King Arthur Movie Tristan

Jillian asked if I'd post my favorite horror novels. I can never resist an invitation to discuss one of my favorite genres. Here they are, my favorite horror/thrilling reads listed in no particular order. These are the books that kept me up late at night wondering what that mysterious 'noise' was in the kitchen. These are also the books that made me afraid to go down to my basement alone. I read these wide eyed, biting my nails.



None of these are for the faint of heart.







10. The Ruins by Scott Smith


I randomly got this one at a library sale for 25cents. It's one of the scariest books I have ever read. Four young American tourist couples are vacationing in Cancun Mexico. They wind up going deep into the jungle and stumbling upon ancient ruins. Little do they know, the horror that awaits them once they set foot on these ruins. This one was fast paced and scary with no chapter breaks in between.











9. Misery


Retired psycho nurse Annie Wilkes 'rescues' her favorite author Paul Sheldon from a car crash and nurses him back to health in her home.
Remember the hobbling scene in the film? When she hobbles Paul in the book, it's much worse.











8. Heart Shaped Box


The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Stephen Kings's son seems to have inherited his fathers gift of telling a good scary story.


Famous musician Judas Coyne collects rare and grotesque items.
When his personal assistant tells him there is a ghost for sale on the internet, Jude buys it for $1000.00. The package arrives at his door, it is a black heart-shaped box, inside is a suit belonging to a dead man. Jude just puts the box away in his closet and forgets about it until one day he sees an old man in his home, wearing the suit. Sound creepy? It is.











7. Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

This books villain is Gretchen Lowell, a female serial killer.
Gretchen is the female version of Hannibal Lecter, minus the cannibalism. This is one of the best female villains I've read. The relationship between Gretchen and the detective on the case is intriguing to say the least.













6. The Taking by Dean Koontz

When a married couple living in a small town awakens one morning to a soft rain that just doesn't seem right, they soon realize there is an odd weather phenomena across the world. Before they know it, power lines are down, a strange fog has taken over and the townspeople get together in hopes of finding out what is going on. This is an end-of-the-world story that will send chills down your spine. One of my favorite Koontz reads.















5. The Shining

(see a recurring S.K. theme here?)



Recovering alcoholic Jack Torrence, takes the job of caretaker of the 'Overlook Hotel' for a few months in the winter. His family will be in complete isolation in the hotel with no quick way to leave and barely any contact with the outside world. Once the snow falls they will be stranded. This hotel is located in Colorado and is famous for housing some famous people. It's also known for a triple murder/suicide that occurred there from the previous caretaker who suffered from 'cabin fever'.
Just the idea of being isolated during a blizzard in a haunted hotel with someone who is slowly going insane is terrifying.













4. Interview With the Vampire
Beautifully written and dramatic. Anne Rice's vampires are deliciously wicked, gorgeous and flamboyant.



I developed a crush on the vampire Louis while reading. This one has a child vampire within the story, Claudia, that really creeped me out.
The New Orleans setting was great, the story was better, and some of the vampires have a touch of humanity that makes you root for them.










3. Salem's Lot

Stephen King's vampires scared me to bits. Again, King makes the story believable.
Writer Ben Mears returns to the town he was born Jerusalem's Lot in Maine.
He wants to write a book about an abandoned mansion in town called the Marsten House which is now inhabited by a vampire. Little by little, the townspeople are all becoming vampires.








2. Undone by Karin Slaughter

I had to include Undone on my list. This book has everything a good crime thriller should have. A sadistic serial killer, complex characters and plot twists and turns.
This one had me on the edge of my seat while reading, I was unable to put it down.














1. Pet Sematary

This is the scariest book I have ever read.
With a horrifying plot and well written characters Pet Sematary had me hooked from the start. S.K. makes this story almost believable, I think that's what makes it so terrifying. Turning the pages felt scary to me, I feared what was next while reading this book, but I just couldn't stop reading.
I don't know which was worse, the grave robbing or the creepy Zelda.




Those are some of my favorite scary reads. As the years go by, I hope to add plenty more to the list.

Have you read any of these? Can you recommend any scary reads?

title: Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After

author: Steve Hockensmith


genre: humor/fiction/Austen Spoof

published: 03.22.2011


source: ARC copy from Quirk Classics

pages: 287

first line: As his beloved Elizabeth shattered the nearest zombie's skull with a perfectly placed axe kick, Fitzwilliam Darcy saw in her eyes something that had been missing for a long, long time: joie de vivre.


rated: 4 out of 5 stars

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and its prequel, Dawn of the Dreadfuls, were both New York Times best sellers, with a combined 1.3 million copies in print. Now the PPZ trilogy comes to a thrilling conclusion with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After.

Dreadfully Ever After is the third and final installment in the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies trilogy.
What can I say, other than this trilogy has been a fun and quirky ride?

Dreadfully Ever After starts off with a happily married Elizabeth and Darcy visiting the Bingley's, who I might add have four children. Elizabeth is no longer allowed to slay zombies in public especially, since she is now a married woman and doing so is frowned upon when she has a perfectly capable husband to slay the undead for her.


On the walk home, Darcy is bitten by a zombie child.
Lizzie refuses to do what she is supposed to do to anyone who has been bitten by an unmentionable. She cannot bear to slice her beloveds head off with her katana.
Instead Lizzie contacts Darcy's aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, since there is rumor she has access to a cure for the disease.



Lady Catherine agrees to help Darcy, but she does have a few stipulations, the first being she take him back to her home and away from Lizzie, who she still hates. Elizabeth and her sister Kitty are supposed to be seductresses as well, getting the zombie cure from its creator, Sir Angus MacFarquhar, and his son Bunny.


Lady Catherine sees this as an opportunity to get rid of Lizzie and ruin her reputation once and for all. It's also her chance to get her sickly daughter, Anne, near Darcy.






I thoroughly enjoyed Dreadfully Ever After. Having read the first two books in this trilogy, I was eager to get to this one. I laughed out loud as I read and the book kept me hooked wondering what would happen next. The illustrations within the book add that 'special touch'.
Author Steve Hockensmith combines two of my favorite things: Pride & Prejudice and zombies. What's most impressive is that what started as inserting zombies into Austen's beloved novel Pride & Prejudice, has spurned two other books that have a life of their own.


I think this is a great conclusion to the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies trilogy. It was funny, quirky and Austen's beloved characters stay true to form, though most are highly trained warriors. Lizzie's dainty parasol conceals well hidden razor blades and a small sword in its center. I'm actually sad to see it all end.

Not everyone in Derbyshire had accepted the warrior woman of inferior birth who had married their precious Fitzwilliam Darcy. Even after years at Pemberly House-years in which she'd never once worn her katana in public-she still caught the occasional whiff of disapproval. The resentment seemed to stir up most whenever her mother visited, yet Elizabeth could never be sure when it might arise.

-p.22

Giveaway:

Quirkbooks has commissioned Etsy artist SpecialMeat to create Dreadful Antidote pendants.

If you go to Facebook and 'like' the Dreadfully Ever After page, you will be signed up to win a special Dreadful Antidote pendant. Eight winners will be chosen! Good luck!

Check out the book trailer:

title: WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE: Vampire Hunters And Other Kick-Ass Enemies of Evil


authors: Jonathan Maberry & Janice Gable Bashman


genre: nonfiction

pages: 363

published: 2010

first line: To many, Cain's killing of his brother Abel was not only the first murder, but the first crime.

rated: 3 out of 5






WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE: Vampire Hunters And Other Kick-Ass Enemies of Evil is a type of reference guide for horror fans.


This book is full of interesting information about the paranormal, fictional as well as real life monsters, and folklore among other things. Artwork from various sources is included throughout the book.



One chapter I enjoyed in particular was 'Legendary Heroes'. They discuss several different heroes from the fictional ones, James Bond to Rocky Balboa to Indiana Jones, to real life heroes like Mother Teresa and Rosa Parks.

We all love a good hero-a champion who triumphs over obstacles, who perseveres when hope seems lost, and who manages, somehow, to emerge a better person on the other end of the struggle.


p. 100

Another interesting chapter was 'Who You Gonna Call?' which centered on ghosts and hauntings. Famous haunts such as the Bell Witch and Lizzie Borden's house are discussed as well as techniques and equipment used on ghost hunts.








There is a chapter devoted to demonic possession and exorcism and the different types of rituals different cultures and religions use to get rid of evil spirits.
Another chapter discusses weapons used to fight evil, such as amulets and charms. There are a few chapters devoted to different kinds of vampires and vampire history as well as famous vamp slayers like Buffy and Van Helsing.

It's impossible to create a definitive list of vampiric powers or vulnerabilities because they vary from culture to culture. Most vampires from folklore do not fear sunlight or the cross. Stakes won't kill them, they can cross running water, mirrors are irrelevant, and they don't have to obtain permission before entering a house.

p. 37

One chapter is about serial killers and how they are evil real life monsters. I was kind of reading this chapter with just one eye open since I was a bit squeamish about the topic. But the serial killer issue is one that is morbidly fascinating and I couldn't help but read on. They do list different serial killers and their crimes, and I was surprised to see some date back to as early as the
1700's.




I could really go on and on, this book is full of information about the paranormal, villains, heroes and monster folklore.



WANTED UNDEAD OR ALIVE: Vampire Hunters And Other Kick-Ass Enemies of Evil comes complete with a list of 100 top villains of all time. Who are the top three? 1. Darth Vader 2. Hannibal Lecter
3. Norman Bates.





I'd recommend this book to fans of horror and things that go bump in the night.

Special thanks to Janice Gable Bashman for this opportunity.

title: Pet Sematary

author: Stephen King

genre: horror

pages: 559

published: 1983

rated: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars

"Sometimes dead is better...."



When the Creeds move into a beautiful old house in rural Maine, it all seems too good to be true: physician father, beautiful wife, charming little daughter, adorable infant son -- and now an idyllic home. As a family, they've got it all...right down to the friendly cat.


But the nearby woods hide a blood-chilling truth -- more terrifying than death itself...and hideously more powerful.

While reading the introduction of this edition of Pet Sematary I learned two frightening facts. One being that author Stephen King thinks that this is the scariest book he has ever written. And secondly, this book was inspired by true events. So just reading the introduction creeped me out a bit even before I read the story. Apparently when King first moved with his family to a rented house in Maine, they lived right off a busy road where his daughters cat was hit and killed by a truck. And she did cry out 'Let God have his own cat!', which is a line that made it into the book. The cat was buried in a pet cemetery not too far from the house. He also says that after writing Pet Sematary, he put the manuscript away in a drawer because he felt he'd finally crossed the line. He was scared by what he had written.





The Creed family makes a move from Chicago to Ludlow, Maine. Louis, his wife Rachel, their 5 year old daughter Ellie and 2 year old son Gage, along with the family cat, Winston Churchill, move into a nice house, right along a dangerous road where trucks tend to fly by at high speed. Just up the road, conveniently, is a pet cemetery. Louis is a doctor and his new position running the University of Maine's infirmary is the reason for his family's recent move.




Louis and his elderly neighbor Jud Crandall become instant friends.
Jud takes the Creed family on a little outing one day, to the woods behind their home. He shows the family the pet cemetery which was created over the years by children who wanted to bury pets that had been killed on the busy road.






Just beyond the cemetery is something else, further into the woods, an ancient Indian burial ground. There are large tree limbs, thorny vines and poison ivy blocking the entrance way.



There's all kinds of unsavory rumors, mostly known by the older residents of the small town, about the old Micmac Indian burial ground. Rumor has it, whatever you bury up there, returns.








Disaster strikes the Creed family and Gage is hit and killed by one of these huge tanker trucks on the road. A grief stricken and half mad Louis does the unkthinkable, he buries his toddler in the Indian burial ground, wanting to bring his son back from the dead.





I wanted to get into a really good old fashioned King read, and this book was it. I was scared silly while reading. As usual when I'm reading a scary S.K. novel, he has me so drawn into the story that I don't realize how creeped out I am until later on when I won't want to go into my basement to do laundry alone. Without a doubt, I can say that this is the scariest book I have ever read.



Pet Sematary is definitely a disturbing read, not for the faint of heart. I had a hard time getting through the description of Gage's death as well as Louis' grave robbing.



The one part of the story that was really creepy was Rachel's deceased sister Zelda. After suffering a long time with Spinal Meningitis, Zelda died while a horrified 8 year old Rachel watched on. The description of Zelda and her long time suffering was nightmarish. I couldn't get the image out of my head.




Another aspect of the story that was really scary was how the burial ground itself kind of took hold of events. There was a supernatural force that made Jud tell Louis about it's power, it made the truck driver drive at unsafe speed as soon as it got on the road where the Creed family lived. Later, this unseen force made Louis bury Gage up there. There's an evil presence surrounding the Indian cemetery that partly orchestrated what was going to happen the entire time.



With a horrifying plot and well written characters Pet Sematary had me hooked from the start. S.K. makes this story almost believable, I think that's what makes it so terrifying. Turning the pages felt scary to me, I feared what was next while reading this book, but I just couldn't stop reading.



This is not just a story about blood, ghosts and reanimated corpses, there's a family within the story that you can't help but like. It's about what this father and husband does at his most desperate hour.

As sick as Louis' actions were, as mad as he slowly became, I pitied him. In his mind he kept rationalizing what he was doing. When his mind finally snaps and he loses his sanity, he realizes that as well.

His screams echoed and racketed shrilly through the house where now only dead lived and walked. Eyes bulging, face livid, hair standing on end, he screamed; the sounds came from his swollen throat like the bells of hell, terrible shrieks that signaled the end not of love but of sanity; in his mind all the hideous images were suddenly unloosed at once.

The film version of Pet Sematary scared me badly when I was young. After reading the book, I do think they adapted it as well as they could for the big screen. However, the cutesy Gage in the film is nothing like what comes back from the dead in the book. Of course, the book is better. You get to see why these characters did these things, why Jud told Louis about the Micmac burial ground in the first place, because he simply had to.

title: In the Dark

author: Edith Nesbit

genre: short story/supernatural/horror

published: 1910

first line: It may have been a form of madness.





In this short story by Edith Nesbit, the narrator, named Winston, and Haldane are best friends. They both dislike a fellow classmate named George Visger for being a know-it-all. Once the friends are grown men and off to college, they are still in contact. When Winston studies abroad for a year and returns, he finds Haldane is sickly and depressed. Haldane is packing and will be moving out of his apartment.
He won't tell Winston what's wrong with him, but leaves the next day, leaving no new address where he can be found.






When Winston finally sees him again, it is another year later, and Haldane looks worse. Over breakfast Haldane tells Winston that he is going to kill himself and wants to explain why.



Haldane tells him that he and Visger got into an argument over lies Visger told Haldane's girlfriend. Apparently the girlfriend died inexplicably afterwards. He wound up killing Visger himself by strangling him. He won't tell Winston where he put the body.

I had said nothing. It is not easy to think at once of the tactful and suitable thing to say, when your oldest friend tells you that he is a murderer.

Now Haldane insists Visger has been haunting him. He says before he killed him, Visger told him 'you won't be able to get rid of the body'. Haldane sees Visger everywhere he goes and is terrified he will die in the dark.



Winston tells Haldane it's all in his mind, there is no ghost, and takes Haldane away to try to help him forget. The two travel, and it seems Haldane is better.
He tells Winston that he is leaving everything to him in his will. Winston sees that Haldane isn't better at all, he is still afraid he will die in the dark soon.




They wind up staying at an Inn called Grande Vigne, with the initials G.V. stitched in large red letters on the bedsheets. The same initials as George Visger.


Haldane is very jumpy and is still fearful of Visger's ghost. He wants to get a glass of water in the middle of the night, but refuses to go alone and refuses to stay alone while Winston goes and gets it. They set off together to get the water, then return to their room.



When they get into bed, Haldane complains to Winston that his sheets are all missing and that he is freezing. He starts to freak out and yells for Haldane to light the candle.

'Light the candle, light the candle,' he said, and his voice broke, as a boy's does sometimes in the chapel. 'If you don't, he'll come to me. It is so easy to come at anyone in the dark. Oh Winston, light the candle, for the love of God! I can't die in the dark.'

Haldane starts yelling that Visger is in the bed beside him. Once Winston finally lights the candle, he sees Haldane dead on the bed, with another dead man beside him. It turns out the two friends came back to the wrong room after getting the cup of water, and Haldane got into bed in the dark, with the corpse of a man who died of a heart attack in that room recently.



Shortly after the death of his friend, the police deliver Winston a large metal box, left for him by Haldane. He opens the box in private, only to discover the body of Visger is inside the box alongside the body of another dead man.



I like Edith Nesbit's creepy short stories, this is my third time reading her and I think she's pretty good. However, In the Dark was definitely scary and had me really interested in what was going to happen next, but also a bit confusing. I didn't like how Haldane's girlfriend mysteriously dies with no explanation. And I didn't like how in the end there was a second corpse inside the large metal box. I felt it wasn't explained fully and I ended up re-reading a few bits of the story to see if I could understand it. Another thing that bothered me was how Winston simply accepts that his friend is a murderer and wants him to move on with his life.



But then again, the last lines in this story do let the reader know this one is left up to interpretation:

Explain it as you like. I offered you, if you remember, a choice of explanations before I began the story. I have not yet found the explanation that can satisfy me.

All in all, a good, creepy short story, if you don't mind an unresolved ending.





You can read In the Dark free online here.

English poet, journalist, and short-story writer, perhaps now best-known for her children's books (the twice-filmed Five Children and It, The Railway Children and The Wouldbegoods) and the over-anthologized horror tale "Man-Size in Marble." She also published works under the joint pseudonym (with her husband) "Fabian Bland."


-quoted from The Literary Gothic

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge

title: Voluntary Committal

author: Joe Hill

genre: horror/short story

published: 2007

first line: I don't know who I'm writing this for, can't say who I expect to read it.





Voluntary Committal is a short story from Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts. I read this collection of short stories a while ago and I did enjoy it very much.



In this story Nolan tells the tale of his younger brother Morris, who was a schizophrenic that went missing three weeks ago. Nolan's friend Eddie, was a troublemaker at school and had behavioral problems, also went missing years ago when Nolan was still in high school.



Morris builds these amazing tunnels out of cardboard boxes in his basement. Within these tunnels exists an almost surreal other world. Morris's tunnels are elaborate. He draws inside the walls, adding different effects to make them seem maze like and otherworldly. However, Nolan is creeped out by these handmade creations and dislikes being in the basement alone or entering the forts himself. The few times he's entered them, he's been disoriented and a bit shocked.

The box at the center of Morris's cardboard kracken was roomy enough to provide shelter for a family of five and their dog. A battery-operated lava lamp bubbled in one corner, red globs of plasma rising and sinking through viscous amber fluid. Morris had papered the inside of the enormous box with silver foiled Christmas wrap. Sparks and filaments of light raced here and there in trembling waves, sheets of gold and raspberry and lime, crashing into each other and vanishing. It was as if in the course of my long crawl to the center of the fort, I had gradually been shrinking, until at last I was no larger than a field mouse, and had arrived in a little room suspended inside a disco ball.

When Eddie does something terrible, and involves Nolan in the crime, Morris overhears the two discussing it afterwards. Morris knows Eddie will never leave Nolan alone and he wants to get rid of Eddie himself, permanently.



This is when Eddie mysteriously goes missing and only Nolan and Morris know where he went. When the boys are grown up and Nolan goes away to college, Morris moves out on his own and gets an apartment. However, shortly after that he voluntarily commits himself to a psychiatric hospital only to mysteriously disappear himself soon after.



All that is left is Nolan trying not to think about Eddie and his brother Morris, but being the only one to know exactly where they went.

In the end, people usually get a bit more of what they want than they can really handle, don't they?

I enjoyed re-reading this short story. I could imagine Morris's magical and creepy forts. As I was reading I did get the chills while author Joe Hill describes the basement and Morris's huge creations made out of simple cardboard boxes, yet leading to other dimensions. It was very much like an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Joe Hill is the author of a novel, Heart-Shaped Box, a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, and an occasional comic book series, Locke & Key. His second novel, Horns, will be available from William Morrow, in February of 2010. He lives in a small stone cell at the bottom of a chasm; there is only one steep, treacherous trail leading down to it, and the way is protected by fierce goats.

-quoted from the author's website

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge

title: The Mystery of the Semi-Detached

author: Edith Nesbit


genre: short story/horror/ghost story

published: 1893 in a short story collection titled 'Grim tales'

first line: He was waiting for her, he had been waiting an hour and a half in a dusty suburban lane, with a row of big elms on one side and some eligible building sites on the other-and far away to the south-west the twinkling yellow lights of the Crystal Palace.




In the short story, The Mystery of the Semi-Detached, the narrator is waiting for his fiancee one May night at ten-o'clock on her street. When she doesn't come out of her parents home to meet him, he goes to her front gate. He sees that her front door is wide open and begins to worry. Upon entering the dark house, it seems abandoned, yet he has the feeling that he is not alone.



When he goes upstairs and lights a candle, he sees his fiancee wearing a gown, lying on her bed, her throat slashed. The narrator runs out of the house in hysterics and is picked up by the police for public drunkenness. After spending the night in a jail cell, and after his shock wears off, he tells the police what he saw the night before. That morning they take him to his finance's house only to find her alive and well. After he tells her what he saw, and describes that he even saw her calendar was dated October 21st althought it was mid-May, she tries to tell him he was imagining things.


She explains to him that she and her family went to the Crystal Palace and left the house alone.




He insists it wasn't a hallucination and moves his fiancee and her mother in a different house, all the while never forgetting what he witnessed that night.

He was a very ordinary, common place, young man, and he didn't believe in visions, but he never rested day or night till he got his sweetheart and her mother away from that commodious semi-detached, and settled them in a quiet, distant suburb. In the course of removal, he incidentally married her, and the mother went on living with them.



His nerves must have been shaken, because he was queer for a very long time, and was always inquiring if anyone had taken the desirable semi-detached; and when an old stockbroker with a family took it, he went through the length of calling on the old gentleman and imploring him by all the he held dear, not to live in that fatal house.

The narrator tries to convince the next residents, a stockbroker and his family, not to move into the house, but they don't take his warning seriously. That following October, on the 21st, the narrator's wife finds him one morning holding the newspaper, white as a ghost. When she reads the paper, she sees the headline. The stockbroker's daughter has been found inside the house, lying on her bed, her throat slashed.



I've become a fan of Edith Nesbit's short stories. This was a good, creepy, ghost story. The only thing I didn't like was that they didn't explain what the Crystal Palace is. Upon googling it, I found the Crystal Palace was a a cast-iron and glass building erected in Hyde Park, London, holding the Great Exhibition.



You can read The Mystery of the Semi-Detached for free online here.

English poet, journalist, and short-story writer, perhaps now best-known for her children's books (the twice-filmed Five Children and It, The Railway Children and The Wouldbegoods) and the over-anthologized horror tale "Man-Size in Marble." She also published works under the joint pseudonym (with her husband) "Fabian Bland."



-quoted from The Literary Gothic

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge

title: The Violet Car

author: Edith Nesbit

genre: short story/supernatural/horror

published: late 1800's-early 1900's?

first line: Do you know the downs-the wide, windy spaces, the rounded shoulders of hills leaned against the sky, the hollows where farms and homesteads nestle sheltered, with trees round them pressed close and tight as a carnation in a button hole?






The Violet Car is a short story by Edith Nesbit. It is narrated by a nurse in London, who is telling her story about being sent to a home in Charleston for a mental case involving an elderly couple.




Mr. Eldridge wrote to the nurse asking her to come attend to his deranged wife. Yet when she arrives at their doorstep, the wife acts like she is fine, but Mr. Eldridge is the one who is deranged. The Eldridge's live on a large neglected farm and from the getgo something seems odd about them.


After dinner the couple always has a cup of tea and goes for a walk, where they return sad and depressed afterwards, the wife crying. However, other than this, the seemingly odd couple does not seem mentally ill.
The nurse arrives at their home in November, and by February she decides she should move on, seeing as the couple seemes fine. She no longer wants to accept payment for her services if she isn't really needed.


Spying on the couple one evening during their walk, the nurse sees that Mr. Eldridge and his wife go down to the lane and he freaks out insisting that a violet colored car is coming. He screams and pushes his wife out of the lane so she won't get hit. Yet, neither his wife nor the nurse hear or see a car.



Afterwards, when the nurse questions the couple, she finds out that their daughter had passed away after being run over by a violet colored car on the lane. Mr. Eldridge has never truly recovered from his grief and he insists he can hear the car coming and there is terror inside. So the nurse tells him she is going down the lane by herself to investigate and to prove him it's all in his imagination. That there is no car coming and perhaps he should consider moving.

I walked up and down the lane in the dusk, wishing not to wonder what might be the hidden horror in the violet car. I would not let blood into my thoughts. I was not going to be fooled by thought transference, or any of those transcendental follies. I was not going to be hypnotized into seeing things.

Reluctantly the nurse walks down to the lane one evening, only to find out that Mr. Eldridge silently followed her and is standing further up the lane.
She sees him once again freaking out over the car, and to her amazment, she actually sees the car as well.

Mr. Eldridge is hit by the car, and by the time the nurse reaches him, he is dead. However, there are no tire marks on the ground and no marks on him. Yet she saw it with her own eyes, the violet car ran him over.
When the doctor arrives, he says Mr. Eldridge died of a heart attack. There is no sign of a car.




I thought The Violet Car was a creepy short story. It scared me in a simple way.
The writing isn't overly descriptive, leaving it up to the readers imagination.
There's no blood or gore, just an everyday seemingly normal older couple and a nurse who is trying to help them. I definitely got the chills when the nurse went down the lane to prove to
Mr. Eldridge that there was no car. She was secretly terrified of going, and was not only trying to convice Mr. Eldridge that the car was in his imagination, but she was also trying to convince herself.

English poet, journalist, and short-story writer, perhaps now best-known for her children's books (the twice-filmed Five Children and It, The Railway Children and The Wouldbegoods) and the over-anthologized horror tale "Man-Size in Marble." She also published works under the joint pseudonym (with her husband) "Fabian Bland."

-quoted from The Literary Gothic

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge

title: The Fall of the House of Usher

author: Edgar Allan Poe

genre: short story/horror

published: 1845

first line:

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.





Ahhhhh....Edgar Allan Poe. He doesn't disappoint. There's something about cuddling up on the couch at night reading Poe, draped in a blanket and sipping hot tea.
That's exactly how I read this short story.



In The Fall of the House of Usher the narrator is traveling by horseback and arrives at the house of Roderick Usher, who is his boyhood friend.
He will be staying there a few weeks. Roderick had written him a letter saying that he was suffering a 'mental disorder' and asking if he would come and stay with him a while.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks.

As usual, Poe is intense. I enjoy his writing, it's so dark and dramatic.

I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn - a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

Once inside the house, a silent butler takes the visitor through the dark hallways to the master of the mansion. He finds Roderick looking pale and sick and blaming the house for his poor health as well as the illness of his sister Madeline.



The visitor spends a few days with Roderick. They read, Roderick plays the guitar and even sings. When the very ill Madeline passes away, Roderick insists on burying her in the family tomb located in the house, for two weeks, before taking her body to the cemetary. The narrator helps Roderick place her in the tomb, but does take notice that Madeline's cheeks are still rosey and she seems to be asleep.



One night a storm starts and Roderick appears at the narrators bedroom. He is very anxious and the narrator decides to read him a story to calm him. As the narrator reads the story, adn the storm rages, cracking and ripping sounds are heard from within the house. Roderick is terrified and is insisting that his sister Madeline is making the noises and was buried alive.





I liked this one, and the way Poe described the house was perfect. The imagery alone can give the reader chills and take them inside the house itself. I could totally picture the creepy mansion.


This is a great short story, especially if you want a quick dose of something spooky.

...the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode...

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge