Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.
The rules are simple:
- Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
- Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
- Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
- Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is a freebie on the theme of Hallowe’en. My list contains ten books or short stories that have a touch of the supernatural. Links will take you to my review.
- H – (The) Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson – ‘The house was vile. She shivered and thought, the words coming freely into her mind, Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once.’
- A – A Gap in the Curtain by John Buchan – Five country-house guests, trained by an Einsteinian mathematician who has devised a way of seeing into the future, each gain one piece of knowledge from the experiment and have to decide how to act on it
- L – ‘Lost Hearts’ in Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James – ‘Still as the night was, the mysterious population of the distant moonlit woods was not yet lulled to rest. From time to time strange cries as of lost and despairing wanderers sounded from across the mere.’
- L – Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker – A monstrous worm secreted for thousands of years in a bottomless well is able to metamorphose into a seductive woman who survives on her victim’s life blood
- O – ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ in Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James – ‘The light was obscure, conveying an impression of gathering storm, late winter evening, and slight cold rain. On this bleak stage at first no actor was visible. Then, in the distance, a bobbing black object appeared; a moment more, and it was a man running, jumping, clambering over the groynes, and every few seconds looking eagerly back.
- W – Witch Wood by John Buchan – ‘The Black Wood could tell some tales if the trees could talk.’
- E – ‘(An) Evening’s Entertainment’ in Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James – ‘Oh, it was a terrible sight; not one there but turned faint and ill with it, and had to go out into the fresh air.’
- ‘ Apostrophe – ‘A Warning to the Curious’ in Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James – ‘So we did go, first peering out as we opened the door, and fancying (I found we both had the fancy) that a shadow, or more than a shadow – but it made no sound – passed from before us to one side as we came out into the passage.’
- E – ‘(The) Experiment’ in Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James – ‘It was a very dark night, and the spring wind blew loud over the black fields: loud enough to drown all sounds of shouting or calling. If calling there was, there was no voice, nor any that answered, nor any that regarded – yet.’
- N – ‘No-Man’s-Land’ in The Strange Stories of John Buchan, edited by James Machin – Whilst on a walking holiday, a young man stumbles upon a hidden tribe of Picts who have survived for centuries in a cave
