Supernatural Friday: Women Writers of Horror

Why would women write about monsters or ghosts? I am sure there are readers who say stick to writing romance or fantasy. But women have just as much right to write the scary stuff and about monsters as does their male counterparts. After all, in the long run, it is all about the story. 

At BBC.com, an article mentioned how women writers “often found the supernatural a way to challenge and condemn their role in society.” It seems male writers have dominated supernatural fiction, those like M R James, Edgar Allan Poe, HP Lovecraft, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Onions and others.  But female writers have been on the horror scene in the past, too. Shirley Jackson, for instance. She wrote, The Haunting of Hill House, the only story to this day that scared me in the daytime, in a room full of people. Others had to do it at night, with me in a room alone. Susan Hill who wrote Woman in Black, is another. A classic ghost story from 1892, is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. Her nameless narrator, suffering from post-natal depression, is confined to bed rest under the care of her doctor husband and begins to lose her mind.  Confined to an old nursery with ghastly wallpaper, she sees strangled heads and unblinking “bulbous eyes” in its pattern. Eventually, a skulking female figure appears, seemingly trapped behind the bars of its design. Is it the narrator’s own hidden self? When her husband enters to find her tearing down the wallpaper, she tells him “I’ve got out at last. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper so you can’t put me back!”

Do women authors use ghost stories to exorcise their resentments over societal restrictions? After all, it can be said that the ghost is the ultimate outsider – an absent presence, all-seeing and yet unable to partake of life in any meaningful way. Do we have insight differently from male writers? Can what a woman writes be more downright frightening than what a man writes? Is the way we pen the words on paper or type onscreen haunt the person as they read? Maybe we even make the monster sympathetic. Still horrifying, but a monster the reader just care about. Or not.

With February coming around and Women in Horror a theme for the month, this may be the time for readers to discover female horror authors. There are those I am sure readers already know about; Anne Rice, Sarah Pinborough, Laurell K. Hamilton and Caitlin R. Kiernan.  Others are Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Massie, Lisa Morton, Yvonne Navarro, Carrie Ryan, Cherie Priest, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and much, much more. A good place to check for women horror writers is at Horror Writers Association. Try someone new today. 

So instead of picking up that Stephen King or other male horror authors, try several feminine writers instead. We just might bring "SCARE" to a whole new level.

Supernatural Friday: Eleven Spooky Supernatural Reads for October

For this Supernatural Friday, I decided to do eleven spooky reads perfect for October and Halloween. Not to say, they aren't wonderful, to read any other time. There are more creepy novels and short stories I can tell you about, but then that might go into the hundreds. Instead, I feel these eleven will be a great start for you. Plus at the end, there is a link for my own scary ghost story that made the top seven stories for Small Press Award 2013.  Now get reading!

1.     The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (It’s not Halloween without a great, scary ghost story. This is the only novel to scare me during the daytime, in a room full of middle school student. My parents landlady had given this book and Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (another good read), so after getting my work in class done early the teacher said I could read my book, so I did. The scene I read freaked me out.)

 

2.     The Wolfen by Whitley Strieber (A werewolf horror novel, but where the werewolves are shifters, but a race living alongside humans since prehistoric times.  Though no longer in print (you can find it used—I did—it is available of Kindle and Nook.

 Book blurb: In the dark, they are watching...
They are waiting for you. No one has ever lived to tell the horrifying truth about them. Yet even now the Wolfen are gathered in the night-dark alleys ... unseen, poised ... ready to destroy their helpless human prey. Only one man and one woman, trained cops, willing to risk their lives, stand in the way.)

3. Bad Wolf by Tim McGregor (I got this free on Kindle—which I see it is again—and though self-published, it was good. Enough for me to buy the second two in the Bad Wolf Chronicles trilogy.

 Book blurb: Detective Lara Mendes’s hard work finally pays off   when she gets the chance to join the homicide detail. There’s only one catch; she has to partner up with a cop no one wants to work with.

John Gallagher is a veteran homicide detective who loves stomping bad guys and hates partners. When the Lieutenant saddles him with this green kid named Mendes, his first reaction is to ditch her but a call comes in about a body on the river bank and the rotation says they’re up.

What they find are human remains, mutilated and partially devoured. Their investigation reveals a killer stalking the city with a pack of vicious, feral dogs.
And the suspect believes he is a werewolf.

But this is Portland, where crazy bastards outnumber normal ones ten to one. Except there’s another catch. The crazy werewolf guy? He isn’t crazy...  

4.     Dracula by Bram Stoker( Forgot that Twilight junk and read the vampire that start it all (even though there was a vamp novel before him). With ‘Dracula Untold’ coming to movie theaters, showing how he became the monstrous Count, I would suggest start reading the book. And no, he may walk in the daytime, but he does not sparkle! If cannot afford the book or eBook, or it’s out at your library, you can read it free here: http://www.literature.org/authors/stoker-bram/dracula/  or get it at Gutenberg as download for free: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345 Read the short story, “Dracula’s Guest” for free at http://www.literature.org/authors/stoker-bram/draculas-guest/ or get it at Gutenberg too, as free download: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10150

 

5.     Hell House by Richard Matheson (You think it was Hill House again, but it is not. What really haunts Hell House?

6.     “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs (Not a novel, but a very, scary ghost story. Remember that motto, “Be careful what you wish for?” as this story fits it so well. Sometimes the dead should remain dead.) The Monkey’s Paw,” one of the most bone-chilling and frequently anthologized stories of all time. Readers will find it difficult to believe that W(illiam) W(ymark) Jacobs (1863-1943) gained his fame as a writer of humorous tales, as there is no hilarity to be found here. It has been adapted relentlessly: for radio, as a 1907 play, motion pictures (several silent films as well as a 1933 talkie and a 1948 remake), for television as episodes of Suspense, Great Ghost Tales, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and Great Mysteries, and for three operas. “The Monkey’s Paw” was first published in the September 1902 issue of Harper’s Monthly; it was collected in The Lady of the Barge (London, Harper, 1902). You can read it here for free.

7.     All of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and novels (Something about the Old Ones that can creep to a person, don’t you agree?)

 

8.     Salem’s Lot and It by Stephen King (I compiled these two together, as both scared me when I read both books alone in my bedroom, just before bedtime. )

     

9.    Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (I love all of Ray Bradbury's works, but this one is a great favorite of mine.

Few American novels written this century have endured in th heart and mind as has this one-Ray Bradbury's incomparable masterwork of the dark fantastic. A carnival rolls in sometime after the midnight hour on a chill Midwestern October eve, ushering in Halloween a week before its time. A calliope's shrill siren song beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister. 

 

10.     Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (Got to have one demon or Devil story with witches to read for Halloween. Forget The Exorcist—that bored me—but this one stuck in my mind for years.

 

11.  Complete Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe (You thought I would forget him? Heck, no! He’s is perfect for this time of the year.)

 

Now read my fictional ghost story, Bottled Spirits at BuzzyMag.com for free. 

Ten Scary Books to Read

Autumn brings a chill to the air and shadows of darkness block out the light earlier as evening draws near. This is a good time of the year to stockpile books and read indoors. Most of all, it's October and Halloween is fast approaching. So the reader wants something frightening to devour. I have many favorites, but I will only do ten here. If you want others to know your own suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.






1. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: A 1959 novel by author Shirley Jackson. Finalist for the National Book Award and considered one of the best literary ghost stories published during the twentieth century, it has been made into two feature films and a play. Jackson's novel relies on terror rather than horror to elicit emotion by the reader, utilizing complex relationships between the mysterious events in the house and the characters’ psyches. This is also the only book to scare me in the daytime, in a room full of people.


2. Ghost Story by Peter Straub: For four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder.




3. Hell House by Ricard Matheson: Rolf Rudolph Deutsch is going die. But when Deutsch, a wealthy magazine and newpaper publisher, starts thinking seriously about his impending death, he offers to pay a physicist and two mediums, one physical and one mental, $100,000 each to establish the facts of life after death.
Dr. Lionel Barrett, the physicist, accompanied by the mediums, travel to the Belasco House in Maine, which has been abandoned and sealed since 1949 after a decade of drug addiction, alcoholism, and debauchery. For one night, Barrett and his colleagues investigate the Belasco House and learn exactly why the townfolks refer to it as the Hell House.


4. It by Stephen King: A promise made twenty-eight years ago calls seven adults to reunite in Derry, Maine, where as teenagers they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city's children. Unsure that their Losers Club had vanquished the creature all those years ago, the seven had vowed to return to Derry if IT should ever reappear. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that summer return as they prepare to do battle with the monster lurking in Derry's sewers once more.


5. Salem's Lot by Stephen King: For vampire fans. Author Ben Mears returns to ‘Salem's Lot to write a book about a house that has haunted him since childhood only to find his isolated hometown infested with vampires. While the vampires claim more victims, Mears convinces a small group of believers to combat the undead.


6. Dracula by Bram Stoker: An 1887 novel by Irish author, Bram Stoker. The classic vampire story revolves around a struggle between good and evil, tradition and modernity, and lust versus chastity. The author didn’t invent vampires, but his novel has so captured the public’s imagination that he is rightly considered their popularizer.


7. Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe: Of course, I would add Poe's works!


8. The Red Church by Scott Nicholson: A boy and a sheriff must solve the mystery of a haunted Appalachian church when a strange preacher returns to town. Stoker Award finalist

9. Phantoms by Dean Koontz: CLOSER… They found the town silent, apparently abandoned. Then they found the first body strangely swollen and still warm. One hundred fifty were dead, 350 missing. But the terror had only begun in the tiny mountain town of Snowfield, California.
AND CLOSER… At first they thought it was the work of a maniac. Or terrorists. Or toxic contamination. Or a bizarre new disease.
AND CLOSER… But then they found the truth. And they saw it in the flesh. And it was worse than anything any of them had ever imagined…

10. Wolfen by Whitley Stieber: This is out of print, but still my favorite werewolf novel. Do a search for it in your local used bookstores, or through Amazon or Indiebound.org. Only two people have grasped the full horror of the Wolfen--one man and one woman, both cops, locked in a strange passion of love, hate, and sheer terror.

Another author to read for his dark fantasy is Ray Bradbury. He even has some perfect for this time of the year. Just google his name or check for bhis books on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.com.

And if you're interested in reading any of my scary fiction, try Spectre Nightmares and Visitations: Many things scare us. But the most fearful things are those that infect our nightmares and visitations. Monsters from the closet or from another planet. Ghosts that haunt more than houses. Werewolves are not the only shapeshifters to beware of. Children can be taken from more than the human kind of monsters. Even normal things can be the start of a heart-pounding terror. Prepare to step beyond the pages into Spectre Nightmares and Visitations.
Just tell yourself that they're only stories.

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EBook at Genre Connections