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 24
Day 24: “The Little Angel’s Exhumation” by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Joel Streicker (2014). Read it here.
The translation is easy to read. Enriquez often writes about children; dead children, ghostly children, tortured children, and childhood trauma carried into adulthood. I can see why, given the context of her work, and the way it’s written doesn’t upset me as viscerally as it does when I think about later.
This one is another rough read, but it’s also very sweet and very sad, and I quite enjoyed it. Trauma, grief, and the guilt of the past does not leave just because one acknowledges it. One must learn to live with it, once it arrives and reveals itself. It’s less about overcoming and forgetting, as it is about adaptation and acceptance.
A Scare A Day: Plot Summary
A girl digging holes in the back yard of her grandmother’s house unearths some bones, which turn out to be the remains of her grandmother’s baby sister, Angelita.
Later on, after the house is sold, Angelita appears as a revenant to the narrator, who is now an adult living in a different city. She cannot be free of this little ghost, who is rotting and walking and communicating beyond her three months of natural life, and has to take her around with her.
Angelita eventually communicates that she wants to go back to where her bones are buried. She sees the yard of the old house over the fence, and forgives the narrator for not rescuing her bones before selling the property. The narrator asks if Angelita will leave now; she shakes her head, and follows the narrator home as before.
A Scare A Day: Film Pairing
Today’s pick is an Argentinian Horror film, El cadáver insepulto/The Unburied (2020), dir. Alejandro Cohen Arazi, written by Alejandro Cohen Arazi. It’s another one where a corpse (unburied, in this case, rather than exhumed), is the catalyst for unearthing past trauma and upending the protagonist’s life.
Maximiliano is a psychiatrist who suffers from strange visions of his past. He grew up in an orphanage and then left for the big city. When his adoptive father dies, he goes back to his hometown where he will be reunited with his brothers and discover a dark family secret.
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