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Arts & Culture

5 Unnerving Shirley Jackson Short Stories to Read Before Halloween

Evil children! Rebelling teeth! Murderous spouses! Jackson has all the scary stories you need for October.
Rae Alexandra
A book rested against a woman's knees viewed in side profile. Her right arm is reaching out to touch the pages. She is wearing a simple tank top.
It's scary story season... (Maravic/ Getty Images)

October is upon us once more. Pumpkins are springing up on doorsteps, costumes are being prepped and candy is appearing in bulk on store shelves. If you’re planning to pre-game Halloween for the entire month, there’s no better author to get you in the mood than San Francisco’s own Shirley Jackson.

When thinking of Jackson’s scariest tales, horror fans are usually inclined to pick up The Haunting of Hill House, the deliciously claustrophobic We Have Always Lived in the Castle or the macabre short story that put Jackson on the map, The Lottery. But Jackson has a wealth of other disturbing short stories that are just as likely to give you chills on a dark October night.

Here are five of the creepiest.

A small child stands behind a pane of frosted glass, with their mouth pressed up against the glass in a scream.
Charles, the subject of a six-page story by Jackson, is a mean little so-and-so. (Ugurhan/ Getty Images)

‘Charles’

Let’s be honest. There is nothing more terrifying than small, uncontrollable children. Children who won’t stop injuring their classmates. Children who physically attack their teacher without a care in the world. Children who remorselessly disrupt the world around them for attention and their own sadistic pleasure.

For those of you unwilling to commit to reading Lionel Shriver’s disturbing masterpiece We Need to Talk About Kevin, there’s Jackson’s Charles, just six pages long and seeped in the same themes. Ultimately, this 1948 short story is about the blind faith we put in our children, the idea that sometimes nature wins out over nurture and, most of all, the unflinching judgement parents receive from other parents.

A close up shot of a dental X-ray, showing upper and lower molars.
Teeth: All fine and dandy until one of them rebels and takes over your life. (Glow Images/ Getty Images)

‘The Tooth’

The only thing worse than a rotten child like Charles is a rotten tooth — and an overnight, out-of-town trip to the dentist, all while tripping on codeine, whiskey and sleep aids. In the course of The Tooth, the story’s heroine, Clara, feels herself slowly but surely slipping away, as unbearable pain — and the almost omnipotent cause of it — takes over. Her ordeal doesn’t end with the anticipated sanctuary of her dentist’s office, either. Instead, she falls even further into a sunken place forced on her by a rebelling part of her own body.

“Her tooth,” Jackson writes, “seemed now the only part of her to have any identity. It seemed to have had its picture taken without her; it was the important creature which must be recorded and examined and gratified; she was only its unwilling vehicle, and only as such was she of interest to the dentist and the nurse.”

In granting so much control, so viscerally, to Clara’s molar, Jackson somehow conjures David Cronenberg-levels of body horror.

A 1950s-era photo of a white couple sitting at a square dining table covered in a white cloth. He is sipping from a coffee cup as she smiles at him, holding a tea cup aloft. There is a half-eaten cake on the table in front of them.
What if you never really know what your spouse is thinking? (George Marks/ Getty Images)

‘What a Thought’

The scariest thing about What a Thought is the way it so completely upends an average scene of domesticity. The story, about a typical wife and her perfectly pleasant husband, sees the woman of the house, for no apparent reason, fantasizing about killing her spouse. The casual nature of her invasive thoughts make murder seem positively normal — as easy as making a cup of coffee.

That Jackson’s protagonist is making life and death decisions with all the passion and intensity one might put into making a roast dinner is what ultimately makes What a Thought so disturbing. Do you ever really know what your partner is thinking?

A man in a suit, viewed from behind, walks down a cold, concrete and mysterious corridor in the half light.
Is that you, James Harris? (Gremlin/ Getty Images)

‘The Daemon Lover’

This 1949 short story shares a name with a traditional Scottish folk song and makes nods to Elizabeth Bowen’s 1945 story, The Demon Lover, both of which convey the eerie consequences of a broken promise of marriage. Jackson’s rendition takes the form of a nightmare that spirals and slowly accelerates, despite staying firmly rooted in everyday environs. (If there was a movie to compare it to, it would be Rosemary’s Baby, albeit with less Satanists.)

The Daemon Lover finds Jackson’s unnamed protagonist groomless on her wedding day and searching the streets to find him. Like a bad dream where you can never quite reach your destination, she encounters multiple hurdles and humans that are unsympathetic to her anxiety-ridden plight. By the end, it’s unclear if this bride is indeed jilted or just wrapped up in her own delusions — the product of being 34, unmarried and shunned by society because of it. One for the single ladies!

A black and white image looking out over a peaceful lake with trees in the foreground on the shoreline and mountains in the distance.
Oh, it all looks picturesque now, but what happens when your car and phone stop working and no one will bring you food and fuel? (Around the World Photography/ Getty Images)

‘The Summer People’

Imagine what would happen if everyone in Succession lost their lackeys and had to fend for themselves for once. Then imagine what would happen if those lackeys actively turned on the Roys while the family was out in the middle of nowhere. That’s the scenario Robert and Janet Allison are faced with in The Summer People.

Obliviously elite, and disdainful of those they perceive to be beneath their stature, the Allisons find themselves the victims of their own self-entitlement in this 1950 allegory. When the couple decides to extend their vacation in their remote holiday cabin, the townspeople around them don’t take too kindly to it. As the locals cease to tend to the Allisons, the couple soon finds themselves without kerosene, groceries or a working vehicle. Their phone line goes dead, the local mechanic can’t be reached and the Allisons wind up isolated and helpless, having grossly overestimated their ability to get whatever they want, whenever they want, from the people around them.

Jackson eerily weaves a sense of creeping peril into the story,  creating an ominous atmosphere that slowly envelops the Allisons’ home. After reading this one, you’ll never outstay your welcome anywhere, ever again.

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