James Hynes

I'm a small town boy. I was born in Lansing, Michigan, which is not small, but from the age of six, I grew up in Big Rapids, a small, mid-Michigan college town. Most of my memories of growing up there are pleasant, but it was also in Big Rapids that I learned to love scary stories. I probably checked out every ghost story anthology there was in the Big Rapids Public Library, and whenever I think of Halloween, the first memory that comes to mind, the baseline of every spooky mood I've ever felt, is the image of the ten-year-old me walking home from the library on a gloomy October Saturday afternoon, kicking through the fallen leaves on the sidewalk, under an overcast sky. I've already got my nose in the book I just checked out—an old, fat hardback with a crinkling plastic cover—and I'm wearing my fall jacket against a northern wind that already has the slight sting of winter in it, and that rattles the red and orange leaves of the maples overhead. I can smell the sharp aroma of the fallen leaves and the mustiness of the book, and I know without thinking about it that if I just walk slow enough, I can finish the first story in the book by time I get home.

Ohhhh-kay. With that egregiously sentimental intro, I bring you my brand new list of Halloween stories for 2009. I really hadn't planned on making this an annual event. I did a list a few years back for Maud Newton, and then I did my own list last year. I wasn't going to do one this year—it seemed like too much work—but then, over the weekend, it was actually kind of rainy and cold and gloomy for Austin, Texas, and I caught the old seasonal mood. Not only that, but this year it's a themed list, in honor of my small-town, Bradburyian roots: a collection of scary stories, novels, and films that have something to do with small-town life.

Some of them are supernatural stories, but some of them are not. Some are classically paranoid, from the-small-town-with-a-terrible-secret genre, while others are just horror stories that happen to be set in a small town. Some of them are actually about the nature of small-town life—namely, the potential creepiness of close-knit communities, and what the members of those communities know, think they know, and actually don't know, about their neighbors—while others derive their spookiness from the simple idea of isolation and remoteness. Still others are about the ease with which a small community can be corrupted or destroyed by outsiders, or even by a strong-willed native.

Some of the entries are kind of a stretch, theme-wise, and some of them are rather obscure, and maybe even impossible to find. I've also tried not to repeat entries I used in earlier list (so I'm not including Salem's Lot or "It's a Good Life") (except that I just kinda did). But all of them evoke in me, to varying degrees, the pleasant thrill of those gloomy Saturday afternoons back in Big Rapids, in the weeks before Halloween.

1) "Young Goodman Brown," by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The ur-text (American apocalyptic allegory division) of the creepy small-town story: it's set in Salem, Massachusetts, it starts at sunset, and by the end, young Goodman Brown has found out all sorts of things about his neighbors, and even his wife, that he'd rather not have known. Oh, and it's got the Devil in it, too.

2) "The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson. Another ur-text—American, apocalyptic, allegorical. You know it, you love it, and no matter how many times I read it, it always—always—creeps me out.

3) "The Dunwich Horror," by H. P. Lovecraft, who of course wrote a number of stories set in gothicky small towns in Rhode Island and western Massachusetts, this one being the most famous. Though I'm sure he wasn't thinking of it (Lovecraft not being known for his ideological bent), this one plays on Marx's idea of the "idiocy of rural life," through his evocation of the reclusive, inbred, white-trashy Whately family, who just happen to have been (how shall I put this?) intimate with godlike, malodorous, tentacled demons from another dimension. Just like some of the folks I knew in Big Rapids, in other words.

4) Dr. Cook's Garden, by Ira Levin. Most people know of Levin's work through the film versions of his novels Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives (both of which are well worth reading in their own right), but he was also a successful playwright. This one is about a seemingly kindly doctor in a seemingly idyllic New England town who takes a very hands-on approach to social engineering. You can buy the play, cheap, if you click on the link above, but I know it from a 1971 TV film starring, of all people, Bing Crosby as Dr. Cook. Bearing in mind that I haven't seen it in nearly 40 years, I have very fond memories of the film, and recall that Crosby was very chilling in the part. It's completely unavailable on DVD or even VHS, as far as I can tell, which is a shame, because after seeing it, I've never heard "White Christmas" or "In the Blue, Blue, Blue of the Evening" quite the same way again. 

5) Harvest Home, by Thomas Tryon. Speaking of narratives about seemingly idyllic New England small towns, this novel scarred me for life; my own novella "99" is basically a riff on Tryon's book. Tryon was B-list Hollywood actor for about fifteen years, before giving up to write novels. In most cases, turning to novel-writing to make money isn't a smart career move (take it from me), but in Tryon's case, it paid off. Several of his books were bestsellers, and two of them, The Other and Harvest Home, are bona fide horror classics. It's out of print, apparently (are you listening, New York Review Books?), but click on the Amazon link above, and you can find cheap used paperback copies.

6) Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury. How could I do a list of small-town horror and not include this? I must have read it half a dozen times before the age of twelve. I've read it since, and while the writing strikes me now as, erm, a little mannered, once I give in to it, it's still a very creepy little novel, with the added attraction of being set closer to my own experience, i.e., in a small, midwestern town. And in this one, the darkness isn't homegrown, but comes from without, from an evil circus. And who doesn't love an evil circus? 

7) Vampire Circus. And since one evil circus deserves another, here's my favorite Hammer Film. It was made in 1972, during the era when Hammer's films were getting more lurid—more blood, more breasts—and this one certainly fits the bill. It's also cheap-looking and rather clumsily put together, but it has a raw power to it, and it is, in the phrase of that noted vampire aficianado, John Marks, a very dank movie. It is, alas, not available in a Region 1 DVD, but if you live in or near Austin, Vulcan Video has a blurry old VHS tape of it which I watch every year. 

8) The Heart of a Witch, by Judith Hawkes. Between 1989 and 1999, Judith Hawkes published three first-rate supernatural novels: Julian's House, which for my money is one of the best novel-length ghost stories ever written, My Soul to Keep, which is nearly as good, and this one, a sympathetic portrait of a Wiccan coven in a small town in upstate New York. It's got loads of small-town atmosphere, lots of spooky magic, and a truly heartbreaking ending. It's an indication of the book's idiosyncratic appeal that, from its Amazon page, you can buy used copies for a penny, but a new copy for nearly a hundred bucks. And, for what it's worth, it's got 49 reader reviews, most of them five-star raves, and many of them by practicing Wiccans.

9) The Land of Laughs, by Jonathan Carroll, who really is a cult writer, and doesn't just call himself one, like I do. He's already published seventeen books, but this is his first one, in which a writer travels to a small Missouri town to write a biography of his favorite children's book author, and discovers that the writer and the town have...wait for it...a terrible secret. A beautifully written and genuinely haunting book.

10) The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham, the great British sci-fi author.  It's is a combination of small-town apocalypse with Cold War paranoia: women in an English village are impregnated by aliens, and the resulting children turn out to be unusually creepy, even by hybrid alien baby standards. Brian Aldiss once dismissed Wyndham for his "cosy catastrophes," but it's Wyndham's narrow focus, quotidian detail, and sharp characterizations that make his books so unsettling. Same with the two films of the book: made twice as Village of the Damned, the first version, with George Sanders, is the best, one of those low-budget, black-and-white British thrillers of the late 50s and early 60s that is all the more effective for being so tight and economical. Unlike your modern, over-the-top alien invasion blockbuster, with massive CGI explosions and nameless CGI extras being flung through the air, this one evokes the feel of coming face to face with an implacable enemy in your own yard.

So, there it is. As you wander the leafy streets of your own small town this holiday season, or just imagine you do, bear in mind that under those rustling, autumnal maples and behind the solid doors of those snug woodframe houses lurk sinners of every description, not to mention the Old Ones, matriarchal corn cultists, Wiccans, and alien children. If your doctor wants to give you an flu injection, you might think twice if he looks anything like Bing Crosby. And if the circus comes to your town this month, take my advice and stay home.

Happy Halloween!