One of the Girls Was Dead

Harvey’s Dream  by Stephen King (The New Yorker Magazine, 2003)

Thursday’s Suspense  Story, December 8, 2022

 

 

How deep can the imagination go? How deep can a dream go?

Dreams are often horrors and great subjects for suspense stories and mysteries. This short story by Stephen King (The New Yorker Magazine) is a tale of a middle-aged married couple with daughters. We are in the kitchen and Harvey tells his wife Janet of a dream, describing details that his wife begins to recognize. Specifics like deviled eggs and a dent in the neighbor’s car. We follow Janet’s every thought that reaches psychological heights of fear and an ending that only Stephen King could write.

 

Read the short story here at The New Yorker Magazine:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/06/30/harveys-dream

 

Readers, please drop a line in the comments if you liked the story, or didn’t like it. How many stars would you rate Harvey’s Dream?

 

Film: 14 minutes. Don’t miss this!!

 

Stephen  King is a best-selling American author of suspense, horror, sci-fi and fantasy books. When he writes, he prefers to use pen and paper, using a Waterman fountain pen, instead of a computer. In his book On Writing, King says he tries to write at least 2,000 words a day. During the writing of his novel Carrie, King threw the first draft in the trash. His wife Tabitha retrieved it and eventually Doubleday bought the rights.

In the Atlantic, King revealed that he considers the introductory sentence of a book crucial for the book’s atmosphere and to successfully connect to the reader. He often labors over his first line for months or years until it’s exactly right.

 

Don’t forget to view the INDEX OF AUTHORS’ TALES above for more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 250 short stories by more than 150 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, sci-fi, romance, ‘quiet horror,’ and mainstream fiction.

 Follow or sign up to join me in reading

one short story every month. 

Comments are welcome!

Feel free to click “LIKE.”

 

 Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Kirkus Mystery & Thrillers Reviews

Books & Such    Bibliophilica   NewYorkerFictionOnline

      Monster Librarian     

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Literature Blog Directory   

Blog Collection

Blog Top Sites

Discover Author of the Week posted on Mondays!

Abasteron House Mystery

Abasteron House by Paula Cappa 

Tuesday’s Tale of Supernatural   May 29, 2018

NATIONAL SHORT STORY MONTH,  May 2018.  Week Five.

READING FICTION BLOG

At this conclusion of National Short Story Month, and being an avid short story reader and writer, I would like to offer my own short story Abasteron House.

This flash fiction (five-minute read) was originally published at Every Day Fiction and is the prequel to my novel Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural, an Eric Hoffer book award winner. Of course, it’s the writing, the story, and the storytelling that matters here. Not me. Creative writing for a short story is just as challenging as writing a novel—perhaps more demanding creatively because of the brevity of the short story form. In the act of  creating, according to Joseph Campbell (American mythologist, writer, and lecturer), “there is an implicit form that is going to ask to be brought forth, and you have to know how to recognize it.” Campbell is well known for his intelligence and insights on the “archetype of the unconscious.”

“If you know exactly what it is you are creating, it is not going to work.”

Campbell, of course, is speaking here about the ‘mystery of your own being.’ His essay on Creativity is a marvelous read and available at NewWorldLibrary.com.

Abasteron House is a story that surfaced from my unconscious, sparking its own storytelling and then expanded into a novel exploring the land of ghosts in a woman’s unconscious mind.

Today I ask you to settle back for 5 minutes and come spend a summer at Abasteron House by the sea with Davida Kip Livingston. Come meet Duma, the angel prince of dreams. Experience the mystery.

“The fall of noon.” That’s what Grandfather called it. I never really understood how noontime could actually fall, but he liked to say it that way.”

 

Read the published short story here at EveryDayFiction.com:

https://everydayfiction.com/abasteron-house-by-paula-cappa/ 

Do leave a comment if you liked Abasteron House!

 

Read the Supernatural Mystery

NIGHT SEA JOURNEY, A TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL

This novel is in the genre of supernatural, quiet horror, but mostly in occult. The word for occult is hidden. Behind the veil of our experiences lies a deeper, perhaps a truer, field. Davida Kip Livingston is an artist living on Horn Island in her family home Abasteron House. There is a secret power in her unconscious that is immanent, a resident field of another phenomenal experience that haunts her nights. Is her dream consciousness from her own substance or energies? Or from something else, something more sinister? Dr. Laz Merlyn, a Jungian therapist, attempts to help Kip understand and resolve her ghostly night journeys.

ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARD FINALIST, 2015. REVIEW: “This romantic fantasy is propelled by gorgeous language and imagery…angels and demons…The grime of inner city Chicago, the tranquility of the Rhode Island coastline, and the depths of a phantasmagoric ocean are the stages for this conflict.”

 

 

On Amazon.com for Kindle and in trade paperback, published by Crispin Books.

Amazon UK 

Barnes & Noble.com

Smashwords 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, ‘quiet horror,’ crime, sci-fi, and mainstream fiction. Follow or sign up to join me in reading two short stories every month. Comments are welcome! Feel free to click “LIKE.”

 

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Kirkus Mystery & Thrillers Reviews

Books & Such    Bibliophilica   NewYorkerFictionOnline

 Lovecraft Ezine   Parlor of Horror

HorrorNews.net   Fangoria.com   

Slattery’s Art of Horror Magazine   Chuck Windig’s Terrible Minds

HorrorAddicts.net     Horror Novel Reviews    HorrorSociety.com     

Monster Librarian      HorrorTalk.com 

 Rob Around Books      The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

 

 

Podcast:

What Is Fearless Reader Radio?

Fearless Reader Radio

 

If you love audio books or just love the art of verbal storytelling, or admired old time radio show s like The Shadow Knows, you might like to know about Fearless Reader Radio. Serialized dramas are still popular and loved at RiverWest Radio   WXRW in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They are bringing back the art of old time radio storytelling.  I’m pleased to tell you that they are reading my supernatural novel Night Sea Journey on air. Katie Jesse, host of Fearless Reader Radio,  is quite skilled in dramatic reading and she is performing 1-hour episodes of the full novel, every Wednesday, week by week. The broadcast is also on internet radio for anytime listening at your convenience.

 

I hope you’ll give Katie Jesse a listen. The first two episodes are already available at the links below.

Night Sea Journey, Episode One:

http://www.riverwestradio.com/episode/peoples-books-story-hour-0169-night-sea-journey-by-paula-cappa-episode-1/

Night Sea Journey, Episode 2:

http://www.riverwestradio.com/episode/peoples-books-story-hour-0170-night-sea-journey-episode-2/

Night Sea Journey, Episode 3:

http://www.riverwestradio.com/episode/peoples-books-story-hour-0171-night-sea-journey-episode-3/

Night Sea Journey, Episode 4: 

http://www.riverwestradio.com/episode/peoples-books-story-hour-0172-night-sea-journey-episode-4/

 

Access to RiverWest Radio Shows: www.riverwestradio.com/shows  (scroll down to Fearless Reader Radio for more upcoming Night Sea Journey episodes and for their lineup of shows).

 

U.S. REVIEW OF BOOKS “Stunning and absorbing plot on par with–if not better than–a Dan Brown novel.”

SAN FRANCISCO BOOK REVIEW  “NIGHT SEA JOURNEY is like reading a Dan Brown book with a wicked twist. Readers will be taken on a continual thrill ride, impossible to put down, a fast-paced thriller.”

HorrorPalace.com  “A suspenseful, romantic, mystical tale … Cappa’s superior writing skills, her ability to write this particular story to be so profound and thorough was perhaps one of the most impressive thing about the book.”

An Eric Hoffer Book Award Winner, 2015, this supernatural thriller explores the haunted chambers of the night. Artist Kip Livingston struggles against a dark visitor who invades her night sea journeys into subconsciousness. Angels and demons, psychological twists, murder, and romance make this mystery a gripping read.

 

Come to Horn Island and experience Kip Livingston’s firehawk.

Thriller of the Day at Kindle Nation Daily: Night Sea Journey

Thriller of the Day

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

 

NIGHT SEA JOURNEY, A TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL

Do dreams have the power to live beyond nightscapes? Night Sea Journey ia a fast-paced read with the mystery of angels and demons, psychological and spiritual twists, romance, and murder.

An Eric Hoffer Book Award Winner, 2015  

Night Sea Journey on KND:   http://kindlenationdaily.com/2015/12/157588/

Paula Cappa on BookGorilla.com: http://www.bookgorilla.com/author/B009P2HZ7A/paula-cappa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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U.S. REVIEW OF BOOKS “Stunning and absorbing plot on par with—if not better than—a Dan Brown novel. Truly an outstanding read.”

SAN FRANCISCO BOOK REVIEW ★★★★★ ” Readers will be taken on a continual thrill ride, impossible to put down, a fast-paced thriller.” 

★★★★★ Grady Harp, Amazon Hall of Fame Reviewer. “A talent that will draw even those who are not keen on supernatural stories into her fold.”

 

Trade paperback published by Crispin Books, Milwaukee, WI.

Amazon.com

Amazon UK 

Barnes & Noble.com

Smashwords

Deathless and Patient

The House of the Past   by Algernon Blackwood (1904)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror  November 10, 2015

 

If your dreams could speak to you, what would they say? Let’s open that rusty door to dream time. Here is the key. Go deep. Turn and hear the click. Or is it a whumpp? Throw the door open, if you dare, into the bleak images moving about. Let your dream speak. What would she say? She might say … “This is the House of the Past. Come with me and we will go through some of its rooms and passages; but quickly, for I have not the key for long, and the night is very nearly over. Yet, perchance, you shall remember!”

Remember? Do you remember the ghosts of your past? Will you hear them whispering or weeping? Might you see shadows wearing old dust like shrouds?

 

In Blackwood’s House of the Past, the themes are streaming with imagry. Listen to the language and let yourself flow with the pace. This story can truly transport you to another world of the supernatural. Algernon is one of my favorite authors because I love how eloquently he builds a story into a fantasy and blends the mystical with the occult. He’s my number one go-to author when I want a really mesmerizing ghost story. Lovecraft named him a “modern master.”

 

Read the short story here at LoverOfDarkness.net

Listen to the audio story (this is a treat, don’t miss it) by Librivox on YouTube.com.

[All images are public domain from WikiCommons.]

 

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Books & Such

Bibliophilica       Lovecraft Ezine     HorrorAddicts.net  

Horror Novel Reviews      HorrorPalace

HorrorSociety.com        Sirens Call Publications

 Monster Librarian

HorrorNews.net     HorrorTalk.com

 Rob Around Books      The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror classic authors.

Soul Blood

The Dream of Red Hands   by Bram Stoker  (1894)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror  November 3, 2016

 

This story opens in the grey of dawn. Jacob Settle lives alone on the far edge of the isolated moorland in a small cottage. Our narrator is Jacob’s friend. While we all think of dreaming as normal events in our night life, Jacob is tormented by nightmares and there’s nothing normal about them. Some of us know that when you sleep alone, nightmares don’t just vanish upon waking. Without the comfort of a spouse or family member to anchor reality and soothe the moment, one can go a little mad.

Stoker’s story seems to beg the question, what do nightmares do to the soul? If anyone is in need of fiction about the soul and nightmares, this is the story that will haunt you. Is there such a thing as an evil dream?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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You can read The Dream of Red Hands at WikiSource.org.

I am especially fascinated by nightmares as most of you know from my supernatural mystery Night Sea Journey. If you are also fascinated with the pathology of nightmares, you might be interested in reading Ernest Jones’ On the Nightmare (1931) published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. It includes chapters on vampires, werewolves, witches, and the devil. Are nightmares truly caused by spikes in blood pressure or gastric disturbances? Or is there a soul element to it? Is there a spiritual element to it? You can read the book, free online, ON THE NIGHTMARE here.

 

Group photo 1909 in front of Clark University.

Front row: Sigmund Freud,G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung;

Back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sándor Ferenczi.

 

Irish-born Bram Stoker published his first story The Snake’s Pass in 1890. In 1897, readers were shocked and disgusted by Dracula. Stoker’s first horror story was The Crystal Cup in 1872.

 

 

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Books & Such

Bibliophilica       Lovecraft Ezine     HorrorAddicts.net  

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror classic authors.

Dreaming Little Traps of Horror

Mrs. Rinaldi’s Angel   by Thomas Ligotti  (2005)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror  March 11, 2014

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Have you been watching Nic Pizzolatto’s True Detective on HBO?  Pizzolatto says in an interview with The Arkham Digest  that “the work and vision of Thomas Ligotti was very influential for imagining Cohle’s (Rustin Cohle) overall worldview.” Cohle is a nihilistic and hypnotic character in this compelling crime and horror series. If you became mesmerized watching True Detective as I have, you will likely enjoy the short stories of Thomas Ligotti. His prose is luscious and the philosophy of horror one of the darkest you’ll experience. And while Ligotti is not a classic dead author as I normally feature here, I felt stimulated this week at the conclusion of True Detective to read one of Ligotti’s shorts.

Mrs. Rinaldi’s Angel is about angels and demons with a dash of Gnostic theology. Add nightmares and the power of evil (favorite elements of my reading and in my own writing) and you’ve got a story intense with horror.

A young boy suffering from nightmares is brought to the long-widowed and witchy Mrs. Rinaldi for her curative methods.

“Do you know what dreams are?” she asked quietly, and then immediately began to answer her own question. “They are parasites-maggots of the mind and soul, feeding on the mind and soul as ordinary maggots feed on the body. And their feeding on the mind and soul in turn gnaws away at the body, which in turn again affects the mind and the soul, and so on until death.”

Until death. Makes one wonder if you could literally die inside of a nightmare … and then what? Does the nightmare triumph in the end? This young boy’s bodiless nocturnal adventures are not to be missed as you go with him into the blackness of old time.

Read Mrs. Rinaldi’s Angel at Ligotti.net

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In keeping with today’s dream themes and for my classic horror fans …

The House of the Nightmare  by Edward Lucas White (1906)

Edward Lucas White wrote stories based on his own nightmares. This story is more than fantasy or a writer’s imagination. Our narrator is a traveler in the countryside when the image of a white stone catches his eye and he crashes his motorcar. He is knocked out and awakens to find a young boy with a hideous harelip, staring intensely at him. He spends the night inside the boy’s house and drops into a nightmare.

“It had a hot, slobbering, red mouth, full of big tusks, and its jaws worked hungrily. It shuffled and hunched itself forward, inch by inch, till its vast forelegs straddled the bed.”

This story will remind you of being a little kid, alone in your darkened room, afraid of the monster under the bed. White’s most famous short story collections are Lukundoo and Song of the Sirens

Read The House of the Nightmare at Gaslight.mtroyal.ca

Listen to the audio at Librivox Recordings

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TRUE DETECTIVE LINKS YOU  MIGHT LIKE

 WSJ blog:  http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/02/02/writer-nic-pizzolatto-on-thomas-ligotti-and-the-weird-secrets-of-true-detective/

Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/sites/allenstjohn/2014/03/09/six-things-to-watch-for-in-the-true-detective-finale/

HBO: http://www.hbo.com/true-detective#/

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2356777/

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Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Bibliophilica.com

Horror Novel Reviews   Hell Horror    HorrorPalace

 HorrorSociety.com  

 Monster Librarian  Tales to Terrify       Spooky Reads

 Lovecraft Ezine      Rob Around Books    The Story Reading Ape Blog

     The Gothic Wanderer   Sirens Call Publications   The Fussy Librarian

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

 

 

Art is by William Blake, Red Dragon

Dreaming Dark and Deadly

The Leather Funnel by Arthur Conan Doyle  (1902)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror   April 1, 2013

Cartoon art from PUNCH of AC Doyle chained to his fictional creation, Holmes.

The Leather Funnel

Picture yourself in Paris, a house guest at the home of Lionel Dacre. The house, walled with grey tiles stained with lichens and mildew, has a library filled with books on magic and psychic matters, and what else …  eccentric items of display, specifically a large leather funnel, brass rimmed, black and discolored with faded letters—likely from the Middle Ages.

In The Leather Funnel, Dacre insists that his house guest sleep with the leather funnel by his head. This is based on the idea that we can receive important information through dreaming. Dacre tells his guest, “You are yourself a psychic subject—with nerves which respond readily to any impression.” Dacre believes this old funnel might enlighten the dreamer of its origin, use, and history.

The science of dreams is new to this house guest; doubts prevail, but he agrees to the experiment. So, after the smoldering firelight goes out, the supernatural dream begins.

I must tell you this dream is so frightening, that I couldn’t read fast enough. The tension and descriptions were so compelling that I had to slow down if I wanted to truly savor the images, the haunting fear, and what is the most grisly revelation.

Do you think dreams create supernatural events?

Read it here at East of the Web:

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/LeaFun.shtml

Or listen to a podcast of the story on YouTube.com:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVC4JcnNg0M

Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch House is another you’ll find absolutely chilling as nightmares blur into reality (link is on this site in November’s blog).

 Stop by next Tuesday for another Tale of Terror.

Comments, please!

http://www.hellhorror.com/links/

Horror In Abasteron House

Abasteron House  (author to be revealed)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror   March 26, 2013

Abasteron House is a dark tale. We begin with the shy light of a girl under a beachy summer sun. We end in the purple of the bedchamber, a women in her dream, darkness filled and winged.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. Most recognize this line from Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “A Dream Within a Dream.” Literary experts debate the poem’s full intent, but many can agree Poe is saying all is an illusion—all we see here and all we seem to be. Really?

Illusion versus reality. What a haunting dilemma.

Imagine you are Davida Kip Livingston, a young artist, just an ordinary girl, living with your grandfather in Abasteron House by the sea. Grandfather is a dear sweet man who loves poetry and mythology and prefers to sit for long hours locked inside his attic study. But what he sees versus what he seems to be is no dream within a dream.

Listen outside Grandfather’s attic door and hear the maniacal scratching; imagine a bitter claw ripping into your flesh. Is there a growling now? Is that the flap of a winged beast? Davida wants to know what’s living inside Grandfather’s attic. Do you?

Abasteron House is published at Every Day Fiction in the March issue. The story is flash fiction (1000 words). The author is not a dead author like the other 19th- and 20th-century horror writers featured on this blog site. The author is me, Paula Cappa, and Abasteron House is the prequel to my novel Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural, where Davida Kip Livingston lives through the horror in Abasteron House.

Read the short story here:  http://www.everydayfiction.com/abasteron-house-by-paula-cappa/

Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural on Amazon.com

I love to hear comments from my readers, so please dash off a word or two if you enjoyed Abasteron House.

Stop back next Tuesday for another Tale of Terror. Follow me here, on Twitter or Facebook.

HellHorror.com 

The Wintry Gloom of a Haunted Mind

The Haunted Mind  by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror, January 15, 2013

Is there a state of mind, a supernatural zone, between the real and unreal? Examine the dream. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Haunted Mind, we enter a “midnight slumber.” If we were to dream of ghostly inhabitants, they would certainly be unreal yet we perceive these dream ghosts to be startlingly real, “wide awake in that realm of illusions,” as Hawthorne describes.

The Haunted Mind is probably one of the gloomiest stories Hawthorne’s ever written because he brings us into the subterranean psychodrama of sleep with pervasive phantoms and then blurs the wakefulness. A cunning device. And, to set his stage for deeper emotion, he uses of the second person you, “You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins, through the drear winter of the grave ….”  This forces us to think we are feeling this dreadful experience with the narrator.

A most extraordinary story, the prose requires a slow read as each sentence, each chilling word holds a great deal of imagery, realism, and insight. We need to read it slowly as if every line is a delicious bite.

We are introduced to the single character alone in his bed on a winter night, frost patterns on the window glass, snow-covered roofs, streets frozen, perhaps like this dream we are in. Symbolisms abound. While the character slips in and out of dreaming and half-waking, Hawthorne gives us intense descriptions of funereal ghosts passing by—wrinkled, fiendish, evil. A train of regret and sorrow follows, disappointments, shame, despair. What a pervasive eerie mood. We begin to wonder… are we dreaming of the underworld? Are we awake? Are we in some psychological prison of the mind? I think it was Poe who compared sleep to death, calling sleep “little slices of death.”

Hawthorne holds us captive when his character believes he cannot be persuaded that the dead “… neither shrink nor shiver, when the snow is drifting over their little hillocks, and the bitter blast howls against the door of the tomb.” The deathly isolation in this story made me shiver, wishing for a warm fire to appear. And when the hearth’s embers do shed a bit of gleam, as the flames vanish, we are left to wonder what is real, the cold or the gloom.

“Yesterday has already vanished from the shadows of the past, to-morrow has not yet emerged from the future.” Where is this poor soul? Does he awake fully in his warm bed? Do we?

If we know Hawthorne at all, we know that the supernatural and self-discovery are common themes in his works. You must read The Haunted Mind (a quick read at only 1700 words) for an extraordinary experience into the wilderness of sleep between reality and dreams from a true master of literature.

Read it here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9209/9209-h/9209-h.htm

Stories about dreaming and alternate realities (the inner world) are my favorite, so The Haunted Mind ranks very high for me. That is probably why I wrote Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural. I’m no Hawthorne, not near his talents, but my novel delves into the dreaming mind, into the fears that often emerge when we are immobile and frozen in our sleep. You’ll find that Hawthorne brings his story to a disturbing destiny, not just merely waking up to start a new day after unsettling dreams. In Night Sea Journey, my character, Kip Livingston, journeys in her dreams to find a new destiny—a reality that defies the expected and enters the supernatural realm of angels and demons.

Which brings me to the obvious question: Why do we dream? What are these secret nighttime journeys with strange faces and imaginary events? Is there some supernatural power going on here? If you’ve had a dream that has affected you or your life in some way (A ghostly one, maybe? Or a dream with the spirit of a dead loved one?) please post.

And stop by next Tuesday for another Tale of Terror.

Artwork  is The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli, 1781.