My Favorite Scary Stories

For someone who likes scary things, I am very far behind on my scary stories. I haven't read most of Stephen King's massive library, and most horror from the last forty years has gone completely under my radar. I keep telling myself that I can read horror stories outside of October, but it just doesn't happen. A lot of these picks are from stories I've read in just the last few years, but some are from my childhood.  These are in no particular order. These are just ten of the stories that I really enjoy or have scared me at one time or another.


1. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

I'll just say that I was pleasantly surprised that this story was so much different from the Universal classic film. This monster, or "Adam," talks and even waxes philosophically with his beleaguered inventor. The monster was not accepted by Frankenstein, so he goes about completely ruining his life. This book is deep and has some of the most disturbing lines from any book.


2. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

This book was quickly adapted into a pretty decent horror movie in 1963, and was later remade in 1999, both titles being shortened to The Haunting. Spoiler Alert: the newer one not so good. Stick to the first one, or this book. The book deals with a paranormal investigator who brings a bunch of psychics into the house to discover its secrets. The book relies more on subtle terror, and makes you wonder whether there is actually any paranormal activity going on, or if Eleanor, the main character, is just imagining it because she's a crazy person.

3. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

This ones a short story, and by far one of the most famous scary short stories of all time. The story involves a sleepy town in 1940's America that takes part in a ritual known as "the lottery." I won't spoil it for those who haven't read it, but rest assured that you will be uneasy by the end. Shirley Jackson's short story was included in a 1948 issue of the New Yorker and quickly became the most infamous story they have ever run.


4. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

There are several other titles for this book, but they aren't exactly politically correct. More of a murder mystery than a horror book, but it's got the perfect mood and setting. Ten seemingly random people are invited to a remote island off the coast of England and are all accused of past hidden crimes through a gramophone found inside a large mansion on the island. Mystery and murder ensue! A classic, to be sure.


5. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book is the newest book on this list, and is probably my favorite. Yes, it's a young adult book, but it's near perfect in my book. Gaiman has a knack for spookier tales (Coraline, Sandman, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane), and this is his best. Partly modeled after The Jungle Books, the book follows Nobody Owens, a young boy who is taken up by ghosts in a graveyard after his family is murdered by the deadly order known as the Jack of All Trades. Spooky, touching, and heartbreaking all in one spectacular story. I can't recommend this book more. I listen to it every year for Halloween (it's narrated by Gaiman himself).


6. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving

A short story penned in 1820 as a part of The Sketch Book, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is undoubtedly Irving's most famous story. In this early American classic, the lanky and stork-like school teacher, Ichabod Crane, becomes entangled in a battle for a rich, young woman's heart. Crane ultimately meets a mysterious end, though the reader is left to decide whether it was from the legendary "Headless Horseman, " or Crane's nemesis, Brom Bones. I do enjoy the book, but I do feel that the various film adaptations help bring the story to life.

7. "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood

Considered by H.P. Lovecraft to be the finest supernatural tale in English literature, "The Willows" tells the story of two men traveling down the Dunabe river, all the time being stalked by a powerful and otherworldly force of nature. This short story is heavy on dread and unease. This is probably the most effective story in terms of freaking me out.


8. "The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury has many short stories that deal with horror and the unknown, but his best is "The Veldt". Bradbury was famously disgusted by modern technology, as evidenced by Fahrenheit 451, and this story is no different. A family lives in a futuristic home where the children have a virtual reality room that projects images telepathically from their mind and project it into the room. The parents become concerned that the room is raising the children and attempt to separate them from it, but find out that perhaps the room is full of more reality than they thought.


9. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

I had to read this in a literature class in college, and judging by the title, thought it was going to be a bore. Instead, it's a story about a family who winds up running into a serial killer and his cohorts. It's a fascinating story, and proves once and for all that you should never take your grandmother with you on long trips. Less of a scary story, and more of a surprising, though-provoking evaluation of the human condition.


10. "The Green Ribbon" by Alvin Schwartz

This story has been around for many, many years, but my first encounter was from the children's book, In a Dark, Dark Room and other Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz. There's a young girl that always wears a green ribbon around her neck. She meets a nice boy who asks her about the ribbon, but she refuses to tell him why she wears it. They eventually fall in love and get married, and again he asks, and again she refuses. They grow old together, and when she is on her deathbed, he asks her a final time and she finally tells him that he can remove the green ribbon. Then her head falls off. Yup. This scared the crap out of me when I was young, and is honestly still pretty unnerving.

Evil Dead (2013) Review

Who likes to see filmmakers attempt to remake a classic movie? Nobody, that's who! It works about ten percent of the time, with the other ninety-percent ending up smelling to high heaven. You have your Ocean's Eleven, and then you have your Psycho. So, like every other Evil Dead fan, I freaked out when I heard they were going to remake it. It just didn't seem like a good idea. Why bother messing with a classic? After hearing that Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert, and Sam Raimi were producing it, I settled down. As you've probably noticed, I'm a little late with this, considering the movie came out in March. I wasn't incredibly excited to see it, so it took until now for me to rent it. So what did I think? It's....different. Let me explain.

The Evil Dead is a classic of horror cinema and it also-unbeknownst to me when I first saw it-has a huge cult following. It's a classic because the liberal use of blood, the creative camera usage, the bare-bones look, and the corny one-liners. Evil Dead (yes, the new movie is titled Evil Dead, not The Evil Dead) takes a few cues from the original, but tries to be its own movie. This is good because you can't make a shot for shot remake of a film and expect it to go over well (I'm looking at you Psycho). Evil Dead couldn't be overly hokey, couldn't look cheap, and couldn't reuse dialog. The Evil Dead was a movie for the 80's, and this is one for the 2010's. The best way of describing Evil Dead is saying that it's like they put the first two Raimi films in a blender. It takes several cues from both classic films, but leaves out the humor. Seriously, there are no lighthearted moments in this movie.

While The Evil Dead dealt with five teens going to a cabin in the woods to just have fun, Evil Dead has five teens going out to a cabin in the woods to try to clean out their user friend. Something that was nice about the original film was the lack of back story. You didn't need to know anything about the characters except for associations. You had a brother and sister, the brother's girlfriend, and two other friends (the two other friends were boyfriend and girlfriend in the original). There you go! Who cares about their back story, it's a horror movie. Evil Dead decides to give at least the two main characters, the brother and sister, a back story. Their mom went nuts and the brother left Michigan for Chicago, we assume because he can't cope with his mother's illness. This leaves the sister all by her lonesome, who eventually breaks under the stress of it all and becomes addicted to heroin. The trip is a way of everyone trying to make the sister go cold turkey, this time with the brother back in the picture. Some might say that a back story helps you feel for the characters, but it doesn't help me. I usually root for everyone to survive, even if they don't. I only don't care when the movie tries to make you hate a character. So the added story didn't really do anything for me, but I knew exactly how they were going to use it.

To keep this review a little bit shorter, I'll just go over a few similarities between The Evil Dead and Evil Dead. The biggest one is the situation: five kids from Michigan at a cabin in the woods, with no way out and crazy stuff going on. The main villain, "The Force," is the same, with both movies using a POV shot to show the demon's perspective. The way everyone is taken by the demon is the same, usually coming from direct contact with a possessed person, or Deadite. The pendent makes an appearance in Evil Dead, though instead of a gift to the girlfriend from the main character, it's from the brother to the sister. The reason I'm sticking with just labels is because the names are not the same in each movie. The main character in The Evil Dead is obviously Ash, while in Evil Dead, it can be argued whether it is Mia or David (the sister and brother). A few weapons from The Evil Dead make a return, namely the shotgun and the infamous chainsaw. In both films the sister is the first to be possessed, after being raped by the woods. Yes, you heard me correctly. I was honestly surprised they kept that part in. The sister is then locked in the basement for most of the film, though serves as the main adversary. The male friend is again the one that releases the demon, though the way they do it is completely different. While Scotty played a recording of a professor reading the words from the Necrinomicon (the Book of the Dead), Eric simply reads the words out loud from the book, even though there is writing all over it that tells him not to. Oh, Eric. The Deadites do the same tricks as in the original, claiming they are back to normal and not actually hideous demons who want to eat your soul. The best similarity between the two movies is the similar camera work for when Ash/David is getting things ready in the shed. Pure genius. I loved it.

Evil Dead differs in a lot of ways, however. The movie does a good job of keeping you in the dark about who the actual main character is. It is set up to make you think that David, the brother is the Ash of the film and therefore is the one that you should bank on making it out. His sister, Mia, is the first one possessed and therefore can't be the real main character, right? Wrong. It was a great twist, but this movie changes the rules on how to be free of the demon. You have to either burn, bury alive, or dismember the original host, in this case, his sister Mia. He almost burns the place down, but can't do it because of back story! Gah! He decides instead to buy her alive, though he plans on bringing her back to life after the fact. It actually works, though after Mia comes back from that...somehow, David is stabbed in the neck by the Deadite he forgot about. Oh whoops, now Mia is the last one standing. Seriously, it's always the girl that's last. She burns the house down, but it's not over. Another demon comes out of the ground and totally messes her up, eventually leading to her hand being taken off. She then attaches a chainsaw to her stub of an arm and grinds the hell out of the demon's face. Bet you didn't see that coming! This is what I meant when I said that it's like the first two movies mixed together. Ash doesn't lose his hand and replace it with the chainsaw until Evil Dead II. It was a nice touch to the end of the movie. Besides the ending being completely different, the way each person is possessed is pretty different, save for the sister in both films. Other differences include: two cars in this film instead of one, there's a dog named Grandpa (who names their dog Grandpa?!), there's an opening sequence that shows that this isn't the first time this has happened, and there is a complete lack of bookcases falling on people rendering them completely immobile.

I liked a few things about the movie. First off, the blood and gore was up to par with The Evil Dead. It might have even surpassed it in some ways. A lot of the weapon use was cringe-worthy, especially the utility knife, syringe, pneumatic stapler, and the electric knife. This film is relentless; once the story starts to get going, it never stops. The twist with the main characters was great, and I think the acting wasn't that bad either. It's not too hard to be better actors than the ones in The Evil Dead though, no offense to Bruce Campbell. I just appreciate that the filmmakers made a film that was all their own. It wasn't a shot for shot remake, but it also wasn't a incredibly loose interpretation. You knew while you were watching it that this was The Evil Dead. What I didn't like about the movie was the obvious foreshadowing. Seeing the characters use the electric knife and the stapler made it glaringly obvious that those items would be used later on as weapons. Like I said before, I didn't really like the whole back story. It took away from the film in my opinion and gave them all really stupid reasons for doings things. They decide not to leave the cabin at first because they think if they leave Mia will go back to heroin. Everyone feels indifferent to David because he moved to Chicago. David wimps out of doing a bunch of awesome stuff because he feels that he can't do anything wrong to his sister. David is kind of a weak character in general. He is convinced the whole time that everyone is alright, that maybe it's just some kind of sickness that his sister has and all they need to do is get her to a doctor. He must represent delusion or something, while Eric represents the audience, constantly trying to slap some sense into him. The last gripe I have is the ending. You can't have a happy ending in an Evil Dead movie! Something bad is supposed to happen!

If I had to give the movie a grade, I'd give it a solid B. Not bad for a remake. Let me know what you thought about the remake. Did you like it? Hate it? Even love it? Word is they are coming out with two sequels, the last one that will tie-in with the original trilogy. I'm a little intrigued by that, though I don't know if that involves Bruce Campbell playing Ash again. He's kind of too old for that now. It hurts me to say that, but it's true. I still love him anyway.

My Top Ten Halloween Movies

People like reading lists, right? I mean, they have websites dedicated to lists, so FINE! Here's my attempt at a top ten list! Since it is Halloween and all, I'm going to do a top ten list of my favorite Halloween type movies. I was considering calling it my top ten favorite scary movies, but there were too many that were funny movies that just happened to be about ghosts or zombies. Go figure! So, I have changed it to Halloween, because I love being vague. Enjoy!

10. Shadow of the Vampire

I am a sucker for movies about making movies. They just appeal to me. So it would make sense that Shadow of the Vampire would be my kind of movie. I didn't hear about this movie until last year, but it's been out since 2000. Chances are that you haven't heard about it either, since it kind of flew under everyone's radar only making $11 million in theaters. The plot centers around the making of the silent movie, Nosferatu. Anyone familiar with Nosferatu knows that it was just a ripoff of Dracula since they couldn't get the rights at that time. Anyway, John Malkovich's character, the director of said film, wants his production to be as close as possible to the real thing, so much so that he finds a real vampire to play Nosferatu's vampire, Count Orlok. I won't go anymore into the movie, but just know that it is definitely worth a watch, if only for Willem Dafoe's magnificent recreation of Nosferatu's Count Orlok. 

9. Beetlejuice

If I remember correctly, I watched the TV show version of Beetlejuice many times before I finally saw the movie version. I'll just say that the dynamic was a little bit different. Nevertheless, I love this movie. It definitely has that Tim Burton flair. The plot revolves around a recently deceased couple who are having trouble with the people that have moved into their old house. They unwittingly unleash the devious "bio-exorcist" Betelguese (that's how is name is actually spelled, like the star. The movie title is the phonetic spelling.) on the new owners and chaos ensues. The highlight of the movie is Betelguese, played by Micheal "I'm Batman" Keaton. Keaton literally has a little less than 18 minutes on screen, but believe me when I say that he utilizes every minute of it. It's a twisted comedy from the mind of Tim Burton, and one of his better films. 

8. Halloween

Halloween in my mind is the slasher film. It's not the first slasher film, but it's probably one of the more well known ones. People who have seen other slasher movies, especially newer ones, and then watch this for the first time may find it a little predictable and cliche, but that's because every slasher film has copied this movie. The movie follows Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode, a high school babysitter, who, along with her friends, are terrorized by a speechless and seemingly indestructible killer named Micheal Myers. This confused me at first when I was a child, since there was the scary Micheal Myers, and the funny one from SNL. This is another movie that I didn't watch until a few years ago when it randomly came on TV during October. This is a classic slasher film that hits all the right notes. It just feels real, and it does a great job of building up the suspense as the movie goes on. Random fun fact about this movie: the Micheal Myers mask is just a William Shatner mask that had the hair removed and the whole thing spray painted white. 

7. 28 Days Later

Just another zombie movie? I think not. Danny Boyle decided to turn the zombie genre on its head by making the zombies a little bit different from the ones that people were used to seeing. Instead of radioactivity from a space probe like in Night of the Living Dead, or a mysterious gas like Return of the Living Dead, the zombies in this movie are made from a virus called "Rage." Oh, and these zombies aren't slow like the ones you may be used to seeing, they are fast as hell. The beginning is probably the best part of this movie. Just watching Cillian Murphy's Jim walk around an abandoned London makes me shiver. The mood is perfect. I don't know how else to put it. I don't know what else to say about the movie, except that I like the first half a bit better than the second. Don't get me wrong, its a great film, but some parts in the second act just seem out of place. 

6. Psycho

From this point on, you can basically lump all these movies together, because they are all basically perfect in my book. They are all different kinds of scary stories though. Psycho is under the old classic category. But I also find it the scariest out of all the entries. Everything about this Hitchcock tale is extremely terrifying to me. An out of the way motel, a strange motel manager, tons of taxidermy on the walls, and a mysteriously absent mother. I won't spoil anything here, unlike in my Psycho review. You should already know the shower scene, and if you don't, then you must be living under a rock. Actually, you are fortunate for not seeing it, because after I saw it for the first time I basically had to have my bathroom on lock-down in order to feel safe inside a shower. If you want an older horror movie for the Halloween season, this is the perfect choice. Suspense, mystery, and murder!

5. Shaun of the Dead

This "Zom-Com" can be watched any time of the year, but why not during the Halloween season. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play best friends trying to survive in a zombie apocalypse. It parodies all the Romero zombie movies, even in the title which is an obvious homage to Romero's Dawn of the Dead. This was my first Pegg/Frost film and it is in my opinion the best one. It's a funny movie that knows when to throw in a bit of heart, but also when to throw in a literal heart. Just because its a comedy doesn't mean its not gory. It's a zombie pic! What do you expect!? If you want something for the season, but want to laugh, look no further than this British comedy classic. 

4. Ghostbusters

Yeah, yeah, another comedy. I was torn which to put at 4, and which to put at 5, but Ghostbusters is too much of a classic. This movie will never not be funny to me. This is another one that you can watch anytime and it's good. It fits the season because of the whole ghost thing, but it's truly a comedy for all seasons. You all know the plot: Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Ackroyd, and Ernie Hudson are the Ghostbusters, and they do just that. This is probably Bill Murray's funniest movie, but I'm sure someone will argue with me on that. As funny as the movie is, it still has some legitimately scary parts. I was super scared of the ghost librarian as a child. And I'm sure I had nightmares about the beast versions of the Gatekeeper and the Keymaster. I could go on and on about this movie, so I'll just stop here and offer this movie up as another alternative to any truly scary movie for Halloween. 

3. Alien

Alien is a masterpiece. It freaks me out every time I watch it, and I love it. The whole movie is so claustrophobic and suspenseful that it makes me antsy. They are literally trapped on this ship in the middle of space with a hostile alien. Alien movies aren't typically thought of as Halloween type movies, but I would say that this movie is just as worthy as any movie. There's a killer, it's in a secluded area, people get picked off one-by-one. Sounds like a classic slasher-like movie, minus the slash. Like Halloween, Alien's protagonist is a woman, played by Sigourney Weaver. It's refreshing to see a female lead in a horror movie, especially one that kicks so much ass. Well, not as much in this movie as in the sequels, but she does her fair share. One of the greatest horror movies of all time, and one of the best movies period. 

2. The Thing

Another John Carpenter film, the other being Halloween, this dealt with scientists in the Antarctic. That's not so scary, right? Oh, I forgot to mention the part about the extraterrestrial parasite that assimilates other organisms and is in turn able to imitate them. That's right, these researchers are stuck at a ice station with an alien that can look like any one of them. As you can imagine, this causes mass paranoia among the group and things escalate quickly. The movie is actually a remake of the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, which is the movie everyone is watching in Halloween. This is one of my favorite scary movies because it's premise is just that good. Who can you trust? The alien could be anybody. The suspense is unbearable. I love it, though. I'll warn you though, this is kind of an intense movie. Lots of gore, mutations, and scary images, so if you aren't into those things, I would go for a lighter Halloween movie. 

1. Evil Dead II

OK, so this was a hard one. Not between this and The Thing, but between this movie and its predecessor, The Evil Dead. I really want to put both of them, because I love them both so much, but there can be only one! The Evil Dead is a low-budget masterpiece that was straight horror. It's got great makeup, gore effects, and camera work. What it doesn't have that II has is comedy, well intentional comedy at least. I heard a ton of laughs at a midnight showing of The Evil Dead last year. I don't know, I just have a harder time recommending the first film to people because it's just so different. The tree part also has a little bit to do with it. II has a bigger budget, better acting, and a bigger role for the greatest B-movie actor of all time, Bruce Campbell. Campbell's Ash was the hero in the first film, but he's kind of a woos. He got stuck under bookcases a lot. In the second film, he has attitude and he's not gonna go down without a fight. The second film literally rewrites the first film in the first ten minutes. So, it's kind of a remake of the first film, but not really. Anyway, Ash is tormented by The Book of the Dead. He plays a tape player of an archaeology professor reciting passages from said book and it unleashes an evil force. This evil possesses his friends and it's up to Ash to banish the evil once and for all. The humor in the movie definitely has a Three Stooges vibe to it. That's the best way to describe it. The movie can be just plain silly sometimes, than the next second, something completely messed up happens. That's Evil Dead II. Funny and messed up. This is another film I could go on and on about but I'll save that for another post. If I had to label this under any specific horror genre, I guess it would have to be the zombie genre. This movie is too hard to define, you'll just have to check it out for yourself. Have a great Halloween!