Spooky Season 2026
Benson, E. F.- Ghost Stories (narrated by Mark Gatiss)
Due, Tananarive- The Reformatory
Gaskell, Elizabeth- Tales of Mystery and the Macabre
Movies:
Podcasts:
As always, I've been reading, watching, listening to scary stuff since September, and as usual, I can't believe that October has gone by so fast. The heat finally broke where I live, and we've had a couple of weeks of nice autumn weather, so it feels seasonable. I haven't scared myself as much as usual, but I've enjoyed myself.
I"m not going to list all the usual things that I've listed in past posts, because I'll put the bookstore link to my scary list and I'll link this post to past Halloween posts. So, on with the new.
I've been buying audiobooks on LibroFM for a few months now, and I found this book Ghost Stories by EF Benson and narrated by Mark Gatiss. It was just the right amount of spooky for me. Most of the stories had actual ghosts or something very close, and, no surprise, the reading by Gatiss was great. It's a short book, just over 5 hours, but it's a nice Halloween treat.
I've been meaning to read The Reformatory for awhile now, and since I got a galley of Mazywood, they were at the top of my list for this fall. I meant to write up a rating for Mazywood before it came out, but I've had alot of boring grown-up stuff going on and didn't get to it, but I'll do that now. I liked The Reformatory, and I could see why it was so popular when it came out, but the scares in it are mostly from suspense- and there's alot of that. But Mazywood has a proper monster. They are connected, but you can read either one you want first, I think. I had the idea that Mazywood was a sequel, and that's not quite so. It has two timelines: one is Mazelle, a child actor in early Hollywood who grows up to run a ski resort for Black people during segregation. Then the later timeline is her grandson who goes to the resort, which is closed up and has been recently renovated. You know that it all has to go wrong when he takes his family to the remote place right before a snowstorm. But I didn't find any of it predictable. Ghosts, female rage, dark magic, snow boards. It's got everything.
I have really been enjoying the Gaskell book, even though about half of the stories haven't had anything supernatural. They are still really good! One, "Lois the Witch" isn't about witches, but is about fear and superstition. Sometimes I forget to watch for the ghost or goblin until the story is over because I'm so caught up in it. I think I like her stories better than her novels that I've read. I have one or two more for the actual day of Halloween, and then I'll have to find something else for next year. I've been looking for Edith Wharton ghost stories for awhile...
I watched The Thing because I've heard of it several times as being a really scary film, and I just didn't feel it. I think it's because it reminded me of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which actually scared me half to death. I'm not going to go into a summary because it's a pretty old and very popular movie, but I linked to the one I watched above- the 1982 version.
I watched The Presence just last night and really liked it. I was surprised when I looked it up on IMDB for the link and saw it was only rated 6.1. I guess people like different things, but this is the kind of thing I like. It could have been scarier, but it was such an interesting story. For some reason, the closed captioning never came on, which drove me nuts. I know that's like an Amazon rating that turns out to be about the shipping, but really, I liked the movie. It's a family that moves into a house that we, the viewers, know is haunted, because we're watching through the viewpoint of the presence. We're figuring this family out as it does, and we watch it pick its sides. My jaw actually dropped at the end. (BIt of a spoiler: There's a death scene and some violence, but no gore.)
I always listen to Uncanny when it's on, and I listened to the Charles Dickens podcast last Christmas because the first ghost story he reads is A Christmas Carol. The reader is Sir David Suchet, by the way, who played Poirot, and he reads the stories very well. The others in the podcast aren't Christmas stories, so I saved them for later, and I pulled it up and listened to "The ghost in the bride's chamber." I thought it was really cool, not technically a ghost, but creepy. Sad, though. He reads "The Signalman," which I have read before and found very creepy. I will listen to this version sometime.
My scary booklist on bookshop.org
https://bookshop.org/lists/scary-suspensful-spooky (these are affiliate links, so if you don't like those, get the isbns and use them another way- go back to the bookshop.org homepage and just search the isbn if you want.)
Well, dark greetings, everyone. Don't get bit.
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