Staff Picks for Halloween
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Unless you’re in the category of people dressing up in costumes that appeal to the zeitgeist and taking to the streets, Halloween can be a good occasion to turn to the genres of ghost stories and horror by writers new and old. In case you’re in need of a recommendation – or a chilling reminder of the cultural logic and ethics behind this holiday – the team at The London Magazine share some of their favourites in the generously-applied category of ‘spooky’ fiction, film and poetry.
Steven O’Brien, Editor
A Vignette by M. R. James
The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allen Poe
Both of these texts feature a classic eerie moment of spine-tingling disquiet. Both Poe and James were masters at evoking the intervention of the supernatural.
Jamie Cameron, Managing Editor
The Island in the Sound by Niall Campbell
Donnie Darko by Richard Kelly
I struggled with this for a few reasons. Mainly because I don’t really get Halloween and as a result don’t have much to offer in terms of legitimate ‘spooky’ suggestions outside of the most generic. But I was intrigued to see extracts from Jean Baudrillard’s America circulating online over the past few days. According to him, Halloween is a postmodern simulation, like Main St in Disneyland and the New York, New York casino in Las Vegas; or, in our own city of London, like Oxford Street at Christmas or M&M World in Leicester Square are simulations, a hyperreality where real things and actual relationships have been replaced by their simulacra. Baudrillard goes on to say that ‘this sarcastic festival reflects an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world. Behind all the dressing up and presents – people turn out their lights and hide.’
Anyway, beyond all the postmodern cultural logic and elaborate costumes – hyper-sexualised and racially appropriated as they often are – I really enjoyed Niall Campbell’s new collection The Island in the Sound which had some vaguely spooky poems. This one, ‘Houdini’, first published in Bad Lilies, features a magician which I think counts as Halloween adjacent. Oh, and I liked the film Donnie Darko as a teenager. That can be my other pick.
Zadie Loft, Marketing and Editorial Assistant
The Manningtree Witches by A. K. Blakemore
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
Manningtree Witches for its obviously Halloween-y ‘witches’, but more for the sheer horror of violent misogyny at the hands of Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins; Seven Moons for its ghosts, violence and spooky existentialism; and The Bloody Chamber because nothing says Halloween more than werewolves, vampires and general Carter-esque weirdness.
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