Dreams & Swords
October 2006 issue
Dreams & Swords
All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
- Amy Lowell (Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds)
Past issues of the Dreams & Swords column may be found here.
A Huntingdon Halloween:
"In a period when the heavy iron gates were locked every Sunday afternoon and when the Literary Digest could ask faculties, 'What are the causes of and remedies for the evils of modern dance?' the president, the faculty, and even the trustees felt a certain responsibility for making their own contributions to the girls' restricted social life. … The faculty as a whole, usually under the direction of Miss Lily Byron Gill, provided an exciting entertainment each fall in its Halloween party for the students. This party was first given in the fall of 1917. The usual procedure was to escort the students, who were both giggling and quaking, down to the darkened swimming pool, filled with bedsprings for the occasion. After a period in the "torture chamber" the faculty led their victims to the chapel, where they threw off their disguises as witches and ghosts and gave a vaudeville that the students always applauded hysterically. In the twenties the setting for the party was moved to the 'gym' in Massey."
(from History of Huntingdon College, 1854-1954 by Rhoda Coleman Ellison, University of Alabama Press, 1954.)
So, Halloween celebrations at Huntingdon are nothing new it seems. And were you aware that the basement of Flowers once held a swimming pool? (We have pictures of it in the archives.)
The Library won't be installing a torture chamber for its Halloween observance, though the sealed off old basement can make one conjure a myriad of gruesome possibilities …
But to help get you in the spirit of things, our resident library ghost, Frank, would like to offer a few suggestions for your holiday reading and viewing pleasure, and remind you first-year students of the Library's FYE Halloween dinner. This year's event is scheduled for Friday evening, October 27. Invitations will be going out in a couple of weeks. Now for Frank's recommendations:
Female of the Species : Tales of Mystery and Suspense and Haunted : Tales of the Grotesque both by Joyce Carol Oates.
Essential Dracula : Including the Complete Novel by Bram Stoker, written and edited by Leonard Wolf.
The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty.
Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus, by Mary W. Shelley.
Ghost Story, by Peter Straub.
Interview with the Vampire: a Novel, by Anne Rice.
Jaws, by Peter Benchley.
Salem's Lot, by Stephen King.
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux.
The Historian : a Novel, by Elizabeth Kostova.
Blood Thirst: 100 Years of Vampire Fiction, edited and with an introduction by Leonard Wolf.
Doubles, Dummies, and Dolls: 21 Terror Tales of Replication, edited by Leonard Wolf.
Norton Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Brad Leithauser.
Book of Were-wolves: Being an Account of a Terrible Superstition, by Sabine Baring-Gould.
Death Makes a Holiday: a Cultural History of Halloween, by David J. Skal.
For a more visually induced horrorfest, there are many classic films of the 20th century in the library collection - Dracula, The Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein, The Fog, Vincent Price films, Alfred Hitchcock (including his television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents), of course The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and then those that are so bad they're good such as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
And Frank's good friend the Red Lady would never forgive him if he didn't mention her personal favorite 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey, by Kathryn Tucker Windham and Margaret Gillis Figh.
Now … what's that creak you just heard???
Eric A. Kidwell
Director of the Library