The thick of autumn is upon us, dear reader, and with it the shivers. Around Hallowe’en you may be tempted to go and see yet another edition of Paranormal Activity (a quotation from the trailer: ‘There’s, like, obviously something going on here’) or something similar. Do not. There is nothing frightening about going to the movies. You are there with a crowd of other human beings, doing something fun and communal. This is not scary. If you’re serious about engaging with the spirit of the season, the thing to do is to stay up late alone, in bed, reading a terrifying book. Fortunately, the bookshop shelves are currently creaking under the weight of exactly that. Here are some of the most delicious horrors lately made available on the printed page.
William Gay died in 2012, but this year publishes a book called Little Sister Death (Faber, £12.99, pp. 240). Sadly, this was not written posthumously (how good a zombie-penned book would be!), but rather has been reconstructed from his manuscripts. You may have heard of Gay’s novel The Long Home, currently being adapted for the screen by James Franco. Little Sister Death is inspired by the legend of the Bell witch of Tennessee, a nasty episode from the early 19th century in which one John Bell was harassed by a rude and mysterious voice emanating apparently from his house. In Gay’s version, a nice young family from Chicago rents a spooky house so that the dad can write a scary book about it. Little does the dad know that he is the protagonist in a scary book about the house already. It’s a very neat setup, making for a very frightening haunted-house story. There are also many snakes in it: a cheap strategy, but an effective one.
If the shotguns and Spanish moss of Southern Gothic remain too camp to frighten you, two longer novels from colder climes may work.

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