Never Sleep Again: My Favorite Scary Stories that You Can Read Online

Halloween!  That magical time of year when skin-crawling horror is married to dad jokes (my original opening for this blog post was, "Welcome back, boos and ghouls!" because I'm a horrible person).  All month I've been getting in the spirit by re-reading some of my favorite scary stories, and discovering some new ones.  And here, for you, are the fruits of my labors: a list of scary stories I've enjoyed ("enjoyed" being surrounded by some HEAVY quotes in many cases) that you can read/listen to/watch online FOR FREE!  Because nothing says Halloween like free stuff and also existential terror.

As a disclaimer, since we're talking the horror genre here, assume that there's some graphic content in a lot of the works I'm linking to.  Approach at your own risk.

Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe

A famed resident of my favorite cities and a former drinking buddy of the Jesuits, Poe was also known for writing a scary story from time to time.  Fortunately, you can find pretty much everything he's ever written online, but here are a few of my favorites:

• "The Cask of Amontillado"
• "The Pit and the Pendulum"
• "The Tell-Tale Heart"
• "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"

Short Stories by Neil Gaiman

The offerings here are pretty limited, since most of his short stories (including some of his very best) are only available in book form.  So take it as a sidebar suggestion that, if you like this sort of thing and good writing in general, you should pick up all three of his short story collections ASAP.  But that would require possibly leaving your house and definitely spending money, so I'm just gonna modulate my expectations and recommend some that you can read (or hear!) RIGHT THIS MINUTE:

• "Snow, Glass, Apples"
• "A Study in Emerald" (Sherlock Holmes + Cthulhu + AAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH)
• "How to Talk to Girls At Parties"
• "Click Clack the Rattlebag" (video)
• "My Last Landlady" (video -- you can also find audio of him reading it on Spotify!)

Children's Stories Made Horrific, by Mallory Ortberg

Mallory Ortberg writes an occasional series on The Toast, the website she co-edits, where she takes famous children stories and does horrible things to them and robs you of your ability to sleep for a while.  The link above will take you to the full series (so far), but listed below are some of my favorites:

• "The Gifts of the Giving Tree"
• "The Beauty and The Beast"
• "The Little Mermaid"
• "Thousandfurs, or The King Who Wanted to Marry His Daughter"
• "Amelia Bedelia's First Day"

"The Other Place," by Mary Gaitskill

This one kind of sticks out because I don't know any of Gaitskill's other work, but I found this story (published by The New Yorker in 2011) on another list of scary stories you could read online for free, and DEAR GOD.  Nothing supernatural here but, as the friend who sent me that list likes to say, humans are the scariest monsters.

Comics by Emily Carroll

Emily Carroll's comics will make you feel extremely untalented which is too bad because they'll also make you never want to go outside again, and in that case it would have been nice to have some hobbies to fall back on.  And as if her art and writing weren't frightening enough, Carroll is diabolically innovative with the format and possibilities of web-based comics, leading to some scares that are only possible in this medium.  Her whole website is linked above, but the stories below are the ones that still freak me out just thinking about them.

As a caveat, because this is a visual medium, graphic content warnings apply double.  Her stories are usually more creepy than gory, but just so you know...

• "The Groom" 
• "When the Darkness Presses"
• "The Hole the Fox Did Make"
• "Margot's Room"
• "His Face All Red"
• "Out the Door"

"State Trooper," by Bruce Springsteen

One of the bleakest tracks from Springsteen's bleakest album, "State Trooper" is the perfect song to listen to if you're driving alone at night and like making yourself miserable.  For a fun double feature, follow it up with the even-more-horrifying song that inspired this one, Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop" (not officially recommended because I still haven't convinced myself to listen to it).

Random (not free) Recommendations:

There's no Stephen King on that list, and that's pretty much entirely because I can't find any of my favorite shorts online anywhere, but I'm a big fan of "Children of the Corn," "Quitters, Inc.," (both from Night Shift) "Dedication," (Nightmares & Dreamscapes) and "1408" (Everything's Eventual).  And IT is by far my favorite of his novels (though I'll always have a soft spot for Carrie).  All three of Neil Gaiman's short story collections (Smoke & Mirrors, Fragile Things, Trigger Warning) are phenomenal and I can't recommend them enough.  Emily Carroll has a book, Out of the Woods, which is just as chilling as her online work (although you don't get any animation, unfortunately).  

If you're into comics, check out Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing (particularly Volume 3: The Curse and Volume 4: A Murder of Crows) and his sprawling From Hell (arguably his best work), and Mike Carey's Lucifer.  

I'm actually not well-versed in horror movies (I'm not a big fan of gore/awfulness for its own sake, so you can imagine that the glut of slasher movies, torture porn, and zombie flicks over the last few decades has put me off the genre at large), but The Shining is great and I really liked The Cabin in the Woods, for what that's worth.  Pan's Labyrinth gets horror-ish.  People I respect really liked The Babadook and It Follows, but I haven't seen them yet myself.  And, uh, Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas?  Sure.  Let's go with those.

I was a big fan of NBC's short-lived Constantine, which I think you can still watch online.  And if you can dig up the episodes anywhere, my favorite TV show as a pre-teen (and for a while after) was a Disney Channel series called So Weird, which was essentially a kid-friendly X-Files.  Despite that qualifier, it had some pretty solid horror stories, the best of which were laced with a surprisingly-mature sadness and sense of loss.  All of the best episodes are in the first two seasons, before the network stepped in: "Family Reunion," "Tulpa," "Mutiny," "Destiny," "Blues," "Transplant," "Twin," "Strange Geometry," Medium," and "Banshee."

If you have any recommendations of your own, feel free to leave them in the comments.  Happy Halloween!

Public Loss

Despite the cold, I took a meandering path home from the gym today, partially to get a picture of a relatively-new mural at the corner of Columbus and Coles, and partially just out of a desire for some fresh air.  Because I took that path, I ended up stumbling through other peoples' loss.

The first was at the corner of Montgomery and Brunswick, the site of St. Bridget's Church.  Everything around it is low-slung - the housing complexes, the public high school, the athletic field - so the dark brick bell tower is visible for blocks.  It's a beautiful building, all dark brick and white stone, with those tall, bullet-shaped Gothic windows.  Historic, too: it officially opened its doors in 1887, the same year that Georgia O'Keefe was born and the character of Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print.

As I approached from the west, I could see people clustered at the front steps, talking, hugging, heading for their cars.  I passed a woman carrying a bouquet of roses in a paper wrap, and saw more parishioners cradling bouquets as I got closer.  As I hooked a left down Brunswick, I ran into a student and his parents, who told me what parishioners have known since last November: St. Bridget's was closing.  Today was the last mass.

When I moved here, St. Bridget's was part of Resurrection Parish, a conglomerate of five Downtown Jersey City parishes formed in 1997, banding together against atrophying parishioner numbers and income.  Like most big cities, the inciting incident was demographic change, as the ethnic Irish, Italians, and Germans who had once dominated the neighborhoods north of Montgomery Street fled to the suburbs and were replaced, largely, by African-Americans and Puerto Ricans (and, later, various Asian groups).  According to The New York Times, St. Bridget's had a congregation of 650 in 1997, down from 6,000 in 1910 when the Irish ran downtown.  A more direct illustration: my own church, St. Michael's (one of the five downtown parishes mentioned above), is an enormous building in a (now-)thriving neighborhood, but tonight there were exactly 15 people there, including the priest, altar boy, and cantor.*

*Granted, it was also a 6:30 p.m. Sunday mass.

Since then, two of the churches in Resurrection Parish have closed (St. Boniface has been sold, but remains an imposing vacant on 1st Street, and St. Peter's is now Prep's cafeteria).  And early last year, the archdiocese dissolved Resurrection Parish as a corporate entity, returning its three remaining churches to their original status as independent parishes.

My student's mother told me that the final mass had been very nice, but deeply sad.  The church had been a big part of their lives, as it had for many people in the neighborhood.  Although parishioners were encouraged to go to St. Mary's (another former Resurrection church), she said that she'd heard a number of people weren't sure if they would even go to church anymore once St. Bridget's closed.

I thought that was interesting, the way a community can become synonymous with its purpose.  You might seek out a community because you're drawn to its goals or philosophy, but (in my experience) it's the relationships that make you stay, and that make your experience meaningful.  I went on a lot of retreats in college, and they were all well-designed and included some really powerful activities and prayer service.  But what I remember are the people with whom I shared those experiences.  So when those people are gone -- when you no longer have that same community -- it can be tough to want to carry on by yourself.

After wishing my student and his parents a good weekend, I continued down Brunswick.  Another pair of parishioners were up ahead, paused at the fence that looked into the narrow courtyard of a long, squat housing development immediately behind the church.  In that courtyard was a snow-clogged shrine: a dark orange plastic milk crate holding wilted flowers and empty liquor bottles, surmounted by a framed photo of a young, short-haired Latina.  Printed at the bottom: R.I.P. Pretty.

And further down Monmouth Street, another memorial: this one created on the big rectangles of plywood covering the windows of a vacant storefront.  From across the street it appeared to be covered with black capillaries, but a closer look revealed dozens of messages written in black Sharpie:

R.I.P. Eric
R.I.P. E $
One love
The Good Die Young!
NEVER 4GOTTEN

You see shrines like this in the deeper parts of cities.  Sometimes there are stuffed animals, or t-shirts bearing the face of the deceased, or votive candles.  In more violent neighborhoods, you often see them erected for murder victims, although natural deaths are memorialized in a similar manner (for instance, only one of the two people whose monuments I saw today died under what can be described as suspicious circumstances*).  Eventually the physical tributes degrade or are removed by weather or garbage men, leaving only the R.I.P. graffitos and the occasional commemorative mural.

* Based on my own supplemental research, which -- due to the resources available and my own very-limited desire to intrude on someone else's grief -- is extremely surface-level.

Part of the communal experience of living in a city is that you share your life with your neighbors, whether you want to or not.  On the street, at festivals, at bars and restaurants and shops, your lives intersect.  Even if you throw your hood up, plug in your earbuds, and crank up Serial, public spaces make it impossible to totally isolate yourself.  Often that means exposing yourself to others' art or passions or big life events (ever had to wade through someone else's bachelor party to get a drink?).  But it also means sharing the darker parts of life.  It means being exposed to each other's grief and loss.

This is unusual, because we normally only know about grief if we have some personal stake in it.  Otherwise, people tend to keep it private.  In the shared spaces of a city, however, it's uniquely possible to become aware of strangers' most personal losses -- even if that awareness goes no further than simply knowing that it exists.  That a person, or a community, has been lost, and there are people left behind who mourn.

I wasn't a parishioner at St. Bridget's.  I didn't know Pretty, or Eric.  But even that brief exposure reminds me that other people exist as more than just obstacles on the sidewalk.  People are mourning and rejoicing and living stories that I'll never know.  That's reason enough, I think, to be mindful, and to be kind.