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.
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 – Ella 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 01
Day 1: “Night Scenes of Other Times” by Joanna Baillie (1790). You can read this here (accessible version) or here, at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive.
If you prefer to sing your poetry, the meter is 8.6.8.6, so it will fit the 18thC hymn “All Hail The Power of Jesus’ Name” (try to the tune Miles Lane for a contemporary feel), or even easier, the tune for the popular carol O Little Town of Bethlehem (the tune is called Forest Green). The poem is VERY LONG, so if you’d like to musically torture yourself, your family, your neighbours, your cat, etc, go for it. Or, feel free to change tunes midstream and keep things interesting.
The source for this poem is Fugitive Verses. By Joanna Baillie, author of “Dramas on the Passions,“ etc. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXL., 1840, pp. [31]-52. (Page images digitized from a copy in the Bodleian Library [40.17].)
A Scare A Day: Plot Summary
The poem, in 3 parts, deals with Marg’ret (for the meter) and Edward, her murthered lover, whom Himself refers to as Deadward, because, well, he’s dead. Marg’a’ret also dies in a storm after seeing the ghost of her lover (Deadward, who is dead).
In Part II, Conrad, who murthdered Deadward for love of Ma’rg’a’ret, is haunted by said Deadward, who turns up, waves a knife around vaguely, glares at him, and fucks off. Conrad is doomed to be the most miserable man alive.
Part III takes us to M’a’rg’re’t’s dad in his lonely tower. He is either Old Arno (likely) or, as we read it, Old Amo, like the Aussie version of Amy, I guess. He finds out Magrat is also dead and so he lies down and dies. Men can die of the vapours too. It was the eighteenth century. The End.
A Scare A Day: Film Pairing
We need Atmosphere. Melodramatic deaths all over the show. A doomed love triangle. Scenery chewing of the highest order. Plus, ideally, ghosts.
Your opera pairing is obviously Carmen, in a double-bill with Rigoletto.
Film-wise, it has to be Italian Gothic, and I’ve gone for La vendetta di Lady Morgan/Lady Morgan’s Vengeance (1965) dir. Massimo Pupillo, written by Giovanni Grimaldi.
Lady Morgan (played by Barbara Nelli) believes her lover is dead. In fact, her new husband, Harold Morgan, has conspired to kill him, so that he can marry her for her money. He then leads her in a hypnotised state to her death by falling from the castle walls in the fog. Lady Morgan returns as a blood-drinking revenant (and yet, somehow, also incorporeal), and takes on her husband and his cronies with her new ghost powers.
It’s not quite the same as the poem, but it does have a pair of tragic lovers, and the evildoer getting his comeuppance after murdering someone. I think that works quite well.
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