Scary Stories

As a child, I was kind of obsessed with ghost stories. I just absolutely loved them. I had all the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark books, and I read anything else I could get my hands on. I even read them in a darkened room by myself. I think the illustrations throughout those books are almost as bad as the stories themselves.

You know who had compiled one of the best compilations of ghost stories I had ever read? Roald Dahl. That guy is pretty awesome. Orson Scott Card also has a really cool book of short horror stories.

I don't know what happened, but in the years since I haven't bothered reading anything else from the horror genre. Not until recently at least.

I bought Stephen King's book, Everything's Eventual more than a year ago to read the short story 1408. I loved the story, but didn't bother reading anything else from the book.

Well I started up again. And there are some really great ones. I love how the book is billed as a "nighmarish landscape of unrelenting horror and shocking revelations" when of the 6 or 7 stories I've read, only a couple of them would really be classified as being horror. All the other ones are kind of hopeful actually.

I tried finding my favorite one so far, That Feeling You Can Only Say What It Is In French, but I can't find any full text copies anywhere. I don't think of that one as being of the horror genre, but it's still chilling. I just love that one.

King is a really, really great writer. It's easy to write him off as being an author who overproduces a tired product, but he's so prolific because he's got such an incredible and active imagination. And what's more, he has some amazing stories that don't have anything to do with horror - Green Mile, Stand By Me, and Shawshank Redemption, among others. Yup, those are all based on Stephen King stories.

I think I've mentioned his commentary before on the Passion of the Christ, but I've found the full text of the article that can be found here. Keep in mind that that particular piece comes from the master of horror. It's short, and definitely worth reading.

After some consultation, I've settled on my first Stephen King novel being Salem's Lot. I just really wanted something appropriate for the Halloween season that we're about to embark upon. And this is one of his earliest novels, and it's about vampires. I'm loving it.

I've read Bram Stoker's Dracula, and some of the Rice Interview With A Vampire series, and most recently the Twilight books. I'm anticipating, or maybe just hoping, that this will be the best of all the vampire books that I'll ever read. We'll see.