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 (trans. 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’ (1994) – 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 23
Day 23: “The Wall” by Ahmed Khaled Tawfik (2000s), translated by Noor Sahnoun (Noor Tarek) and Melissa Krawczyk (2017). Read it here.
This one is a banger – a new favourite has emerged from this year’s challenge! I love the structure and the slow reveal.
It is part of the collection Now I Understand, published posthumously in 2017 (Tawfik passed away in 2008). I dated this story to the 2000s as the story mentions New Zealand is “where the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed”, and the last part was released in 2003, but I couldn’t find an exact year for it.
The translation is really enjoyable to read.
A Scare A Day: Plot Summary
Mahmoud and his wife have rented a flat from Essam, who is away in New Zealand. The front room of it has a wall, which cuts the usable space in half, and behind which there are things in storage.
The story is a series of one-sided letters by Mahmoud to Essam, saying how his wife can’t bear the sounds and smells coming from behind it. Mahmoud assures Essam he smells bean soup but nothing dead – although he can hear movement as well.
The letters are broken by another letter to Essam, but this is from a woman with a different name, who claims to be the person who has rented the flat. The reader at first supposes this to be Mahmoud’s as yet unnamed wife. She is going to tear down the wall.
However, the next section is a magazine article relating that the woman tore down a wall in her flat to find the bodies of Mahmoud and his wife, whose odour overpowered even the smell of her bean soup she served to guests…
The final letter is once more from Mahmoud, now that he has understood the situation, and that he has not been writing letters after all. Mahmoud suggests he and his wife join Essam in New Zealand to rekindle their old friendship. The story ends on this ominous note.
A Scare A Day: Film Pairing
I haven’t been able to access a lot of Egyptian horror, but one haunted house story I have been able to watch is Ammar (2020) dir. Mahmoud Kamel, written by Ahmad El-Dahhan and Haytham El-Dahhan.
The events of the film revolve around an unfortunate family that arrives at the Al-Gharib palace, and the joy of the couple and their three sons in their new home soon dissipates after the house gradually begins to absorb them one by one into a terrifying world full of old crimes that occurred between its walls, or that the ill-fated walls were behind those crimes.
BONUS WATCHES
- The Night (2020) dir. Kourosh Ahari, written by Kourosh Ahari and Milad Jarmooz. An Iranian couple living in the US become trapped inside a hotel when insidious events force them to face the secrets that have come between them, in a night that never ends.
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