Going Bump in the Night: Women Writing Horror

This episode is ALIVE! Anney and Samantha delve into the history of women crafting the stuff of nightmares in the realm of horror fiction. Bonus dramatic reading included.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is any In Samantha, and welcome to Stephane.
Never told you protection of I heart radio. Samantha. You
know what the scariest thing you've ever read is? Do
you know what? I used to scare the hell out

(00:26):
of myself with the scary stories in the dark? Yeah,
oh my god, I would. I wouldn't read all the
stories and then not sleep for days. But yeah, yeah.
My old roommate and I, Katie she in college, we
were like the sweetest, dorkiest nerds and during October we

(00:48):
would light our little jackline and like the little Baby
one and we would take turns reading those to each other.
You don't out loud. I don't know if I could
the imagination alone, like for me to see in my head,
because what are some of the stories like the ribbon
around her next story really figuring out? The witch stories
always freaking me out? The banchee bungee, Oh my goodness,

(01:11):
I was petrified. That obviously still resonates with me. M
And I know there was a movie. Have you seen
the movie for it? I have seen the movie. Is
it worth it? It depends on what your level of
worth it is. I don't want to rule in a great,
great memory and great book though I don't think it

(01:31):
would do that, but it's definitely like I didn't. It
didn't scare me at all. Um. I was also very
very drug drink responsibly when I saw it in theaters
and I had to rewatch it because I was like,
maybe I just wasn't in the right place. And I
was like, no, it's great. The story didn't really make
sense to me. UM. But I mean, if you have
the option and it's streaming anywhere, I'd say go for it.

(01:53):
I don't think it'll ruin it for you. What is
this something that you've read that's super scary? UM. I
was very very scared by pet Cemetery by Stephen King. Um.
I remember reading it and just like lying awake and
not really sure why I was so scared. And I
think that's what he does really well, So he just
sets like a atmospheric tone and you can't really pinpoint

(02:14):
why you're so scared. But actually, the scariest thing I
ever read, and this is so so me, is a
Silent Hill fan fiction that, like, to this day, I
think of it and I just my mind is like,
don't even think about it. Oh, it scared me so bad.
That's amazing. Yeah, alright now never never even read a

(02:39):
Silent Hill fan fiction since then? Really, yeah, it scared me. Yeah. Um,
have you ever written anything like horror? No? I am
more like so my if I were to write anything,
my genre would be a little more like sudden gothic

(02:59):
tragic type of thing and so not necessarily scary. Oh,
we are talking a lot about Gothic. I love gothic
stuff for sure. Yeah. Yeah, and typically why anything scary?
I know you do the really sad stuff. Yeah, that's
my go to is sad. But um, I have written.
I wrote a book called Silence, and it was I

(03:22):
mean it was pretty typical like it was about a
therapist who's like through her sessions realizing something's very wrong
in this town. Um. And then recently I wrote there's
a new podcast coming out called Thirteen Days of Halloween,
and I wrote thirteen stories because I'm an overachiever or

(03:42):
a masochist. I don't know. They only chose one. I
was only supposed to do one. Say, didn't they say
write one? And then you wrote thirteen and said them
all of them? Yeah, And they were like, Okay, this
is great, but we have a lot of stuff to
go through to rank them. An you're an edit, there's nightmare,
I know, I know, believe me, do I know that? Um,

(04:04):
so look out for that. It should be interesting. Again.
My story is called red Bilvity. It's a good one. Um.
But yeah, today we were talking about women in horror
writing horror because yes it is October, and uh, I
just love things that are scary and I'm always ready
to talk about these things. Uh. And disclaimer for We're

(04:28):
gonna give a lot of examples in this episode, but
we have not read them all. We have not read
all the examples we're going to cite, and I cannot
speak for their depiction of women, race, queer able, is
m all that intersexual stuff? Um. Also, we are focusing
largely on horror written in the Western world, but I

(04:49):
would absolutely love to come back and do another one. Um,
looking at horror in different places and women writing horror.
I bet it would be so interesting that the legends
that they have in the kind of like the folklore
that's behind those legends. I would love to hear about
that me too, like things like the gin Oh my goodness,
that's say stuff. Yeah, And if any listeners has anything

(05:13):
we should pursue in that area, or any examples to
share with us, Oh my gosh, please send them in.
Oh yeah, and just to put this in there, we
are for our monthly reading. Just to go ahead and
let everybody get a heads up reading The Bloody Chamber. Yes, yeah,
which is by a female horror writer. Who is it,
Angela Carter? You know, was like Alicia Watts Nope, giving

(05:35):
our new name. Yeah, So we're reading The Bloody Chamber
by Angela Carter, which is an older horror story. So
if you want to pick that up and join us,
just to let you know, Yeah, it's pretty short. Um,
neither of us have read it before, so we're going
to go on this journey together. Who knows what it
will be like. It was recommended to me by by

(05:59):
actually past host Christen Caroline mentioned it in one of
their episodes, so I'm excited to check it out. But
in the meantime, all right, let's talk about women in
horror fiction and what exactly is horror fiction. It turns
out that that's sort of a difficult thing to pin down.
Some people say it's more of an emotion, more of
a feeling, than a definition. One of the founders of

(06:23):
the Horror Writers Association, Robert McCammon, tried to define it
in though with this, horror fiction can be a guide
through a nightmare world, entered freely and by the reader's
own will. And since horror can be many many things
that go in many many directions, that guided nightmare ride
can shock, educate, illuminate, threatened, shriek and whisper before it

(06:45):
lets the readers loose um And as we've talked about
time and time again, horror is often a reflection of
what we fear on a societal level. And because we
are so afraid of women and women's bodies, as we
recently talked about, women are definitely tied to the genre.
It makes sense that women authors have been pioneers and
writing horror fiction. Despite this, many of the authors that

(07:08):
get lifted up as the best in horror or of
course men. And if you look at horror anthologies, out
of fifteen stories, maybe one to three are written by women,
which is so unfortunate if any of them are at all, right,
And I think if you asked the average person to
name three authors who are writing horror, they would probably

(07:31):
all be men. Yeah, for sure. The top ones in
my head for sure come up as men. Yeah. Um.
And many of the accounts of women writing and horror
described not only having difficulty getting published, but this layer
of over analysis when it comes to subtext, both from
the reader and the writer. A woman can't just write horror,

(07:52):
has to have some hidden man hating theme, even if
that's not there, like, that's fine if it is, but
of people just assume. And therefore it's like women's literature
as opposed to horror. Um. And not only that, there's
this question of what kind of woman would right horror.

(08:12):
Women describe being judged as weird or disturbed if they
were writing horror, whereas male authors would be viewed as
cool or brave, like bucking the system. Um. And these
judgments following them to job interviews. At least one account
said she uh, an interviewer had found that she had
written this horror story and there was definitely already this
layer of well, I don't know about this woman. Yeah. Yeah.

(08:38):
Horror stories or stories mean to bring a sense of fear,
have been told for as long as people have been
telling stories, and those are the best stories, the ones
that kind of become legends um. And a lot of
these first horror stories weren't told for fun necessarily, but
as of course cautionary tells. Don't go alone in the
dark or you might get eaten. They might also feature

(08:59):
a creature, which are ghost, to explain things that people
don't understand at that time. Do people understand these things
at this time? Do we really understand creature? Which is
we're just sort of like, you know, like banshees. They
think was that sound coming from swamps? Or or maybe
it was a screech owl, but of course it's pushees.
To be fair, I do assume ghost first almost always.

(09:21):
As you know, Samantha, I think you're correct. We're definitely harden. Uh.
These stories make up a great deal of our foundational
folk stories, which again we would love to hear the
international levels because I can't imagine like how it transitions
from culture to culture. And ancient Greek tales told of
which is vampires and monsters, yes, and so did religious texts,

(09:41):
which we know maybe more like demons and such. Yeah.
One of my favorite things I've ever learned is that
almost every culture has a vampire legend, and and almost everyone,
I think in everyone except for one vampires don't like garlic.
And all these stories came separately like originated and set
replace at separate times. Fascinating m h m hmm. Horror

(10:05):
for horrors or curiosity's sake emerged in Western literature in
the century with the Gothic novel sixty four novel The
Castle Otranto by horrace At Walpole often gets the credit
for cementing the genres legitimacy. So maybe not the first
book or the first short story, but the first one.

(10:25):
People were like, oh, this is a book and it
deserves respect. At the same time, in France we see
the erise of Roman noir, black novels and German shutter novels,
which I love. And women have been riding a horror
since the very beginning, but they haven't always gotten the
attention or the credit. And we'll get into that and

(10:45):
some famous historical examples after we take a quick break
for word from our sponsor and we're back, Thank you sponsor. Yeah,
so let's get into history. Historically, a lot of horror

(11:08):
written by women has been lost to time and not
preserved in the same way mal warts were, of course,
and many of these words were not discovered until long
after the author's death, usually when a male writer of
acclaim highlights the story. Some of these authors are believed
have literally starved to death. However, it was not all
doom and gloom. A lot of women succeeded in the

(11:30):
realm of writing. Horror particularly got the car as the
genre emerged and gain popularity, and this popularity was only
possible due to the introduction of new technologies that allowed
for the printing of cheap magazines and newspapers. To distribute
these stories to a wider audience and to fill these
pages required a lot of stories, and in the early days,
women were largely the ones providing these stories. It was

(11:54):
an appealing career path for women who didn't have a
lot of opportunities at the time. Uh though the world
of publishing is largely dominated by men, women could still
get works published by writing under a gender neutral or
masculine sounding pen name, or anonymously or with a missus
so people knew you had a husband to keep you
in lyne, you weren't such a big threat. And not
to say that some women didn't do those things. It

(12:15):
was just easier to get published by doing their things.
Not only that strict genres weren't so much a thing yet,
so there was a lot of freedom to try all
kinds of stories, Like you could write a horror story
one day in a romantic story the other day, and
nobody really questioned, oh, you should stick to stick to
your life um, And these women did. Even within the

(12:38):
horror genre ghost swear worlds, vampires, banshees, cosmic tears, mad scientists,
dark dread inducing stories. Several of the horror stories written
by women from this time did include feminine themes womanhood,
social and class movements, feminism, domesticity, motherhood, uh children, childlessness,

(12:58):
and the self worth of child All those women all
of this stuff in these early horror stories. Examples include
What Was the Matter by Elizabeth Stewart Phelps, The Dream
Baby by Olivia Howard Dunbar, The Giant Wistaria by Charlotte
Perkins Gilman, The Wind in the Rosebush by Mary Wilkins Freeman,
Twilight by Marjorie Bowen, Transmigration by Dora Sigerson Shorter, and

(13:20):
so so so many more. A lot of these are
in the public domain, by the way, if you'd like
to go check them out. At this time, most horror
stories were written by women. The Gothic genre owes its
existence to women, and the audience was primarily women too.
In the early days of its existence, Gothic horror was
dismissed as essentially chick lit, which still problematic to dismissed

(13:44):
chickolt neither is good, neither is good m So many
of these women were able to support a family and
fairly quickly by writing, especially in the wake of a
loss of a Husbandhood previously provided support. And Radcliffe, who
wrote primarily Gothic fiction, was a top paid author in
the seventeen nineties. Her most famous work was a supernatural
tale following a female protagonist in a castle, called The

(14:06):
Mysteries of Udolpho. Some consider this the first best seller,
which maybe that should be on our list. Most of
her works did focus on dynamic, interesting female characters, which
of course was a rarity for the time, which even
is a rarity to this day. For some unknown reason,
she stopped writing at the age of thirty two, and

(14:27):
there's several probably untrue stories around her life and death,
which is even better like I'm like you do you
not love that? Like Aura of Mystery are under so
from c U and Y Brooklyn quote. Little was or
is known about Radcliffe's life, so not surprisingly, hypocritical story
sprang up about her. It was reported that she had

(14:48):
gone mad as a result of her dreadful imagination and
been confined to an asylum, that she had been captured
as a spy in Paris, or that she ate rare
port chub before retiring to stimulate nightmares for her novels,
and several times she was falsely removed to be dead.
It sounds like a fascinating woman. I mean, why have
we not thought about her? We talked about Emily Dickinson

(15:09):
all the time with her past. Yeah, I want to
know why? Why did people think she was a spy?
Emparison such a stretch from eating raw pork to have nightmares?
And I also just love dreadful imagination. That's so good.
But okay, no history of women writing horror would be

(15:30):
complete without mentioning Mary Shelley. In eighteen eighteen, Shelley published Frankenstein,
a novel that continues to influence our pop culture to
this day. I was thinking about this. It had such
a huge impact. You still, like, I still hear it mentioned,
like just recently I heard it on a like late

(15:50):
night talk show. And then I was thinking about Darth
Vader and because of Forest in Revenge of the Sith
and how when he comes to life. Oh it's like, yeah,
it's still mentioned and it's still a popular costume, like
it has lived for sure. Oh yeah, it lose lose.

(16:13):
Shelley was eighteen when she wrote this, and allegedly she
wrote it in response to Lord Byron's ghost story challenge.
So this is kind of a legendary tale in itself
that after rain kept Byron and Shelley inside with three
other vacationing friends. Uh, they told each other ghost stories,
and then Byron was like, I challenge all of the
to write a scarier ghost story than these, and she

(16:36):
and one other person did. Um. The fact that this
was written by a woman did cause surprises no one.
I'm sure a fair share of controversy and its day.
The British Critics eighteen review of the book claimed quote,
if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex,
there is no reason why we should, and we shall

(16:57):
therefore dismiss the novel without further comments. Wow. Yeah, excellently,
says demanthis so verbos you are still the book was
successful and her earned her the nickname the Mother of Horror,
which is an excellent nickname. Many consider this the first

(17:22):
science fiction novel, an epic pseudoscience tale about a monster
destroying its creator. That fateful rainy day, by the way,
also allegedly led to Paul Dori's The Vampire or the
Vampire perhaps in eighteen nineteen, and the nineteen eight six
movie Gothic. And there's also the movie Mary Shelley, which
Hulu keeps telling me I should watch? Is that the

(17:43):
one with Julia Roberts. There's probably more than one, this one.
I think this one has Ellie Fanning. Oh well, there's one.
Oh wow, look at that. And I think al Pacino, No,
no, no no, al Pacino. Robert de Niro is one of
them too. Wow. Okay, yeah. So in the nineteenth century,

(18:04):
Irish writer Charlotte Riddle turned out several short stories and novella's,
primarily about ghosts and haunted house. Originally she published under
masculine pen names like F. G. Trafford and RVM Sparling,
and she was quite prolific and popular at the time,
and she started writing as a means to support her mother,
which is even better, and we have Marie Correlli. She

(18:25):
was the top paid author in the eighteen nineties. Writing
was one avenue that women could receive pay equal to men's,
particularly if their pen name was again anonymous or allowed
people in some way to believe that they were men.
Two women who turned to writing out of dire financial
need later became some of the most well known of
the time, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Frances Hodgson Burnett. And

(18:47):
and we can't forget two of my favorites, Emily and
Charlotte Bronte, who wrote Weathering Heights in Jane Eyre and yes,
read both of them. Jane Eyre is probably my favorite
on top on the other hand, but it's delightful in
our classic examples of the Gothic pieces from this period.
Very haunting, yes, yes, lots of atmosphere, so much atmosphere

(19:09):
with names like hey, Heythcliffe, come on um and fire,
so many fires. But anyway, people were really concerned about
women reading this material. I think it was mentioned in
the fan fiction two parter right. Yeah, yeah, they were
worried that it was giving us emotions, so many emotions. Um.
Jane Austin's eighteen seventeen worked North Hangar Abbey mocked women's

(19:31):
love of these books. I will say there was this
weird uh rival against the Bronte sisters in Austin. There
was because I love both of them, all of them.
I love all of them. M But she did mock
the love of these books, with protagonist Katherine Morland imagining
all sorts of monsters thanks to reading too many horrid
books and giving to her feminine curiosity, the idea slowly

(19:54):
to call that women were way too fragile for horror
and gothic of the course, in a genre that had
once been received as feminine, was mascualized. The anxiety wasn't
confined to women reading it, to women writing it, as
a lot of the themes consciously or not reflected anxiety
around the patriarchy and were feminist in nature. Oh no, yeah,
oh no, indeed. And there's also a layer of um, oh,

(20:17):
you poor thing, like you're silly enough that you'll believe this.
You're not, You're not smart enough to know that this
is in reality. Uh. The link between feminism and harsh
strengthened by the end of the eighteenth century, and women
writers use their stories to critique society and push for
social change, particularly around issues like motherhood, health, and hysteria.

(20:39):
Despite the plethora of examples of women's short stories, gothic
novels written by men are what we remember from this period.
I had a really hard time. Obviously, there are plenty
of examples, but when I went to just a page
that was highlighting, I'd say probably one hundred, almost all
of them were men. No joke. Um. There are several
reasons why I this could be. Perhaps novels receive more

(21:03):
respect and attention than short stories, perhaps because these stories
dealt with women's and social issues, and thus we're categorized
as women's writing instead of gothic or heart which again
is a problem that remains to this day. But the
point is women were there at the very beginning, and
they were writing most of this and then until society
was like, Nope, that's not that's not ladylike, and men

(21:26):
should do it. And now it's a respected genre because
men are doing it right and should be paid more
for it. Right. Yep. Absolutely, Well that's that's about our history.
But we do have some more modern day examples we
wanted to share with you. But first we have one
more group, break for a word from our sponsor, and

(21:58):
we're back, Thank you sponsor. So unfortunately, in our more
modern times, they are still more men writing horror than women.
But there are women producing some amazing stuff and this
is slowly changing that it's not super weird that women
are writing horror. And we thought we'd leave you with

(22:19):
a few examples if you want to check them out,
Starting with Shirley Jackson, who wrote things like The Haunting
of Hill House, which I know a lot of you
are probably familiar with. The Netflix show. UM Daphne do Martier,
whose works were adapted into films twelve times, including several
by Hitchcock, like The Birds and Nicholas Real Eggs It

(22:41):
Don't Look Now, which we mentioned in our which is
episode about hocus Pocus in the Witches. UM Joyce Carol Oates,
a Pullit Surprise winning author who has written over one
hundred books. Of course, Octavia Butler, who you love, Yeah,
I love Octavia Butler. Yeah, it's one of the few times,

(23:01):
while now that's not true at all, I was gonna
say it's one of the few times in an assigned
book became one of my favorite books. I've actually generally
liked every book I've been assigned to read. But I
was assigned to read some of her books in college,
her science fiction books, and I love them and I
still love them to this day. Yeah uh yeah. And
she has a lot of horror in her science fiction,
which I do feel like go hand in hand oftentimes. Um.

(23:22):
And she frequently addressed the horrors of systemic racism in
her work, which is awesome as needs to be. Also
on anomie author of things like The Body and Now
You're one of Us Lisa Tuttle, which, by the way,
I thought you were saying Lisa Turtle, and I was
really caught up and just played by the bill anyway.
Lisa Tuttle an eighties horror fiction writer who also wrote

(23:42):
Encyclopedia of Feminism. Yeah, we might need to read. Yeah.
Then there's Linda Addison, who in two thousand one became
the first black woman to be awarded the Bram Stoker
Award for her work Consumed Reduced to Beautiful Gray Ashes,
And in two seventeen, the Horror Writers Association shows her
for their Lifetime Achievement Award, which is in the horror
world that's like the top. Yeah. Yeah, Also, I'm just

(24:07):
gonna put out there. I tried to get to the
bottom of I don't know. Have you heard the rumor
that brand Stoker didn't really write Dracula but a woman did? Yes,
I actually I did. I tried to get to the
bottom of that, and I could not find the answer.
But we are aware of it. Right. There's also like
the rumor, well not the rumor that yes, he did
write it, but because it was legend and had already
been there, that there were other rights that he took

(24:28):
from right right right, right right right. Yeah. We mentioned it.
Oh gosh, that feels like centuries ago in our serial
Killer episode because we talked about kind of the inspiration
around it and there was a woman behind that. Um.
But anyway. Uh. There's also Karma Krmen Maria Machado, author
of Her Body and Other Parties. Um. And then there's

(24:50):
Tanana reeve Do who, on top of writing horror, also
teaches classes on it, including a u c L A
class called the Sunken Place, Racism Survival, and Black Horror Acidic.
We made her on the show. Sounds awesome. Um. And
then there's Helen Oh yeah, Ammi, author of things like
White Is for Witching and Acorus girl, right, and I

(25:12):
guess we should put in there and Rice because yes,
she did right, many of the vampire series. Um, and
she's one of the probably more popular ones because of
those vampire series. As you know, Tom Cruise and Brad
Pitt comes together to subduce Kristen Stewart. I don't remember
Kirsten Dunst whatever. See, there's so many vampire movies and

(25:33):
I love vampire genres. Please don't hate me, so, but yeah,
Kristen dunts there. It is in her young self. But yeah,
so we have to put her in there because she did.
She definitely create a whole level of sexy, sexy vampire.
Well no, I mean the vampires always been sexualized, but
in this level, when you have iconic stars like Tom

(25:55):
Cruise and Brad Pitt Pitt playing the main characters, you
can't help but notice, right, Okay, I've never read an
Ann Rice book, Um, but I would, I mean, I
would definitely say she would be one of the first
that if you were trying to list popular horror writers,
people would think of her. Um the first woman, I

(26:17):
would say a lot of times. And she did do
a lot to popularize specifically a vampire Horrors a whole
series yep. Um. For all the older examples we mentioned,
most if not all, of them, are featured in the
book Weird Women Classics Supernatural Fiction by groundbreaking female writers

(26:39):
Y three by Leslie s Clinger and Lisa Morton. So
you can go check that out too. And I'm so happy.
I feel like I have a whole repertoire books I
want to check out now. Yeah, for sure. I know
when we were talking again about our monthly reading and
You're like, I have a whole list. I think we
should read one of these, and I was like, okay, cool, cool, cool,
let's do this. Yeah. Well, I was reading the the

(27:02):
synapsis for a lot of these and everyone I was like, oh,
I think there's an original for sure. I gotta do it.
I gotta do it, yes, yes, um. And And for
this one, since it is October, we thought we would
close out with a reading anyone I would be done

(27:23):
to us. A dramatic reading isn't dramatic, Okay, here we go.
So we are going to read from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
So go ahead and light your candle, sit in the dog,
and here we go. So how we start. Yes, it
was on a dreary night of November that I beheld
the accomplishments of my toils with an anxiety that almost

(27:44):
amounted to agony. I collected the instruments of life around me,
that I might infuse a spark of being into the
lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already
one in the morning, the rain patterned dismally against the pains,
and my candle was nearly burnt out, when by the
glim of the extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow
eye of the creature open. It breathed hard, and a

(28:04):
convulsive motion agitated its limbs. How can I describe my
emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom
with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form.
His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his
features as beautiful, beautiful, great God. His yellow skin scarcely
covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath. His hair

(28:26):
was of illustrious black and flowing, his teeth of a
pearly whiteness. But these luxuriances only formed a more horrid
contrast with his watery eyes that seemed almost of the
same color as the dun white sockets in which they
were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips. The
different accidents of life are not so changeable as the
feelings of human nature. Had worked hard for nearly two

(28:48):
years for the sole purpose of infusing life into an
inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rust
and health. I had desired it with an ardor that
far exceeded moderation. But now that I had finished, the
beauty of the dream vanished and breathless. Horror and disgust
filled my heart, and able to endure the aspect of
the beating I had created, I rushed out of the

(29:09):
room and continued a long time to versing my bed chamber,
and able to compose my mind asleep. At length last
Dude succeeded to the tumult I had bullied endured, and
I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavoring
to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was
in vain I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by
the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth in the

(29:30):
bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted
and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the
first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the
hue of death. Her features appeared to change, and I
thought that I had held the corpse of my dead
mother in my arms. A stroud enveloped her form, and
I saw grave worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.
I started from my sleep with horror. A cold dew

(29:51):
covered my forehead. My teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed.
When by the dim and yellow light of the moon,
as it forced its way through the window shutters, I
beheld the wretch, the miserable monster whom I had created.
He held up the curtain of the bed, and his eyes,
if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me.
His jaws opened and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while

(30:13):
a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but
I did not hear. One hand was stretched out seemingly
to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. I
took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which
I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night,
walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening, attentively,
catching and fearing each sound as if it were to
announce the approach of the demonical corpse to which I

(30:35):
had so miserably given life. Oh, no mortal could support
the horror of that countenance. A mummy again and endued
with animation. It could not be so hideous as that
wretch I had gazed on him while unfinished. He was
ugly then, But when these muscles and joys were rendered
capable of motion, it became a thing such as even
Dante could not have conceived. I passed the night wretchedly.

(30:56):
Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I
felt the palpitation and of every artery. At others I
nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness.
Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment.
Dreams that have been my food and pleasant rest for
so long a space were now become a hell to me.
And the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete.

(31:19):
Flaws flaws, Amantha. I remember reading this in my ninth
or tenth grade ap English class, and loving, Loving, because
we did um literature. Yeah, European literature as ap English
class I think and uh. I loved this book and
loved everything about this book because it was so different.

(31:41):
Don't get me wrong, I still love Jane Austen, I
still love the Bronte Sisters, but this one was unique
in itself. It was so it was so small, it
was a short read, but it was perfect. I like
how structured too, with different like there's letters being written
to different people. Right. The point of view switch is
um And yes, this is in the public domain, so

(32:03):
if you would like to read it, you absolutely can.
And we hope that that gave you a little taste
of something spooky for the season. If you have any
horror book suggestions or short stories or whatever, please send
them our way. Our email is Stuff India, mom Stuff
at i heeart media dot com. You can find us
on Instagram at Stuff I've Never Told You, are on

(32:25):
Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks as always to our
super producer Andrew Howard. Happy Halloween, and thanks to you
for listening Stuff I've Never Told You as a production
of iHeart Radio for More podcast from my Heart RADIOVI
is the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.