Notes From Crew Quarters: Get Your Spook On

This week, Ethan Brightbill asked our editors to confess their favorite spooky stories.

Jacqueline Boucher, Managing Editor

"I'm Pogo" by Lindsay Hunter terrifies me and makes me ask a lot of ethical questions, which terrifies me even more. I couldn't recommend it more.

Brenna Womer, Associate Fiction Editor

"Antigonish" by William Hughes Mearns gets me every time.

Jason Teal, Associate Fiction Editor

"Two Brothers" by Brian Evenson is an oldie goldie I only recently encountered. Still gives me chills, re-reading it. I need to jump into Paul Tremblay's novels. These are long overdue.

Jennifer A. Howard,  Editor-in-Chief

Imagine being 13 and reading VC Andrews’ Petals on the Wind in the back of a VW bus on another epic summer camping trip. Cathy, who’s spent most of her life locked in an attic with her love-interest brother and starving but also somehow becomes a very good ballerina, finally has an audition for a company, but in the middle of her dance she starts to bleed so heavily she passes out and some older doctor creep later tells her, in a way you suspect is lying but cannot argue with facts and you have no real grasp on his motive, that she released many years of periods and none of it makes any medical or emotional sense to you but growing up sounds terrifying.

Megan Martinek, Intern

Is it cliché to say "Masque of the Red Death" by Poe?

Elisha Sheffer, Associate Fiction Editor

Anything from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Takes me right back to my childhood.

Krys Malcolm Belc, Associate Fiction Editor

Not sure what your definition of "spooky" is, but I pulled John Grisham's The Firm off my dad's bookshelf when I was 10. He warned me that I would be creeped out, and I sat on the floor in terror reading the entire thing in one day. Thus ended any ambition I had to become a lawyer...

Kara Wixtrom, Intern

I have a nostalgic fondness for W.W. Jacobs' short story "The Monkey's Paw," which was one of the first scary stories that I remember from my high school reading. It's tame compared to some of the other scary stories I've read, but at the time, it was the epitome of horror/suspense writing for me, and when I think of it now, it's not without an appreciative shudder.