Spending the summer in Upstate New York at a private cottage on the shores of Lake Ontario sounds like a dream. But for Sam Payne, whose idyllic childhood summers spent at the family cabin complex were marred by a disturbing murder, returning there is her worst nightmare. And that’s before she learns that the family legend of a headless horseman haunting those shores is true. Kelly Armstrong delivers thrilling folk horror that somehow manages to be a perfect read for both summer and Halloween season with The Haunting of Paynes Hollow, which came out last fall. Continue reading Review of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow—Lakeside Horror
Tag: Sleepy Hollow
Literary Influences on The Nightmare Before Christmas
Halloween is just around the corner, and you know what that means—time for one of your bi-annual viewings of The Nightmare Before Christmas! Wow, I can’t believe we’ve gotten this far into October, and I haven’t even mentioned Halloween on the site. But The Gothic Library is kind of like Halloweentown—every day is Halloween, here! It was hard to think of how to do something different to commemorate my favorite holiday. But today I’ve decided to explore the literary roots in one of my favorite movies, Tim Burton’s spooky Halloween classic. Some of the allusions are obvious, like the one in the title, but as I began digging, I realized that The Nightmare Before Christmas has a much greater literary wealth than I would have imagined. Read on to learn about the five major literary influences I noticed in Jack Skellington’s story: Continue reading Literary Influences on The Nightmare Before Christmas