10 Great Modern Horror Stories For Halloween

As the clock ticks down towards Halloween, here are a few recommendations for anybody looking for some suitable reading matter. All these were written in the last decade or so, by rising stars in the field.

1) The Dancer In The Dark by Reggie Oliver

Reggie Oliver

Reggie Oliver’s emerged in recent years as one of the best British writers of weird fiction, and this 1980s-set novella draws both on his skills in the macabre and his long and intimate knowledge of the world of theatre. Allan Payne, a young actor, is cast in a new play by playwright Sir Roger Carlton, alongside fading star Billie Beverley. Carlton, along with director ‘Pussy’ Cudworth and leading man Talbot Wemyss, are both old associates of Billie, but cruelly conspire to push her out of the play. Shortly after, she dies in an accident, but her presence haunts the production, and one by one, those who wronged her fall prey to her ghostly revenge.

Where to read it: Mrs Midnight and Other Stories.

2) When The Moon Man Knocks by Cate Gardner

Okay, now I’m biased here, as the author is my wife, but When The Moon Man Knocks is, in my view, a stone masterpiece. This beautiful and heartrending novelette revolves around grieving widow Olive and the sinister Hector Wynter. Hector claims he can contact the dead, who live on the moon and come to earth in the form of message-bearing paper birds. But with every message, less of them remains...

Where to read it: Black Static #48.

3) Free Jim’s Mine by Tananarive Due

From Due’s award-winning and phenomenal collection Ghost Summer. Georgia, 1838: escaped slaves Lottie and William seek out Lottie’s uncle, Jim. The only free black man she knows, he even has his own mine. Lottie begs him to hide them from their pursuers. He does, but the only shelter he’ll offer them is in his mine. And Lottie and William soon discover they aren’t alone down there. Just what sort of price has ‘Free Jim’ paid for his prosperity?

Where to read it: The Dark.

4) A Prayer For The Morning by Joseph Freeman

Dunning and his family visit the ruins of town lost to the sea, including the remnants of its leper colony. Drawn there alone by night, he finds the colony’s former inhabitants still haunt their former home.

Where to read it: Terror Tales Of The Seaside.

Keris McDonald

5) Hell Hath No Fury by Keris McDonald

Angela, a painter, marries Colin, the only son of tyrannical Edward Gissons. Edward sets out to make her life a nightmare, manipulating her Down’s Syndrome son Josh to hurt her. But when he dies, she discovers that the nightmare is only beginning.

Where to read it: At Ease With The Dead (sadly not cheap!)

6) Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma

Today, Eliza is wealthy and successful. But once her name was Lola and she lived in poverty. She changed from one thing to the other. She does that a lot. Fabulous Beasts is her story, and it’s superb.

Where to read it: Tor.com.

7) The Bury Line by Stephen Hargadon

Hargadon’s based in my former hometown, Manchester, and brings its seedy side brilliantly to life. The Bury Line is a chilling and nightmarish evocation of modern work culture. That’s really all I can say about this story without spoiling it.

Where to read it: Black Static #42.

8) The Devil Under The Maison Blue by Michael Wehunt

Sexually abused by her father, teenager Gillian confides in her neighbour, the dying jazzman Mr Ellings. Ellings tells her a tale from his youth, of his journey to New Orleans and the creature he met in the crawlspace under the Maison Blue nightclub. And then he plays her – and her Daddy – a tune...

Where to read it: The Dark.

Usman Tanveer Malik

9) Ishq by Usman Tanveer Malik

A haunting, beautiful love story and horror story all in one. Polio-stricken Parveen and shakerkandi vendor Hashim fall in love. Even as Parveen sickens, dying slowly from bone cancer, he tends her lovingly. Even after she dies. That description doesn’t even begin to capture the sheer beauty and anguish of this tale.

Where to read it: Nightmare Magazine, or in Black Static #43.

10) Night of the Crone by Anna Taborska

Bored and looking for kicks, agroup of rowdy Lake District teenagers desecrate the Bronze Age stone circle known as Long Meg and her Daughters. In revenge, Long Meg comes to life in the form of a demonic crone that hunts them down in one long night of terror.

Where to read it: Terror Tales Of The Lake District.

And if you're still looking for Halloween reading matter after that, Simon Bestwick's collection of ghost stories, A Hazy Shade Of Winter, is available as an ebook here. You can read a sample here if you so wish.

The Lowdown with... Reggie Oliver

Reggie Oliver was educated at Eton and University College, Oxford, and has been a professional playwright, actor, and theatre director since 1975. He has worked in radio, television, films, and theatre, both in the West End and outside London. His "strange stories" (which often evoke life on and behind the stage) are very much in the great tradition of the British ghostly tale, the lineage of M.R. James, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare, and Robert Aickman.

 

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

I have been a professional actor for over forty years and I once played Rudolph Valentino on The Little and Large Show, my oddest but not my proudest moment in the profession.

I was born and lived in London for nearly the first forty years of my life; for the last twenty or so I have lived mainly in Suffolk and have always felt much more at home there.

For most of my adult life I have kept a diary which has come in useful in all sorts of strange ways but mainly because, in the words of Shakespeare, I am “one that, above all strifes, contended especially to know himself.” (Measure for Measure Act III, Scene 2)

                                                                                                   

2. What was the first thing you had published?

Apart from odd things (very odd things) in college magazines etc. my first major publication was a play Imaginary Lines (Samuel French 1987). It had been produced and directed by the great Alan Ayckbourn in Scarborough in 1985 and is still occasionally put on by amateur companies.

3. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

The biography of my Aunt, the writer Stella Gibbons called Out of the Woodshed (Bloomsbury 1998). Stella was a great influence on my life, a good friend and wonderfully funny and witty. I feel that the biography, though not in any way reverential or hagiographic, is a small act of gratitude and a tribute to one of the most remarkable, and one of the kindest people I have ever known.  

4. …and which makes you cringe?

Oh, dear! I used to write comedy sketches for a theatre called the Overground in Kingston. Many of the jokes were truly awful. For example: “Did you know that Sophocles wrote a play about a dog who ate cats? Yes, it was called ‘Eat-a-puss Rex’!” And believe me, that is not the worst of them.

5. What’s a normal writing day like?

I am not a great creature of routine, but I like to be writing (or drawing) by about nine thirty and work through till lunchtime after which I go for a walk. On return I may briefly rest and have a cup of tea and listen to music before doing more work till six or seven. I usually do some writing late at night too, even if is only making a brief entry in my diary.

6. Which piece of writing should someone who’s never read you before pick up first?

I suppose any of my collections of stories published by Tartarus. Perhaps the second, entitled, The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler.

7. What are you working on now? 

I am just finishing the last of the ninety odd drawings for a sort of children’s book entitled: THE HAUNTINGS AT TANKERTON PARK And how they got rid of them, a tale in verse to be published by Zagava. The words I wrote some time ago but the drawings have taken ages. I say “sort of” children’s book because I wrote and drew it really to amuse myself and though it’s just the sort of book that I would have loved as a child, I was a peculiar sort of child (still am) and it might be too macabre for some. It is about a Victorian haunted house, quite mad and part of it is a rhyming alphabet. Here for example is:

Z was a zombie and clearly insane.