In acknowledgment of the season, I’m pointing you toward Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings blog and some wonderful new illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of the Macabre.
People certainly love creepy stories. But, depending on the combination of experiences and attitudes unique to you, you may love one such story and hate another. I have never liked Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw.” Not because I read it as a young babysitter and had to walk home in the dark, but because the idea of children’s minds being taken over turned me off.
But I loved Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado,” about walling in an enemy in revenge for some imagined slight. I even converted it to a script in my girls’ high school and directed the play. It was a colossal flop because the girl who was the unfortunate Fortunato forgot all her lines.
As I recall, no one seemed to care much. Halloween at that school was tremendous fun — the highlight being a spooky Tunnel of Horror that the older girls orchestrated. I went home that first Halloween of high school and created a memorable Tunnel of Horror for my siblings, in and out the windows at our shivery summer cottage.
Art: Benjamin Lacombe 
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 