Mercer County Library Blog

Is something out there? Summer is here and with it comes the time for camping, s’mores, and spooky stories told around a campfire. One of my favorite genres of scary stories to listen to and read about is cryptids. Whether you believe in them or not, it can be fun to speculate. For those who are not familiar with the term, cryptids are creatures that have not been proven to exist, but numerous people claim to have seen them. Cryptid sightings have occurred all around the world and over the centuries, even though the term “cryptid” was only coined in the 1980s. Though cryptozoology is not recognized by mainstream science, cryptozoologists and others define cryptids as being animals that could possibly exist in nature. This means that their biology could align with known animals. This differentiates them from mythological creatures, gods/demons, spirits, and supernatural beings. Think Bigfoot, the chupacabra, and the Yeti. Popular culture and folklore often group these unknown creatures...

Let’s be real here, sometimes we are not as active readers as we would like to be. Family, relationships, career, and life overall get in the way. All this makes that 300-page novel collecting dust on your shelf that you’ve been meaning to pick up for weeks, now look as daunting as ever. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. If you need something a little less time-consuming that still can pull you in and leave a big impact, look at a short story collection! Short story collections can be small narratives exploring multiple types of fun and unique genres. They are an avenue through which authors can choose to indulge in the weird and eccentric sides of our typical romance, horror, and science fiction categories. They’re a great way to introduce yourself to genres you would’ve never picked up on your own! As a short story lover myself, I can confirm that there is a lot of depth within the short pages of these collections. Think a short story collection could get you out of your reading f...

With Halloween just around the corner, I am endlessly in search of all things haunted, spooky or mysterious. Whether it be a scary book, movie, or destination – you can always count me in! As a child of the 90’s, I grew up with a love for spooky books like R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, and tuned in weekly for shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark and Goosebumps (yes, obviously I couldn’t get enough of R.L. Stine’s stories!). I fondly remember making annual visits to places like Shady Brook Farm in Newtown, PA for their fantastic Haunted Hayrides that would leave me screaming….with joy of course! And my parents driving us up to Gravity Hill, where they’d put the car in neutral, tell us a spooky story, and “let a wayward ghost push our car to safety.” (For anyone unfamiliar with the site, Gravity Hill is a place where an optical illusion makes it seem like cars are rolling uphill. It occurs because the lack of a clear horizon...

Many people have their own special traditions for Halloween night, like taking their kids trick or treating, going to Halloween parties, or watching a horror movie marathon. One of my traditions is to read at least one new scary short story. Even if you have other things to do, reading a truly well-crafted short horror story can get you in the Halloween mood like nothing else. I’ve always thought that the short story is a better literary medium for horror than the novel because, being short and compact, they can be more viscerally scary. In just a few pages drawing you in and leading you into a shocking revelation or a terrifying twist ending. I want to keep it short for this post so I’m sharing just a few selected recommendations for Halloween short stories, both classic and new, that you can read on Halloween night for a terrifying thrill. I’ll start with Edgar Allen Poe, who is of course well-known as the nineteenth-century American master of short horror stories. If you’ve neve...

The first Stephen King book I remember reading was The Shining , and I was hooked. As a teenager I ripped through that book and many that followed from Stephen King. Carrie , Salem’s Lot , The Stand , and The Dead Zone were all published when I was in high school, and they were followed by Cujo and Pet Sematary while I was in college. At the time, King was the unquestioned master of horror writing. There were other authors who turned out top horror books - The Omen by David Seltzer, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, and Jaws by Peter Benchley all come to mind. But no one produced the mass quantity and quality of Stephen King. As he continued through his career, King kept pounding out best sellers, but I always felt like the horror aspect was downplayed and the books, while they had a horror edge to them, were more of a storyteller spinning a yarn that you just shook your head and couldn’t believe. Books through the later 1980s and through the 1990s such as It , Misery , N...

Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor that started in 2012 and has since exploded into a bona fide franchise, spawning its own podcast network, live shows, merchandise, and books. Mercer County Library System has all of the books in the Night Vale family. If you’re a fan of the charming, surreal podcast or just enjoy the unusual, you may want to read (or listen to - some of these books are in audiobook form) what the creators of Night Vale and their collaborators have to offer. Welcome to Night Vale (the podcast) is set in the town of Night Vale, a desert community where all manner of paranormal and supernatural things happen, but are treated like common everyday occurrences. The podcast is a fictional radio show set in this bizarre community and hosted by Cecil Palmer (voiced by Cecil Baldwin). This year is Welcome to Night Vale ’s 10th anniversary, so I thought we should look at what the Night Vale books have to offer. The first book that was ...

The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari If you’re a horror fan and like mainstream horror franchises such as Scream , you may not be aware that some of the greatest horror scares may be found in the oddest, most obscure little corners of the genre. You may want to branch out and find some hidden gems in places you haven’t explored before. March 15 th , 2022 is the 100th anniversary of the premiere of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu . One of my most vivid childhood horror memories was seeing Max Schrek’s Count Orlock on late night TV. It scared me but also fascinated me because the atmosphere seemed so odd and unreal. That got me thinking about how horror movies and books outside the mainstream can make such a lasting impression. Some of the scariest horror movies that I saw when I was young were the silent horror films. Just because they were so odd and out-of-the ordinary, they had that extra scare factor. Do you wonder how and why those weird silent horror films ...

I love to read about local ghost stories and haunted places in our area, especially around Halloween. I was always fascinated by the historical facts and by the paranormal side to those stories. From local legends like Gravity Hill in Titusville to the Jersey Devil, New Jersey has a lot of spooky lore to sink your teeth into. Check out some of what our branches have on the topics of New Jersey’s haunted places, ghost stories and all things paranormal! Haunted New Jersey: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Garden State by Patricia A. Martinelli Phantom pirates, water monsters, and mythical snakes figure prominently in this collection of eerie tales from the Garden State. From this state's bucolic, rolling farmland to its heavily populated shore come a variety of stories and legends. The Big Book of New Jersey Ghost Stories   by Patricia A. Martinelli Reader, beware! Turn these pages and enter the world of the paranormal, where ghosts and ghouls alike ...