Friday Night Frights: Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark

Hey Bookdragons! Welcome to the 4th installment of the Friday Night Frights meme!

How It Works:
On your blog feature a horror novel you loved (it doesn't have to be a new release) and recommend a horror movie you love then come back here and post your link in the comments! That's it, as simple as that! 

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

The iconic anthology series of horror tales that's soon to be a highly anticipated feature film! 

Stephen Gammell’s artwork from the original Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark appears in all its spooky glory in this paper-over-board edition. Read if you dare!

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a timeless collection of chillingly scary tales and legends, in which folklorist Alvin Schwartz offers up some of the most alarming tales of horror, dark revenge, and supernatural events of all time.

And don't miss More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Scary Stories 3!

What I loved about Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark:

This book takes me back to my childhood. Staying at a friends house or at a birthday party and telling stories to scare each other into sleeping with our eyes open. These books were actually really popular when I was in elementary school and I remember checking them out from the local library but I admit, I was a kid who was afraid of everything and was too chicken to give these stories a read back then. Now as an adult I'm reading them for - believe it or not - the first time and realizing they're not so scary after all. 

Movie Rec: The Fog

If you've been a follower of this blog since the beginning or have read any of my paranormal/urban fantasy novels you will know that The Fog is one of my all-time favorite movies. The remake, not the 1980 original, which shocks most people because it's usually the other way around. 

"Selma Blair, Tom Welling and Maggie Grace star in this creepy thriller about an island town off the coast of Oregon that's forced to contend with some unwelcome visitors from its past: the spirits of lepers and sailors aboard a ship that the hamlet's forefathers had steered astray on purpose. Those aboard the doomed vessel all wound up lost in the fog forever. Now, they're back from the mist, eager to exact revenge on the descendants of their murderers."

The first time I saw this movie I was 13. It was Halloween night and I was having a Halloween sleepover so three of my friends and I went to see The Fog. I had not seen said 1980 original, which is fine since this remake has a completely different (and in my honest opinion much better) plot. 

The Fog begins with a ghastly crime. Four men sail out through the fog to kill a ship full of lepers who were just looking for a new place to call their own. Instead, the men they made a deal with stole their gold and anything of value and burned and sunk the ship killing everyone aboard.

Now 150+ years later the crimes of the past will be visited upon the heads of the descendants of those four foolish men. But why now? What made them come back? Could it be the return of Elizabeth (Maggie Grace) to the small island of Antonio Bay, Oregon?

If you like supernatural horror, reincarnation, and a great movie sound track you need to add The Fog to your queue right this minute!

Book Review: Boy Heaven by Laura Kasischke

Boy Heaven by Laura Kasischke

Blurb:

They were seventeen, with perfect tans and perfect bodies. They planned on a joyride in a convertible on a hot summer day. They planned on skinny-dipping in a beautiful, secluded lake. They planned on making it back to camp before anyone noticed they were gone. What they "didn't" plan on was being followed by two guys in a beat-up station wagon. . . . Their day soon takes a drastic turn -- all because Kristy Sweetland smiled at the wrong time, in the wrong place, at the wrong boys.

Now the girls feel prying eyes on them all the time -- during pep practice, on the path through the woods, outside the window of their cabin. The boys are stalking them, leaving threatening notes on their beds, and watching their every move.

"Boy Heaven" is a provocative, page-turning mystery, and a must-read for anyone who loves an urban legend.

My Review:

The first time I read Boy Heaven was twelve years ago. I was thirteen and at the time this story creeped me out. Years passed and I lost track of the book but never forgot the story, eventually managing to track down a used copy online. And so as a now-twenty-five-year-old-woman I read this book for the third time.

Boy Heaven is about a girl named Kristy who attends cheerleading camp with her best friend Desiree. There they meet a redhead also named Kristi and one day decide to ditch camp and drive to a nearby lake to skinny dip. Along the way they attract the attention of two boys in a station wagon who decide to follow them. The girls decide to turn back for camp and see the boys following them so they decide to flash them. Unbeknownst to them this event causes a disastrous chain of events. Soon Desiree and the redheaded Kristi insist they're seeing the boys watching them at the camp but the other Kristy doesn't believe them, thinking they're losing their minds. 

With the help of the camp lifeguard, T.J., Desiree and Kristy discover the truth about what really happened the day they ran into the boys in the station wagon, a truth that will change all of their lives forever.

This book is an okay read. It's told in a very strange way - like you know how someone starts talking about one subject then before you know it they've off-shot into about a hundred other topics that you wonder how they were connected to the original topic to begin with. That's how this story is written. Originally it starts with a camp counsellor telling horror stories around the campfire, and the Desiree and Kristis' story is one of them then we hear the story in Kristy's perspective with a bunch of offshoots to things that happened in her past that aren't really but sort of are connected to the main story. 

It's not as eerie of a story as I thought it was as a teenager but the ending - the fate of the three girls still gives me an uneasy feeling and reminds me why I never liked telling scary stories in the dark as a kid. 

Overall, I like this book but I think there are a lot of things that could have been cut from the story. 

My Rating:

🌟🌟🌟

3.25 of 5 Stars!

16 Novels That Remind Me of Halloween

Happy Halloween! 

To me, Halloween is the most magical of nights. Did you know that some believe that on Halloween the veil between this world and the afterlife is at its thinnest and spirits walk among us? Traditionally pumpkins were carved to ward off evil spirits that may come knocking. Personally, for me, Halloween traditions are filled with watching tons of horror movies, reading spooky novels, and maybe a tarot reading or two.

So in the spirit of my favorite holiday, here are some books that scream Halloween to me...

CLASSICS

1. Dracula by Bram Stoker

2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelly

3. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

4. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

5. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

MODERN

7. The Hollow by Jessica Verday

8. Asylum by Madeleine Roux

9. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

10. Nevermore by Kelly Creagh

11. Blood and Salt by Kim Liggett

12. The Revenant by Sonia Gensler 

13. The Unquiet by Jeannine Garsee

14. The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich

15. Lucky Break by Carly Phillips (not spooky, but I love reading this at Halloween)

16. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (again, not scary but classic)

With so many more horror stories out there, what would you add to the list? Whatever you're reading or whatever you're doing this Halloween, I hope you're having a fantastic day!

Why Are Horror Novels Scarier Than Movies?

With Halloween just days away I've been bingeing horror movies like they're going out of style. Old horror movies, 80s horror movies, newer horror movies - I've watched at least a few of them all. One thing remains the same no matter how many of them I've watched: no matter how gory, a horror movie is never as scary as a well-written horror novel. 

I know what you're thinking, how can I say that? Well, it's true when you think about it. Old, old horror movies like the original House of Wax (Vincent Price, 1953), The Mummy (Boris Karloff, 1932), House on Haunted Hill (Vincent Price, 1959) aren't really scary by modern standards. They're awesome movies, no doubt, but do they really send a chill down your spine? 

Then came the 1970s-1980s and their slew of cheap horror movies with terrible acting. I mean sure, a lot of them are cult classics like Halloween and Friday the 13th, but they're gory,  bloody, and even at times laughable... not scary. It's like that one Geico commercial - "If you're in a horror movie you make bad decisions, that's just what you do." Yes, because running upstairs instead of out the front door and to the nearest road/neighbor's house is so smart! Let's see how long you last... 

I'll admit, the horror movies that leave me scratching my head the most are the ones made in the last 5+ years like Paranormal Activity or The Gallows that look more like a bad episode of Ghost Adventures. When watching a horror movie I still want a plot... not an idiot with a green screen, no name actors, and no apparent plot. 

So it's no real wonder that horror novels are way scarier than horror movies. Even a well-made horror movie, one that can make you jump and have you sleeping with a nightlight at night is still just a movie. You know it's all fake and the actors didn't just get slaughtered on camera. But horror novels are different. Readers can get swept away into a good novel. I don't know about you but sometimes when I'm reading I forget that I'm reading. The world around me disappears and I'm in the book. The characters become real and the story becomes something you're living through right along with them. And when I read a well-written horror novel my mind paints a dark picture of a horrific situation I'm clawing to get out of right along with the characters. 

Example:

 "At the same time a light unexpectedly sprang up, and I saw Carmilla, standing, near the foot of my bed, in her white nightdress, bathed, from her chin to her feet, in one great stain of blood.”

—Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla 

You can picture it can't you? Waking up in the middle of the night to someone standing at the foot of your bed drenched in blood? Perhaps you read this late at night and have nightmares of someone standing beside your bed, staring at you, studying you with a crazed look in their eye as blood dribbles down their chin staining their white clothing. I'm shivering right now. 

While reading a horror novel I can picture it clearly as if it is occurring before my very eyes and though a movie is a moving picture playing on the screen in front of me it's not the same. It's not... realistic?

Example:
“Kaitie, are you alone?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Hang up."
"But why? What is it?"
"I can hear someone breathing on the line."
[Click]” 

― Dawn Kurtagich, The Dead House

You can picture someone sneaking up behind you, you can feel someone breathing on your neck, you hastily turn around and nobody is there. But there could have been...

Sure, the same could be said about watching a horror movie in the dark but still... I think you get where I'm going with this. 

photo via: theroadgoeseveron1812/instagram

What do YOU think? Do you find horror novels to be scarier than horror movies? Why do you think horror novels are scarier? What are some of your favorite spine-tingling, breath-stealing, scare-yourself-silly horror novels?