I am currently reading Algernon Blackwood’s The Damned (1914), which Wikipedia describes as “A highly original haunted house tale in which the haunting results from the intolerant religious beliefs of a series of previous residents”, and which I can say is gripping, unnerving, and just what a classic spooky story should be.

But it’s a bit of a mouthful… OK, so what can one expect written in 1914?

Reading the 90-page story, I have the urge to modernise it, to bring the situation and characters right up to date while retaining the underlying original story. I cannot say I have ever reacted to a story in this way. The beauty of The Damned is it’s now out of copyright and freely available (pop over to Project Gunteberg for a copy).

It got me thinking as to why this notion modernising and reworking of classic movies has not (as far as I am aware, please re-educate me if I am mistaken) appeared in the publishing world. It seems more acceptable to revision an idea in the movies than in print. Sometimes these reworks fail, sometimes they improve on the original. Some stories at their core are timeless.

This may be an interesting project to accomplish after the completion of Persistent Spirit and before getting fully imersed in A Shot in Time (the second TableRappers novel).

In addition to the big writing project (TableRappers) and its supplementary tales featuring its characters, I want to create some old-style scary stories. By old style, of course, I means some that are genuinely scary!

I have a pile of horror short story compilations in my reading pile, acquired in recent months on the search for what I find leaves me unnerved and disquieted after reading. I found I left more modern tales behind and was drawn more and more to older, classic stories from the 19th Century up to the 1950s. The purchase of a Sony ebook reader (full review on this great device in the pipeline) has helped as it came packaged with 100 classic books, one of which was the complete works of Poe.

I had not read The Pit and the Pendulum for many years and have a stronger memory of the Hammer horror movie (I’m guessing it was Hammer) of that name, than the originating story. Reading was disturbing. I began to sense what such stories once kindled within me. I was glad I had not read this alone in a dimly lit room. Fantastic!

This contrasts with most of the modern  – to me that is post 1950s – horror tales I have recently read which try, frequently too hard, and fail, leaving me with little more than wanting my time refunded.

And so I am on a mission….

I wrote on my personal blog about creating a classic spooky tale audio episode for this year’s Halloween. If you like that sort of thing, please leave a comment and let me know what you would like to hear.

In addition, I have been reading anything and everything in the genre that I can get my eyes on with the aim of developing some of my own concepts into actual stories.

At the very least I believe I can create somethig that scares the willies out of me, perhaps it will do the same for you.