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Some Horrific Reading - something to read for Halloween/Day of the Dead


The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde


The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
 (Edgar Allan Poe)


Just in case you need a little scary reading. I'm a strong believer in personal reading choice to encourage reading. I look back and see all the books that I read in Junior and Senior High School, and the ones that I remember most are the ones that I wanted to read. So if your students are looking for a little horror or scary reading now, then lets support them in their reading desires and guide them to some good books that they might not have noticed before. We could show them the classics that everyone may have heard of, seen the movie, but may never actually read (ie books such as Dracula & Frankenstein), and then there are others from famous author but stories that they have never heard of  such as Robert Louis Stevenson "The Body Snatcher" or Robert E. Howard, who is famous for his Conan stories, but also wrote a number of frightening horror stories too (see Weird Tales).  If you want to go beyond text, you can even find a number of classic comic books, such as the Mr. Mystery series at Comic Book+ (search the page for "horror")

Here are a few collections that can be explored:
Project Gutenberg's Horror Bookshelf: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Horror_(Bookshelf) 
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis StevensonSteve Calvert's List of Classic Horror Stories (Public Domain): http://www.steve-calvert.co.uk/public-domain-texts/List-of-Stories.html 
Comic Book +: http://comicbookplus.com/?cid=1507 


Then of course if you don't feel like straining your eyes as you read a scary story, you can always listen to one in the dark. Try going to Books Should Be Free (now Loyal Books) and select from over 80 horror/scary public domain audio books that include classics like Dracula & Frankenstein and other works by Bram Stoker, Edgar Allen Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Robert E. Howard (and quite a few more). 

Loyal Books' Horror/Ghost Stories: http://www.loyalbooks.com/genre/Horror_Ghost_stories 

Dracula by Bram Stoker
 Horror Fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the "horror" experience has often been the intrusion of an evil — or, occasionally, misunderstood — supernatural element into everyday human experience. Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called "horror." Horror fiction often overlaps science fiction or fantasy, all three of which categories are sometimes placed under the umbrella classification speculative fiction.
—Excerpted from Horror Fiction on Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

Book CoverLarge Thumbnail For Weird Horrors v1 #3Large Thumbnail For Mister Mystery v1 #1

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