Haunted Houseful, ed. Alfred Hitchcock

This week’s posts all have some element of the supernatural that make the reader feel increasingly ill at ease and encourage one to keep checking behind the curtains and making sure the windows are actually locked—just the sort of titles to read on a rainy night in October, when the dark comes early and the wind is in the trees.

I suspect that for many of us, our first encounter with tales of the supernatural came through short story collections, perhaps in school or taken from a shelf in the library. I remember coming across this collection of superbly eerie fiction for young readers in a house that my grandparents rented for vacation down in Tall Timbers, Maryland. The house was surrounded by towering pines on the Potomac River, and as I recall in my mind, it was darkly paneled and made an excellent spot to read spooky stories.

Here, Hitchcock has collected some fun tales to introduce a younger reader to the delightful pleasures of scary stories. There are two classic thrilling tales—Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Red-Headed League” and Mark Twain’s “The Treasure in the Cave” (from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). But even better in some ways are the other stories featuring lost treasure (“The Forgotten Island”), vengeful spirits (“The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall”), and playful ghosts (“Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons”). Except for the Sherlock Holmes piece, all the stories feature young boys and girls as the protagonists, and the settings range from small towns that all seem to have a haunted house nearby to a decidedly eerie summer spot in Maine.

None of the tales is overly scary, and some would be considered pretty mild by today’s standards, but for a younger reader, these stories might be just the thing to read under the bedcovers on a cool fall night.

Check the WRL catalog for Haunted Houseful