NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Horror takes center stage in this week's WCBS Author Talks podcast.
In "The Remaking," a ghost story is told over and over again with horrifying results. Author Clay McLeod Chapman says the real life ghost story of the Little Witch Girl from Pilot's Knob, Kentucky inspired his spooky tale.
"She and her mother were accused of witchcraft," Chapman said. "They were burned at the stake. Mom was buried out in the woods, but they were much more afraid of the little girl, so they buried her in consecrated ground in a church cemetery; wrapped her up in a steel, reinforced coffin, six feet of concrete, poured gravel and then they put a metal fence of crucifixes around her grave."
He says you can visit the little witch girl's grave, but beware.
"The story is if you go at midnight, you can see the Little Witch Girl of Pilot's Knob wandering along her grave, but just don't take her hand because she'll pull you underground with her."
It's that story that inspires the 70's horror flick, 90s remake and true-crime podcast in Chapman's book.
In his debut novel "A Cosmology of Monsters," author Shaun Hamill writes about a monster that stalks a family that runs a haunted house. Hamill says he always wanted to write a big sprawling family novel ala Meg Wolitzer or John Irving, but he didn't have a hook.
He says that changed when he was walking his dog.
"I wanted to do it about a family running a business and I always loved haunted houses and I was walking my dog and finally those two ideas [the haunted house and the family novel> collided," he says.
He also says the book didn't start out as a horror novel, but that when he started writing, the monster aspect of his story just flowed.
Other Horror Books to Check out this Halloween:
