What better way to spend October than reading thirty-one scary short stories and poems? Every year, Dr. Sam Hirst of Romancing the Gothic puts together a magnificent reading list for spooky season of short tales that span the breadth of Gothic literature. We read one story for each day of October and keep a running commentary going on BlueSky or the Site Formerly Known as Twitter using the #AScareADay hashtag—be sure to check it out to see some other folks’ perspectives on these stories! This is my fourth year in a row doing Romancing the Gothic’s #AScareADay reading challenge, and my third time reflecting on those readings in a blog post. Check out my past posts about the 2024 and 2023 reading challenges. Though occasionally a bit grueling on top of my other reading responsibilities, the #AScareADay reading challenge is one of my favorite times of year because it pushes me to discover new authors, to read critically and share my thoughts with others in a concise manner, and to stay connected to an international group of brilliant Gothic scholars and enthusiasts. This year’s challenge was no exception, and I had a great time! The selection of stories and poems was particularly well-balanced and almost entirely new to me. You can find the reading list here.
There was only one story on this year’s list that I had read before and surprisingly, it was one of the contemporary ones. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Nibedita Sen read her story “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnibar Island” aloud at local literary salons, not once but twice! I’m always happy to return to this unique tale, which brilliantly manages to craft a narrative while formatted like an academic bibliography. There were also quite a few familiar authors on this year’s reading list, with particular stories I’ve always meant to read. One was E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman,” which came up frequently when I was researching weird fiction. The experience of reading this one was a bit of a slog, and when discussing it online with others doing the reading challenge we agreed it might have been more enjoyable with a better translation. But I’m glad to now be able to say that I’ve read it and deepened my understanding of weird fiction in the process. I also read Clive Barker’s “The Midnight Meat Train” for the first time, which is such a classic tale of NYC horror that I find it regularly comes up in conversation—now I can join in! And while I discuss the Brontë sisters quite a lot on here, I had never read any of their poetry before. I really enjoyed reading Emily Brontë’s “And now the house dog stretched once more,” which explores a cozy domestic scene that slowly becomes unsettling. Lastly, I’ve been on a quest to read more Agatha Christie since I started working for a publisher of mystery fiction, but had somehow never encountered any of her short fiction. “The Mystery of the Blue Jar” was a solid short mystery with an amusing twist.
My favorite part of activities like this that involve reading a variety of works in quick succession is the unexpected parallels you can discover. We found watery landscapes to be an unintentional recurring theme throughout the reading challenge, and two stories in particular—Everill Worrell’s “The Canal” and Elizabeth Jane Howard’s “Three Miles Up”—seem to have the same moral: Be wary of mysterious, canal-dwelling women. But on a more serious note, putting “Three Miles Up” next to Hoffman’s “The Sandman” shows both stories critiquing men for over-valuing quietness and subservience in women. If you believe that women should be seen and not heard, you may be more vulnerable to quietly monstrous women… Another recurring motif, which shows up throughout Gothic literature, was characters who find they cannot trust their own senses or perception of reality. Two of the tales (I won’t say which, so as not to spoil them) feature plot twists in which one character pretends not to hear a voice that the other one hears in order to suggest madness or supernatural intervention. Lastly, reading two apocalyptic poems published a year apart—Lord Dunsany’s “Charon” (1915) and Conrad Aiken’s “The Vampire” (1916)—really highlighted the impact that the horrors of World War I had on these writers’ psyches.
If you missed this year’s reading challenge—not to worry! Just because October is over, doesn’t mean you can’t still read scary stories. You can still find the reading list here, and all of the stories and poems are available to read online for free. You can also belatedly participate in the online discussion using the #AScareADay hashtag, if you want to connect with other readers. And if you just want to assemble a TBR pile of short fiction to dip into every once in a while, be sure to check out the reading lists from 2024, 2023, and 2022, as well! Whether you read along in October or checked out the stories after the fact, let me know in the comments which ones were your favorites!