Halloween is a subdued affair this year, I suppose because 2020 has been enough of a sucky horror show. In America, there are strict guidelines for trick or treating (if the state allows it at all): masks under masks, leaving “candy” outside in closed, clear packaging with sanitising spray, no engaging with trick and treaters, no organising a Halloween party, dressing your child in a hazmat suit and so on
Are we celebrating it at all here on Saturday? Over the past few years it seemed SA was joining in the supernatural fun, but so far I’ve thankfully not received my usual neighbourhood invitations of enlisting my home as a place for children to constantly buzz my gate and demand sweets. It would be terrifying if that is happening. More a sick trick than a treat for everyone involved.
But I do love indulging in horror during Halloween week — great B-grade films will do (btw, thoroughly enjoyed the campy Vampires vs The Bronx on Netflix), but mostly I love sinking myself into a dark, twisty book to escape annus horribilis.
How can there be Halloween without witches? Practical Magic’s Alice Hoffman has returned to writing about the witches in the Owens family. In Magic Lessons she goes back to the 1600s to reveal how and why the love curse on the family was invoked. In The Witch Hunter by Max Seeck, detective Jessica Niemi is called to investigate a strange murder, which seems to be part of a dark ritual. Shivers.
There’s something so disturbing about non-fiction tales of the paranormal and Kate Summerscale produces the best scares in The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story. In London in 1938, Fielding begins to experience supernatural events: crockery flying out of cupboards, beetles scuttling out of her gloves, cupboards flipping over for no reason ... Nandor Fodor, chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research, who has unmasked several frauds, investigates and finds out the true trauma behind these hauntings.
The King (Stephen, of course) always provides good horror fodder and this year he gives us a short story collection called If It Bleeds. He is masterful with the novella and he proves it here again. There are four stories. The titular novella comes from the old newspaper saying “if it bleeds, it leads”. Private investigator Holly Gibney (who is not a stranger to King fans — she is in the Bill Hodges trilogy and The Outsider) becomes suspicious when she notices that a reporter is the first on scene at several different tragedies. The second story is what I think is the best in the book, Mr Harrigan’s Phone, where technology becomes the conduit for the supernatural and dangerous. Like Zoom meetings. The other two are The Life of Chuck, a biography of a man told in reverse, and Rat, in which an author goes nuts — King’s favourite type of tale to tell.
Devolution is one of the strangest horror books of the year. It’s written by Max Brooks, whose World War Z became a best-selling book and blockbuster movie, starring Brad Pitt skedaddling from oddly superfast zombies. Brooks’s focus is not zombies this time, it’s Bigfoot (Bigfeet?), and though I’m not a fan of tales of the Sasquatch, the author delivers a tightly wound drama with enough quirky world-building to transport one temporarily out of their life and into the fantastical. Sometimes, that is desperately needed.
