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. Continue reading #AScareADay 2025 Reading Challenge Reflections
Category: Short story
Classics: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James
M. R. James is widely considered the father of the modern ghost story. He was a medievalist scholar and a provost at Cambridge and Eton College in the early twentieth century. He made a hobby out of writing Christmas ghost stories for his students and colleagues and eventually began to publish these stories in collections. Much of his short fiction reflects his academic background and his interest in archaeology and medieval art, architecture, and literature. A few weeks ago, Romancing the Gothic celebrated the hundredth anniversary of his final short story collection A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories with an online conference dedicated to M. R. James, his contemporaries, and the ghost story genre. Leading up to this conference, I decided to read as many of James’s ghost stories as I could. I made it through his first two collections: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) and More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911). If you love a good ghost story, you can’t go wrong with picking up some M. R. James. Continue reading Classics: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James
Review of The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Sixteen
Well, we’re nearly halfway through 2025, but I’ve just finished reading Ellen Datlow’s 2024 collection of the best horror short stories published in 2023, or in other words: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Sixteen. Ellen Datlow is one of the most celebrated editors and anthologists in the horror genre, and I have particularly enjoyed her themed horror anthologies like Haunted Nights and The Devil and the Deep. Short story anthologies are a wonderful way to discover new writers and plumb the diversity of a given subject or genre. But “best of the year” anthologies have the added benefit of highlighting particular trends or preoccupations that emerge in any particular year. The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Sixteen, is the perfect example of this. Continue reading Review of The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Sixteen
Review of The House of Silence—E. Nesbit’s Ghost Stories
I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that I love a good ghost story. Lately, I have especially been enjoying discovering the works of many of the talented female authors who flourished during the golden age of ghost stories but have since gone largely unrecognized. Which is why I was devastated to learn that the small publisher who introduced me to many of these authors will be shutting their doors: Handheld Press, the small UK house who brought us Women’s Weird volumes I and II, The Outcast and the Rite, From the Abyss, The Unknown, Strange Relics, and so much more have announced that they are done publishing as of this summer. But they made sure to go out with a bang. One of their last titles was The House of Silence: Ghost Stories 1887–1920 by E. Nesbit, with an introduction by Melissa Edmundson, which came out in May. Nesbit’s stories were among my favorites that I first encountered in Women’s Weird and in my sporadic reading since, so I was thrilled when Handheld announced they’d be doing an entire collection of her ghost stories. And I was not disappointed! Continue reading Review of The House of Silence—E. Nesbit’s Ghost Stories
The Hypnotic Tales of Rafael Sabatini Review
I have a deep appreciation for literary scholars who aim to draw once-popular but now obscure authors out of the shadows and back into the light for a new generation of readers to discover! Donald K. Hartman does just this with The Hypnotic Tales of Rafael Sabatini, which came out last year. This is the third installment in Hartman’s series of books that highlight the role of hypnotism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century horror, mystery, and weird fiction. I have previously reviewed Death by Suggestion and The Hypno-Ripper, and I can now say I fully share Hartman’s fascination (if you’ll excuse the pun) with this intriguing microgenre. In this latest book, Hartman collects two short novelettes by the author Rafael Sabatini along with some notes about the cultural context in which they were written. Continue reading The Hypnotic Tales of Rafael Sabatini Review
Review of Sunless Solstice—Christmas Ghost Stories
As my various posts over the years about Christmas ghost stories might suggest, I’m on a bit of a mission to bring this spooky seasonal activity back into fashion. But I’m not alone in my quest! The British Library has started publishing annual collections of haunting Christmas tales as part of their Tales of the Weird series. Sunless Solstice: Strange Christmas Tales for the Longest Nights, edited by Lucy Evans and Tanya Kirk, is the third such collection, released in December 2022. If you, like me, would like to start spending your Christmases telling scary stories around a fire, I cannot recommend these collections enough! Continue reading Review of Sunless Solstice—Christmas Ghost Stories
Gothic Gambles
Gambling is as pervasive in the world of Gothic literature as it is in the real world. Gothic novels are full of dissolute villains whose dastardly dealings at the card table are just one facet of their poor behavior and hapless heroes who find themselves in dire straits after running up debts. But today I want to highlight a few pieces of short fiction with gambling at their center. These tales warn not just of the ordinary dangers like debt and addiction, but also of potential supernatural consequences for those who gamble excessively or unwisely.
Christmas Ghost Stories, Part 3
’Tis the season … for Christmas ghost stories! In recent years, I’ve been all about bringing back the classic tradition of livening up the winter months by sharing tales of terror. After all, encounters with the spirit world are the perfect way to get into the Christmas spirit! You can see some of the seasonally spooky tales I’ve previously recommended here and here. But if those aren’t enough for you, here’s a third round of Christmas ghost stories:
Review of Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror
Jordan Peele is one of my absolute favorite directors and I think his horror films are some of the cleverest and most thoughtful contributions to the horror genre in recent years. So when I saw his name on an anthology of short horror fiction, I knew I needed to pick it up. Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams, came out last month, right on the heels of another great horror anthology centering marginalized voices: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology. Judging by the quality of tales in these two collections, this diversity of voices is definitely here to stay in the horror genre! Continue reading Review of Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror
Review of Never Whistle at Night—Indiginous Horror
From “wendigos” to “Indian burial grounds,” the folklore and tragic history of North America’s indigenous populations has frequently been mined for inspiration and twisted to suit the purposes of horror authors writing outside of their own cultures. In recent years, however, we’ve seen a real rise in the number of indigenous voices within the horror scene telling their own stories. A new collection of short horror stories celebrates this surge of Native American writers: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. This anthology, which contains twenty-six stories plus a foreword by Stephen Graham Jones, came out just last week, in plenty of time for spooky season. Continue reading Review of Never Whistle at Night—Indiginous Horror