The Halloween season is upon us, and you may well be in the mood to read up on the history of the classic monsters from film, legend and literature. Well, I’ve written quite a bit on the topic; I suppose you could say that a very large, very loose project of mine involves covering our favourite fictional beasties in as much detail as possible…
Vampires: My main offering here is a twelve-part essay series called The Vampyre’s Legacy, where I analyse (at least) one vampire story for each decade from the 1810s through to the 2010s. If that series doesn’t spend enough time in the nineteenth century for your liking, I’ve written a few other articles on vampire literature of that era. Want to read about vampire films? Well, I’ve written an essay on silent vampire films, plus a three-part series on Dracula’s Daughter.
Werewolves: My weekly Werewolf Wednesday column has covered a large chunk of lycanthropic films and literature, and I recently collated the links here.
Mummies: I’ve written an entire book on the bandaged shamblers. It’s part of the Devil’s Advocates series form Auteur Publishing and it’s focused primarily on the 1932 Mummy with Boris Karloff, but it has a whole chapter devoted to mummies in vintage weird fiction and another discussing post-Karloff mummy films. Available in paperback and ebook from the outlet of your choice!
Headless horsemen: They may not be quite as versatile as monsters go, but headless horsemen have a quite interesting history — as I found when I did a deep dive into the Dullahan of Irish folklore (part 1, part 2) after finding Wikipedia’s utterly terrible article on the topic.
Poltergeist girls: Regan, Carrie, Carol Ann, Emily Rose — I covered them all alongside their inspirations in-life cases of alleged poltergeists and possession over the course of a four-post series.
Doris V. Sutherland 