The House on Loon Lake and Other Halloween-Adjacent Tales

That chill in the morning air that says, “Fall is here!” is the reason I will never permanently relocate to Florida or southern California. I NEED four seasons. I crave cool mornings and sweatshirts and warm cinnamon toast and gourds.

<pause to let the word “gourds” swirl around in my head for a minute>

In the spirit of fall and Halloween coming up soon, please listen to this episode of This American Life: The House on Loon Lake about a mysterious abandoned house and a group of teenage boys who discovered it. This was definitely one of my childhood fantasies. (Honestly, I’d still love to find an intact abandoned house from decades ago!) I would say this episode is appropriate to listen to with kids 10 and up, and it’s free to stream or download.

I also recommend the Netflix series, “The Haunting of Hill House.” I don’t “do” horror movies but I love suspense. For me, this series evoked the same feelings I got reading Stephen King books at night in my basement bedroom as a teenager: all the suspense, all the chills, but none of the nightmares I get from watching true crime and anything crime- and gore-adjacent. Typically I can’t watch anything in which children are in peril, but in this series the action is in flashbacks from the kids as adults so I knew they were “okay” at the outset. This show is rated TV-MA.

A deliciously suspenseful movie in the alien/monster genre is A Quiet Place with John Krasinski and Emily Blunt. I was skeptical that a movie about people being really quiet could be much of a thing, but I was wrong. Technically, this doesn’t have anything to do with Halloween spookiness, but it’s my blog so I’m including it. This movie is rated PG-13. It’s available at Redbox, streaming on Amazon Prime Video and probably at your library.

Feel free to comment on your creepy, suspenseful, fall- and Halloween-adjacent recommendations!

What I’m reading: City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert.

What I’m listening to: The Happiness Lab podcast by Dr. Laurie Santos.

More posts about fall weather:

Fall Weather Arrives, Easing Pressure to Make “Good Use” of Sunny Days

Colorado Fall Color – Caribou Ranch Open Space

Finding Aspen Gold in Colorado 2019 (Spoiler Alert: It’s Not Here Yet!)

Photo by Rikki Austin on Unsplash