Halloween is creeping closer

The days are growing shorter and the long shadows of winter are starting to stretch. While we may not see pumpkins on doorsteps yet there is still that unmistakable sense that Halloween is approaching. And what better way to prepare for the darker months than by reaching for stories that match the eerie mood: atmospheric, unsettling, and a bit scary.

Halloween at Bókin

In our recent search through the shelves, we’ve uncovered some true treasures from the pen of Henry James. One is the famous The Turn of the Screw (1898), a novella that has chilled readers for more than a century. A governess, two children, and a lonely estate create a story whose power lies in its ambiguity: is this a tale of genuine ghosts, or the slow unraveling of a fragile mind? The tension proved so enduring that Benjamin Britten later transformed it into a haunting opera, carrying James’s eerie uncertainty from the page to the stage.

In the very same collection, though, is another remarkable James tale: Owen Wingrave. Britten also set this one to music, but here the theme is not only ghosts, but pacifism. Owen is a young man from a proud military family who refuses to fight — a choice that brings him ridicule, alienation, and ultimately a hauntingly fate. It is a not only a ghost story but also one that asks uncomfortable questions about courage, tradition, and the price of peace. In times like ours, when the world feels ever more fragile, its message of resistance to violence feels deeply needed.

Together, these two stories, one gothic and spectral, the other moral and defiant, remind us of the many shapes a haunting can take. Sometimes it is a figure in the shadows; sometimes it is the weight of history and expectation pressing against one’s conscience.

So as Halloween and the long Icelandic nights draw near, perhaps skip the horror films once or twice and open the covers of Henry James or other Ghost stories instead.