sweeping the falling leaves this way and that, whispering to us: \u201cSomething wicked this way comes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"September has slipped into October, leaves are beginning to change \u2013\u2013 even as the Island has experienced a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":["post-232762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-books","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}