"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

Spooktober 2026

Ladies and gentlemen, here we are! And yes, I know, the banner appeared a little too soon, this year, but I’m abroad without my computer and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to bring it up. But I’ve got you covered.

All month long, we’ll be publishing one classic horror story a day, mostly Gothic and horror fiction from the 19th and early 20th centuries by authors who invented or perfected the mechanisms that makes us shivering today. No jump scares, I promise: just prose, pacing, and the old, sturdy art of suggesting more than you show.

Some of these stories are short and fit neatly into a single post. Others are longer and will run in installments, a bit like an old serial read by candlelight.

This year’s lineup ranges from names everyone recognizes — Dickens, Conan Doyle, Maupassant — to voices less commonly read but just as unsettling: Marjorie Bowen (a classic of our Octobers), William Hope Hodgson, Gustav Meyrink, Arlton Eadie. Railway ghosts, family mirrors, inns that smell of blood, hands that move on their own. The classic horror repertoire.

Starting tomorrow, one well-written piece of darkness a day. Get ready. And maybe leave a light on.

Enjoy the spooky season!

Spooktober

Spooktober 4 – Twilight

“Twilight” is a short supernatural story by Marjorie Bowen, an author I often featured in these seasonal events, and it blends a ghostly atmosphere with a historical setting. It first appeared in Bowen’s 1913 collection God’s Playthings. Three women stood before a marble-margined pool in

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books and literature

Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever and Other Stories

Two women in Rome, harbouring a resentment over something that seems shallow at first and then, little by little, it becomes spoken and plain, and terrifying. I didn’t know what I was getting into, with this collection of short stories, and it was the titular

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Spooktober

Spooktober 3 – A Bottle of Perrier

“A Bottle of Perrier” is a short suspense story by Edith Wharton, first published in 1926 in The Saturday Evening Post under the title “A Bottle of Evian.” It was later collected in Certain People (1930). The title was changed because of commercial concerns surrounding

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Spooktober 4 – Twilight

“Twilight” is a short supernatural story by Marjorie Bowen, an author I often featured in these seasonal events, and it blends a ghostly atmosphere with a historical setting. It first appeared in Bowen’s 1913 collection God’s Playthings. Three women stood before a marble-margined pool in

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