The Quick 10: 10 Unexpected Horror Writers

If you've been reading the Quick 10s for a while, you know that I have a fascination with horror movies and Halloween and all things creepy. So when I saw The Book of Lists: Horror, it seemed like a no-brainer to add it to my ever-growing collection of trivia books. Scary stuff plus lists?! C'mon! I'll no doubt share more of these lists as we get closer to Halloween (only 93 days, you know), but for now, here's one to tide you over at least until Fall gets here.

3. Truman Capote. Of course he wrote In Cold Blood, which was horrific due to the fact that those events actually occurred. But Capote also wrote horror fiction on at least one occasion. "Miriam" is a short story about a woman who is pestered by a little girl who shares her name. The girl keeps popping up at strange times, making larger and larger demands and eventually announces that she is moving in. There's no gore, but the story is more than a little chilling, nonetheless. It's another quick read if you're looking to kill some time.

4. F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you saw the recent movie with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett you might not consider The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to be scary, exactly. But the original short story definitely has some supernatural elements to it that make the reader stop and wonder exactly how Mr. Button got into his peculiar state.

5. Edith Wharton. She's usually known for her depressing tales, not her scary ones - The House and Mirth, Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence among them. But Wharton also had a taste for the macabre, which she revealed in several stories: "Afterwards," "The Triumph of the Night" and "The Ghost-Feeler" are just a few. What's more, Wharton believed in the supernatural and refused to sleep in a room with books of ghost stories and destroyed any that entered her house.

8. Paul Gallico. He was probably best known for the movie based on one his novels "“ The Poseidon Adventure, but he was quite a prolific man. I guess with 41 books, lots of short stories, twenty movies, twelve T.V. movies, and one T.V. series, it's probably not too shocking that at least one horror story slipped in. "The Terrible Story" is about a man who hates people, but loves his computer. I mean, loves his computer. As the HAL 9000 and T2 have taught us, it's best not to trust machines too much...

9. Raymond Chandler. As the man who brought us private eye Philip Marlowe, maybe it's not that much of a surprise that Chandler's "The Bronze Door" also involves an investigator, but unlike the Marlowe stories, this tale takes a supernatural twist: anyone who walks through the Bronze Door is never seen again.

10. Evelyn Waugh. You likely know him for 1945's Brideshead Revisited, one of Time magazine's 100 "All-Time" novels. "The Man Who Liked Dickens." I won't totally spoil the story for you, in case you want to check it out sometime, but it comes down to Dickens or death. It inspired Waugh's full-length tale A Handful of Dust.

Do you have a favorite chilling tale? Do share - I'm getting in the mood for the macabre!