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One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted— One need not be a House— The Brain has Corridors—surpassing Material Place— Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting External Ghost Than its interior Confronting— That Cooler Host. Ourself behind ourself, concealed— Should startle most— Assassin hid in our Apartment Be Horror’s least. The Body—borrows a Revolver— He bolts the Door— O’erlooking a superior spectre— Or More—

Emily Dickinson, “670″

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“Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil.”

For a classic tale of ghost detection in a haunted house, you could do no better than Algernon Blackwood’s story excellent “The Empty House”. Pictured here is Seth’s excellent illustrated edition. 

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“You know, don’t you, what it signifies when a spectre of that kind looks long and hard at one of the living?”

Feel like a Séance story today? Try “The Spectral Hand” by the decadent writer Jean Lorrain - a strange tale about a seance at a dinner party.

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Today's suggestion: Rudyard Kipling's classic tale "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" in which a young man is haunted not only by a ghost of his past but by a ghostly rickshaw associated with her. Who knew vehicles had ghosts too! https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2806/2806-h/2806-h.htm

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‘Tis the season for a warm fire, a windy night, and a ghost story. Every day until Christmas, we’ll be suggesting a new story for you to check out.

Today’s recommendation is “The Upper Berth” by F. Marion Crawford. On a transatlantic crossing, a traveler finds the porthole in his room keeps opening on its own, as a dead passenger finds its way inside. 

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22246/22246-h/22246-h.htm

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The Krampus must feed.

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Not Your Forest

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Happy Dia de Los Muertos, everyone! Fondly remembering IGA in Mexico this summer with the little tchotchkes I brought back.

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Final Shocktober rec: Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape (1972). Equal parts campy, terrifying, and strange, this movie provided such a considered vision of ghosts that real world ghost-hunters adopted it as "The Stone Tape Theory"

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I've saved some of the best for last. Today's horror rec: "The Night Ocean" by R.H. Barlow (polished by Lovecraft). An exhausted artist slowly begins to suspect there is an eerie predator in the ocean by his cottage.

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Today‘s horror rec: Edogawa Rampo’s disturbing story “The Human Chair”. A chair-maker-turned-thief smuggles himself into wealthy homes inside a chair only to succumb to a voyeuristic obsession in his hiding spot.

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Today’s horror rec: “Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture”, an eerie walking simulator in which you explore a small English town listening to haunting voices to piece together an apocalyptic event. Perhaps the best fictional rewriting of orbs I’ve seen.

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“....A house with a death in it can never again be bought or sold by the living; it can only be borrowed from the ghosts that have stayed behind...” 

Today’s horror rec: “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House” (2016). The lives of three women across the history of a house collapse into each other in a temporally complex haunting. Be prepared for a slow, Henry James style burn. 

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Today’s horror rec: M. T. Anderson’s “Quick Hill”, a story set in an eerie, alternate 1940s America where an innocent boy faces being “married to the hill” in a rite to aid the flagging war effort. American folk horror!

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Today’s horror rec: Chamber’s “The Yellow Sign”.  An artist is fascinated by a wormlike church watchman while his model discovers a cursed book in his library. The story begins slowly but quickly descends into compelling dream logic.

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/YellSign.shtml

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Just in case you want something substantial to end your October: Hodgson’s “House on the Borderland”, a trippy, cosmic horror novel told by a reclusive man whowe house comes under attack by bizarre creatures.

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Horror recommendation for the 24th: “The Wilds”, the title story for Julia Elliott’s brilliant 2014 collection. Tracing a girl’s interactions with a boy who wears a wolf mask, the story reimagines the werewolf in Elliot’s Southern Gothic style.