#30 of 31 Days of Halloween: La Llorona

La Llorona is not a story I grew up with, but one I learned as an adult. She's a creature of Latin American folklore, a ghost or demon who preys on children who wander too far from home or on cheating men, depending on who is telling the story. She's a character in the traditional of The Woman in White, who is also a vengeful ghost seeking retribution for her wrongs or forgiveness for the wrongs she has done.

She's been gaining in popularity here in the United States, making an appearance on an excellent episode of the popular television series Supernatural. 

I love how these stories pull from many of my favorite ghost story elements. How ghosts can be remnants of powerful emotions, like vengeance, or how wandering as a ghost can be a punishment for wrongs, like filicide. Sometimes there's a phantom hitchhiker vibe to the stories, when the woman in white wanders the road, and might wreak horrible revenge on the man who picks her up.

There's a lot of meat to those stories and I end up being sympathetic both to the "monster" and to its victims, which is a place I like a horror story to take me.

#29 of 31 Days of Halloween: Werewolves

Of all of Halloween's creatures, my favorite is probably the werewolf. Cheesy or terrifying, I love the Jekyll and Hyde torment of a good werewolf character.

I don't remember when I didn't now about werewolves as a mythology, so I'm not sure who my first fictional werewolf was. Maybe Eddie Munster? Or Wolfie from the Groovy Ghoulies?

But An American Werewolf in London has remained a favorite film of mine since I first saw it as a teenager. It's the first thing I think of when I think of werewolves.

The special effects were amazing, but what really made it for me were the performances. When the two young men were frightened on the moors, I ran with them in my imagination. David Kessler's disbelief about what was happening to him and fear as he began to believe that maybe he wasn't "just" suffering delusions and hallucinations got me, too. It was also one of the first films I saw that combined the horrific with the comedic, which is a combination that still grabs me when I can find it.

As an old movie buff, I also love The Wolf Man. It's stilted at time, but oh-so-atmospheric and menacing at others. The 2010 update was equally flawed, but spot-on in some ways. I loved the family curse element of that story. Teen Wolf was a movie that I LOVED when I was younger, though I haven't seen it since and still haven't gotten around to watching the more recent TV series.

I loved Oz on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and was grossed out by the transformation portrayals in the first season of Hemlock Grove. Being Human (both versions) was fun, too, for the ways the bitten character tried to cope.

Got a favorite werewolf? Something I should check out? Let me know in the comments!

#28 of 31 Days of Halloween: Spooky Sounds

In so many spooky scenarios, it's the sounds that get you going, make you nervous and edgy. Footsteps echoing in empty spaces. Distant wolves howling. Tiny scritching sounds that might be rats trapped in the walls. Dripping liquid. Creaks and groans of old wood. Wind through dry leaves. Murmuring voices where you think no one is present.



Right up there with shadows, the right kinds of sounds can feed my imagination and let me build up a good case of the heebie jeebies. Combine spooky sounds with other atmospheric details like moonlight and fog and we've got ourselves a setting for a horror story.

One of the advantages movie and television have over print media is the ease with which they can convey sound. Literally, they can make you hear it. It's harder for writers, but when done well, sound can be a very effective way to build tension.

What kind of sounds make you nervous? Got a favorite horror moment when it was the sound that got you? I'd love to hear about in the comments.

#27 of 31 Days of Halloween: Masks

What is it about masks? Whether they're sitting on tables, hanging on walls, or covering someone's face, they are so inherently creepy. Something about those frozen facsimiles of faces, whether they imitate life, or distort it.

At the Halloween store, I can creep myself out just by standing at the wall of masks for a while. My vision will trick me into thinking the expressions have changed. Sometimes especially on the rigid ones that totally can't change expression.

The Phantom of the Opera, Michael Myers, Darth Vader, Leatherface. So many scary characters have been made that much scarier by the omission of their faces.

Got a favorite scary mask character? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

#26 of 31 Days of Halloween: Zombies

I didn't grow up on zombie movies like some folks did. My family didn't go in for Romero films and I was still only 14 when the first wave of Zombie films went by. If I had wanted to see them, my parents wouldn't have let me.

But when I re-met the man who would become my second husband, we went to see Dawn of the Dead, (2004) together.

I loved and hated it.

I remember in particular, being really creeped out by the idea of a zombie baby (a pregnant woman had been bitten and was in labor). I had my feet pulled up in the chair with me, I was so sure it was going to be terrifying. Then, the baby came, and it was a zombie. But it was still…cute. I was so relieved!

Since then, I've watched a lot of zombie movies and TV shows. They definitely can make a great catalyst for storytelling, putting characters in survival situations and given them the chance to reveal their true mettle. So many times the real monsters are still human.

Got a favorite zombie story? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

#25 of 31 Days of Halloween: Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson should be some kind of patron saint of Halloween. She wrote some of the horror stories that haunt me the most deeply. She's best known for her short story "The Lottery" which many a high school student read in their English classes, one of the few horror stories we were allowed in the curriculum alongside Edgar Allan Poe.

One of the scariest things about that story and many other of Jackson's works isn't the supernatural.  It's the people. The psychological torments we inflict on ourselves and on others. We Have Always Lived in the Castle has always been my favorite, but The Haunting of Hill House is a very close second.

It set the standard for Haunted House stories, with discord and distrust among the inhabitants, disagreement about what did and did not really happen, or what the probably causes might be. The atmosphere of long shadows, both of past events and of long windows shining with impossible light. No one knew that atmosphere like Shirley.


Who could forget that first paragraph (which is also the last):

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

The house itself is the main character of that novel, and that's true of the recent adaptation by Netflix as well, even though the story takes little else from the original text. It's like reading Hamlet or Macbeth, where you're not sure from one moment to the next if its madness or magic going on. There's room for both interpretations in every moment.

That ambiguity is the heart of gothic storytelling, and it beat in Shirley Jackson's chest full bore.

#24 of 31 Days of Halloween: Classic Gothic Horror

I've been on a classic literature journey for the past four or five years, reading all those books I've always meant to read and hadn't gotten around to yet and participating in a First Monday Classics Book Club to meet up with other readers like me who enjoy a book with a bit of heft and gravitas.

Alongside works like War and Peace and The Grapes of Wrath, we've also read some classic works of speculative fiction. The Island of Dr. Moreau, Jane Eyre, Rebecca, Frankenstein. On my own, I've gone back for Dracula, The Turn of the Screw, The Castle of Otranto, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and The Haunting of Hill House.

Some of these stories I've known and loved for a long time even though I had never read them, because the stories are that ingrained in popular culture, television, and movies. Others I had read, but many years ago. Some are like embracing a long lost old friend.

I like the quiet, slower nature of some of these stories. how the horror takes a while to manifest and leaves the characters (and the reader) with room to doubt that supernatural elements are really at play. That self-doubt got more than one character into a tricky spot.

The new writing project that is tapping on my shoulder right now is a gothic romance. I think I'm set to pen a good one with all these classic tales bumping around in my imagination.