Scary Stories

Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson was born on December 14, 1916, in San Francisco, California, and grew up nearby in Burlingame. She attended the University of Rochester and then Syracuse University, where she became fiction editor of the campus humor magazine.

After graduating in 1940, Jackson moved to New York City. She began to write professionally, her works appearing in such publications as The New Yorker, Redbook, The Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies' Home Journal. Her first novel, The Road Through The Wall, was published in 1948.

Also in 1948, The New Yorker published Jackson's short story, "The Lottery." The tale, which starts as a seemingly benign account of an annual event in small town America, takes a dark turn when the event is revealed to be a gruesome sacrifice. "The Lottery" generated the most mail in the history of The New Yorker, with many readers expressing confusion about underlying meanings and anger over its disturbing ending.

Despite the backlash, "The Lottery" became one of the most significant short stories of its era. It was eventually translated into dozens of languages and adapted for radio, television and the stage.

Jackson also wrote novels like The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle as well as the witty, embellished memoir Life Among the Savages, about her domestic experiences. Often relying on supernatural themes, she was known for tackling provocative, chilling subject matter that was culturally incisive and held metaphors for how people dealt with differences. She was married to critic Stanley Edgar Hyman and the couple had four children.

Jackson died on August 8, 1965, from heart failure. Decades later, two of her children, Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman Dewitt, have become editors for a collection of her unpublished works, Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings. The compilation, released in August 2015, helps to mark the 50th anniversary of Jackson's death.

Jackson's life is depicted in the 2020 film Shirley, which stars Elisabeth Moss as Jackson.

Shirley Jackson

- The Lottery First published in the June 19, 1948 issue of The New Yorker
- (PDF)

H.P. Lovecarft

Lovecraft was born Howard Phillips Lovecraft in 1890, in Providence, Rhode Island. Lovecraft had an unusual childhood marked by tragedy. His traveling salesman father developed a type of mental disorder caused by untreated syphilis when he was around the age of three. In 1893, his father became a patient at the Butler Hospital in Providence and there he remained until his death in 1898.

A sickly child, Lovecraft spent many of his school years at home. He became an avid reader, devouring works on a variety of texts. Lovecraft loved the works of Edgar Allan Poe and developed a special interest in astronomy. As a teenager, he did attend Hope High School, but he suffered a nervous breakdown before he could earn his diploma. Lovecraft became a reclusive figure for several years, choosing to stay up late studying and reading and writing and then sleeping late into the day. During this time, he managed to publish some articles on astronomy in several newspapers.

Lovecraft started out as a would-be journalist, joining the United Amateur Press Association in 1914. The following year, he launched his self-published magazine The Conservative for which he wrote several essays and other pieces. While he had reportedly dabbled in fiction early on, Lovecraft became more serious about writing stories around 1917. Many of these early works were influenced by the writings of Lord Dunsany, an Irish author of fantasy tales, as well as Lovecraft's early favorite Edgar Allan Poe.

The horror magazine Weird Tales bought some of Lovecraft's stories in 1923, giving him his first taste of literary success. The following year, he married Sonia Greene. The couple lived together in New York City for two years before splitting up. After his marriage failed, Lovecraft returned to Rhode Island and began work on some of his best stories. "The Call of Cthulhu" came out in 1928 in Weird Tales, and it perhaps best illustrated Lovecraft's efforts at creating an otherworldly type of terror.

Lovecraft introduced readers to the first of many supernatural beings that would wreak havoc on humankind. Elements of this story would reappear in other related tales—collectively known by many as the "Cthulhu Mythos." These later stories reflected Lovecraft's own philosophical ideals. According to American Heritage magazine, Lovecraft once wrote, "all of my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and emotions have no validity or significance in the cosmos-at-large."

In his final years, Lovecraft was barely able to support himself. He took editing and ghostwriting work to try to make ends meet. Lovecraft died of cancer on March 15, 1937, in Providence, Rhode Island. He left behind more than 60 short stories and a few novel and novellas, including The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

Lovecraft story

- The Cats of Ulthar (Originally published in the November 1920 issue of Tryout.
- PDF

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809, the second child of English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe Jr. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died a year later from consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis). Poe was then taken into the home of John Allan, a successful merchant in Richmond, Virginia. The Allans served as a foster family and gave him the name "Edgar Allan Poe", though they never formally adopted him.

In 1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, where he excelled in his classes but accumulated considerable debt. Humiliated by his poverty, Poe was forced to drop out of school and return to Richmond. After an acrimonious split with the Allans Poe had a brief stint in the military and enrolled in West Point only to be thrown out in eight months.

Broke and alone, Poe turned to Baltimore—his late father’s home—and called upon relatives in the city. One of Poe’s cousins robbed him in the night but another relative, Poe’s aunt Maria Clemm, became a new mother to him and welcomed him into her home. Clemm’s daughter, Virginia, first acted as a courier to carry letters to Poe’s lady loves but soon became the object of his desire.

The January 1845 publication of “The Raven” made Poe a household name. He published two books that year, and briefly lived his dream of running his own magazine when he bought out the owners of the Broadway Journal. The failure of the venture, his wife’s deteriorating health, and rumors spreading about Poe’s relationship with a married woman, drove him from the city in 1846. In the winter of 1847 Virginia died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. Her death devastated Poe and left him unable to write for months. His critics assumed he would soon be dead. They were right.

He returned to Richmond in the summer of 1849 and reconnected with his first fiancée, Elmira Royster Shelton who was now a widow. They became engaged and intended to marry in Richmond after Poe’s return from a trip t Philadelphia and New York. However, on the way to Philadelphia, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared for five days. He was found in the bar room of a public house that was being used as a polling place for an election. Poe spent his last days in Washington College Hospital, far from home and surrounded by strangers. Neither Poe’s mother-in-law nor his fiancée knew what had become of him until they read about it in the newspapers. Poe died on October 7, 1849 at the age of forty. The exact cause of Poe’s death remains a mystery.

Poe Story

- The Masque of the Red Death First published in the May 1842 issue of Graham's Magazine. (Audio of the story begins at 3:22 in the embedded clip.)
- PDF

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