Halloween is upon us again, and to get into the spirit, I thought I would head over to my bookcase and re-read a scary story or two. As a big fan of the great Victorian Gothic novels – “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” – I thought I would delve a little into the origins of Gothic literature and explore why these books remain so popular. Principally, “Gothic” refers to a style of architecture which developed during the Middle Ages; featuring tall, pointed windows, stained glass, flying buttresses, and soaring spires.  During the late… Read more »

For the final post in my “Halloween” series; I thought that I would discuss the three movies which I think are among the scariest of all time: “The Wicker Man” (1973); “Poltergeist” (1982) and, Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece, “The Shining” (1980). Maybe I’m just getting old, but in the days before CGI, film-makers really had to work to make their movies authentically scary.  You couldn’t just put an actor in front of a green screen and ask them to emote terror against… Read more »