Date: Fri 24-Oct-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Quick Words:

horror-stories-books-King

Full Text:

Spine-Tinglers From A Skeleton Crew Of Favorites

(with book covers)

If thine eye offends thee

Pluck it out

--Edgar Allan Poe

(audio, The Tell-Tale Heart )

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble

--William Shakespeare

( Macbeth )

BY KIM J. HARMON

Mihai Vlahuta stands on a isolated road in the Carpathian Mountains, straining

to see, through the swirling mist, his ancestral home, the Castel Vlaicu. It

sits forlornly, like a sentinel, looking over the desolate Rumanian

countryside.

And then, as though brushed aside by the inarticulate gesture, a wall of mist

vanished. It was as if the old photograph pasted in front of my journal had

suddenly been enlarged and set down before me. High among mountains, in a

cluster of snow-encrusted trees, the towers and cupolas and battlements and

corbeled roofs of Castel Vlaicu hung suspended like a mirage. And there,

directly in front of us, the path on which we walked continued, snaking its

precipitous way up the mountainside to end at last at the castle's door. In a

window high above the valley, a light burned. It was still day, but Castel

Vlaicu seemed wreathed in a darkness of its own.

It is The Lost by Jonathan Aycliffe, the tale of a Cambridge prep school

teacher, Michael Feraru, who travels to Rumania to reclaim property his

grandparents had abandoned after World War II. In turn, he discovers an

unearthly evil -- the strigoi, the undead -- that reaches back into the very

roots of his family history.

There is unsettling horror in this novel, which builds as the evils of the

past transform Michael Feraru into Count Mihai Vlahuta... and into something

far worse.

Any fan of the horror genre, hungry for something in a field that has been

almost barren for too long of a time, needs to read this.

Just in time for Halloween.

In that vein (so to speak), thinking that the spirit of the season may entice

you to tell a scary story around candlelight on All Hallow's Eve, I have

listed ten of the scariest, most unsettling, horror stories ever written (at

least in my mind).

If you are need of a fright, read one.

Read two.

Read one a day for ten days.

And don't forget to look over your shoulder. Something may be creepin' up on

you.

(1) The Monkey's Paw , by W.W. Jacobs. An absolute classic of the genre,

written by a man, William Wymark Jacobs, whose first job was as a clerk in the

post office.

As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. A monkey's paw, which has

the power to grant three wishes, brings horror to a simple family. Ninety-five

years after it was first published, it is still a terrifying story.

Can be found in a number of anthologies, the most recent being Creepy Classics

, published by Random House.

(2) One for the Road , by Stephen King. The horrors of Salem's Lot (remember

that story?), one year after the town burned to the ground, are revisited upon

a New Jersey family which gets stuck at the height of a Nor'easter.

Can be found in the King anthology, Graveyard Shift.

(3) The Tell-Tale Heart , by Edgar Allan Poe. A man is driven to madness after

killing his uncle and hiding his body beneath the floorboards. Quintessential

Poe. "It is the heart! The beating of his hideous heart!"

Can be found in the unabridged collection of Edgar Allan Poe, published by

Running Press.

(4) Nightcrawlers , by Robert McCammon. This is considered a classic in the

genre, the tale of man who thought he had left the horrors of Vietnam behind,

horrors that are much, much worse than what was birthed by the war itself.

Can be found in the McCammon anthology Blue World .

(5) The Lurker , by H.P. Lovecraft. Howard Phillips Lovecraft was apparently a

very mild-mannered man, but he could imagine the most horrific things

possible.

His Cthulhu Mythos is the most revered cycle of stories in the horror genre.

The Lurker simply brings to life one of Lovecraft's most ghastly monsters.

Can be found in the Lovecraft anthology Lurker And Others.

(6) Tunnel of Love by Robert Bloch. I don't know what it is about the

carnival, but many authors have tried to turn it into a repository of evil.

There are no supernatural underpinnings in the Tunnel of Love, but I guarantee

you will be shivering when you are through.

Can be found in the Bloch anthologies Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of and

The Complete Stories Of Robert Bloch.

(7) The Mist , by Stephen King. A violent thunderstorm wreaks havoc upon a

small town and a secret government facility, which in turn unleashes

horrifying monsters... monsters hidden by a thickening mist.

Can be found in the King collection, Skeleton Crew.

(8) I Am Legend , by Richard Matheson. Charlton Heston starred in the movie,

called Omega Man , but it did not do the grand master, Richard Matheson,

justice for his tale of man doomed to the prison of his own home because he

alone was unaffected by a disease which has made veritable vampires out of the

rest of the world.

Can be found in the Matheson anthology, I Am Legend.

(9) The Night They Missed The Horror Show , by Joe R. Lansdale. There is

nothing supernatural here at all, but Lansdale gives readers a glimpse into

the true heart of human evil. And it is terrifying.

Can be found in several anthologies, but is most accessible in By Bizarre

Hands.

(10) Black And White And Red All Over , by David Morrell.

A city is besieged by a serial killer who preys on paper boys. Frightening, it

is like sitting in a dark room, knowing something is standing behind you and

waiting for the claws to grip your shoulder.

Can be found in Night Visions: Dead Image.

(Bonus) Traps , by F. Paul Wilson. Can't say more than this: putting out traps

for mice simply won't be the same anymore. You WILL get the shivers.

Uncontrollable shivers.

Can be found in the Wilson anthology Soft.. . And Others.

Obvious Omissions

There are omissions. On any Top Ten list, there have to be omissions.

There would have been more H.P. Lovecraft stories on this list -- like The

Dunwich Horror, for example -- if his stuff wasn't so verbose and somewhat

diffuse.

There are plenty of other Stephen King stories, too, that deserve to be on

this list, or at least considered, because no one has the kind of the ability

he has to make you afraid.

And for one reason or another, I passed on a lot of the best authors in the

horror biz, including August Derleth, Guy De Maupassant, Charles L. Grant,

Steve Rasnic Tem, Richard Christian Matheson, J.N. Williamson, and Thomas

Tessier.

This, however, does not mean you shouldn't poke around into some of their

stories. There is a lot of fear out there. Why not enjoy some of it?