5 Frightening Novels to Keep You Up At Night: September Edition

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

Shirley Jackson

I couldn’t resist throwing this classic on here. It’s one of my favorite novels of all time – a Gothic tale of murder, family, and Otherness. The novel tells the story of the Blackwood family, living in their once splendid but now crumbling mansion on the edge of a small town. There are only three people left in the Blackwood family: the timid and beautiful Constance, the eccentric uncle lost in a maze of memories, and the narrator, Mary Katherine “Merricat” Blackwood. Merricat leads the reader on a journey through the twisted paths of the Blackwood estate and in and out of the neighboring town, describing secret hiding places, Constance’s wonderful cooking, the suspicious eyes of the town population, and into her own shadowed mind, rife with superstitious beliefs and haunting memories of her own. All the while, the reader is left wondering, what happened to the rest of the Blackwood family? And why do the townspeople hate them so much?

Tune in next month for more horror novels to keep you up at night!

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