Our Super Mega-Deluxe Coffer of Eerie (and Not-Too-Scary) Halloween Goodness

It’s the spookiest season of the year. The days get shorter, and maybe you’re periodically peeking over your shoulder as you walk home in the dusk, boots clacking and leaves crunching underfoot. Perhaps your thoughts turn to werewolves and vampires and things in the shadows.

Or not! Maybe you’re more Hocus Pocus than Nightmare on Elm Street, so you’re cackling like a happy witch and looking forward to Halloween night with a bottomless bowl of candy.

Either way, we’ve got you covered.

Halloween: Costumed Revelry, Voices From Beyond, and YAY, Candy!

In this podcast episode, we got curious about Halloween traditions and explored the lore that swirls around classic creepy creatures. Then we recommended books we love that celebrate the spirit (and spirits) of Halloween, including stories for self-proclaimed scaredy-cats, titles that should come with a ‘don’t read this at night’ warning label, and a few in-between. Trick or treat!

Be sure to visit our show notes page for photos of terrifying vintage Halloween costumes, links to more info on the fun facts David shared in Two Truths and a Lie (including the US government’s plan in case of a zombie attack), interviews with authors of our recommended books, and a video tour of Sleepy Hollow.

16 of our Favorite Spooky Season Reads

These are just a sampling of our site’s spooky, eerie, moody, Gothic, Halloween-worthy books. Be sure to visit our Halloween Destination Page for dozens more book recommendations.

• Speak to the Spirit World with ‘Haunted Houses’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Run Away with the Circus and Get Lost in Miraculum
• Fall Under the Spell of the Mysterious, Sexy Fairy Tale The Governesses
• Salem is Bewitching and Beguiling in The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
• Grab a Candelabra and Your Courage to Visit the Haunted Manor House of Mexican Gothic
• Travel to Styria and Be Seduced by the Perilously Alluring Carmilla
• Get Caught Up in Vampire Gang Warfare in Mexico City with Certain Dark Things
• Libraries, Archives, and Diaries… Oh, My. Fall is the Ideal Time For The Historian
• Take the Train to Transylvania to Re-Enact the Romance and Drama of Dracula
• Mysterious Locked Doors and Ghostly Apparitions in the Scottish Highlands of Pine
• Walk the Cobbled Streets and Possibly Haunted Hallways of Brussels in Villette
• Take a Stroll Through the Spookier Side of Edinburgh in City of Ghosts
• Determine the Right and Righteous Path with the Verse Novel Long Way Down
• What is Going on at the Eerie Blackwood School in the YA Classic Down a Dark Hall?!
• Fall is the Perfect Time for the Dark Academia of Special Topics in Calamity Physics
• Real life and fiction collide in the modern Gothic mystery The Stranger Diaries

8 Halloween Posts to Get You in the Spirit of the Season

• Get in the Mood for Mayhem with our Halloween Playlist
• 6 Short Story Collections That Are Appropriately Eerie for Halloween
• 7 Eerie Audiobooks to Fill Your Ears with Spooky Halloween Fun
• For the Love of Fangs: 6 of Our Favorite Literary Vampires
• 5 Gothic Novels That Feature Moody Houses and Haunted Heroines
• 7 Dark Academia Novels to Get You Read(y) for a Perfectly Eerie Halloween
• The Delightful and Diabolical World of Edward Gorey
• Visiting the Codex Gigas (Devil’s Bible) at the National Library of Sweden

Destination Pages

These pages include book recommendations, recipes, poems, and more.

• Halloween
• Manor Houses
• Vampire Haunts

Top image courtesy of Eduardo Mallmann/Unsplash.