A Scare A Day Reading Challenge
Romancing the Gothic founder and organiser, Dr Sam Hirst, is back for another month of A Scare A Day. Dr Hirst curates a daily reading list, and the challenge is to read the story or poem for that day and post your thoughts on social media using the tag #AScareADay (not #ScareADay – don’t forget the ‘A’ at the start like I always do!)
Last year, I posted a creative response to each story or poem featured in the challenge, and turned them into Season 05 of Eldritch Girl, where I talked about the stories and poems, and read my fiction/non-fiction piece inspired by the daily read.
This year, I’m pairing the challenge with #100HorrorMoviesIn92Days so I’m going to be suggesting a film pairing to go with the story/poem, the way I do for my book reviews over on Divination Hollow.
The challenge list is posted on RomancingTheGothic.com, and below. To thank Sam for this service, you can leave them a tip on Ko-Fi!
The “A Scare A Day” Daily Reading List 2026
October 1st – Joanna Baillie – Night Tales of Other Times – 1790 – Read it here
October 2nd – Nikolai Karamzin – The Island of Bornholm – 1794 – Read it here
October 3rd – Anne Bannerman – The Black Knight of the Water – 1802 – Read it here
October 4th – William Harrison Ainsworth – The Spectre Bride – 1821 – Read it here
October 5th – Charles Pigault-Lebrun – ‘The Unholy Compact Abjured’ – 1825 – Read it here
October 6th – Mary Elizabeth Braddon – ‘The Cold Embrace’ (1860) – Read it here
October 7th – Amelia Edwards – ‘In the Confessional’ (1871) – Read it here
October 8th – Elizabeth Stuart Phelps – ‘Since I Died’ (1873) – Read it here
October 9th – Mary Elizabeth Coleridge – ‘The Witch’ (1893) – Read it here
October 10th – Arthur Machen – ‘The Novel of the White Powder’ (1895) – Read it here
October 11th – Gertrude Atherton – ‘The Striding Place’ (1896) – Read it here
October 12th – Elia W. Peattie – ‘From the Loom of the Dead’ (1898) – Read it here
October 13th – Mrs Wilson Woodrow – ‘Secret Chambers’ (1909) – Read it here
October 14th – W W Jacobs – The Well (1911) – Read it here
October 15th – Violet Hunt – ‘The Prayer’ (1911) – Read it here
October 16th – Rabindranath Tagore – ‘The Lost Jewels’ or Monihara (1917) – Read it here
October 17th – Ellen Glasgow – ‘The Past’ (1920) – Read it here
October 18th – Mikhail Bulgakov – ‘The Red Crown’ (1922) – Read it here
October 19th – John Masefield – ‘The Haunted’ (1923) – Read it here
October 20th – Elsa Morante – The Secret game (1941) – Read it here
October 21st – Dorothy Quick – ‘After an Air Raid’ (1943) – Read it here
October 22nd – Mayra Montero – ‘Corinne, Amiable Girl’ (1991) – Read it here
October 23rd – Ahmed Khaled Tawfik – ‘The Wall’ – Read it here
October 24th – Mariana Enríquez – ‘The Little Angel’s Exhumation’ (2014) – Read it here
October 25th – A. C. Wise – ‘The Stories We Tell About Ghosts’ (2017) – Read it here
October 26th – Brandon O’Brien – ‘The Lagahoo Speaks For Itself’ (2017) – Read it here
October 27th – Darcie Little Badger – ‘Those Hitch-hiking Kids’ (2023) – Read it here
October 28th – Tyler Sookralli – ‘The Devil Wears Skin’ (2024) – Read it here
October 29th – Eleanna Castroianni – ‘They Return’ (2025) – Read it here
October 30th – Ash Vale – ‘consumed’ (2026) – Read it here
October 31st – Quincy Lee – ‘The Dark Follows Me’ (2026) – Read it here
A Scare A Day: Day 14
Day 14: “The Well” by W. W. Jacobs (1911). Read it here.
This is one of the tales in The Lady of the Barge and Other Stories, Book 4, which is linked above and available via Project Gutenberg. It has the original gorgeous artwork.
William Wymark Jacobs was an English author and dramatist best known for his story The Monkey’s Paw, which can also be found in the collection The Lady of the Barge and Other Stories. That short story has had numerous direct film adaptions, and has influenced many other works. See: Letterboxd List, Films Based On Or Inspired By The Monkey’s Paw.
This story, however, isn’t that one, and is a bit less memorable, but I love the character dynamics and the pre-War bright young things at each other’s throats, and Olive seems a lovely girl. Too good for Benson, for sure. However – the plot itself is dull, and it isn’t doing anything fun or different with the ‘be sure your sins will find you out’ motif.
A Scare A Day: Plot Summary
Benson wants to marry the lovely Olive, who would drop him in a heartbeat (good on her) if she discovered he was trash. Spoiler alert: he is trash, and his hard-up mate has the letters to prove it, which he will return for a fee.
Benson doesn’t like being blackmailed, so he kills his friend and chucks him down the well in the park. Olive drops her bracelet in the well, and thinks she hears something down there. Benson says he will get it back for her, and the next day gets lowered down by a couple of hardy lads on a rope.
When they struggle to pull him up, they realise it’s because they are heaving up a corpse – and they get such a fright they don’t see the living Benson carrying said corpse, also attached to the rope, and the rope is released, causing both men to plummet back down the well. The final line implies that’s the end of Benson, and the corpse is, of course, the blackmailing friend.
A Scare A Day: Film Pairing
To be honest, it’s hard to find a film quite as dull as this story in terms of the plot/premise, so I’m going with an absolute masterpiece – some might say – involving a well in which dead bodies are thrown. There lies the only similarity with today’s story, in fact.
The Well (2023) dir. Federico Zampaglione, written by Federico Zampaglione and Stefano Masi, is an English-language Italian Gothic gorefest, in which they took the Italian folklore around cannibal witches and demons and went full Argento with it.
There is no blackmail or disgruntled young men, but there is a medieval painting, a legend, a curse, and a lot of people getting thrown down a well and fed to the demon trapped inside it. I think that’s a bit more exciting.
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