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From "The Best of Book Spine Poetry" via BookRiot





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From SomeEcards

A Spooky Dozen Online Books For Free

To read these online books, you don't need a Kindle or a Nook, and all of them are free. On some, you may have to make the text larger by holding down CTRL on your keyboard while clicking the Plus + Key. Others have multiple views and can even be downloaded as a text file. Enjoy! 

True Irish Ghost Stories
~ by St. John D. Seymour and Harry L. Neligan [1914]

Byways of Ghost-Land
~ by Elliott O'Donnell

 The Short Stories of H.G. Wells
~ including the eerie tales "The Magic Shop," "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid," and "The Empire of the Ants."

The Watcher and other Weird Stories
~ by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The Haunted Hour
~ An Anthology of Poems compiled by Margaret Widdemer

The Book of Were-Wolves
~ classic folklore collection by Sabine Baring-Gould

The Stoneground Ghost Tales
~ Recollections of a Parish Vicar, by E. G. Swain

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 
~ by Robert Louis Stevenson

 Historic Ghosts and Ghost-Hunters
~ by H. Addington Bruce

Short Stories and Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne 
~ including "The Minister's Black Veil," "Rapaccini's Daughter," and "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"

Modern Library: The Best Ghost Stories
~ edited by Joseph Lewis French, contrib. by Arthur B. Reeve , Daniel Defoe , M. R. James , Edward Bulwer-Lytton , Leopold Kompert , E. F. Benson , Algernon Blackwood , Rudyard Kipling , Brander Matthews , Ambrose Bierce , Vincent O'Sullivan and Ellis Parker Butler

The Best Psychic Stories
~ Edited by Joseph Lewis French, including Jack London, Algernon Blackwood, Katherine Bickford, Edgar Allen poe, Elsa Barker, Ambrose Bierce, H. Carrington, A. J. Davis, Helena Blavatsky, and W.F. Prince.

Poetry Passion: Halloween Shivers

Halloween
Tonight is the night

When dead leaves fly
Like witches on switches
Across the sky,
When elf and sprite
Flit through the night
On a moony sheen.

Tonight is the night
When leaves make a sound
Like a gnome in his home
Under the ground,
When spooks and trolls
Creep out of holes
Mossy and green.

Tonight is the night
When pumpkins stare
Through sheaves and leaves
Everywhere,
When ghoul and ghost
And goblin host
Dance round their queen.
It's Hallowe'en!
~ Harry Behn


Spirits Of The Dead
Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.

Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness- for then
The spirits of the dead, who stood
In life before thee, are again
In death around thee, and their will
Shall overshadow thee; be still.

The night, though clear, shall frown,
And the stars shall not look down
From their high thrones in the Heaven
With light like hope to mortals given,
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy weariness shall seem
As a burning and a fever
Which would cling to thee for ever.

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,
Now are visions ne'er to vanish;
From thy spirit shall they pass
No more, like dew-drop from the grass.

The breeze, the breath of God, is still,
And the mist upon the hill
Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token.
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!
~ Edgar Allan Poe

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Souvenir
A vanished house that for an hour I knew
By some forgotten chance when I was young
Had once a glimmering window overhung
With honeysuckle wet with evening dew.
Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew,
And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung
Ferociously; and over me, among
The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew.

Somewhere within there were dim presences
Of days that hovered and of years gone by.
I waited, and between their silences
There was an evanescent faded noise;
And though a child, I knew it was the voice
Of one whose occupation was to die.
~Edward Arlington Robinson

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 Theme in Yellow

I spot the hills

With yellow balls in autumn.

I light the prairie cornfields

Orange and tawny gold clusters

And I am called pumpkins.

On the last of October

When dusk is fallen

Children join hands

And circle round me

Singing ghost songs

And love to the harvest moon;

I am a jack-o'-lantern

With terrible teeth

And the children know

I am fooling.

~ Carl Sandburg

Jack O'Lantern
I'm a jack o' lantern with a great big grin.
I'm a jack o' lantern with a candle in.
Poof! goes the wind and out goes the light.
Away fly the witches on Halloween night!
~ Author Unknown

The Bat

By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.
His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse is so slow we think him dead.
He loops in crazy figures half the night.
Among the trees that face the corner light.
But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:
For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.
~ Theodore Roethke

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Ten Halloween Books for Kids on a Spooky Night

Here are some classic Halloween Books that my own kids adored when they were growing up, and they are really fun to read.




Four on the Shore: Level 3 is literally a "campfire ghost story" book that is designed for beginning readers. But like all books by the late great James Marshall, the vocabulary is humorous, and there are twists and turns that no one expects. Don't scream!








Space Case is another Marshall classic, and this one has a plot centered around Halloween. What if an alien landed on the one night of the year when children are dressed in bizarro costumes? Beep-Beep-Beep!



 



 Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls by William Cole may be out of print, but you can still find it in libraries or at book sales, and now and then on Amazon. I adored this poetry book as a child and relished the macabre fate of boys and girls who misbehaved. It's hilarious - rather like a rhyming Willy Wonka and the Oompa Loompas chorus. The line drawings by Tom Ungerer are are funny and nostalgic for parents, too.








 In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories is a read-aloud "Gotcha!" book for mid-level readers, with the steady repetition and suspense of all great ghost stories. A better book for sharing, rather than leaving alone with a child, especially one who has nightmares about monsters under the bed. Probably better for a daytime story hour.









The trick behind Jean Marzolo's picture book I Spy Spooky Night is the fantastical photography by Walter Wick, capturing the essence of a haunted house full of little goodies and details. Parents and children alike will love pouring over the pages in search of little ghostly goodies. A great interactive experience and no computer required.






Generations of people have honed their reading skills on The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree so this is a perennial favorite at Halloween. Do you dare walk near the spooky old tree?







The fabulous Edward Gorey always wrote to please himself above all, and the darkly humorous ABC book The Gashlycrumb Tinies is a good example. Older kids will love the black-and-white drawings and the matter-of-fact death knells of unfortunate children: "A is for Amy who fell down the stairs. B is for Basil assaulted by bears. C is for Clara who wasted away. D is for Desmond thrown out of a sleigh . . ."





 

James Stevenson has a flair for sarcasm which kids adore, and the main character of The Worst Person in the World is a snarky old man who sits in his spooky house alone sucking lemons until one day he meets a friendly monster and some children who turn his life around. Not really a Halloween book, but certainly captures the atmosphere of the classic strange house at the end of the road.






Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is Book Two in J.K. Rowling's Potter series, and includes everything you need for Halloween - a spooky castle, a creepy cat, a giant spider, a haunted forest, witches and wizards making potions in cauldrons, a Death Day Party complete with headless ghosts (and one "nearly-headless ghost"), and lots of candy including Bertie Botts Many Flavored Beans. Fun for older kids to read alone or parents to read aloud.





Some schools have probably banned Jack Prelutsky's Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep because it is not for the faint of heart. But many children remember this fondly as one of their favorite books, because let's face it - kids enjoy a good scare sometimes! The drawings by famed children's illustrator Arnold Lobel are an extra, such as the eerily patient monster sitting on the playground: "The gruesome ghoul, the grisly ghoul, without the slightest noise waits patiently beside the school to feast on girls and boys."



Pic via The Haunted Closet

Five Scary Books for Halloween Reading

Some of these books great to read, then read again. The shivers are actually better when you know they are coming . . .




The short graphic novel Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King is an overlooked classic, in my opinion. The story goes through the yearly cycle of full moons in the small town of Tarker's Mills, Maine, as the townsfolk slowly realize that a werewolf is living in their midst. And who will unmask the true identity of the beast? I will only give a hint: this is a truly satisfying story about courage and hardship while growing up, much like King's novel Hearts in Atlantis," or the story "The Body," which was the basis for the movie Stand by Me. And the wonderful werewolf illustrations make the story come to life. As one reviewer on Amazon put it: "A Fast Furry Fantasy."

If a reader isn't familiar with H.P. Lovecraft, you might believe he is a science fiction writer thanks to some of the gaudy book covers displaying alien-looking characters from the Cthulu Mythos. But once you read several of his stories set in New England, you will realize he is writing in the same tradition as Edgar Allen Poe and Washington Irving, a tradition that embraces local American history, folklore and ghost stories. There are shadowy valleys and strange fishing villages where no one dares to go. And like his literary descendent, Stephen King, Lovecraft can produce a supernatural shiver that goes up your spine in the midday sun, or when you notice something not quite right and the universe shifts around you. Like a good nightmare, these stories can shake you up, so read them with the light on, and be sure to lock the door first.



The Woman in Black: A Ghost Story was recently made into a creepy movie starring Dan Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame, and before that the 1980s version starred Adrian Rawlins, who plays Harry's father James in the movies. Believe me, watching either or both of those movies will not diminish the pleasurable creepiness of the original novel. Nor will it give away the ending, since both movies based on her work are somewhat different thanks to poetic license of the filmmakers. Susan Hill is an old-fashioned mistress of the macabre, and this is a great atmospheric short read for a cool autumn night.



The late author John Keel writes in The Mothman Prophecies : "The universe does not exist as we think it exists. We do not exist as we think we exist." And that sets the stage for one of the creepiest stories of the late 20th century, the tale of an alleged flying creature that haunted an area of West Virginia, of people convinced they had met a harbinger of doom, of people driven almost to madness. There are hints of UFO's and Men in Black as well as a local curse by a dead warrior named Chief Cornstalk. The most chilling parts are the phone calls from an "entity" named "Indrid Cold," and some bizarre happenings at Keel's New York apartment surrounding his telephone. The movie with Richard Gere is merely based on this book and not a thorough telling - you really need the original to appreciate all the intricate coincidences and weird details. And hopefully this won't give you the heebie-jeebies about driving over large bridges.



Like most of Ray Bradbury's books, Something Wicked This Way Comes
is set in a midwestern town where life is slowly boring everyone to despair until something happens . . . Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show rolls into town and rattles everyone down to their bones. You have to love a book with names like "Jim Nightshade" - a boy who is definitely an American cousin of Harry Potter. But all the magic, except for love, is definitely from the Dark Side. Yes, it's a little over-the-top, but there's so much depth also, as Bradbury changes point of view between the children and the adults that you don't care. And for fans of the author you will notice recurring characters like the Illustrated Man, from the book of stories by that same name. In fact all of Bradbury's books are a little dark and great to read this time of year - The October Country and The Halloween Tree to name a few. But this book is Bradbury at his wicked best.