Let's Take a Journey through Horror Short Stories

A Masterclass for lovers of horror (and mystery...)

I have been reading old and new horror short stories a lot lately. Keeping me in that horror writing mindset. It’s really a great genre to read! If you’re into that sort of thing, of course. Therefore, for the rest of the year I’m going to be reading horror (and mystery) short stories. Most, but not all, will be available to read for free in the public domain for us to read and do a deep dive into together. We’ll start with these:

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson (1892) - July 5th

The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs (1902) - July 19th

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe (1842) - August 2nd

Five days after the story is sent via email a Discussion thread will then go out for us to discuss the story. This should hopefully give us all time to read and digest.

After the Tell-Tale Heart I thought we might take a bit of time to read a few more Poe classics and some not so well known classics. For those interested, I’ll be picking the stories from this book:

Also, because I just became equipped with a library card I’ve been taking full advantage of the Libby and Hoopla apps audio books sections! If you have a library card, I highly recommend doing this. I don’t usually listen to audiobooks, which is strange since I love true crime podcasts! Anyway, I am now listening to David Suchet read Agatha Christie to me, Jim Dale read Harry Potter to me, and Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone performing Edgar Allan Poe. Can’t get much better than this!

Some of the Edgar Allan Poe classics I’d love to take a deeper dive into are:

The Premature Burial (1844)

William Wilson (1839)

The Oblong Box (1844)

The Purloined Letter (1844)

The Masque of the Red Death (1843)

The Oval Portrait (1842)

The order is still as yet to be determined. However, there will be other short fiction stories sprinkled in that I’d love to take time out to read. I’ve got some of them listed here:

• The Lottery Shirley Jackson

• The Landlady by Roald Dahl

• The Forbidden by Clive Barker

• The October Game by Ray Bradbury

• The Veldt by Ray Bradbury

• The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

• The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson

• Thrown Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson

• Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

• Survivor Type by Stephen King

• The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft

• A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor

• The Signal Man by Charles Dickens

• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

• Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates

• The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado

• Lacrimosa by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

• The Nine Little Goblins [poem] by James Whitcomb Riley (special thanks to

  Haly, the Moonlight Bard
  for the suggestion)

If you can think of any notable short stories I don’t have listed here, please do let me know. And if they aren’t in the Public Domain, let me know that as well, in case it means I have to purchase the book. Public Domain short stories are preferred.

I do have a bit of an idea surrounding reading all of these short stories that I’ll share next year. For now, let’s enjoy reading horror and mystery!