In partnership with

There Are No Haunted Houses…

Happy Halloween! 🕸🎃

Isn’t it such good luck that October 31 falls on a Thursday this year, the day that we typically send out a themed list? Not that I ever need any, but this just gives me a good excuse to send you some of my absolute favorite spooky stories.

Halloween is an interesting holiday (is it even that?) for me. I live in a country where October is drawn to a close—and November is welcomed—through the solemn veneration of the dead, rather than a cheery, strange, often over-the-top celebration… of something.

And here, the cultural shift has been jarring, confusing, and very sudden. Also really recent. I was already an adult when it happened, and in the span of just a handful of years (even with the cultural pause during the pandemic), it seems like the season is now marked more by costume parties and getting drunk, rather than the usual two-day break where graveyards swell with families offering prayers for loved ones who had gone ahead.

There’s not really a grand point I want to make here; just wanted to point out how easily and quickly things change.

What has stayed constant, however, is the eerie vibe of the season. When I was a kid, TV programming was almost completely dominated by cheesy, overdone horror shows, many of which are now considered local cult classics. Moviehouses would run the latest releases, also cheesy, also horror, and also now cult classics.

That hasn’t changed much—mostly, anyway. While party costumes tend to be more cute (for kids), sexy (for adults), or have pop culture references (for nerds like me), horror stories are still very much in vogue.

And I think that’s pretty much going to be true forever. Horror as a genre of fiction, after all, plays off of our very real anxieties about life, about society, about ourselves. And given the very worrying state of the world today (and presumably into the future), it seems like there will always be a place for scary stories.

This list is how TLR is celebrating spooky season: With true-to-life horror stories. True tales of ghosts and the paranormal, of curses and killers, of haunted houses and haunted people.

Happy reading! 👻

PS - This Halloween reading list is supported by Authory! Back up all your articles automatically and get a portfolio page that's always up-to-date. Zero Tech Skills Required. Fully automated.

Please consider clicking the ad below! It’s a free and easy way to support TLR.

The Longform List

I Bought a Witches’ Prison | Medium (Jeff Maysh), $

Jeff Maysh never disappoints.

I think I’ve said this before here, but Jeff has this incredible knack for sniffing out just the absolute best, most fascinating stories. And then he matches that with his peerless reporting and writing.

The result is stories like these—unbelievably detailed and gripping, and intelligently structured both to show the many ways in which the past echoes into the present, while also building really good tension. He fleshes out his characters really well, too, making it very easy to feel sympathetic to them, while still keeping them at enough of a distance that readers can still feel frustrated at their stupid decisions. I call that talent.

I know it’s extra difficult to write effective horror stories in the non-fiction realm, mostly because there has to be some fantastic element for a story to be truly, hair-raisingly scary, but Jeff comes pretty freaking close.

This is a good story to put you in the spooky mood for Halloween. I’d give it 40 minutes.

American Ghosts | Medium (Truly*Adventurous), Free

I’ve been sleeping on Medium, it seems.

I’ve been really enjoying longreads from the site, though I guess it’s also true that the Medium stories I’ve been reading recently have all been from years ago. And I don’t really know if there are still outfits on the site that regularly run good longform writing—or if it’s mostly self-help articles, listicles, and thought pieces.

(It’s likely the latter, but I’ll keep my hopes up.)

In any case, I think this story is scarier than the Jeff Maysh one before this, if that’s even possible. That’s largely because this one does have that paranormal, fantastic element that I was talking about. The writer plays that up perfectly to drum up a really horrory vibe, but she also does incredible research into the history of the house. And the way the story is structured really makes it clear that the house’s dark past continues to haunt it and its tenants.

And this one takes a really tragic and near-impossible twist. As per the writer’s hook: this is an “untold story of one of the only purported cases of a supernatural entity being responsible for murder.“

Long, but absolutely worth your time. And very gripping. I think I took 30 minutes with no breaks.

Snowed In with a Ghost | Narratively, $

This is a unique twist on a scary story—by which I mean this isn’t necessarily scary in the classic sense of the word, though it does hit all the usual beats of a horror story.

But instead of a malevolent spirit, the ghost in this one appears to be friendly. Or at least it means no harm to the writer. In fact, the ghost helps the writer battle the true hostile entity in the story, which is inside the writer. Or the writer herself.

Okay— that’s a very roundabout and cheesy way to say that this is a mental health story packaged as a horror story. The writer spends a miserable winter mostly alone (she lives with her partner, but they work opposite hours), save for the ghost. She battles crippling depression and the near-overwhelming urge to hurt herself. But the ghost inspires some hope in her so that after the snow thaws, it seems that she’s found at least a vague sense of a drive to live.

Not long, but also not an easy read, especially if you’re wrestling with mental health problems yourself. So that’s your trigger warning: Please be extra careful when reading through this. And if you’re in crisis, please consider reaching out to a professional. Otherwise, this story should take you 20 ish minutes.

The Elusive, Maddening Mystery of the Bell Witch | Atlas Obscura, Free

In many fascinating ways, Halloween is right up the Atlas Obscura alley—a holiday dominated by occult and mystical elements is likely to have very interesting historical roots. This story paints that perfectly.

One of the most enduring horror icons is the Blair Witch, the titular supernatural figure of the 1999 film. As with most works of fiction, that movie was partly based on a true story: That of the Bell family, which in the 1800s was haunted by a nasty spirit that would soon become known to the community at large as the Bell Witch. Sounds familiar enough.

But in true Atlas Obscura fashion, the writer digs deep into the psychological and social subconscious of the time to find out the underlying fears behind the Bell Witch. And as it turns out, many of these fears are evergreen and still heavily influence us today.

Not long, but honestly not too easy to read too. Can be a bit thick with details at some points, and gets a bit academic toward the end. But still a fulfilling reading experience, and it poses some interesting arguments. Maybe allot 40 minutes so you can read it slowly.

A Haunted City | The Stranger, Free

This is a pretty unique longform story in that it is actually three short vignettes strung together, with no real thematic thread through them—except for the specter of crime that haunts the city of Seattle.

Now, I'm wary of (and not totally comfortable with) giving crime a supernatural color. It’s a very socioeconomic problem, after all, and there’s really no concrete benefit to consigning it to the realm of the occult. That doesn’t solve any of our criminality problems, and only serves to marginalize people who commit crime, rather than address the circumstances that pushed them to wrongdoing.

BUT: This story does an incredible job of digging through Seattle’s crime records and finding the three spookiest, Halloweeniest cases. And the writer traces each of them back through their twisted histories, in the process revealing vastly different but similarly chilling ways in which people come to haunt places.

Not too long, and it helps that it’s broken into three very manageable chunks. I’d allot 15 ish minutes for each part. 

What Really Happened at 777 Pine Street? | Popular Mechanics, $

You know, I went into this story feeling a bit worried that I’d be giving you another haunted house story. Because apparently there are a lot of scary—and clearly deadly—houses, and journalists love covering them.

But then the writer said this, and I became convinced that this story should close out this list: “No haunted houses, only haunted people.”

And that’s exactly correct. Try applying this lens to the other stories before this. It might not completely explain the tragedies, but the people at the center of the events are haunted in their own dark ways, and in various degrees.

This essay bears that out most clearly. We get to watch as the writer descends into a certain mad level of obsession after he and his partner make a bad real estate decision. In parallel, the essay follows the previous owner of the house in question, who also goes on his own downward spiral. The tale is less about the horrors that the house inflicts on its occupants (indeed, there almost isn’t any talk of that at all), but more about the house being witness to how two men unravel under life’s pressures.

So in that sense, this one also isn’t a classic horror story. Instead, it illustrates how scary life can be in that one simple twist, one tiny mistake can ruin everything you’ve built up for yourself. And I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty damn scary.

Long, but honestly it went by relatively quickly for me. The writer has this incredible talent of making readers root for him, making it an easy experience. I finished this in 30 minutes.  

Finally! A portfolio that's auto-updating and backs up your work.

If you're a writer, journalist or content marketer, you are familiar with these struggles:

1. Spending hours updating your portfolio page to keep it fresh.

2. Losing your work samples due to site shutdowns.

The good news? Authory has you covered!

It automatically pulls in your content and creates a stunning portfolio that updates itself every time you publish.

Plus, it backs up all your work, so you never have to worry about losing anything.

Ready to impress potential clients and employers?

Get your free portfolio today

Hello again!

Hope you enjoyed this themed reading list!

If you have a few minutes to spare, please consider giving me some feedback using the form below. I’m treading into completely new territory here and I’m pretty much going in blind. I’d love to know how I can make this a better experience for you.

Thank you so much! 🫶