Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Think of this as my Halloween contribution. For the last several years, I have celebrated Halloween not by Trick-or-Treating, not by gorging myself with candy, but by reading collections of horror stories, mostly those published by Dover Publications. I find that the best works of horror fiction are usually not the longest (sorry, Stephen King), but either short stories or novellas.

Here is a list of ten of my favorites, in order of publication:

• Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the red Death” (1842)
• J S Le Fanu, “Carmilla” (1871)
• Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Body Snatcher” (1884)
• Henry James, “The Turn of the Screw” (1898)
• Bernard Capes, “An Eddy on the Floor” (1899)
• W W Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902)
• Arthur Machen, “The White People” (1904)
• Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows” (1907)
• M R James, “Casting the Runes” (1911)
• H P Lovecraft, “The Colour Out of Space” (1927)

Happy Halloween, and Boo!