Hallowe’en used to last one day: now it is a two-month celebration of corn syrup and horror. The candy corn appears in August.  The Halloween cards soon follow. As for pumpkin spice lattes, I say, “Don’t.”

I admit I am frightened of some of the more graphic decorations. I like the green-skinned Elphaba witches, the inflatable black cats, and the plastic gravestones. But I do draw the line at the 12-ft.-tall skeleton that has not been taken down since September 2024! Perhaps the house is haunted. That’s the only explanation.

So you may wonder:  what does a person scared of plastic skeletons do for Halloween?  Naturally, I read Daphne du Maurier’s classic tales.

Daphne du Maurier’s After Midnight: Thirteen Tales for the Dark Hours is a fascinating collection of her tales, with an introduction by Stephen King.  This stunning hardback was published in September, and it is one of my favorite books of the year.

Two of her most famous stories, “The Birds” and “Don’t Look Now,” were the inspiration for movies. The former is terrifying, the latter a tragedy. In “The Birds,” the avians seem determined to kill off the human race, and the jackdaws and seagulls are the first attackers. A family tries to defend itself, but things look grim. Alfred Hitchcock’s movie approaches it a bit differently, but is true to the spirit.

In “Don’t Look Now,” a couple go to Venice hoping to distract themselves from the horror of their little girl’s death. This story unfolds as a tragedy about what happens if you refuse to believe in psychic phenomena.  The movie Don’t Look Now is also brilliant, but so sad and horrifying that I haven’t returned to it.

I ration myself to one of these stories a day, because I need to look at what lurks beneath the terror, what it says about human fallacy, carelessness, and sometimes malice.  One of her best stories, “The Blue Lenses,” could be designated either as “horror” or “fantasy.”  It is the story of a woman who, after an eye operation, is fitted with blue lenses. What she sees will haunt you. 

I came upon this collection by chance, as so often happens with books. In addition to the two stories I described above, the book includes “The Alibi,” “The Apple Tree,“Monte Verita,” “The Pool,” “The Doll,” “Ganymede,”“Leading Lady,”  “Not After Midnight,” “Split Second,” and “The Breakthrough.”

 I have savored Du Maurier’s novels in the past: now for the short stories.  Yes, we can read ghost stories by E. F. Benson and M. R. James, but it is the world of Daphne du Maurier that resonates with me.