It’s the time of year to pull those pumpkin vines, bundle the corn stalks and put away the outdoor furniture. Fall is for coming to the hearth with a good book and a hot cup of cocoa-a time to look inward and reminisce about spring and summer days that warmed the garden and brought forth the crops for harvest.

The sudden shift of light, the clouds with hints of a storm bundled inside, the night that comes more quickly . . . all of these are October, and there’s a slight charge in the air as the old myths stir within our memory.

Persephone once again returns to Hades as she was bound to do. Demeter bemoans the loss of her daughter and the earth goes silent and infertile for the months they are separated.

Now is the time for ghosts to walk among us, while our minds grow quiet in the long chilled nights.

I haven’t written a ghost story in a few years, but I had a couple published a while ago in Crow Toes Quarterly, so I thought to celebrate the season, I’d share this one. It’s written for middle grade readers, so I hope you’ll print it and read it or give it to a young reader who would like to be a tad scared by the THE GHOSTLY DOUBLE.

I hadn’t read Dracula in a long while, so I checked out a copy of the latest edition and found a fascinating introduction by Joan Acocella (American journalist and dance critic for the New Yorker.) She shared so many interesting facts that I’d either forgotten or never heard of, and, since they heightened my appreciation of this iconic novel, I thought I’d share some with you to celebrate this dark season.

First, as you probably know the lovely idea of the living dead wasn’t orignial with Bram Stoker. These creatures had been around in European folklore for a long time before Stoker created the sensual count and captured the imagination of the reading public. “Captured the imagination” is another way of saying “lured them with the forbidden.” 

The idea of the suave, enticing male figure didn’t originate with Stoker. It was Lord Byron’s personal physician, John Pilidori,  who wrote The Vampyre: A Tale and published it in 1819. He might even have crafted his undead character after the handsome Byron himself and used an outline of a story Bryon had started. By all accounts, The Vampyre was an erotic tale, luring readers with innocent virgins and an irresistible fiend. Wowzer! No wonder it was a hit. Remember, in last week’s post I suggested writers could keep readers hooked by exploring taboos; the good doctor must have known that.  

Here’s something I had never read before. Mary Gowin was a guest of Lord Byron’s good friend and neighbor,  Percy Bysshe Shelley, during a summer stay at Lake Geneva. As a game several of the guests wrote or started to write ghost stories. While Polidore worked on his Vampyre story, eighteen-year-old Gowin began writing Frankenstein. This was in 1816. I would say that there were some significant ghostly vibes around that Swiss lake that year.

There have been more than 150 movies made about Dracula. The first one was a silent film titled Nosferatu and came out in 1922.

Bella Lugosi began playing Count Dracula on stage in 1927 and became the count on screen for most of his career. It wasn’t what he wanted, but in the end it made him famous. Ms. Acocella writes, “[Lugosi] was buried in his Dracula cloak.”

Bram Stoker was born outside of Dublin in 1847. He was very ill  and bedridden until he was seven, and mentioned how that time alone, turned him into an introspective person whose thoughts during those early years became books in his later ones.

About 1871 he turned to acting, but didn’t do very well. Next he became a drama critic (sounds like revenge to me) and started to write short stories. His first novel, The Snake’s Pass was published in in1890. He publishes Dracula in 1897.

So what other facts are there about our famous writer and his famous book, Dracula? Can you share them here? Thanks.

I was thinking about all the books that I’ve read that were really spooky. You know the ones you can’t read after dark when your home alone? My top hit when I was a kid was Dracula or anything vampyrish. I went back to the original Bram Stoker book the other day and started reading it again. It still “got to me” enough that 1) I kept reading and 2) I tried to warn those characters about the dude with the weird eyes.

So why did this story grab me and scare me . . . again? Here’s what I came up with and here’s what I think I, as a writer, have to master. See what you think and let me know what else I need to add to this list of strategies.

Strategy #1 Keep ’em guessing-the characters, that is. What one character knows, the other(s) shouldn’t, but the reader should. That will drive the reader “bats,” and he’ll keep urging each character to wake up, turn around, pay attention!

Strategy #2 Take your time cluing those characters into what’s afoot. Make the character very slooow to discover what the reader knows.

Strategy #3 Let the characters understand and have control in their world, but show that they ain’t dealing with their world as they know it. All the time these characters are doing what they know is right or logical and that has worked in the past, mysterious events continue around them and that evil dude is doing people in-maybe getting ready to do in those oblivious characters too.

Strategy #4 Never make the the bad guy all bad and good guy all good. It’s really tantalizing when the bad guy is handsome, kind of sweet, but deadly. A little avarice, cowardice or greed in the good guy makes it a little harder to root for him at times, so the reader is conflicted: pull for the hero or his enemy who is totally awesome and exciting?

Strategy #5 Give your female characters some backbone, yet keep them vulnerable and feminine, witty, sometimes wise and sometimes (especially when it comes to that evil guy) foolish.

Strategy #6 Get into some of those cultural taboos and show how the characters really feel about them, The forbidden is always enticing and should be for those people in your book as well as those reading it.

So what else can a writer do to hook the reader and keep him hooked until The End?