The Halloween Tree (1993)

Last year I posted an entry about Ray Bradbury's novel "The Halloween Tree", in which eight children learn the origins of Halloween customs while trying to save the life of their friend.


Here's the movie adaptation from 1993. It won Ray Bradbury a Daytime Emmy Award in 1994 for Ouststanding Writing in an Animated Program. This is the full movie, from a playlist.

HWA's Horror Reading List

The Horror Writers Association was formed, in part, to foster a greater appreciation of dark fiction among members of the general public.

In 1996 they compiled a recommended reading list. Bear in mind that since the books that appear here were picked using a survey of HWA's general membership in 1996, many excellent books published more recently do not appear here, and some of those that do are now out of print.

Note: This list is arranged alphabetically by author's last name. No ranking is implied.

• Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood
• The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
• Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
• Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite
• The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell
• The Between by Tananarive Due
• Darklands by Dennis Etchison
• Raven by Charles L Grant
• Dead in the Water by Nancy Holder
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
• Turn of the Screw by Henry James
• The Ghost Stories of M.R. James
• Dr. Adder by K.W. Jeter
• The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
• Pet Semetary by Stephen King
• The Shining by Stephen King
• The Stand by Stephen King
• Skin by Kathe Koja
• Dark Dance by Tanith Lee
• Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber
• Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
• Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti
• Lovers Living, Lovers Dead by Richard Lortz
• The Dunwich Horror and Others by H.P. Lovecraft
• At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
• The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen
• Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by Arthur Machen
• Sineater by Elizabeth Massie
• I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
• Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Book of the Dead edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector
• Ghoul by Michael Slade
• Vampire Junction by S.P. Somtow
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon
• Phantom by Thomas Tessier
• Sacrifice by Andrew Vachss

The October Country

Today being the first of October, it seems fitting to mention a book that I always enjoy revisiting this time of year.

The October Country, by Ray Bradbury, is a classic collection of short stories to put you in the proper frame of mind as Halloween approaches (also see The Halloween Tree post).

As described on the authors website, THE OCTOBER COUNTRY is many places: a picturesque Mexican village where death is a tourist attraction; a city beneath the city where drowned lovers are silently reunited; a carnival midway where a tiny man's most cherished fantasy can be fulfilled night after night. THE OCTOBER COUNTRY'S inhabitants live, dream, work, die--and sometimes live again--discovering, often too late, the high price of citizenship. Here a glass jar can hold memories and nightmares; a woman's newborn child can plot murder; and a man's skeleton can war against him. Here there is no escaping the dark stranger who lives upstairs...or the reaper who wields the world. Each of these stories is a wonder, imagined by an acclaimed tale-teller writing from a place shadows. But there is astonishing beauty in these shadows, born from a prose that enchants and enthralls. Ray Bradbury's THE OCTOBER COUNTRY is a land of metaphors that can chill like a long-after-midnight wind...as they lift the reader high above a sleeping Earth on the strange wings of Uncle Einar.

The Halloween Tree

A fine tale for upcoming October nights is The Halloween Tree, by Ray Bradbury.

A group of eight boys set out to go trick-or-treating on Halloween, only to discover that a ninth friend, Pipkin, has been whisked away on a journey that could determine whether he lives or dies. Through the help of a mysterious character named Moundshroud, they pursue their friend across time and space through ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures, Celtic Druidism, Notre Dame Cathedral in Medieval Paris, and The Day of the Dead in Mexico. Along the way, they learn the origins of the holiday that they celebrate, and the role that the fear of death has played in shaping civilization.

The story was made into an animated film in 1993.

Ray Bradbury's original painting for his classic book.