ArcadópolisBooks for the Day of the Dead and Halloween
At the end of October and the start of November, two ways of looking at death meet. In Mexico and much of Latin America, the Day of the Dead welcomes the departed with altars, marigolds and sugar skulls; Spain remembers its dead on All Saints’ Day; in the United States and Britain, Halloween fills up with costumes, pumpkins and ghost stories.
These books are made for those nights. The one most tied to them is Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla: for more than a century it has been staged every year at this time, and its second part takes place in a pantheon where the statues of the dead come back to life. Two centuries earlier, Tirso de Molina had already sat Don Juan down at a dead man’s table in El burlador de Sevilla, and Espronceda, in El estudiante de Salamanca, made Don Félix de Montemar watch his own funeral go by. Bécquer brings the legends in Spanish, with skulls, knights and apparitions, and, in his Cartas desde mi celda, the witches of Trasmoz; Quevedo, in his Sueños, visits the Last Judgment and Death herself; Alarcón, a mystery that begins with a skull in a cemetery; and Jorge Manrique, the most beautiful poem about death ever written in Spanish.
In English there are the horror classics: Edgar Allan Poe’s tales and poems, the legend of Sleepy Hollow’s Headless Horseman, the ghosts of Ambrose Bierce and Henry James, Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s creature.
Where to start: for something short, try The Turn of the Screw or any of Poe’s tales; for the tradition, Don Juan Tenorio (in Spanish); for a long, dark read, Dracula. All of them are in the public domain: read them free right here or download them as PDF or EPUB.
The 20 books
Don Juan Tenorio
José Zorrilla · Spanish
The play staged every year at this time: a wager, a novice, a pantheon full of statues and a supper with a dead man. In Spanish.
Rimas y leyendas
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer · Spanish
All the rhymes and all the legends, with “El monte de las ánimas”, set on the Night of the Dead, “El Cristo de la calavera” and “Los ojos verdes”. In Spanish.
El clavo
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón · Spanish
A judge and his friend walk through a cemetery and find a skull pierced by an iron nail. So the investigation begins. In Spanish.
Coplas por la muerte de su padre
Jorge Manrique · Spanish
The great Spanish poem about death: Jorge Manrique mourns his father and asks what remains of glory and wealth. In Spanish.
El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra
Tirso de Molina · Spanish
The play of the stone guest: Don Juan Tenorio mocks the tomb of Don Gonzalo de Ulloa, the man he killed, and invites him to supper. The dead man comes. In Spanish.
El estudiante de Salamanca
José de Espronceda · Spanish
Don Félix de Montemar, a “second Don Juan Tenorio”, follows a lady in white through Salamanca, sees his own funeral pass and meets a bride who is a skull. In Spanish.
El capitán Montoya
José Zorrilla · Spanish
Captain Don César de Montoya slips into a convent at night for Doña Inés de Alvarado and finds his own funeral under way in the church. In Spanish.
Noches lúgubres
José Cadalso · Spanish
On a stormy night, Tediato pays Lorenzo, the church gravedigger, to help him open a tomb: that of the woman he loved. In Spanish.
Sueños y discursos
Francisco de Quevedo · Spanish
Five satirical dreams and discourses: the dead rise for the Last Judgment, a devil speaks through a constable and Death herself takes the narrator to visit the departed. In Spanish.
Narraciones inverosímiles
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón · Spanish
With “El amigo de la muerte”, where Death makes the cobbler Gil Gil a doctor, and “La mujer alta”, the old woman with a fan who stalks an engineer through Madrid. In Spanish.
Cartas desde mi celda
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer · Spanish
From the monastery of Veruela, Bécquer tells in three letters of the death of la tía Casca, accused of witchcraft, and the story of the witches of Trasmoz and their castle. In Spanish.
Historias y cuentos de Galicia
Emilia Pardo Bazán · Spanish
It opens with “Un destripador de antaño”, the Galician legend of a killer “half sage and half sorcerer”, and includes “Planta montés”, where a howling dog foretells a death. In Spanish.
Historia de los siete murciélagos
Manuel Fernández y González · Spanish
In King Al-Hhamar’s Granada, Betsabé, a young woman with bat’s wings, drinks the blood of Prince Juzef and turns her sisters, three bats, back into women. In Spanish.
Short Fiction
Edgar Allan Poe
Poe’s tales: “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, “The Oval Portrait” and many more.
The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
Washington Irving
Washington Irving’s book with “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, home of the Headless Horseman, and “Rip Van Winkle”.
Can Such Things Be?
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce’s ghost stories, such as “The Death of Halpin Frayser” and “The Moonlit Road”.
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
A governess looks after two children in an English country house and begins to see two people who are already dead.
Dracula
Bram Stoker
The novel of the count who travels from Transylvania to England, told in letters and diaries.
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
A young scientist brings to life a being made from parts of corpses and flees from his creation.
Common questions
Why is Don Juan Tenorio read on the Day of the Dead?
Because for more than a century it has been a tradition in Spain and Mexico to stage it every year around All Saints’ Day and the Day of the Dead, and much of the play takes place in a pantheon with statues, ghosts and the dead returning.
Which classic horror book can I read in one night?
In this collection, The Turn of the Screw, any of Poe’s tales, Bierce’s ghost stories or, in Spanish, Alarcón’s El clavo, Cadalso’s Noches lúgubres and Bécquer’s legends.
Can I download these books for free?
Yes. They are all in the public domain and can be downloaded free, with no sign-up, as PDF or EPUB from each book’s page.