"It gave me a shock all the same..." My Top Ten Scary Short Stories

All of us tend to enjoy short stories. I remember having reading as a subject in elementary school and middle school, and our reading books were always full of fascinating tales. I was introduced to many different types of authors and storytelling in those books. I certainly was introduced to Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, and other great short story authors along the lines of middle or high school.

My favorite literature classes in college were usually the ones that had a lot of short stories. I even took a class titled American Short Stories, and I still have my textbook for that class. That may have been where I first read Franz Kafka's terrifying novella, The Metamorphosis. (And we'll get to scary novellas soon enough in this blog!)

But I had fallen in love with scary short stories as a kid with the incredibly terrifying Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and that's all three books. Most people will say that it was mostly the haunting artistry by Stephen Gammell that scared them. For me, it was the combination of the two. First, Alvin Schwartz was telling us scary stories from folklore, myth and legend. Second, even when he'd reassure us that the stories weren't true, it's almost like was saying so with an undertone of, "...or are they?" For all stories stem from somewhere... who says those urban legends and fanciful myths don't have some truth to them?

Since childhood and college, I've read countless short stories. I truly love anthologies and collections, especially in genre fiction: horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy. So I figured, since Dark Owl is going to be publishing an anthology and a collection on December 1, how about a few lists of short stories to start DOP's blog?

Here's my personal list of top ten scary short stories. They're in no particular order, and I've linked to either the story or the book the story is found in. I hope you'll take time to read them... if you dare!

Read it here

This is probably the first short story I remember really having a strong impact on me when I read it in middle school. Of course, it's incredibly scary to imagine living in a situation where your life is on the line once a year. However, I think what really upset me about this story was not that the town was controlled by some scary demon, or an insane cult leader. No, this was a decision that was agreed upon by perfectly sane people, following a tradition that had been designed by perfectly sane founders. No one questions it. No one denies it. While the tension and fright are very real for these characters, and we are drawn right into their terror, in the end, they have no problem with carrying out the sacrifice and then going back home to their regular lives. This is where Ms. Jackson truly gets us: she understands that some of our worst fears come from unquestioned normalcy.

Read it here

I didn't read this one until I was an adult, and I read it before bed. I honestly had to take some time and read something else, it scared me so badly! I think what truly scared me is our narrator is a victim of the male-based wisdom of her era, and she is driven to her actions by what is considered a normal life during her time. She is being forced to deal with restrictive diagnoses of her condition that, even though they are meant to help, change her decision-making process and send her down a dark mental path. She keeps a secret journal of ramblings, and she starts to see the wallpaper as increasingly suffocating, both unhealthy mechanisms for coping. She is even nameless--she never refers to herself by her own name, which is even more disturbing. A woman truly trapped, truly unable to break through the proverbial walls surrounding her... until she does, to terrifying results.

Read it here and watch it here

This one is another story that kept me up at night! Once again, I had to read another story to ease my mind after partaking in this truly terrifying tale. The key to this story is what our narrator doesn't tell us, and I think that was one of Lovecraft's greatest assets. Randolph Carter is our narrator, and he is outside the tomb while Harley Warren is inside, calling up to Carter about what's happening. Lovecraft weaves a paranormal gradual increase of terror that easily sucked me into the narrative, building to the horrifying final line that honestly shocked me. While Lovecraft had a real gift for creating terror and madness, this somewhat simple yet extremely tight ghost story scares me more than a lot of his other work.

Read it here and watch it here

The descent into madness, the true look at insanity, the confidence of our narrator in his own ability to hide what he's done... this is a recipe of words that has terrified me since the first time I read it. I was introduced to it in middle school, and I believe what genuinely frightened me was the unreliability of our narrator. We're supposed to trust the storyteller, that what he's telling us is true. We are grabbed by the hand, however, and dragged completely downward into his descent into madness. I think this is why the reader gets extremely frightened, for what if the insanity isn't in him... but in them? To me, this is absolutely the scariest story on my list. It still frightens me to my core, no matter how many times I read it. (And the video short I linked scares me as well!)

Buy the collection here

This is the only story that isn't scary on the surface in my scary stories list. However, I included it because there is fear within it that is mixed with absolute sadness. Edgar Allan Poe's death was mysterious--he was found on a park bench after having been missing for three days, in clothes that were not his own. He was taken to a hospital and died soon afterwards, and the only word he would say to anyone was, "Reynolds". This story gives us a potential answer to who Reynolds was and why Poe was in such shock. I cried at the end of the story because I believe I felt the fear and confusion of both Reynolds and Poe as they dealt with their encounter. Their situation would be terrifying to people of that time period, both to themselves and to their peers, never mind the crucial moment that seems to drive Poe insane. So I think this story fits into this list, but as a different type of fear.

Of note, Adrian Ludens is an independent author who I believe has the kind of talent that echoes the most poignant of the horror authors that are well known. Adrian has a story in the upcoming A Celebration of Storytelling from us, also a horror story that has a bittersweet ending.

Read it here

This is certainly one of those old classics I had to read in grade school, and I've had to read it over and over since. Plus we've all seen this trope in other stories, and the theme is now almost cliche: be careful what you wish for, for your just might get it. But let's realize why it continues to endure. It's a simple fear, that our choices and desires in life, especially when in moments of grief, despair, or fear, may be wrong, and horribly wrong at that. I am sure we have all felt this at least once in our lives. There is another trope that might be more hidden: when life seems really bad and it feels we've hit rock bottom, it's quite possible that something worse could still happen. Are we doomed no matter what? Can life only go downhill when we're in its throes? This story warns us to think twice, and to think hard, or suffer the consequences.

Read it here

This story is usually included in sci-fi story lists. However, it was shocking enough to me that the ending imprinted itself on my brain. I had forgotten about it until the film A Sound of Thunder came out in 2005, and I knew the base story sounded familiar. I found the old short story and read it again, and there it was: that story that had honestly scared me in middle school. It's the same scare many sci-fi authors have used: the consequences of too much technology, and the horrific failings of man's hubris. But there's a reason why we kept seeing this theme: Ray Bradbury and all those wonderful authors were ahead of their time, and they saw what was coming. We are starting to live their nightmares, and that is something that is truly frightening to me.

Read it here at your own risk, or buy the collection here

Now, now, hear me out on this one. "Trucks" was the catalyst for the film Maximum Overdrive and a made-for-TV film from Canada with the same name. The problem is, both films failed miserably at capturing the true terror the short story conveyed. I've never been a fan of inanimate objects coming to life. It scared me to death as a kid when it happened in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So when I read "Trucks", the feeling of objects that shouldn't be intelligent suddenly becoming such and them trapping humans into doing what they want... that to me is one of the most horrifying events that could happen to us. How do you stop it? How do you deal with a machine turning on its creator? It's a common sci-fi and horror theme, but to do it with vehicles on a lonely highway was an expert choice. King also masterfully kept the story in one location (the films did not do this, and that's where they lost me), so there is the added claustrophobia on top of the premise of the story. Plus the ending is superb. It's clear these people can't figure out how to stop it, so we are left with impending doom and horrible dread. If you take the time to look at this story from those perspectives, you'll see why it can scare people to their core.

Buy the collection here (coming soon!)

This story is probably not the scariest in McFarland's collection, but it had the most impact on me because McFarland was able to capture exactly how I have reacted to Goya's horrifying painting. We are again faced with a descent into madness, though we could also say that Goya's already there, and that's where his Black Paintings, including Saturn, came from. I think this is a fear some creatives have: to be driven to insanity by their own work. Overall, this quick look into the mind of a genius, or some might say a madman, gives us pause: are genius and madness one and the same?

Of note, John McFarland is a long-time, experienced indie author who came to us with his collection A Dark Walk Forward, and his combination of dark fiction mixed with historical events really emphasizes the type of horror we want to publish. His writing is the kind of horror that haunts our real lives. His book will be released December 1, 2020 in paperback and on Kindle.

Read and listen to it here

I had to include one of the stories from my first introduction to scary stories. And truthfully, this story still scares me to this day. We all have tales from our childhood that trickle into adulthood, and this story is one of those for me. I remember as a child being completely shocked by the ending. What a horrific vision: to see your own wife standing in front of you with horseshoes nailed to her hands and feet, that's just fucked up right there. The image Gammell came up with absolutely haunts me... the horse with a human eye. And to think this was okay for kids to read...

Well, I will say that I'm happy Mr. Schwartz was okay with us reading them. I think we need to learn to deal with fear and the unknown as children. We are living in times that are quite different from even as short as 100 years ago. For example, death is taboo to a point where we cannot handle a friend of family member passing. We must shuffle the body off to someone else to make it look like it's sleeping for the funeral. It's a far cry from when the body used to be on display for a week in the family home so friends and family could come by and pay their respects. We even have a hard time dealing with the family pet passing away. So I think it's good for kids to begin to understand death as soon as their parents believe they can. And I'm glad Mr. Schwartz and my mom thought it was perfectly fine for me to read such horrifying and life-imprinting stories. My other kids be so lucky to get to experience fear in the safety of their own bed, under the covers with a flashlight on!

~ Andrea Thomas

Quote in the post title is from "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs.
First photograph by Andrés Gómez on Unsplash
Dinosaur image (c)2017 Andrea Thomas.
All other images are assumed public domain and copyright their respective creators. Most found via snappygoat.com.