26 Days Until Halloween

I'm a big fan of Librivox.org and the unabridged narrations its volunteers offer for free download. Now, just in time for Halloween, Librivox has added an unabridged reading of the 1786 classic Gothic novel The History of the Caliph Vathek by William Beckford.

Here are some of the other 18th-century Gothic works Librivox has available for your Halloween listening:
* The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)
* The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve (1777)
* A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe (1790)
* The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (1794)
* Sign up for email alert when narration is available: Bungay Castle by Elizabeth Bonhôte (1796)


Talk about getting into the spirit of the season! Science fiction author Michael Swanwick has posted a Halloween story called "October Leaves" on Flickr, written one word at a time on autumn leaves and photographed where they lay in parks and cemeteries and city streets. Read it here or click on the image below.




Text of the Day: Something spooky this way comes, and it's "Ghost Glen" by Henry Kendall (1839-1882). I hope you enjoy it!

"Shut your ears, stranger, or turn from Ghost Glen now,
For the paths are grown over, untrodden by men now;
Shut your ears, stranger,” saith the grey mother, crooning
Her sorcery runic, when sets the half-moon in.

To-night the north-easter goes travelling slowly,
But it never stoops down to that hollow unholy;
To-night it rolls loud on the ridges red-litten,
But it cannot abide in that forest, sin-smitten.

For over the pitfall the moon-dew is thawing,
And, with never a body, two shadows stand sawing
The wraiths of two sawyers (step under and under),
Who did a foul murder and were blackened with thunder!

Whenever the storm-wind comes driven and driving,
Through the blood-spattered timber you may see the saw striving
You may see the saw heaving, and falling, and heaving,
Whenever the sea-creek is chafing and grieving!

(  And across a burnt body, as black as an adder, )