Spooky Stories to Consume Like Candy

Looking for some quick scares to get you in the mindset for Halloween? I’ve already written a post on ghost stories that you can read to get into the spirit of the season, but shades of the deceased aren’t the only things that will send shivers down your spine. Here are a few of my favorite stories featuring all sorts of other things that go bump in the night. These stories are all available online and perfect for giving yourself a quick horror fix before you go out to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve tonight:

1. “The Human Chair” by Edogawa Ranpo

I was recently introduced to this Japanese author who published throughout the first half of the twentieth century. He was greatly influenced by Western mystery and horror authors, especially Edgar Allan Poe. In 2021, one of Ranpo’s best known stories, “The Human Chair,” was given a new English translation for the horror fiction podcast PseudoPod—this is the version that I’ve read. “The Human Chair” opens with a frame story of a celebrated Japanese author reading a strange manuscript she’s discovered amongst her fan mail. The pages tell of a socially isolated furniture-builder who designs an armchair that he can hide inside of. Though he initially intends to hide only briefly in order to  carry out a burglary, the narrator soon becomes obsessed with the one-sided intimacy he develops with those who sit in his chair. After reading this story, you will never be able to see a big comfy armchair the same way again. You can read the text or listen to the story on PseudoPod here.

2. “The Crimson Weaver” by R. Murray Gilchrist

Robert Murray Gilchrist was a British writer at the turn of the century whose work sits at the intersection of Gothic, weird, and decadent. “The Crimson Weaver” is my favorite of his stories that I’ve read so far. In the story, a devoted servant and his master enter a fantastical region ruled over by a sorceress known as the Crimson Weaver. Death feeds the loom of this titular villain, and she is almost vampiric in the way she drains the life of those who defy her. I can’t say much more about this very short story without giving too much away. You can read it for yourself here.

3. “The Famine King” by Darcie Little Badger

Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer best known for her YA novels Elatsoe and A Snake Falls to Earth, but she has also written plenty of short fiction for adults in genres ranging from sci-fi to fantasy and horror, and “The Famine King” is one of her creepiest tales. In this story, the fervor around a new wendigo movie gets into the head of a young indigenous woman named Irene whose mental illness predisposes her to disturbing visions and paranoid fear. As Irene’s world becomes more terrifying by the day, she reflects on the kinship she feels with the figure of the wendigo as someone who also consumes those she loves… Check out “The Famine King” here.

4. “The Blue Room” by Lettice Galbraith

Lettice Galbraith was one of the turn-of-the-century authors first introduced to me by the Women’s Weird collections. Her story “The Blue Room” reads at first like a traditional ghost story, but the ending reveals an even darker twist. Told from the point of view of the housekeeper, this story takes place in an old estate called Mertoun Towers. A certain “blue tapestry room” in the house is rumored to be haunted, and throughout the years, any woman who has slept in there is found dead the next morning with a look of terror on her face. Indeed, the housekeeper witnesses one such death during the early years of her employment there. But fifty years later, another young woman comes along to challenge the power of the room. Miss Erristoun is bold, intellectual, and doesn’t believe in ghosts. When she decides to stay in the room overnight, two of her friends and the housekeeper wait up in a room nearby. And it’s lucky that they do, since the room is haunted by something so much worse than a ghost…. You can find a PDF of “The Blue Room” online here.

5. “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” by Edgar Allan Poe

How could I write a list of scary stories without including one by the inimitable horror master Edgar Allan Poe? “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” is probably one of Poe’s lesser known stories and not likely to be one you read in school, but I consider it to be one of his creepiest. The story is a prime example of the Victorian fascination with (and fear of) the newly emerging practice of mesmerism (the precursor to what is now known as hypnotism). In this tale, the narrator is invited to the deathbed of his friend Ernest Valdemar and given permission to conduct a scientific experiment using mesmerism to try to glean information about the afterlife. The narrator puts Valdemar into a trance right at the moment of death and is able to ask him questions about what he feels and experiences. When he comes back seven months later to lift the trance, however, the narrator and his friends are in for a gruesome surprise. You can read the story online from the E. A. Poe Society.

What will you be reading tonight to get yourself into the Halloween mood? Got any other scary stories to recommend? Let me know in the comments!