Spooky season has officially arrived. If you’re looking for some mood-boosting reading recommendations, we’ve rounded up some of our favorites. long lead Part below. Consider Leslie Finn’s The Final Girl, A Terrible Place, a poignant essay about horror films, the male gaze on women’s bodies, and American patriarchy. Let’s take a closer look at Janna Kadlec’s explanation of the witch/mother archetype. maleficent A movie that is part of her disney demolition series. Or why not try Corpse Rider, Colin Dickie’s work about Lafcadio Hearn, a famous chronicler of Japanese culture including ghost stories and folk tales.
We also have editor’s picks from the past few years about haunted houses, ghosts from history and our own lives, famous fictional monsters, other monsters and evil figures on TV and in our bedrooms. I collected it. .
Long essay and reading list
final girl, terrible place
I was hoping for an easy to understand theory. What I found was a way of looking at things that helped me decipher the scripts I had been stuck in for most of my life.
Stranger Things: Unsolved Mysteries Reading List
Stories of strange phenomena both tease us and capture our imaginations.
Deconstructing Disney: Motherhood and the Taming of Maleficent
Last week, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil was released on Disney+. Gina Kadlec uses this opportunity to explore how Disney dealt with its most powerful witches.
More: Why women are excluded from horror
Horror movies give strong female characters more screen time and appeal to large female audiences. However, there are very few female filmmakers working on this work.
dress you up with my love
Dolly Shafrir reflects on how Halloween has changed for her after struggling with infertility.
corpse slider
“I saw ghosts,” Lafcadio Hearn recalled from his childhood. In his later years, he became a prominent recorder of Japanese folklore, stories of strange demons and lingering visitations.
A family that shouldn’t survive
What do haunted houses and their history tell us about American history and culture? Author Colin Dickey explores what their ghost stories tell us about who we were, are, and will be. Travels across America to investigate America’s haunted spaces to uncover what they’re telling us.
Editor’s picks from around the web
sorcerer’s apprentice
Kent Russell | Harper’s Magazine | May 11, 2022 | 6,982 words
“Looking for the devil in a disillusioned world.”
encounter with a ghost
Sadie Stein | Paris Review | November 2, 2022 | 1,894 words
“We were all there to see ghosts. I think we were all ghosts from the future.”
Ghosts of Antarctica haunt the end of the world
Jack Ryan | CNET | September 11, 2022 | 2,680 words
“We’re writing ghost stories in real time as climate change threatens to turn the Ice Kingdom upside down.”
ghost
Vauhini Vara | Devotee | August 9, 2021 | 5,992 words
“I didn’t know how to write about my sister’s death, so I asked AI to write it for me.”
Who is always walking next to you?
Benjamin Hale Harpers | July 17, 2023 | 14,265 words
“Missing Case in Arkansas.”
Father’s Ghost and the Chelsea Hotel
Amanda Chemeche | Harper’s Bazaar | June 7, 2023 | 1,800 words
“Amanda Chemeche’s childhood spent at the famous Chelsea Hotel taught her about life, loss, and the power of art.”
haunted apartments in montreal
Nathan Mann | Popular | October 5, 2022 | 3,266 words
“Twenty years later, the author recalls being trapped in a vortex of dark energy.”
when your mom is a ghost hunter
Kat Cardenas | Texas Monthly | October 26, 2021 | 2,291 words
“We are searching for TikTok star Brittany Brosky and her mother Heather Long, who is the lead investigator for Texas Ghost Gals.”
The persistent life and mysterious death of the fisherman who discovered the Loch Ness Monster
Paul Brown | Narratively | December 10, 2020 | 5,504 words
“A humble Scotsman spots something strange in the water and boldly attempts to capture it, but his quest is ruined when lustful out-of-towners steal his fame.”
When horror tells the truth
Alexander Chee | Guernica | October 2, 2023 | 2,587 words
“In the age of AR-15s, it’s hard to be afraid of vampires.”
Has the witch town lost its way?
Katherine Miles Boston Magazine | October 22, 2021 | 3,758 words
“Is a tourism economy based on witches the best way to honor the legacy of executed people who were never even witches in the first place? Or is it true that continuing to transform towns into centers of modern witchcraft? Is it the perfect way to right the wrongs of the past?”
The hero can never be controlled
Emily Fox Kaplanguernica | October 2, 2023 | 6,552 words
“A fairy tale turned upside down.”
hungry ghost
Natalie Lynn Balderston | White Review | May 20, 2022 | 3,581 words
“I think of all the hurts she’ll never get over, the ghosts that will never be satisfied no matter how much she feeds herself.”
The Bell Witch’s Elusive Madness Mystery
Colin Dickie | Atlas Obscura | May 2, 2023 | 3,375 words
“Classic ghost stories say something about America 200 years ago, 100 years ago, and today.”
They were labeled as witches. They just had dementia.
Shara Johnson | Narratively | May 2021 | 6,723 words
“In tribal communities across Namibia, older eccentrics are often accused of witchcraft and violently attacked.”