Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Trick-or-Treat: Give us frightening books to read!

Looking to read something that gets you in the Halloween spirit? Check out one of these spook-tacular titles that are sure to bring on the chills!

"[I]f you can't go to Oakland, then definitely invest in your own copy of ATLANTA'S OAKLAND CEMETERY. It's a wonderful journey through Atlanta's history and you won't regret educating yourself about Atlanta's rural cemetery garden." If you missed the Halloween tours at Oakland Cemetery, follow Paranormal Georgia Investigations' recommendation and pick-up a copy of ATLANTA'S OAKLAND CEMETERY. (For Halloween, we suggest reading the book while in costume!)

GHOSTS AND GOOSEBUMPS is a rich collection of folktales and superstitions that capture the oral traditions of central and southeastern Alabama. The spirits of treasure-keepers, poltergeists, murderers and the murdered, wicked men and good-men-and-true float through the book’s first section.
Ten Things to Know About the Ghosts
1. Never laugh at ghosts.
 2. Ghosts never speak unless spoken to.
3. Ghosts hardly ever appear in the daytime, usually at midnight.
4. If you're walking at night and you walk through a warm spot, you're walking though a ghost.
5. People born at midnight can see ghosts.
6. All dogs can see ghosts. If you want to see one, get behind a dog at midnight and look between his ears.
7. If you wish to speak to a certain ghost, go to its grave and walk around it backward twelve times.
8. If you want an easier way, go at midnight and call them by their first name.
9. If you meet a ghost walk around it nine times and it will disappear.
10. If you're running from a ghost, if you have the chance, run over a bridge; ghosts can't travel over running water.
 Rita Shaw (from GHOSTS AND GOOSEBUMPS)
For some chill-worthy short stories, check out Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction winner Hugh Sheehy's THE INVISIBLES.

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly aptly summarizes these haunting tales. "The best stories pair childhood idylls with horrific murder: a teacher and her student are terrorized by vicious killers in 'Meat and Mouth'; a man returns to his childhood house to learn that his next-door neighbor, once a figure of erotic fixation, has been hacked to pieces, in 'Smiling Down at Ellie Pardo'; the father in 'After the Flood' tries to account for his stunted stepson’s destructive impulses. . . . A little violence goes a long way and the lurking fear at the heart of these stories elevates them beyond the merely promising to reveal a wicked new talent."