Fearsome Fiction

Classic stories are better represented than current work online, due to enduring popularity and copyright laws. The horror output of author Henry James was not confined to “The Turn of the Screw [1]”,  for he wrote other supernatural stories like “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes [1]”. M.R. (Montague Roberts) James, unrelated to Henry James, was a medieval scholar whose fiction kept within the borders of the ghostly, as shown by the slightly meta “A School Story [1].” Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire novella “Carmilla [1]” predates his fellow Irishman Bram Stoker’s Dracula. For a shorter taste of Le Fanu’s work, read “Moll Rial’s Adventure [1].”

It can’t be denied that the most popular medium for horror is the moving picture. Yet many horror movies are adaptations of short stories, or are at least “inspired by” elements of a previous story. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher [1]” has spawned films ranging from a Roger Corman production starring Vincent Price to a Czech clay animation version [Part 1] [Part 2]. Someone even recreated the story in The Sims 2 [1]. While a respectable feature-length French adaptation was filmed in 1928 [1] [2], my favorite is an expressionist short film from that year, directed by Melville Webber and James Sibley Watson [1]. (Also available here.)

The stories above should be consumed in a quiet place, away from other people, somewhere the mind can conjure movements in the shadows and sounds in the walls. I end this post with Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart [1]”, as narrated by James Mason:

Happy reading to all, and to all a good fright.

Diandra Rodriguez

Proudly Latinasian NorCal American.

1 Response

  1. I really did try to put a more diverse array of authors but so much is only in print. Feel free to share any other horror short stories here in the comments. Doesn’t even have to be in the English language!

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