{"id":10664,"date":"2023-10-17T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10664"},"modified":"2023-10-24T18:05:13","modified_gmt":"2023-10-24T22:05:13","slug":"pumpkin-spice-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10664","title":{"rendered":"Pumpkin Spice Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"pumpkin,<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Ghostly apparitions, the bloodier and unDisneyfied fairy tales, the scary stories told around a campfire. They all become more spine-tingling as darkness closes in on the days of autumn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some time in the next three weeks, if you want to prep for Halloween by more than filling a plastic pumpkin with candy for the kids, here\u2019s a trio of horror short stories designed to shiver your timbers and get you in the mood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe October Game\u201d by Ray Bradbury (1948) \u2013 A sadistic spouse, a pitch-black basement, a game that just might go awry, Bradbury partners with your imagination to ramp up the chills. Hear it here<\/a> on the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast<\/em>, which offers many more<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBerenice\u201d by Edgar Allan Poe (1835) \u2013 Less well known than \u201cThe Tell-Tale Heart,\u201d \u201cThe Fall of the House of Usher,\u201d or \u201cThe Pit and the Pendulum\u201d\u2014all of which are heart-skippingly scary\u2014this one appeals to me because I\u2019ve used it to create two of my own short stories. You can read Poe\u2019s original here<\/a>. He describes an increasingly unhinged young man who marries his cousin. He obsesses on her teeth. And when she dies, he pulls them out. I\u2019ll let you discover the rest for yourself. My 21st century version, published in Quoth the Raven<\/em><\/a>, is about a meth addict (the bad teeth) obsessed with her twin brother and his girlfriend who has perfect dentition. It doesn\u2019t end happily. My other story based on \u201cBerenice\u201d ends much more happily and appears in a 2021 collection titled Sherlock Holmes: Adventures in the Realms of Edgar Allan Poe<\/em><\/a>. Holmes and Watson to the rescue!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Landlady\u201d by Roald Dahl (1959) also invokes the virtue of beautiful teeth. A young man needing a cheap place to stay makes a bad choice. A master class in devious foreshadowing. You know you\u2019re in for it when the first paragraph ends, \u201cBut the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks.\u201d Read it here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, go grab a sweater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ghostly apparitions, the bloodier and unDisneyfied fairy tales, the scary stories told around a campfire. They all become more spine-tingling as darkness closes in on the days of autumn. At some time in the next three weeks, if you want … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Scary stuff as Halloween approaches. Short stories that will make you keep the lights on!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[126,120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-2","category-short-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2M0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10665,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10664\/revisions\/10665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}