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It is somehow more eerie to hear a person narrate the impending doom in a horror story than it is to read the same words on a page. Here are three stories sure to unsettle you this Halloween: a true crime narrative by the friend of a serial killer, a novel about a girl who learns she is a vampire and a classic horror tale by Stephen King.
THE STRANGER BESIDE ME
Written by Ann Rule
Read by Lorelei King
18 1/2 hours. Simon & Schuster.
Imagine learning that your co-worker is a dangerous sociopath who had raped, sodomized and killed dozens of women. Such was the case for Ann Rule, who learned that Ted Bundy, with whom she volunteered at a crisis center, answering phone calls from people on the verge of suicide, was responsible for a series of murders of young women across the country. When the mysterious disappearances began, Rule obtained a book contract to investigate them, eventually coming to suspect her friend, Ted, of the crimes. She turned his name in to the Seattle Police, but her tip did not immediately produce an arrest. Rule’s book provides a deeply reported account of Bundy’s crimes, as well as her own experience of knowing him and slowly realizing his true nature. Our reviewer called Rule’s book “as chilling as a bedroom window shattering at midnight.”
Listen on Audiobooks.com.
FLEDGLING
Written by Octavia E. Butler
Read by Tracey Leigh
12 hours and 17 minutes. Blackstone Audio, Inc.
In her last novel, Butler introduced Shori Matthews, who has the physical appearance of a 10-year-old girl but is, in fact, 53 years old and part of a species of vampire called the Ina. The book opens with Shori waking up in a cave, gravely injured and suffering from amnesia. She learns that assassins are pursuing her, and she soon discovers why: She is the result of a controversial genetic experiment that would allow the nocturnal Ina to withstand sunlight by providing these vampires with black skin. As this unfolds, Shori looks to satisfy her hunger for blood in scenes that, in narration, are vivid and disturbing. “Fledgling” is a descendant of “Dracula,” to be sure, but it also deals with themes of race, family and belonging.
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