Colonial Horrors

Sleepy Hollow and Beyond

By: various authors

Narrated by: Paul Boehmer, Justine Eyre, Jim Meskimen, John Rubinstein, Stefan Rudnicki, full cast

The most spine-tingling suspense stories from the colonial era - including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, and H. P. Lovecraft

This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the colonial era’s stifling religion, and its dark and threatening woods.

Today, the best-known tale of colonial horror is Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, although Irving’s story is probably best known today from various movie versions it has inspired. Colonial horror tales of other prominent American authors - Nathaniel Hawthorne and James Fenimore Cooper among them - are overshadowed by their best sellers and are difficult to find in modern libraries. Many other pioneers of American horror fiction are presented afresh in this breathtaking volume for today’s public listeners.

Some will have heard the names of Increase and Cotton Mather in association with the Salem witch trials but will not have sought out their contemporary accounts of what were viewed as supernatural events. By bringing these writers to the attention of the contemporary listeners, this collection will help bring their names - and their work - back from the dead.

©2017 Introduction by Graeme Davis (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing

The quality of the stories.

All the stories were captivating and well read. I would absolutely recommend this book.

Classic spooky tales for cold October mornings

I’ve had this on my wish list for almost a year waiting until October to get it. I got impatient and bought it today and enjoyed it with a cup of orange spice tea. It makes me look forward to cold mornings and warm baked goods full of spice.

Inconsistent

Some of the short stories were pretty good, but others were entirely forgettable. Obviously the Legend of Sleepy Hollow was the best, and the reason I got the collection, but the stories of The Bell Witch and The Case of Dexter were also well told. I bet this collection will improve on me when I listen to it again next October.