I think most of us have some memory of reading a disturbing short story in our English class in school. These tales tend to stick with us, coming to mind at the randomest of times. For me, there are many additional short stories that I’ve been witness to, a side-affect of my time participating in Dramatic Interpretation as a speech and debate competitor. Stories like “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Veldt” are two that I’ve commonly seen shared when this topic arises, but I want to share here the three short stories that live in my mind rent free. Spoilers below, so go read them first if you’d like!
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
Like many of us, I read this short story in middle school around this time of year, and it spooked the hell out of me. Poe is amazing when it comes to haunting prose and poetry alike, and I know I’m not alone when I say that this one stuck with me. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the main character is a troubled individual who is uncomfortable with the old man they are close to. Driven by the old man’s piercing eyes, they eventually kill him, despite the fact that they claim to love him. They then cut apart the man and hide him underneath the floorboards. The narrator is then haunted by what they have done, and deals with more constant paranoia.
When officers arrive to investigate the scream heard in the night, the narrator is able to charm their way into an innocent verdict. They claim the scream was their own, and that the old man has gone to visit the countryside. But as they get closer to getting away scot-free, they begin to hear a pounding in their ears that they believe is the heart, still pounding away under the floorboards. The man breaks and confesses, convinced that the policemen can also hear the heart and know their crime.
There are a few reasons this story got to me. Firstly was the fact that the narrator killed someone they claimed to love, which is a challenging notion for an 8th grader. The narrator also wanted to get away with the perfect crime, and was able to commit the murder with thought and great deliberation. I also had such a vivid image of the old man’s scary pale blue eye. I could picture it staring back at me in the night.
The paranoia and probable schizophrenic nature of the narrator was also haunting, as I’d never read anything where the narrator is so deeply troubled and anxious. The way he describes the beating of the titular heart made my own beat in response. Truly a great introduction to eerie and spooky literature.
A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner
I read this one sometime in high school, and damn has it stuck with me. It tells the tale of a woman named Emily, who is one of the last living members of a once wealthy southern family. Just she and her father remain, and he refuses to let Emily marry. Even still, Emily is distraught when her father dies just before her 30th birthday, and for days she refuses to give up his corpse, claiming he still lives. Eventually she relents, and it was all chalked up to her immense grief.
Emily then lives a mostly reclusive life, but eventually begins to see a gentleman named Homer Baron. It’s speculated that the two may marry. While they continue to see one another, Emily purchases arsenic, which some theorize is for pests, and others theorize is for a suicide attempt. Emily eventually begins purchasing wedding presents for Homer while family is in town. After the family leave, Homer joins Emily in her home, and isn’t heard from again. The townsfolk assume he left her. A smell begins to creep from her home, but it’s assumed to be due to shoddy work by the butler.
Years pass, and Emily resumes her reclusive ways. She is rarely seen, and is treated as an institution and example of the ‘old ways of life’ rather than as a person. She remains mostly isolated, and at her funeral, the whole town attends out of obligation rather than desire. Afterwards, the townsfolk wish to see her home, which none of them have entered. They break into her bedroom and see that, for years, the corpse of Homer Baron has laid in the bed beside where Emily slept. Around the room are the presents she had purchased for him, and the house seems chilled and frozen in time, like Emily wanted to reside in one moment forever.
The build up in this story is so well done, and my class was shook when we read that she had been sleeping beside a dead body for decades. Blech. It was also chilling to discover what she had used the arsenic for, and that Homer’s body was the origin of the smell around her home. It was gross and spooky and very well written. It’s a great introduction to southern gothic literature, and a good read for anyone who already enjoys the genre.
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
This is my favorite short story ever. Seriously, if you haven’t, go read it really fast then come back here. It’s just so damn good. Anyways.
Young Goodman Brown takes place in Puritan New England during the Salem Witch trials, where distrust and rumors are rampant. The titular character, Goodman Brown, leaves his wife at home for an ‘errand’, and begins walking through the woods to an unknown destination. Along the way, he runs into a few other individuals, all of whom he regards with skepticism and doubt about their purpose in the woods. More and more of the townsfolk are walking through the woods, all of them going in the same direction.
Eventually, Goodman Brown hears the voice of his wife, Faith. He is worried about why she is in the woods until he stumbles upon her in the midst of a clearing with the whole town present. It’s revealed that they are the last two members of the town to join in on the witches’ sabbath. He cries out to heaven and to Faith and suddenly finds himself elsewhere entirely. He returns home full of doubt and mistrust, unable to stomach the fact that everyone around him, including his wife, has participated in devil worship. He dies a cynic, never regaining his faith in humanity.
I love this story for a lot of reasons. Firstly, because I’ve always liked learning about the Salem witch trials. They’ve always fascinated me, and everything I read or watch about this time period tickles my fancy (I just recently watched A24’s The VVitch for the first time and enjoyed it quite a bit). We read this story as an introduction to the time period before reading The Crucible. What a fascinating an infamous moment in American history.
I also like it because of the complexity of the main character, Goodman Brown, and his hypocrisy. He views the world as black and white. Right and wrong. He questions the intentions of those wandering the woods as he himself wanders. And he distrusts those he sees at the Black Sabbath, but was he himself not about to participate? I think this says a lot about the nature of humans, who have a tendency to believe themselves nuanced and immune from erring, while seeing others as one dimensional. As such, he loses his faith (and his Faith) all in one night, unable to recover.
The narrative is haunting and mysterious from the get go, with the reader wondering what it is that Goodman Brown is up to in the dark woods. The setting immediately evokes dark thoughts and dread in the reader, and the rest of the tale adds to it. Then add in the encounters with those he once considered good faithful folk, the eerie ritual and witchcraft, and his complete transition into an empty, untrusting man, and you have yourself a short story that sticks with you.
If you’re in the mood for some quick spooky reads, check these ones out! Almost all of them can be found on library databases online for free. And I hope they stick with you just as they stuck with me.
October Goals Update: Writing is going well! I’m well on track to hit 15,000 still. I have still made 0 submissions, so I think this goal is a bust. I’ll touch on this more for next week’s article, where I’ll go in depth on my goals. And I have 2/3 short stories finished, so just one more to go there!
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