I hate the holidays that are destroyed by the commercial industry, that suck the essence of what a holiday is supposed to be about. Halloween is somewhat immune to that, because of the creativity that goes into making people scared. People transform into whatever they can imagine: sexy vampire, superhero, or scary looking monster. To find the scariest Halloween story, I went to talk to Michal Hughes, English lecturer at IUPUI, who teaches courses in comics, fantasy, and science fiction.

Hughes: I am not big fan of the hacker and slasher stuff. I like movies when [the] character takes that left hand turn into a Twilight Zone spot. Where there is something he cannot explain, and realizes “I have no power over this.”
Joe: What about the monsters that there are, like Dracula, zombies, witches, and etc.?
Hughes: In the 1990’s, Professor J.J. Cohen wrote essays on how monsters represent our fears in disguise. The Body Snatchers by Jack Finley, in which aliens represent fear of Soviet Union agents. [In the] movie, Shaun of the Dead, you have zombies walking to the beat of some music.
Joe: How about we focus on probably the first popular cinematic monster, Dracula?
Hughes: When Dracula was published in 1887, he represented the fear of Eastern Europeans come over to England. Dracula has a long track record in popular imagination forever, because of abilities like morphing himself into a bat and hypnotize you with his eyes. In 1931 movie, Dracula was able to make Renfield eat bugs, and sexually seduces Mina.
Joe: Let us turn to a classic monster who is least sexual: Frankenstein.
Hughes: In Mary Shelly’s novel, Victor Frankenstein isn’t a doctor; he is a med student, and is trying to reanimate a corpse. He thinks “My god what have I done,” and he rejects the Creature. [The] Creature helps out farmers, gets rejected; that is what the entire story is about. The Creature goes to Victor, saying “I need a companion,” and Victor wouldn’t do it. So the Creature goes off on a rampage because he’s alone in the world.
Joe: Any other classic monster you want to talk about?
Hughes: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert L. Stevenson. If you read the story, it is similar to Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. (Spoiler Alert!) [In Fight Club], the narrator teams up with crazy man Tyler Durden, to form a fight club, and Durden becomes more dangerous as story goes on. Big twist is the sweet narrator has a split personality of being Durden.
Joe: Do you have any recommendations for [the] Halloween season?
Hughes: For books, read:
- Dracula – Bram Stoker
- The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova
- Song of Kali – Dan Simmons (That book will send [readers] into fear.)
- The Stand – Stephen King (And many of his other books.)
- Clive Barker will scare the crap right out of you.
- The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson (She really shaped the way we look at haunted houses.)
- The Veldt – Ray Bradbury
- Blood Child – Octavia Butler
- The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkin Gilman
For television:
- American Horror Story on FX (Each season plays with a horror trope.)
- Stranger Things – Netflix (Has a bit of a Twilight Zone vibe.)
- Black Mirror – Netflix (See #2, above.)
- True Detective – HBO (Fans of weird lit will probably enjoy season one of this.)
For films:
- Alien – Ridley Scott
- Thirteen Ghosts – Steve Beck
- Fido – Andrew Currie
For a classic, try Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. I like the novel more, but both are beautifully frightful.
Featured image courtesy of Francesco Francavilla.