Classic Books for October!!!

It's almost October!!! Which means it's time for a list of some of my favourite spooky, gothic, supernatural, or horror books from times past.

If you're looking for a classic haunted house story, dealing with the themes of loneliness, isolation, and a lil bit of sapphic-coded tension, you can't really do better than The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. If you liked the tv show, you should know that the book is very different. However, it's super fun to notice all the references the show added. 

Maybe you want something a little more gothic, in which case I would recommend Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the lesbian vampire novella from 1872. This story is actually from before Dracula, but it's often overlooked because the seductive powers of the lesbian vampire were simply too much for people to handle (at least that's how I see it). I was actually very surprised by how obvious the lesbianism was, given that it was 1872 and straight-up unintentional on the author's part. I thought it would involve some figurative digging to find it, but it was... very hard not to notice.

If you're looking for something a little shorter I would recommend Edgar Allan Poe. Dude wrote a lot of short stories, but my personal favourites are The Tell-Tale Heart (watch a guy slowly lose his mind), The Cask of Amontillado (murder yay), The Black Cat (self explanatory), and The Fall of the House of Usher. 

Lastly, we have Dracula by Bram Stoker and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. To be completely transparent, I haven't read either of these yet, so I can't comment on them. But it felt wrong to leave them off.