Hallowe’en favourites from the editors of TFF

Staying in the Hallowe’en mood, we asked all of the TFF editors and guest editors for their recommendations of horror-themed short stories (both worldwide and in TFF’s back catalogue), for names of women and POC horror writers, for films, children’s books, artwork and videogames in this genre. Not everyone answered in every category, and the list below is just the first thing or two that each person thought of, in no particular order, and is certainly not meant to be a definitive list. Please add your own favorites or recommendations in the comments. Happy Hallowe’en!

1) Horror Stories:

• Still Life with Crows, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, 2003
• Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring
• Conor McPherson The Weir
• "The Performance" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia http://www.grumpsjournal.com/jue3/stories/jue3-moreno-garcia.html
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1952/1952-h/1952-h.htm
• "Boobs," Suzy McKee Charnas http://talesofmytery.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/suzy-mckee-charnas-boobs.html
• "When it Ends, He Catches Her" by Eugie Foster http://dailysciencefiction.com/fantasy/fairy-tales/eugie-foster/when-it-ends-he-catches-her
• "A Handful of Earth" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia http://expandedhorizons.net/magazine/?page_id=2442

2) TFF horror stories:

• Monsters, by Amelie Daigle (2013) http://futurefire.net/2013.27/fiction/monsters.html
• Not so much horror but deeply disturbing for the socio political implications — ‘Neap Tide’ by Don Norum (2009) http://futurefire.net/2009.17/fiction/neaptide.html
• ‘The Harpy’, Laura Heron (2012) http://futurefire.net/2012.24/fiction/harpy.html
• ‘Wingspan’, Aliya Whiteley (2009) http://futurefire.net/2009.17/fiction/wingspan.html
• Gabriel Murray, “Forests of the Night” (We See a Different Frontier, 2013)

3) Women horror writers:

• Mary Shelley
• Susan Hill
• Nicola Griffith
• Octavia Butler
• Cecilia Tan
• Cherie Priest
• Tanith Lee
• Wendy Wagner

4) Horror writers of colour:

• Tananarive Due
• Rani Manicka (her book The Rice Mother about the horrors of the Japanese occupation of Malaysia was so disturbing)
• Ben Okri's books are terrifying
• Benjanun Sriduangkaew
• Daniel José Older
• Koji Suzuki
• Khakan Sajid

5) Horror films/TV shows:

• A Woman Walks Home Alone at Night
• Ginger Snaps
• Alien
• The Thing
• Babadook
• Pan’s Labyrinth
• The Hunger
• The Ring
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• Afterlife (TV)
• Pushing Daisies (TV)
• Les Revenants (TV)

6) Horror/monster-themed children’s books:

• Les trois brigands, by Toni Ungerer (I don't know if this counts as horror, but it is a scary story that turns out to be cute in the end)
• Jan Pienkowski's Haunted House

7) Horror artwork:

• "The nightmare" by Johann Heinrich Füssli (1781)
• Any of H.R. Giger’s work
• Second illustration to “Nasmina’s Black Box” illustrated by Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein (2009) http://futurefire.net/images/rr-nasmina2.jpg
• Second illustration to “Bluebird Magick” illustrated by Cécile Matthey (2013) http://futurefire.net/images/cm-bluebird2.png

8) Horror videogames:

• Eternal darkness: Sanity's Requiem
• American McGee’s Alice

Hallowe'en Special: horror stories from TFF

If you’re looking for a few dark and bloody tales to read for the Hallowe’en season, we’ve a list of 35 such stories to share with you—taken from the annals of TFF over the last ten years. Maybe we should make an anthology of these some day…

If you like your horror fairly classic: more or less contemporary, and some combination of supernatural or violent, here are the stories that might be up your dark, deserted alley:

• ‘Half Light House', J.W. Bennett
• ‘Nasmina's Black Box’, Jennifer Marie Brissett
• ‘Dare’, Sophie Clarke
• ‘Final Passage’, Addison Clift
• ‘Monsters’, Amelie Daigle
• ‘Pianissimo’, Alan Frackleton
• ‘The Exaggerated Man’, Terry Grimwood
• ‘Coffin Road’, Terry Grimwood
• ‘Kemistry’, Terry Grimwood
• ‘The Harpy’, Laura Heron
• ‘Happy Days’, Jerome Kemp
• ‘Deadline’, Tom Lichtenberg
• ‘Once Again’, Allen McGill
• ‘Made Light’, Melissa Moorer
• ‘Bottom Drawer’, Brett Alexander Savory
• ‘Nettles’, Arley Sorg

If you don't mind a bit of secondary world in your horror, dark fantasy, historical, post-apocalyptic or dark steampunk, then some of these might be more your steaming mug of horse blood:

• ‘The Death Park’, Duncan Barford
• ‘Lost Chapters: A fairytale’, J.W. Bennett
• ‘The Wolf Behind the Sun’, Johann Carlisle
• ‘What Hath God Wrought?’, Neil Carstairs
• ‘The Issuance of One Hundred and Thirty-Six ’, Mark Harding
• ‘Shadow Boy and the Little Match Girl’, C.A. Hawksmoor
• ‘Bluebird Magick’, Alexis A. Hunter
• ‘Until the Pit is Dug for the Wicked’, John Kratman
• ‘Only the Dogs Bark’, Dawn Lloyd
• ‘Survive!’, Cory McMillen
• ‘The Dark One's Cry’, Barbora P.
• ‘American Golgotha’, Joe Pitkin
• ‘Sweet Like Fate’, Sara Puls

 

And if you like a touch of surrealism or magical realism while your heckles are being raised, sample some of these other-worldly beauties…

• ‘Wings So Foreign’, Frank Ray Ard
• ‘All Along the Mall’, Chloe N. Clark
• ‘What the Dead Are For’, Terry Grimwood
• ‘Fragmentality’, Sandra M. Odell
• ‘Night Dreaming’, Steven Pirie
• ‘Wingspan’, Aliya Whiteley

For more like this, follow The Future Fire for the next ten years, or check out our Fae Visions of the Mediterranean anthology—call for stories open for the next two weeks; volume will appear in the new year!