Top Five Horror Stories
So it's been awhile! 52 Short Lives went on hiatus while I took a break from my year long commitment, but I'm ready to start wading back in. Staring with a few light posts making lists, ranking, or commenting on the 52 stories that made up the first year of this blog project.
The first category: horror stories! I dedicated the month of October solely to horror stories, and through out the rest of the year the genre was sprinkled through my weekly readings. Horror makes for great short stories. There is something classical and old there. Ghost stories around a camp fire, urban legends, party stories, there is something about horror that fits well in the medium of the short story. It really doesn't take a lot of words to create an atmosphere, set up the tension, and then unleash the scare.
So in honour of the short story genre that just keeps coming back from the dead and never goes out of style, here are my Top Five Horror Stories from the 52 Short Lives project.
5. The Most Dangerous Game- This iconic short story concept has been parodied, rewritten, explored countless times since Richard Connell published it in 1924. Blurring the line between humanity and beasts, predator and prey this story explores the visceral horror of being perused and hunted for sport, and the more psychological horror of what it takes to make man monstrous (not as much as we might like to think).
4. The Yellow Wallpaper- This was the first story I wrote about on this blog, and remains one of the best. Published in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman the Yellow Wallpaper is a psychological horror story that leaves the reader questioning where exactly the horror is coming from--is it the dominating control of a woman's husband driving her to madness, or is it the unknown supernatural fear of something in the wallpaper? Part of what makes this story so iconic is the uncertainty, and the way that it works on both levels. With themes of early feminism, and isolation this was one of oldest stories I wrote about across the 52 week project, but remains one of the most timely.
3. The Magnus Archives-I played with the definition of 'short story' when I included this series on the list, and I stand by that definition. The Magnus Archives by Jonny Sims is a master piece of modern horror. The podcast is made up of 200 episodes with an overarching story plot, but each episode also stands alone as a short horror story. Making the most of its audio format from the creepy violin intro, to the voices actors stunning performances the podcast brings horror back to those ancient roots I was talking early--that human act of speaking scary stories aloud.
2. Sleepy Hollow-What can I say? I love a good ghost story, and Sleepy Hollow is the classic ghost story. It has so many tropes I love: the quirky, but strange small-town, a fantastic urban legend, and a very cool ghost. Published in 1819 this Washington Irving tale is another older story, and one of the longest on the blog, but the classics and are a classic for a reason.
1 The Masque of Red Death- Speaking of classic short horror stories, lets face it-Edgar Allen Poe is one of the greatest of all time. This was another early post on the blog, being the second ever post I made, and is another older story published in 1842. The 19 Century was a great time for both horror and the medium of the short story. Although the story I chose is not one of Poe's more well known works (you've probably heard of The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado) it remains one of my favorites. This story also has some great tropes: a masked ball, cool stained glass, and the personification of death just to name a few. About a group of wealthy elite who bar their doors and party while the poor of their city die of a plague, this story was also brought into timely relevance in our modern time. Told with gothic flair, and what I can only describe as style this story is all the fun things about horror.
So that's my Top Five horror stories list! As I mentioned I wrote about lots of horror stories on this blog, so if you like some of these use the horror tag to find and check out some more! Go and read! If you dare...
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