The Seven Archetypal Horror Stories You Should Read this Halloween (and 31 Suggested Stories)
With Hallowe’en – that most atmospheric and imaginative of all holidays – brewing on the horizon, I thought it might be fitting to take a moment to think about the sorts of horror stories that best suit that august occasion. Here I’ve detailed seven of the most all-canvasing horror archetypes. There are certainly more, but this batch seem to dominate so much of the field that I think they deserve a little bit of special consideration. Along with a short tip-toe through what makes these archetypes so thrilling and chilling, I’ve included a list of 31 stories that I would recommend to illustrate each type. It’s certainly not exhaustive, but I would love for you to comment with your own recommendations: what is your favorite haunted house story, werewolf tale, or vampire book? Until then, ease back, pour a glass of dark, red wine, and – after you’ve made sure that one window that keeps opening is thoroughly locked, and that nothing is breathing under the bed – enjoy this Hallowe’en treat…
7. Stories about a Bad Place
THE HAUNTED HOUSE. (Exemplar: The Fall of the House of Usher) Unlucky homes are among the first ghost stories that we have in writing. Pliny the Younger recorded a story about a spirit who haunted a house with clanking chains; the Tower of London is so famous for its ghosts that they are virtually part of the furnishings. Bad places are symbols of the institutions in life which convey the wickedness of previous generations forward into the future: patriarchies, prejudices, inequalities, unspoken segregations. Houses symbolize the heart of man, and for a house to be haunted, its previous owner must be symbolically guilty of some unresolved sin which society has agreed to ignore. For this reason – like the crimes of a civilization – the house propagates its evil with each generation until someone resists it.
THE LONESOME PLACE (DERLETH), THE EMPTY HOUSE (BLACKWOOD), THE TOLL HOUSE (JACOBS), SOME HAUNTED HOUSES (BIERCE)
6. Stories about a Lingering Presence
THE GHOST. (Exemplar: The Turn of the Scew) Ghosts, like haunted houses, remain extant long after their natural life has expired because of a lack of moral resolution. A crime has gone unpunished, a lust untasted, a hate un-satiated. And so the immortal essence continues to thrive and disturb. Ghosts are metaphors for the unspoken fears, anxieties, appetites, and neuroses that plague our lives. Hamlet’s father reminds him of his (potentially unfounded) suspicions of homicidal incest. Marley’s ghost is a manifestation of Scrooge’s unchallenged misanthropy. The Headless Horseman represents the impotent loss of identity that interlopers (like the gold-digging Ichabod Crane) suffer when they try to alter the status quo. They terrify not because of the fear of the dead, but because of their defiance of death and what that says to us, that distasteful issues, once out of sight, should be out of mind – but they aren’t: we lust and hate and fear and suspect and no amount of denial or politeness can frighten away the ghosts that lurk in our own minds.
A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS (M. R. JAMES), TO BE READ AT DUSK (DICKENS), THE WELL (JACOBS), THE OPEN DOOR (OLIPHANT), SOME STRANGE DISTURBANCES IN AUNGIER STREET (LE FANU)
5. Stories about a Life-Sucker
THE VAMPIRE. (Exemplar: Dracula) Vampires take many shapes other than aristocratic womanizer with a Slavic accent, and they drink up far more than just hemoglobin. Vampires, like monsters, are the manifestations of forbidden desires. Most of these desires are sexual in nature, its true, but some are power-fed, some are revenge-fed, and some are ego-fed. At their most basic, vampires drink life from those they encounter. It is easy to see how this particular monster came to be: people noticed how some among their number shamelessly bled power, money, self-respect, and dignity from those they stood to gain from, and after those sycophants died, who wouldn't guess that they might rise again to drink life-blood as greedly as they slurped up life-power? The vampire reminds us of our human tendency to use each other and serves as a warning to stem our appetites and control our greed. They prey on the beautiful, pure, and virtuous, but what good has it done them? They are grotesque, corrupt, and vulgar. Whether viewed as a sexual, social, or spiritual metaphor, the vampire is never satisfied and never content.
THE TRANSFER (BLACKWOOD), JOHN BARRINGTON COWLES (CONAN DOYLE), THE FAMILY OF THE VOURDALAK (A. K. TOLSTOY), FOR THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE (CRAWFORD)
4. Stories about a Shape-Shifter
THE WEREWOLF. (Exemplar: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde)
While the vampire represents human shamelessness and decadence, the werewolf – a close relative notwithstanding – explores a different, even darker side: human deceptiveness and degeneration. The werewolf was used to explain cannibals and serial killers during the Middle Ages because it was not intellectually acceptable to believe that human minds could be capable of such unspeakable carnage without Satanic influences. Since then the werewolf has continued to be a metaphor for the passions and appetites that we secret away from one another. Dorian Gray was beautiful externally but within he was a horror show. The BTK Killer was a church elder, Boy Scout troop leader, and father, but while he ate breakfast with his wife and children before church, he fantasized about torturing families to death. Werewolves plague our imaginations for the same reason that we are drawn to stories about double lives: it offends our civility but resonates with the very real understanding that all which separates us from behaving badly in public is the fear of shame, and that if that fear was lowered enough, we too might be tempted to succumb to our animal nature.
BLACKWOOD (THE WENDIGO), THE HAUNTED 'PAMPERO' (HODGSON), THE THING IN THE FOREST (CAPES), THE WOLF (DE MAUPASSANT)
3. Stories about a Nameless Thing</