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Ready to get back into reading for Autumn with some ghoulish tales of pumpkins and pixies? Halloween is a great time to focus on reading whether you’re just starting out, getting confident with books, exploring the themes and the genres that you like or you’re a lifelong reader with bookshelves crammed to bursting point. We believe that reading should be something that everybody should be able to enjoy regardless of literacy differences like dyslexia too, so if you or somebody you care about does struggle with reading, we’ve put together a handy list of ready support solutions over at our Reading Support Toolkit. And don’t forget to get in touch with schools, workplaces and dyslexia institutions if you’re wondering what other help and support is out there to open up the world of books – also don’t forget to take a look at our quick and easy lowdown on High/Low Fiction for some more info on finding books that work for you.
So whether you’re reading together, strengthening skills or settling down in a cosy nook with a coffee, we’re here to celebrate the spookiest reads we know! And warning: although everybody loves spooky season, some of these books might be a little scary for the younger members of your ghoul squad – so make sure to check with publishers and reviews for their suitability for kids; and we've also marked our 'Suitable for Kids' picks here with a bat (🦇). Although hiding under the covers when you’ve read a spooky tale is kind of a rite of passage, we don’t fancy being responsible for anybody actually having nightmares.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights is one of those novels that you either loved or hated in high school – either you were put off by the creepy old house, the multiple strands of narration and the surly figure of Heathcliff himself, or you developed a taste for the Gothic and think high romance is standing around getting soggy and cold on the North York Moors for the weekend. We were in the latter category, and it’s a great read for anybody making a first foray into the English Gothic. It’s a family saga set against a creeping backdrop of icy moors and isolated manors, full of chilling moments and atmospheric description; and there’s even a real-life (real-death?) ghost for those purists amongst you for whom digging up the odd coffin of your beloved at midnight wasn’t enough*.
*Yeah, good old Heathcliff actually does this. He's not a great guy.
FunnyBones by Janet and Allan Ahlberg 🦇
Get it? Because they’re skeletons? The Funnybones series is beloved of children everywhere, and features two skeleton heroes and their adorable skeleton dog (called Dog) and cat (called Cat) as they navigate their sweet and spooky night-time world. With adventures on ghost trains to sneaking around at abandoned dinosaur museums, Big Funnybone and Little Funnybone take a humerus (get it? get it?!) look at skeletons and everything spooky, making them a perfect pick for anybody who might be getting a little creeped out by the whole Halloween thing and might need a little pick-me-up in bedtime story form.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Oh, Dracula. The OG, the godfather of all things be-fanged, bloody and going bump in the night. Long before vampires got model-fit and sparkly, they were actually fairly creepy and unpleasant, and plagued the Victorian moral consciousness no end when Bram Stoker’s novel first hit the shelves in 1897. Featuring a plucky heroine in Mina Murray and a not-so-plucky and largely-kind-of-annoying hero in her fiancé Jonathan Harker, Dracula is the tale of the bloodsucking count as he makes his way from rural Europe to the shores of the English fishing village of Whitby, and how he finally meets his match. It’s a great adventure story, fairly light on the guts and gore, and it’s a great starting point in literature for anybody interested in the Eastern European mythological origins of a horror staple. The archaic language can prove a bit of a barrier for some people, however, so we’d also advocate a decent audiobook as a stress-free option - the same can go for Wuthering Heights too.
The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy 🦇
Although it doesn’t go that hard on the spooky, Jill Murphy’s Worst Witch series of books has been a library staple for decades now, and a perfect pick for readers who are flexing their independent reading skills and want to tackle something that’s as funny as it is magical. The books follow the story of hapless witch-in-training Mildred Hubble and her friends at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches, and through friendship drama and frightful coup attempts by evil wizards, it’s as fun and as memorable as they come. Except for that one book where there was a frog called Algernon who wasn’t a frog, but a wizard, and he kept talking about crumpets. That was weird.
Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country by Edward Parnell
This one’s less of a story and more of a history of stories: Parnell’s Ghostland is one man’s look at everything haunted and hallowed in the British landscape, from lonely moors and moss-covered headstones to the rich, verdant woodlands of faery folklore and the ancient, twisting seascapes of the Old English imagination. It’s a gazetteer to a vanishing landscape of supernatural nature that interrogates the ideas of loss and memory, as well as writing an unsent love-letter to the quietly spooky side of the landscape that the modern age has all but forgotten. Writing through the lens of the fiction that inspires him- Alan Garner, Graham Swift, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen and M.R. James – it’s also a wonderful beginning for anybody interested in expanding their spooky book collection, especially into the realms of modernism and the early-century ghost stories that formed the foundation of the modern genre.
Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie
Somewhat of an underappreciated gem in the Hercule Poirot mysteries canon, Hallowe’en Party is one of the author’s creepiest and most atmospheric forays into the darker side of classic detective fiction. Featuring (you’ve guessed it) a Halloween party to remember, an untimely demise and a smattering of the supernatural that’s actually kind of chilling, it’s a mystery that detective fiction fans constantly return to as one of the most difficult to guess whodunnit. This one might be our favourite, not only because it’s a fantastically eerie foray into the spooky season, but also because there’s a fairly large school of thought that Agatha Christie was dyslexic (and still managed to be one of the twentieth century’s most famously beloved and bestselling writers).
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
No spooky books list is complete without a mention of ‘that one guy who everybody thinks of when they start talking about spooky books’. You’ve probably read some of his works in school or in college when you’re first learning about the Gothic tradition, or you might have picked up a copy of his short stories if you spent long enough in the library as a child. The Raven is a narrative poem by Poe that explores some of the key themes in Gothic writing like death, loss and romance though the arrival of (you’ve guessed it) a fairly large raven, and it’s got a quirky twist to the rhyme scheme that actually makes it pretty fun to read out loud. It’s also credited with re-popularising the adverbial usage of the archaic words ‘nevermore’ and ‘evermore’; without which we probably wouldn’t have that really good Taylor Swift album from last year. So there’s that.
Groosham Grange by Anthony Horowitz 🦇
Perhaps best known for his teenage spy fiction in the Alex Rider series and his work continuing the James Bond titles for the Ian Fleming estate, a little-known Horowitz gem is the Groosham Grange series from the late nineties. It’s a pun-sational look at boarding school life from the point of view of an ordinary boy called David Eliot, and a not-so-ordinary educational institution called Groosham Grange, where the deputy headteacher is a vampire, the headteacher(s?) is(are?) a double-headed man, and an eccentric mummy called Miss Pedicure. It’s a fun pick for independent readers as well as great primer on the use of wordplay and puns in fiction, and honestly anybody with a sense of humour that even slightly verges on the macabre will find it a read that hits the spot.
So there we have it! Some of the spookiest books for young and old that we’ve come across on our broomstick journeys though the ether (largely this means the M6 on the way to Telford, but there we go) - happy reading!
