100 Fun Facts About Halloween Book

What is the subtitle of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was the full title: Shelley began it at 18, and the first edition appeared anonymously in London on 1 January 1818.

At whose villa on Lake Geneva did the 1816 ghost-story contest that produced Frankenstein take place?

Lord Byron's rented Villa Diodati hosted the contest: the rainy 'Year Without a Summer' of 1816 kept Byron, Polidori and the Shelleys indoors, and Mary Shelley's entry grew into Frankenstein.

In what year was Bram Stoker's Dracula first published?

Dracula was published in London by Archibald Constable in May 1897; Stoker had worked on it for about seven years, filling over a hundred pages of notes on folklore and history.

Which English seaside town does Dracula plague after arriving from Transylvania?

Whitby: the Count's ship runs aground below the abbey during a storm and he leaps ashore as a great dog. Stoker holidayed in the North Yorkshire town in 1890 and found the name Dracula in its library.

What is the profession of Jonathan Harker, whose visit to the Count opens Dracula?

Harker is a solicitor: he has just passed his examinations when his employer Peter Hawkins sends him to Transylvania to complete the Count's purchase of Carfax, an estate near Purfleet.

In which collection did Washington Irving publish The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 1820?

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., issued in instalments in 1819-20, contained it alongside 'Rip Van Winkle'; Irving wrote the story while living in Birmingham, England.

What is found near the bridge the morning after Ichabod Crane vanishes?

The pumpkin hints that Ichabod's rival, who marries Katrina soon after, may have staged the whole thing.

What is the name of Ichabod Crane's rival for Katrina Van Tassel?

Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt torments the nervous schoolmaster with pranks rather than confronting him.

The raven in Poe's poem perches on a bust of which goddess?

The raven settles on 'a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door'; Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom, sets off the bird's one word, 'Nevermore', that torments the narrator mourning Lenore.

Which Charles Dickens novel, with a talking raven, partly inspired Poe's "The Raven"?

Barnaby Rudge (1841) features Grip, a talking raven; Poe reviewed the novel and wished the bird had been used more prophetically. He also borrowed the metre of Elizabeth Barrett's 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship'.

In which year was "The Raven" first published under Poe's name?

1845: the New York Evening Mirror printed 'The Raven' under Poe's name on 29 January 1845, ahead of the American Review's pseudonymous 'Quarles' printing; it made him famous but paid about nine dollars.

What was the title of the first Goosebumps book, published in July 1992?

Welcome to Dead House, in which Amanda and Josh Benson move to the town of Dark Falls and find the neighbours are living dead, launched Goosebumps in July 1992.

How many books were published in the original Goosebumps series between 1992 and 1997?

62: the original run opened in July 1992 and closed with number 62, Monster Blood IV, in December 1997; Stine then moved to spin-offs such as Series 2000, HorrorLand and SlappyWorld.

Which actor plays a fictionalised R. L. Stine in the 2015 film Goosebumps?

Jack Black plays a fictionalised R. L. Stine in Goosebumps (2015), whose monsters escape from his locked manuscripts; he also voices the dummy Slappy and returned for Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018).

Who wrote the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books?

Alvin Schwartz wrote the three collections (1981-1991) from folklore and urban legends; Stephen Gammell illustrated them, and his nightmarish art was briefly replaced in 2011, to fan outrage.

Per the American Library Association, what distinction did Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark hold in the 1990s?

Most challenged book series: the ALA ranked Scary Stories first on its list of most challenged books of 1990-1999, citing violence and disturbing content; it placed seventh on the 2000-2009 list.

Who wrote Room on the Broom, the picture book about a kind witch and her cat?

Julia Donaldson wrote Room on the Broom (2001), with Axel Scheffler's illustrations; the 2012 animated adaptation was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Which three animals join the witch and her cat on the broomstick in Room on the Broom?

A dog, a bird and a frog each return something the witch dropped (hat, bow and wand) and hitch a ride; when the broom snaps, they rise from a bog disguised as a monster to scare off a dragon.

In Roald Dahl's The Witches, what does the Grand High Witch plan to turn all of England's children into?

Mice: the Grand High Witch unveils Formula 86 Delayed-Action Mouse-Maker to turn every child in England into a mouse; the narrator, eavesdropping at a Bournemouth hotel, is transformed himself.

Who played the Grand High Witch in the 1990 film of The Witches?

Anjelica Huston played the Grand High Witch in Nicolas Roeg's 1990 film, the last feature Jim Henson worked on before his death; Anne Hathaway took the role in Robert Zemeckis's 2020 remake.

What does the Other Mother want to sew over Coraline's eyes?

Buttons: everyone in the world beyond the door has black buttons for eyes, and the Other Mother offers to sew a pair onto Coraline so she can stay forever. Gaiman began the novella in 1990 and published it in 2002.

Who directed the 2009 stop-motion film of Coraline?

Henry Selick, who had directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, wrote and directed the 2009 stop-motion Coraline for the studio Laika; the book itself had won the Hugo and Nebula for Best Novella in 2003.

What is the name of the boy raised by ghosts in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book?

Nobody Owens, called Bod, is adopted by the ghosts Mr and Mrs Owens after his family is murdered by the man Jack; his guardian Silas, neither living nor dead, brings him food from the world outside.

The Graveyard Book was the first book to win which two children's book medals?

Carnegie and Newbery: The Graveyard Book took the American Newbery Medal in January 2009 and the British Carnegie Medal in June 2010, the first book to win both; it also won the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novel.

What does Bunnicula, the rabbit in James and Deborah Howe's books, drain the juice from?

Vegetables: the Monroes keep finding tomatoes and other produce drained white with two tiny fang holes, which convinces Chester the cat that the rabbit is a vampire; Harold the dog narrates.

Which Bradbury novel follows eight boys and Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud through the history of Samhain?

The Halloween Tree (1972) grew from a 1967 screenplay Bradbury wrote for an unmade Chuck Jones film; Moundshroud whisks the boys from ancient Egypt to Mexico's Day of the Dead in search of their friend Pipkin.

On what date does the sinister carnival arrive in Green Town in Something Wicked This Way Comes?

October 24: Cooger and Dark's carnival train rolls into Green Town at three in the morning on 24 October, a week before Halloween, the day after a lightning-rod salesman warns Jim and Will of a storm.

Which Shakespeare play supplies the title Something Wicked This Way Comes?

Macbeth: the Second Witch says 'By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes' in Act 4, Scene 1, just before Macbeth enters to demand prophecies from the witches.

Which character's investigation of Jekyll's will drives Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

Gabriel John Utterson, a lawyer and Jekyll's friend, pursues the mystery of Hyde after learning Jekyll's will leaves everything to him; Stevenson was long fascinated by Deacon Brodie, an Edinburgh councillor with a secret life as a burglar.

Who wrote the 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House?

Shirley Jackson published The Haunting of Hill House in 1959; a National Book Award finalist, it was filmed as The Haunting in 1963 and 1999 and adapted as a Netflix series in 2018.

Which real Colorado resort inspired the Overlook in The Shining?

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park: King and his wife stayed there in October 1974 as it emptied for winter, sleeping in room 217; The Shining (1977) became his first hardcover bestseller.

Who rescued the first three pages of Carrie from the trash after Stephen King gave up on it?

His wife Tabitha fished the pages from the wastebasket and urged him to finish; Carrie, set in Chamberlain, Maine, appeared in 1974 with a 30,000-copy first printing and a $400,000 paperback sale.

In Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party, how is thirteen-year-old Joyce Reynolds killed?

Drowned in an apple-bobbing bucket: Joyce, who had boasted at the party of once witnessing a murder, is found head-down in the bucket; Christie dedicated the 1969 Poirot novel to P. G. Wodehouse.

Which 2023 film is loosely based on Hallowe'en Party?

A Haunting in Venice: Kenneth Branagh's third Poirot film moved the novel's children's-party murder to a seance in a Venetian palazzo in 1947, keeping Ariadne Oliver as the mystery writer who calls Poirot in.

Who wrote the 1902 short story "The Monkey's Paw"?

W. W. Jacobs, better known for comic tales of the London docks, published 'The Monkey's Paw' in Harper's Monthly in September 1902; Louis N. Parker's stage version followed in 1903.

How many wishes does the enchanted paw grant in "The Monkey's Paw"?

Three wishes for each of three owners: the Whites' first wish, for 200 pounds, arrives as compensation for their son's death at the factory; the fakir's spell punishes those who interfere with fate.

Which vampire tells his life story to a reporter in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire?

Louis de Pointe du Lac, a Louisiana plantation owner turned by Lestat in 1791, tells his story to a young reporter in San Francisco; Rice wrote the 1976 debut after her daughter Michele's death, the inspiration for Claudia.

Who wrote Rosemary's Baby, the best-selling horror novel of the 1960s?

Ira Levin published Rosemary's Baby in 1967; it sold over four million copies, and Roman Polanski's 1968 film starred Mia Farrow. Levin later wrote The Stepford Wives and The Boys from Brazil.

What is the name of the Gothic Revival New York apartment building in Rosemary's Baby?

The Bramford, modelled on the Dakota where the 1968 film was shot; the Woodhouses' friend Hutch warns them of its history: the witch Adrian Marcato and the child-eating Trench sisters lived there.

William Peter Blatty heard of the 1949 possession case behind The Exorcist while at which university?

That is why the 1971 novel is set in Washington, D.C., near the Georgetown campus.

Meg and Mog, the picture books about a witch whose spells go wrong, were illustrated by whom?

Jan Pieńkowski, the Polish-born artist, drew Meg, Mog and Owl in bold flat colours for Helen Nicoll's texts; the first book appeared in January 1972.

Henry James's ghost story The Turn of the Screw was first serialised in which magazine in 1898?

Collier's Weekly ran The Turn of the Screw in twelve instalments from January to April 1898; critics have argued since Edmund Wilson's 1934 essay over whether the governess imagines the ghosts.

The Picture of Dorian Gray first appeared in the July 1890 issue of which periodical?

Lippincott's Monthly Magazine printed the 13-chapter version in July 1890, after its editor J. M. Stoddart commissioned it over a London dinner with Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle; the 20-chapter book followed in 1891.

The Nightmare Before Christmas began as a poem written by Tim Burton in which year?

1982: Burton wrote the three-page poem while an animator at Walt Disney Productions, hoping to adapt it as a TV special narrated by Vincent Price; the stop-motion film finally arrived in 1993.

Which of these prizes did Stephen King's It win in 1987?

British Fantasy Award: It took the 1987 award (the August Derleth Award) for best novel; it was also the best-selling hardcover fiction title in the US in 1986 and was nominated for the Locus and World Fantasy awards.

Which fairy tale came to Stephen King's mind on a bridge, seeding the idea for It?

Three Billy Goats Gruff: crossing a wooden bridge in Boulder, Colorado, in 1978, King thought of the troll beneath it and of a monster under a whole town; he twisted Marianne Moore's line into 'real trolls in imaginary gardens'.

Beside which Maine town's busy road was King renting a house when he conceived Pet Sematary?

Orrington: in 1978-79, while writer-in-residence at the University of Maine in Orono, King rented a house on Route 15 in Orrington, where trucks killed pets and a children's pet cemetery in the woods inspired the novel.

What is the name of the cat in Pet Sematary, belonging to the Creeds' daughter Ellie?

Winston Churchill, Church for short, is hit by a truck while Ellie is away, and Jud Crandall leads Louis to the old Micmac burial ground beyond the pet cemetery; the cat comes back changed.

Whose 1783 Legends of Rübezahl is seen as an influential source for the Headless Horseman?

Bürger's Der Wilde Jäger and Burns's Tam o' Shanter are other cited forerunners of Irving's tale.

In what year was Alice Hoffman's novel Practical Magic published?

1995: Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic follows the orphaned Owens sisters Sally and Gillian, raised by their aunts in Massachusetts; the 1998 film starred Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, and Hoffman later wrote prequels.

Which vampire novella, set in Styria, predates Dracula by 25 years?

Carmilla (1872) by Sheridan Le Fanu: its narrator Laura is slowly preyed upon by a house guest who is really the long-dead Countess Mircalla Karnstein, 'Carmilla' being an anagram of Mircalla.

Who wrote The Vampyre (1819), featuring the aristocratic vampire Lord Ruthven?

John Polidori, Byron's personal physician, spun The Vampyre from a fragment Byron abandoned during the 1816 ghost-story contest; it appeared in the New Monthly Magazine in April 1819, at first misattributed to Byron.

Which 1764 novel by Horace Walpole is considered the first Gothic novel?

The Castle of Otranto: Walpole's first edition of 1764 posed as a translation of a 1529 Italian manuscript found in a Catholic family's library; he admitted authorship in the 1765 second edition, subtitled 'A Gothic Story'.

Which Jane Austen novel satirises Gothic fiction through heroine Catherine Morland?

Northanger Abbey, written around 1798-99 and published posthumously in December 1817, has Catherine Morland imagining Gothic horrors at the Tilneys' abbey; the seven 'horrid novels' Isabella recommends were all real titles.

The Phantom of the Opera is set in which real Paris opera house?

The Palais Garnier, opened in 1875: Leroux drew on a real accident there in May 1896, when a chandelier counterweight crashed into the auditorium and killed one person, and on the water cistern beneath its foundations.

Robert Bloch's Psycho was shaped by the 1957 arrest of which Wisconsin killer?

Ed Gein, arrested in Plainfield, Wisconsin, in November 1957; Bloch was living about 35 miles away in Weyauwega and said he was startled by how closely his invented Norman Bates matched the real man.

Emeric Belasco's haunted Maine mansion is the setting of which 1971 Matheson novel?

Hell House: physicist Lionel Barrett, his wife and two mediums are paid by dying millionaire Rolf Deutsch to spend a week in the Belasco House proving whether life continues after death; the 1973 film was The Legend of Hell House.

Who wrote the 1977 book The Amityville Horror?

Jay Anson's 1977 book told the Lutz family's claim that they fled 112 Ocean Avenue after 28 days; William Weber, the DeFeo defence lawyer, later said the story was invented with the Lutzes over many bottles of wine.

In 'Salem's Lot, which ancient vampire buys the Marsten House?

Kurt Barlow, with his human partner Richard Straker fronting as an antiques dealer, buys the Marsten House and turns the town; King has said the 1975 novel is his own favourite of his books.

In Misery, who is Paul Sheldon's self-proclaimed 'number-one fan'?

Annie Wilkes, a former nurse, holds the injured novelist captive in her Colorado farmhouse and forces him to resurrect her beloved Misery Chastain; King dreamed up the character on a flight and nearly published the 1987 book as Richard Bachman.

Cujo, the rabid dog in Stephen King's 1981 novel, is what breed?

Saint Bernard: Cujo, the Camber family's Saint Bernard, is bitten by a rabid bat and traps Donna Trenton and her son in a stalled Ford Pinto; King has said he barely remembers writing the book.

Stephen King's Christine is a possessed car of which make and year?

A 1958 Plymouth Fury, red and white, bought by teenager Arnie Cunningham from the sinister Roland LeBay; King got the idea imagining an odometer that ran backwards, making the car younger.

Doctor Sleep, the 2013 sequel to The Shining, features which group of psychic nomads?

The True Knot, led by Rose the Hat, travel America in RVs and feed on 'steam', the essence released when children with the shining die in pain; grown-up Dan Torrance helps Abra Stone fight them.

Where does Arthur Kipps settle the Drablow estate in The Woman in Black?

Eel Marsh House, reached only by the Nine Lives Causeway at low tide, where Kipps sorts the papers of the late Alice Drablow; Susan Hill's 1983 novel became a London stage play that ran from 1989 to 2023.

Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart introduced which demonic beings?

The Cenobites, summoned by solving the Lemarchand puzzle box, are 'theologians of the Order of the Gash' who cannot tell pleasure from pain; their lead figure, unnamed in the 1986 novella, became Pinhead on the Hellraiser set.

'The Call of Cthulhu' first appeared in 1928 in which pulp magazine?

Weird Tales printed 'The Call of Cthulhu' in its February 1928 issue, after editor Farnsworth Wright had first rejected it; Lovecraft wrote the story in the summer of 1926.

In Lovecraft's story, Cthulhu rises from which 'nightmare corpse-city'?

R'lyeh, the sunken 'nightmare corpse-city' in the South Pacific where dead Cthulhu lies dreaming; the narrator traces its brief rising to a 1925 Sydney Bulletin report on the derelict yacht Alert and its lone survivor.

Which American family moves into the haunted castle in Wilde's The Canterville Ghost?

The Otises: American minister Hiram B. Otis buys Canterville Chase despite warnings, and when the ghost rattles his chains, Otis hands him Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator to oil them; his daughter Virginia later frees the ghost.

Which family is cursed by the executed Matthew Maule in The House of the Seven Gables?

The Pyncheons: Colonel Pyncheon has Matthew Maule hanged for witchcraft to seize his land, and Maule's curse, 'God will give him blood to drink', dogs the family for generations; Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll's gabled Salem house inspired the setting.

In Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown', what is the name of Brown's wife?

Faith, whose pink ribbons Brown sees fluttering down from the sky on his way to the witches' meeting in the forest outside Salem Village; the name doubles as the faith he loses that night.

John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick is set in which US state?

Rhode Island: Eastwick is a fictional coastal town there, where the divorcees Alexandra, Jane and Sukie discover their powers and meet the devilish Darryl Van Horne; Updike's 2008 sequel was The Widows of Eastwick.

In Gregory Maguire's Wicked, what is the Wicked Witch of the West's given name?

Elphaba, coined from the initials L-F-B of L. Frank Baum; the green-skinned girl from Munchkinland is born in the 1995 novel, which became the Broadway musical Wicked in 2003.

Mildred Hubble of The Worst Witch attends which school?

Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, where Mildred rides her broomstick badly and her tabby cat refuses to sit on it; Jill Murphy wrote the book in her teens, and Allison & Busby published it in 1974.

Who illustrated John Bellairs's The House with a Clock in Its Walls (1973)?

Edward Gorey supplied the cover and interior drawings for the 1973 novel, in which orphan Lewis Barnavelt moves in with his warlock uncle Jonathan, whose house hides a doomsday clock left by the dead sorcerer Isaac Izard.

In 'The Green Ribbon', what happens when Jenny's husband finally unties her ribbon?

Her head falls off: Jenny wears the green ribbon all her life and refuses to say why; on her deathbed she lets Alfred untie it. The tale is one of seven in the 1984 reader In a Dark, Dark Room.

Creepy Carrots!, about Jasper Rabbit, earned illustrator Peter Brown which 2013 award?

Caldecott Honor: Peter Brown's noir-styled orange-and-black illustrations for Aaron Reynolds's text earned a 2013 Caldecott Honor; Jasper Rabbit fences and moats Crackenhopper Field to keep the carrots in, exactly what the carrots wanted.

In Dav Pilkey's The Hallo-Wiener, Oscar the dachshund wears what Halloween costume?

A hot dog bun: Oscar's mother makes him a giant bun costume and the other dogs mock him as the 'Hallo-Wiener', until he floats out to rescue them from a pond and they rename him 'Hero Sandwich'.

Erica Silverman's Big Pumpkin is loosely based on which Russian folktale?

The Gigantic Turnip (also The Enormous Turnip), the Russian tale in which a family and their animals pull together; in Big Pumpkin a witch, ghost, vampire and mummy each fail alone until a tiny bat suggests pulling together.

In Burns's Tam o' Shanter, what do the witches tear from Tam's mare Meg?

Meg loses it at the Brig o' Doon, since witches cannot cross running water.

In Tam o' Shanter, where does Tam see witches dancing as the Devil plays bagpipes?

Alloway Kirk, the ruined church beside Burns's birthplace, where Tam sees 'warlocks and witches in a dance' while the Devil, as a beast, plays the pipes; Burns wrote the poem in 1790 for Francis Grose's Antiquities of Scotland.

Burns's 1785 poem 'Halloween' first appeared in a 1786 edition named for which town?

Kilmarnock: 'Halloween' was among the Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect printed by John Wilson at Kilmarnock in July 1786, a first edition of 612 copies; at 28 stanzas it is one of Burns's longest poems.

In Twilight, Bella Swan moves from Phoenix to which rainy Washington town?

Forks, a logging town on Washington's Olympic Peninsula that Meyer chose for its record rainfall; Bella moves there to live with her father Charlie, the police chief, and meets Edward Cullen at Forks High School.

Let the Right One In is set in which Stockholm suburb?

Blackeberg, the western Stockholm suburb where Lindqvist himself grew up; twelve-year-old Oskar meets Eli there in the autumn of 1981. The 2004 novel takes its title from a Morrissey song, and the 2010 American film was Let Me In.

World War Z follows up which 2003 Max Brooks book, a fictional manual for the undead?

The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), Brooks's deadpan manual on outlasting the undead, preceded World War Z (2006), whose oral-history format he borrowed from Studs Terkel's The Good War.

In 'The Tell-Tale Heart', the narrator is obsessed with the old man's what?

His pale blue eye: the old man's filmed 'vulture eye' drives the narrator to kill him; after dismembering the body over a tub he hides it under the floorboards and is undone by a heartbeat only he can hear.

In 'The Cask of Amontillado', Montresor walls up Fortunato during what festivity?

Carnival: Montresor meets Fortunato 'during the supreme madness of the carnival season', dressed in motley with a jester's cap and bells, and lures him into the catacombs; the narrator tells the tale fifty years later.

How many colour-themed rooms host Prince Prospero's masquerade in Poe's story?

Seven rooms, running east to west from blue through purple, green, orange, white and violet to the black seventh chamber with blood-red windows, where an ebony clock stops the dancers every hour.

What is the name of the narrator's first black cat in Poe's 'The Black Cat'?

Pluto, the narrator's favourite until, in a drunken rage, he cuts out one of its eyes and later hangs it; the story ran in The Saturday Evening Post in August 1843, the same year as 'The Tell-Tale Heart'.

Which short story caused New Yorker readers to cancel subscriptions in summer 1948?

'The Lottery', the tale of a village stoning, ran in The New Yorker on 26 June 1948 and drew some three hundred letters that summer, several asking where such lotteries were held so the writers could go and watch.

In We Have Always Lived in the Castle, what poison killed the Blackwood family?

Arsenic, stirred into the sugar bowl six years before the story opens; Constance was tried and acquitted of the poisoning, and narrator Merricat survived because she had been sent to bed without dinner.

In Peter Straub's Ghost Story, four elderly men call their club what?

The Chowder Society: Ricky Hawthorne, Sears James, Lewis Benedikt and John Jaffrey meet in evening dress to tell ghost stories in snowbound Milburn, New York; the 1981 film starred Fred Astaire and Melvyn Douglas.

In Mexican Gothic, Noemí Taboada visits her cousin at which decaying mansion?

High Place, the Doyle family's mouldering mansion above the mining town of El Triunfo, where Noemí's cousin Catalina has written a frantic letter; Silvia Moreno-Garcia's 2020 novel won the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel.

In The Exorcist, Regan first talks to the demon through a Ouija-board entity called what?

Captain Howdy, the 'imaginary friend' Regan says answers her on the Ouija board, is the demon's first mask; Father Merrin has already met it as Pazuzu on a dig in northern Iraq before the novel reaches Washington.

Varney the Vampire (1845–47) was issued in what cheap weekly format?

Penny dreadfuls: Varney ran in 109 weekly penny instalments totalling 876 double-column pages, its author (probably James Malcolm Rymer) paid by the line; it gave Varney fangs and two puncture wounds fifty years before Dracula.

In The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Kit Tyler arrives in Puritan Connecticut from where?

Barbados: orphaned Kit Tyler sails from the island in 1687 to her aunt's Puritan household in Wethersfield; she is first suspected of witchcraft for diving in to rescue a child's doll, since respectable women could not swim.

Bradbury's 1955 collection The October Country reprints stories from which earlier book?

Dark Carnival, Bradbury's 1947 Arkham House debut, supplied fifteen of the nineteen stories in The October Country, several of them revised, with four newer stories added.

Which Sesame Street character begs readers not to turn the page in a 1971 Little Golden Book?

Grover: 'lovable, furry old Grover' begs the reader not to turn the page, builds brick walls and ties the pages down, only to discover that the monster at the end of the book is himself.

R. L. Stine's Fear Street books are set in which fictional town?

The street is named for the cursed Fear family, and the series had sold over 80 million copies by 2010.

At which university does Victor Frankenstein create his creature?

Ingolstadt, the Bavarian university where Victor studies under Krempe and Waldman after his mother dies of scarlet fever; he animates the creature there on a dreary November night and flees his rooms.

Dracula sails to England aboard which ship, carrying boxes of earth?

The Demeter, a Russian schooner out of Varna: its crew vanish one by one during the crossing, and it runs aground on the Yorkshire coast with its dead captain lashed to the wheel and fifty boxes of earth.