Spooky Season is Here: Five Books to Read This Spooky Season

Spooky season is fast approaching. The pop up Halloween stores are being built and are rising up. It is almost time to bathe oneself in apple cider and eat pumpkin cookies while horror movies play in the background. Who am I kidding, I do that all year round, it’s just time for that to be socially acceptable again.

This is why I bring you this today. A lovely list of books to get you into the spooky season spirit!

Woohoo, spooky season is almost here!

5. Starting us off is one of my favorites. You know him, you love him, Our Lord and Savior Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.” What better way to get into spooky season than a story of desperation, a story of hopelessness, a story of rats and death. If you aren’t familiar with this short story, then let me tell you a little bit about it. Our narrator wakes up in the titular pit with a deadly pendulum hanging above him. It seems straightforward, but it’s really not. If you haven’t given it a read, then do it! It’ll mess you up!

4. The next book on this list is one I’ve talked about before, but I seriously can’t get enough of it. Things Half in Shadow by Alan Finn brings us in at number four. It has a murder mystery, it has ghosts, it has spiritualism, it has cons, it has an amazing female lead. I love it so much. What happens when a reporter and a medium walk into a séance? Read it to find out.

3. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson brings us in at number three. I think I’ve read this book every Halloween since 2017; it’s just such a good book. I’ve read it so many times and I don’t think I’ve read it the same way twice. I am constantly going back and forth with if everything is in the main character’s head or if these things were truly happening. This is a haunted house tale at its finest. It’s *chef kiss* just beautiful.

2. I have just recently discovered the long list of works by Darcy Coates. Let me just say, I am highly intrigued by her portfolio. Currently on its way to me is The Haunting of Blackwood House. Listen, I am just a sucker for a good haunted house tale, and Coates has many. The Haunting of Blackwood House is the tale of Mara and Neil who have recently purchased the titular home. Mara, having grown up in a home where fake séances and mediums ruled, is ready to live in a world without the supernatural. Too bad Blackwood House has other plans for her with creaking doors opening on their own, strange shadows roaming the hall, and disembodied voices being heard throughout the home. But ghosts aren’t real, this is all just a figment of her imagination…right?

1.The final book on this list is The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson. I’ve had this one sitting on my nightstand for awhile; I’ve been waiting for spooky season to start to finally crack into it. I don’t think I can wait much longer. Immanuelle Moore is the outsider of the small, puritanical town of Bethel. Her mother’s union to an outsider of a different race cast her family into disgrace in this small town. Now Immanuelle does everything she can to be lead a life of conformity, but after stumbling into the woods surrounding Bethel her world is challenged. Four powerful witches were once murdered in these woods and their spirits still remain there. Immanuelle is given a gift by these four: her dead mother’s diary. Now, Immanuelle is learning shocking truths about the town and Church’s history. These shocking truths make her realize that change must come before Bethel destroys itself with its own darkness.