Seeking Spine-Chilling Stories
It’s October, and we’re looking for your favorite scary books. From the mildly morose to the positively petrifying, there’s lots to choose from with Eucalyptus, and we want to present the best as Halloween Picks in the app.
What do you think your fellow readers should be sinking their teeth into this Halloween? Whether well known, or more esoteric, promote your Pick as a public comment below, or send it to picks@eucalyptusapp.com. We’ll be featuring the best in Eucalyptus over the Halloween weekend.
Up to about 55 words fits on a Reader Pick card in Eucalyptus, so around that length is ideal. No tricks, but as always a treat will be on its way to the authors of featured picks (so make sure you leave your email address when you comment - don’t worry, it’s not published, so it’s just between you and us).
Make your disembodied voice heard!
The small print:
Probably nothing you would not expect, but just to be clear about this, by submitting a Pick, you’re giving Things Made Out Of Other Things rights to edit it for any reason, and to re-publish the text of the Pick worldwide, in any form, royalty-free. You also understand that Things Made Out Of Other Things may freely sub-license these rights. We do not guarantee to use any of the Picks submitted.
In a previous life, the scary face was by WxMom on Flickr. This incarnation is also published under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License.
"Dracula" is an obvious choice. "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a good choice from Poe, although a collection of his short stories would also be good.
For sheer surreality, Lord Dunsany’s Fifty-One Tales is hard to beat. They are weird tales for the poetic, and their effects linger like a whisper not quite heard, leaving you straining… straining…
"And Death came up behind him, and suddenly shouted.
And Odysseus went on warming his pale hands."
Le Fanu’s Carmilla is a classic horror tale of a female vampire. It was published almost 20 years earlier than Dracula, and may have had some impact on Stoker’s later work.
"…I saw a large black object, very ill-defined, crawl, as it seemed to me, over the foot of the bed, and swiftly spread itself up to the poor girl’s throat, where it swelled, in a moment, into a great, palpitating mass."
Mel, great picks, thanks - your suggestion of Dracula inspired our first Halloween "Staff Pick" (we’re looking for a 55-ish word card for submissions here though).
Great pick, Kristin - although already "picked" (by you I think?) recently enough that I don’t think we’ll repeat it (haven’t repeated any picks yet!).
Definitely well worth a read though for anyone that hasn’t checked it out yet. It’s still a couple of screens to the right of the Halloween picks in Eucalputs’ "Get Books" if you want to take a look at Kirstin’s recommendation.
Thanks for that second pick too, Kristin! Your "Carmilla" is now today’s Halloween Pick in Eucalyptus.
Hugh Walpole’s "The Castle of Otranto" is one of the finest Gothic horror novels, couched in a fictitious Italian castle of fantastical terrors and delivered as a ‘found manuscript’ of uncertain provenance. Walpole’s tale plays upon our fears and our pity for the characters undergoing the trials and perils of the bizarre, darkly miraculous events described and an increasing sense of oppresive horror lurking somewhere in the lowering prose.
Thanks, Adrian - we used your pick on the final Sunday of our Halloween Picks.
Thanks to everyone else who submitted picks via email too. Remember that you can send your (non-Halloween) Pick to picks@eucalyptusapp.com any time of the year. For every Reader Pick we publish we’ll send a Eucalyptus notebook to the picker.