The Darkest Corners of the Library
Guest writer Jennifer Morrow tells us why she loves horror and true crime, and she hopes that others will give it a try, at least once
Hi readers,
I don’t read in every genre, which is especially true of horror. I don’t like to be scared, nor do I like blood and gore. When I have an opportunity to feature a reader who loves horror, I jump on it. Today’s guest writer
says that “Summer is the worst. It’s a sticky, awful hell, and I hate it.” She white-knuckles it until she gets to a month that ends in “er,” and that’s when she comes alive. Most readers think of horror and true crime and associate those genres with Fall, but she reads those year-round and makes no apologies. Her newsletter is full of all things Halloween, articles with creepy history, book reviews, Autumn recipes, cocktails, and much more. She rates books on a “scare scale” of SS1 to SS4, and if a book rates an SS4, “you’re gonna want to sleep with the lights on.” Welcome to SoNovelicious, Jennifer!
Hi everyone. I’m Jennifer Morrow from the Substack
. I post every Tuesday about scary books, horror movies, spooky locations, and true crime stories. You know, the fun stuff.Many people can tell you when they first encountered a subject that would become a lifelong interest. A museum visit begins a love of art, or attending a sporting event leads to joining a team. My first experience with horror is just as vivid.
When I was four, my teenage babysitter discovered that the 1958 Vincent Price classic The Fly was airing on TV that night and insisted we watch it. I did not want to watch The Fly. Few four-year-olds would. The plot involves a brilliant scientist trapped in his one-of-a-kind DNA-melding machine. But he wasn’t alone; a housefly was buzzing around in there, too. The machine works, dammit, leaving him with a fly’s head and hand. That wasn’t so hard to take—I knew the actor was just wearing a mask and glove. If this was the worst of it, I was a-okay! I made it to the end of the movie, and that’s when the filmmakers unleashed hell. Vincent Price is standing in a lovely garden, and like the viewer, he thinks the horribleness of having dealt with a best friend-sized fly is done, but then he hears a tiny voice squealing, “Heeelp me! Heeelp me!” He searches the bushes until he finds the source: the fly trapped in the machine with his friend is now trapped in a spider web. It received the man’s mind and voice, and most gruesome, his ghostly face that watched as the hungry spider descended on him. Price could do nothing more for his friend than frantically pick up a rock and kill both creatures.
I’ve spent my life screaming at spiders.
My first experience with reading horror is one many of you can relate to, as it began with my school’s Book Fair Day. Each kid was given tickets and unleashed in a room of tables covered in books. This was before Amazon, back in the days when a child had three sources for books:
1. The school library. I’d read everything interesting twice already.
2. The public library. I ignored the children’s books and was now getting chased out of the WWII section by the librarians.
3. Parent’s nightstands. Almost a guarantee of finding confusing novels by someone named Sidney Sheldon.
We redeemed our tickets for free books, and this was how I met Alvin Schwartz and his Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark series. And, sweet smokin’ Jesus, they were scary. There were tales with titles like “Dead Man’s Brains” and “The Ghost with the Bloody Fingers.” There was “The Big Toe,” which was a staple of storytelling in my group of neighborhood kids, always told because moaning the refrain of “Where is my tooooe, give me back my tooooe…” is too satisfying to resist. Still, we made it our own by having the nine-toed entity chase the thief around the neighborhood. Our neighborhood.
And then there was “The Hearse Song.” Every kid knew a version of it, and we’d dance around the babysitter’s backyard singing, “Don’t ever laugh when the hearse goes by because you’ll be the first to die!” If you think I’m exaggerating, let me assure you, I’m not. We all knew “The Hearse Song” and loved to bellow it until an adult told us to shut up. It was so baked that I knew the song before picking up a Schwartz book. We were children who sang about “pus pouring out like whipped cream” while the babysitter handed out bologna sandwiches. I’m not sure if this was happening across America or if I was growing up among especially morbid playmates. We loved these horrifying stories and songs because many children love the anti-social. As we get older, I think it has something in common with speeding or swimming with sharks. It makes your pulse race. You can read a scary book or watch a horror movie, lose yourself in a good story and, get that jolt of adrenaline, and then go about your day feeling like you’ve survived.
True crime is something of a sibling to horror. Terrible things happen in both, but with true crime, you have less chance of meeting blood-suckers. Note that I said less chance, not no chance. People are strange.
As with horror, my initial experience with true crime came in childhood. My babysitter was murdered. Laurie watched me no more than twice, so I won’t claim that we had a friendship, but she lived nearby and had gone to the same elementary school I was then attending and the same middle school and high school I would eventually attend. I would go through many of those school years with her younger brother. My vivid memory of her is of a smiling teen who arrived at my house without the threatening aura that even my older sister took on when anticipating that she would be in charge. Laurie sat on the living room floor with me and worked on one side of my coloring book while I filled in the other. We talked and colored, and at one point, she told me I was smart. Compliments were thin on the ground in my house, and I became silent because I didn’t know how to respond. She told me it was okay. Soon after, she was gone.
For all my research into other murders, this is one that I haven’t gone near. I know the basics of it and where it happened. It was in the papers, and my weekday babysitter talked like she was responsible for a news cycle on her own. The murderer was convicted. My only research has been to make sure I spelled her name right. I don’t want the details.
Something like that would send many people running the other way from these subjects, but I’m a contrarian. When I see a trend emerge, I cross my arms and wait it out. I can wait a long time. Eventually, I’ll get around to seeing this Jurassic Park I keep hearing about.
I discovered the true crime section of our public library in middle school. That this smallish library had a true crime section tells me that I missed the chance to become friends with whoever was responsible for it. This section included the old Great Cases of Scotland Yard books by Eric Ambler. These two volumes, first published in 1978, were a goldmine of murder. This is where I met Jack the Ripper (still a favorite), timid Dr. Crippen, John Haigh, aka The Acid Bath Murderer, and Thomas Neill Cream, who looked like a million bucks with his top hat and walrus mustache, but behind the facade, was a monster. For some reason, I loved reading about horrible people.
Becoming a teen, I leaned even more toward the darker stuff. I leaned hard. It wasn’t enough to wear black eyeliner and black lipstick; no, I went ahead and scared my freshman English teacher with an oral report about the Jack the Ripper case. I thought it was an interesting subject that no one else would pick, and I was right. By the time I got to the murder of Mary Kelly, my teacher was cringing and told me to skip it. I had emphatically sealed my reputation as a weirdo.
The adult me recognizes that it’s an interest in psychology, a “why would anybody do that” question that hangs over the entire subject of true crime and much of horror. I don’t enjoy reading about suffering; in fact, I hate the person who causes it. The need to see the perpetrator punished is a driving factor, and when the guilty haven’t received their punishment, it’s insulting to our need for fairness. That’s why heroes like Michele McNamara, Paul Holes, or your local detectives spend years looking for answers. The thing about true crime is that there’s a very long list of criminals and an even longer list of people willing to bring them to justice.
Jennifer Morrow lives in Phoenix with her husband Mike, whom she refers to as the “giant” in her newsletter
. They have a clingy Boxer named Coral, who she says longs for “deep eye contact,” which she thinks is really weird. Her cakes and cookies have won lots of blue ribbons at her state fair, and she likes maple so much that she wrote a book about it, so that's why you'll find recipes for sweets and other Autumn foods in her newsletter. The cocktails are just because she likes 'em. You can hear her story, “Sitting Up with Granny,” in season 5 of the Full Body Chills podcast. She has written a story for the Substack Wicked Writing anthology Vexed to Nightmare called Gnaw, and she’d love to have you drop in at for cocktails, horror movies, and true crime, and I bet she has some really scary stories to tell you, too.Getting to know more about Jennifer has been so much fun! As you can see from the above, she's a great writer, and if horror and true crime aren’t your preferred genre, maybe she has convinced you to read out of your comfort zone just a little bit. I was definitely one of the ones not growing up with playmates with morbid thoughts, but it also sounds like I didn’t have nearly as much fun as she did, either. I don’t know if I’ll read any horror any time soon, but I’m looking forward to reading more true crime, and I’ll think of her when I do.
Readers, do you read horror and true crime? If you haven’t in the past, has she convinced you to give it a try? Head to the comments and tell her a little about yourself and what genres you like to read. Maybe she’ll have a suggestion or two if you want to get started in either of these genres.
I hope you have a wonderful week full of reading and other things you consider fun. Happy reading!
I agree with Jennifer about horror books. But, one horror-adjacent book I love is Michael Crichton's 'Andromeda Strain.' I know it's science fiction but it scared me when I was a kid!
I did a long stint with true crime and horror back in my 20s, but when real life started casting a slight shadow I steered away. This article inspired me to try it one more time. Great read, thank you.