Grave Beginnings: 17

It was a dark and stormy night.

In her attic bedroom Margaret Murray, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraith-like shadows that raced along the ground.

The house shook.

Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.

Note: Look, I know this isn’t really a horror story in the traditional sense, but when I read this Young Adult classic the first time, it scared the hell out of me. The loss of identity, the loss of self, the danger of intellect without humanity, all of it made for heady stuff that has stayed with me ever since. Because of this book, for me true horror is a street lined with identical houses, filled with identical people, doing identical things.