Exquisitely Horrifying Reads at Your Library

I blame Edgar Allen Poe.   More specifically, I blame the The Tell-Tale Heart and Edgar Allen Poe.  This marvelous author and his spine tingling story was my first foray into the world of horror.  I couldn’t get enough.  I quickly devoured The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Fall of the House of Usher.  I blame (or credit) Poe’s masterful storytelling for turning me into the horror junkie I am today. 

In middle school, my tastes shifted from Poe to more mainstream horror by Stephen King. Thanks to his books Pet Semetery, Salem’s Lot, It, and Needful Things, I became a night-time flashlight-under-the-covers kind of reader.  I paid for this indulgence every morning.  By day, I swore I would not read at night so I could get a good amount of sleep.  But by nightfall, my resolve had evaporated; the lure of the tale was too strong.

In college, I discovered Dean Koontz and Anne Rice.  Koontz’s books The Bad Place, Strangers, and Door to December provided needed respite from the harsh realities of strict deadlines, brain crushing exams, and annoying professors.  I eagerly opened my mind to Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire and let it draw me to the darker side of gothic horror.  This book put New Orleans on the map for me as a must-see destination.  I read other books from her Vampire Chronicles series, The Vampire Lestat, Queen of the Dammed, and The Tale of the Body Thief.  Anne Rice led me to Bram Stoker and his famous novel, Dracula.

From gritty mysteries to dark macabre to malevolent supernatural, I love a good heart-stopping story.  The aforementioned authors take readers into the darkest recesses of the human psyche and rip a hole through the natural world to make the impossible plausible.  A great horror story ignites the imagination, builds suspense at an unrelenting fast pace, then delivers an adrenaline charged ending.  Characters in these types of books are deeply flawed and damaged, yet when faced with adversity, dig deep to discover their inner fortitude to fight seemingly insurmountable (and usually unnatural) odds.  Stories set in slithering darkness, damp rotting places, and lurking slippery shadows deliver on chills.  These are perfect fireplace reads on a dark frosty night when you’re home alone.

A scary tale comes alive when you listen to it as an audiobook.  If, that is, the narrator is worth their salt.  Will Patton’s performance of Stephen King’s Dr. Sleep is achingly terrifying.  Kate Mulgrew is equally fantastic.  Best known for her role as Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, Mulgrew’s performance of Joe Hill’s The Fireman and NOS4A2 is utterly captivating. 

Neill Public Library has hundreds of terrifying tales in various formats waiting for you.  Come try one today as the moon rises and darkness falls across the land.

Joanna Bailey

Director, Neill Public Library