It’s First Wednesday, so time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group post!
October 2 question – Ghost stories fit right in during this month. What’s your favorite classic ghostly tale? Tell us about it and why it sends chills up your spine.
I don’t read or watch horror stories—my imagination is way too vivid for that! However, a good classic spooky tale…hmmm.
I guess it would have to be a witch story, to match the spooky season for October and Halloween. Classic vampires are a little too gory for my taste (they didn’t start out being all romantic and such), and classic ghost stories are too depressing. Zombies are gruesome and I always felt sorry for Frankenstein’s monster instead of scared of him. So witches it is.
I’ve always secretly believed in magic, so it’s easy for me to fall into a witchy story and go along with the spells and conjurations. I especially like witch stories where one of the witches is a novice and is being trained by the older ones. Not a spooky story, but I think my favorite witches are the ones from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Granny Weatherwax and Granny Ogg are the perfect epitome of witches: old, scraggly, a little off their nut from all the magic they use, and far more powerful than their looks would suggest.
As to chills up your spine, I don’t really care for those tales, but I do love a good story that lifts the hair on your arms from wonder. Another set of witchy tales that does this is the People stories by Zenna Henderson, which are rightly classified as science fiction instead of fantasy. The people referred to are from another planet, but they have magical powers like telepathy and flight and telekinesis. Henderson was a powerful writer who could raise your goosebumps with just a phrase or two. If you’ve not read those, you should seek them out. They’re probably out of print by now, but you can find the anthologies in a used book store somewhere.
