A Halloween Reader: Poems, Stories, and Plays from Halloweens Past

by Lesley Pratt Bannatyne (Editor)

This sourcebook of Halloween lore spans British, Irish, and American literature from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, from Robert Burns and Edgar Allan Poe to James Joyce and H. P. Lovecraft. Each of the poems, stories, and plays in this comprehensive anthology provides a link to Halloween celebrations of the past. "A Halloween Party," by Caroline Ticknor, is a humorous short story about a nineteenth-century New Yorker's first Halloween party. The macabre soliloquy from Sydney Dobell's Balder paints a dark, haunting picture of the hallowed eve. Robert Burns' "Halloween" gives a detailed description of the night of October 31 in eighteenth-century southwestern Scotland. The "Hallowoddities" section of the book includes witch-trial testimony, journal entries, and other spooky pieces related to Halloween. A Halloween Reader provides an overview of the holiday's roots and of how it has changed since it began in the British Isles more than one thousand years ago. In older literature, the dead are viewed as a supernatural evil, but one that can teach, predict, and warn, because they have seen the future that is hidden to us. In twentieth-century and current literature, however, the dead are portrayed as more humanly evil, returning as zombies to exact revenge or to otherwise terrorize the living. As Ms. Bannatyne says in her introduction, "The boundary between the vibrant world we live in and the underground world of worms is thin and brittle; it's only a matter of time. What makes the older Halloween literature so enthralling is that it lets us travel back and forth to the land of the dead without consequence."

Genres: Halloween, Nonfiction, Horror, Poetry, Plays, Anthologies

272 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2004

About the author

Lesley Bannatyne is an American author who writes extensively on Halloween, especially its history, literature, and contemporary celebration. She also writes short stories, many of which are included in her debut collection _Unaccustomed to Grace_, out from Kallisto Gaia Press in March, 2022. iN 2024, her Lake Song. A Novel in Stories won the Grace Paley Prize and is published by Mad Creek Books in September 2025.

Bannatyne has shared her knowledge on television specials for the History Channel ("The Haunted History of Halloween," "The Real Story of Halloween"), with Time Magazine, Slate, National Geographic, and contributed the Halloween article to World Book Encyclopedia. Her Halloween books range from a children's book, Witches Night Before Halloween, to Halloween Nation, which examines the holiday through the eyes of its celebrants. The book was nominated for a 2011 Bram Stoker Award. Her other titles are A Halloween How-To. Costumes, Parties, Destinations, Decorations (2001); A Halloween Reader. Poems, Stories, and Plays from Halloweens Past (2004), and Halloween. An American Holiday, An American History, which celebrated 30 years in print in 2020.

Her fiction and essays have been published in the Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Christian Science Monitor, and Zone 3, Pangyrus, Shooter, Craft, Ocotillo Review, Fish, and Bosque Literary Magazines. She won the 2018 Bosque fiction prize and received the 2019 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for fiction, the 2020 Ghoststory.com fiction prize, and the 2024 Grace Paley Prize for short fiction. As a freelance journalist, she covered stories ranging from druids in Massachusetts to relief workers in Bolivia.

Lesley lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[☆Angel☆ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives you insight into what Halloween was like in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Superstition and story-telling were a big part of everyday life back then. They style of writing has changed quite a bit over the years. So, while reading my favorite story, in this collection, (Ken's Mystery)I paid close attention to how the words were beautifully arranged. Reading these early writings is a good way to find out where our traditions come from. If you don't have a problem with reading classics and you like Halloween, then you'll (more than likely) like this book.

[Brenda Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the genuine old time Halloween stuff--no violence which has, unfortunately, come to characterize 21st century Halloween. This volune gives good examples of the original Celtic and Irish writings on the genuine roots of the holiday.