There are many odd things to put down, and, lest who reads them may fancy that I dined too well before I left Bistritz, let me put down my dinner exactly. I dined on what they called ‘robber steak’ – bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks, and roasted over the fire, in the simple style of the London cat’s meat!
Dracula, Bram Stoker
We didn’t celebrate Hallowe’en when I was a child; trick-or-treating wasn’t the norm in our neighbourhood, and so knocking on doors and asking for sweets was generally frowned upon. Our experience, therefore, was a vicarious one – reading Goosebumps books, watching Hallowe’en episodes of our favourite television shows, and annual viewings of Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus. As teenagers, my sister and I attended a handful of Hallowe’en parties, but they were nothing like the one in Agatha Christie’s novel – with apple bobbing and games (and murder) – and more like the one in Mean Girls, with everyone dressed in impossibly tiny outfits.
It wasn’t until my job as a nanny that I really immersed myself in preparations for Hallowe’en. For weeks beforehand, we spent bus journeys home from school discussing costumes and routes for collecting sweets. On the night itself, I stayed in the house, a warming pot of curry on the stove, and a bowl of wrapped chocolates on the table, ready to hand them out when the doorbell rang. My charges arrived back pink-cheeked and with bags full of sugar, and we sat with big bowls of the curry, making plans for the costumes the next year. That night, I retreated to bed with The Woman in Black, determined to scare myself silly.
Though I spent time running away from vampires and ghouls in my childhood nightmares, it is domestic horror that more reliably haunts me now. I can read Frankenstein and Dracula without much loss of sleep, but am deeply affected by the creeping horror of The Haunting of Hill House or The Magic Toyshop or The Wasp Factory. I love these stories; love the chill that creeps down the back of my neck and the way my heart races when I catch my reflection in the mirror. They’re ideal reading for the last weeks of October, when the air is cold and crisp, ideal for snuggling up under a blanket with a book.