Halloween Resources at SUNY Broome

Contains the stories: At the mountains of madness --
The case of Charles Dexter Ward --
The shunned house --
The dreams in the witch-house --
The statement of Randolph Carter --
The dream-quest of unknown Kadath --
The silver key --
Through the gates of the silver key.

Shirley Jackson's first collection of short fiction includes the classic title story of a small town that continues a ritual begun so many generations before them that they no longer know why they do it.

An imaginative group of stories that often bridge the gap between fantasy & science fiction.

Few authors can claim Edgar Allan Poe's influence on literary and popular culture. During his short and turbulent life, he invented the modern detective story and horror genres with such immortal works as The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Pit and the Pendulum. Best known for the haunting melody of his poetry and prose, Poe also wrote numerous critical articles and reviews, essays and magazine articles on a variety of subjects.

Excellent new English translations of title story (considered by many critics Kafka's most perfect work), plus "The Judgment," "In the Penal Colony," "A Country Doctor," and "A Report to an Academy." Note.

The resonant and awesome figure of Count Dracula. his Transylvanian lair, and his powers of supernatural evil, have imprinted themselves on the popular imagination, largely through the medium of the cinema. And yet, until now, no one has undertaken a detailed analysis of the source of our preconceptions about the greatest vampire of them all - "Dracula", by Bram Stoker, first published in 1897. This is the first in-depth critical study of Stoker's many-faceted novel, which has some claim to be one of the most influential books, at the level of popular culture, of the last hundred years.

This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic. "An extraordinary achievement."--New York Times The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This is the novel William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."

For readers of all ages, two hundred and ten tales of the Brothers Grimm, including "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," "Snow White," and "Hansel and Gretel," translated by Ralph Manheim, the highly acclaimed and prize-winning translator. Manheim has rediscovered in the original German Grimms' editions of the tales the unadorned, direct rhythm of the oral form in which they were first recorded. He has retained their ageless magic and mythology and restored the extraordinary vitality and wit, the acute perceptions of human strength and facility mirrored in the facets of these small gems.   "The best modern translation of the complete Brothers Grimm."--Choice

In-depth analysis of the roots of occult legends in the works of LeFanu, Stoker, Haggard, Lovecraft, Williams, Blatty, and Wheatley.

More than 200 years after it was first published, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has stood the test of time as a gothic masterpiece-a classic work of horror that blurs the line between man and monster. "If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear." For centuries, the story of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created has held readers spellbound. On the surface, it is a novel of tense and steadily mounting dread. On a more profound level, it illuminates the triumph and tragedy of the human condition in its portrayal of a scientist who oversteps the bounds of conscience, and of a creature tortured by the solitude of a world in which he does not belong.

These 18 darkly complex short stories and novellas touch upon human nature and perception, metaphysics and epistemology, and gender and sexuality, foreshadowing a world in which biological tendencies bring about the downfall of humankind. Revisions from the author's notes are included, allowing a deeper view into her world and a better understanding of her work. The Nebula Award-winning short story Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death, the Hugo Award-winning novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In, and the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella Houston, Houston, Do You Read? are included

Stories of ghostly spirits who return to this world to warn of danger, to prophesy, to take revenge, to request proper burial, or to comfort the living fascinated people in ancient times just as they do today. In this innovative, interdisciplinary study, the author combines a modern folkloric perspective with literary analysis of ghost stories from classical antiquity to shed new light on the stories' folk roots. The author begins by examining ancient Greek and Roman beliefs about death and the departed and the various kinds of ghost stories which arose from these beliefs. She then focuses on the longer stories of Plautus, Pliny, and Lucian, which concern haunted houses. Her analysis illuminates the oral and literary transmission and adaptation of folkloric motifs and the development of the ghost story as a literary form. In her concluding chapter, the author also traces the influence of ancient ghost stories on modern ghost story writers, a topic that will interest all readers and scholars of tales of hauntings.

Against the backdrop of a Puritan theocracy threatened by change, in a population terrified not only of eternal damnation but of the earthly dangers of Indian massacres and recurrent smallpox epidemics, a small group of girls denounces a black slave and others as worshipers of Satan. Within two years, twenty men and women are hanged or pressed to death and over a hundred others imprisoned and impoverished. In The Salem Witch Trials Reader, Frances Hill provides and astutely comments upon the actual documents from the trial--examinations of suspected witches, eyewitness accounts of "Satanic influence," as well as the testimony of those who retained their reason and defied the madness. Always drawing on firsthand documents, she illustrates the historical background to the witchhunt and shows how the trials have been represented, and sometimes distorted, by historians--and how they have fired the imaginations of poets, playwrights, and novelists. For those fascinated by the Salem witch trials, this is compelling reading and the sourcebook.

Here, Laurie Wells Carlson offers a fresh explanation of witchcraft's link to organic illness. She focuses on the afflicted of Salem, rather than on the accused, and offers an argument that the bewitched victims suffered from an outbreak of encephalitis.

"In the sixteenth century, a rise in sexual violence in European society was exacerbated by pressure from church and state to change basic sexual customs...As the centuries since have shown escalating levels both of violence, general and sexual, and of state control, the witchcraze can be considered a portent, even a model, of some aspects of what modern Europe would be like." Over three centuries, approximately one hundred thousand persons, most of whom were women, were put to death under the guise of "witch hunts", particularly in Reformation Europe. The shocking annihilation of women from all walks of life is explored in this brilliant, authoritative feminist history Anne Llwellyn Barstow. Barstow exposes an unrecognized holocaust -- the "ethnic cleansing" of independent women in Reformation Europe -- and examines the residual attitudes that continue to influence our culture. Barstow argues that it is only with eyes sensitive to gender issues that we can discern what really happened in the persecution and murder of these women. Her sweeping chronicle examines the scapegoating of women from the ills of society, investigates how their subjugation to sexual violence and death sent a message of control to all women, and compares this persecution of women with the enslavement and slaughter of African slaves and Native Americans. Ultimately Barstow traces the current backlash against women to its gynophobic torture-filled origins. In the process, she leaves an indelible mark on our growing understanding of the legacy of violence against women around the world.

Much of what we know about the greatest medical disaster ever, the Black Plague of the fourteenth century, is wrong. The details of the Plague etched in the minds of terrified schoolchildren -- the hideous black welts, the high fever, and the final, awful end by respiratory failure -- are more or less accurate. But what the Plague really was, and how it made history, remain shrouded in a haze of myths. Norman Cantor, the premier historian of the Middle Ages, draws together the most recent scientific discoveries and groundbreaking historical research to pierce the mist and tell the story of the Black Death afresh, as a gripping, intimate narrative. "In the Wake of the Plague" presents a microcosmic view of the Plague in England (and on the continent), telling the stories of the men and women of the fourteenth century, from peasant to priest, and from merchant to king.

"Superb... Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause célèbres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike." -Publishers Weekly, starred review

What is the link between Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein and the history and myth surrounding the barons Frankenstein - a respected German noble family that inhabited the Castle Frankenstein on the top of Magnet mountain near Darmstadt from the early Middle Ages. All is explored in this fascinating and highly detailed book by an expert on Eastern European History author Radu Florescu leaves no stone unturned in his search for this legendary monster.

The true story behind the legend of Dracula - a biography of Prince Vlad of Transylvania, better known as Vlad the Impaler. This revised edition now includes entries from Bram Stoker's recently discovered diaries, the amazing tale of Nicolae Ceausescu's attempt to make Vlad a national hero, and an examination of recent adaptations in fiction, stage and screen.

First published in 1897, Dracula has had a long and multifaceted afterlife--one rivaling even its immortal creation; yet Bram Stoker has remained a hovering specter in this pervasive mythology.