Black October
Horror, folklore, and downright spooky tales rooted in the Black diaspora; where traditional storytelling meets history, hoodoo, and healing
My Story:
Growing up, my mother said we lived with a ghost.
Before you ask —
No, I was not scared because I don’t think I was completely conscious of the idea until I became older. The ghost had never bothered me.
Her favorite place, the ghost, must have been the kitchen. My mother would say a saucer was missing, a knife, a spoon; then laugh heartily when they would ‘reappear’. She would say “so, you decided to bring it back huh!”
How can anyone be that comfortable with a ghost?
Well, my day would come when I was listening to my stereo.
I had the music on blast and my mother told me to turn it down. I ignored her. She said it again. I thought about complying to her request, but the music sounded too good.
Then, right before my eyes, the numbers on the small screen indicating the volume were going down; at the same time the button nozzle began to turn left. I sat on my bed in disbelief.
So ever since then — I believed.
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The book features twelve imaginative stories set in Lagos, Nigeria, exploring themes of family, tradition, gender, and modernity through a blend of the everyday and the supernatural.
A haunting novel about a black woman who returns to her hometown for a plantation wedding and the horror that ensues as she reconnects with the blood-soaked history of the land and the best friends she left behind.
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan’s ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.
Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?
Liz Rocher is coming home . . . reluctantly. As a Black woman, Liz doesn’t exactly have fond memories of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white town. But her best friend is getting married, so she braces herself for a weekend of awkward, passive-aggressive reunions. Liz has grown, though; she can handle whatever awaits her. But on the night of the wedding, somewhere between dancing and dessert, the newlyweds’ daughter, Caroline, disappears—and the only thing left behind is a piece of white fabric covered in blood.
In Every Tongue Got to Confess, Zora gives us the folk-tales that reflect the joys and sorrows of the African-American experience, celebrate the redemptive power of storytelling, and showcase the continuous presence in America of an Africanized language that flourishes to this day. Listen for a quick excerpt.
A young woman returns to her childhood home in the American South and uncovers secrets about her father’s life and death. I listened to the audiobook during COVID all thanks to my favorite audiobook narrator, Bahni Turpin
A squeaky-clean honors student gets arrested for selling drugs. A gregarious old man vanishes in the middle of the night, leaving his beloved dog and his belongings behind. Longtime Black residents are disappearing from Gifford Place, and wealthy white people are moving in. Something is definitely wrong with this picture, and it’s worse than run-of-the-mill gentrification. Can one woman save her Brooklyn neighborhood?
On the island of Willow Springs, off the Georgia coast, the powers of healer Mama Day are tested by her great niece, Cocoa, a stubbornly emancipated woman endangered by the island’s darker forces.
Here we have stories of ghosts intertwined with the Caribbean folklore the author grew up with: the Rolling Calf, Mama Dglo, and Ol’ Higue. But the book also features other ghosts: the physical presence of colonization haunting the island of Trinidad and Jamaica, and the haunting that comes from grief and regret. But more than that, there’s the family of Black women that the author sees as her novel’s heartbeat that tell stories of their characters’ histories, their deepest secrets, their wildest dreams.
The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society—and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award–nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’s rap group Clipping
A woman desperate for a child weaves one out of hair, with unsettling results. In “Wild,” a disastrous night out shifts a teenager and her Nigerian cousin onto uneasy common ground. In “The Future Looks Good,” three generations of women are haunted by the ghosts of war, while in “Light,” a father struggles to protect and empower the daughter he loves. And in the title story, in a world ravaged by flood and riven by class, experts have discovered how to “fix the equation of a person” - with rippling, unforeseen repercussions.
Octavia E. Butler’s final novel is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted—and still wants—to destroy her and those she cares for, and how she can save herself.
In the Paisley family, every character has its own ghost. Abel Paisley takes on the identity of a dead man, becoming, in effect, somebody else’s ghost. His life becomes a haunting absence in the lives of his children, his ex-wife, and the family of the ghost he replaces. Abandoned daughters in Jamaica begin to shift into Ol’ Higue, the spirit who drinks the blood of babies and takes off her skin at night. Jamaican American author, Maisy Card beautifully weaves these ghost stories together to create an extraordinary narrative on forgiveness, past trauma, and what it truly means to be family.
Korede, a nurse, is forced to clean up the messes of her younger sister, Ayoola, after Ayoola has killed her latest boyfriend, claiming self-defense. The plot thickens when Ayoola starts dating Tade, the doctor Korede has a crush on, forcing Korede to choose between her fierce loyalty to her sister and her own love and moral responsibility.
A mythical, love story that is taken from the shores of Trinidad and Tobago between a Rasta man and a woman who’s generational inheritance is more complex than she realizes. Check out my book review here.
“Myths are as much a part of the slipstream of Black life as joy.
Yes, Black folks are masters of joy.
Trauma isn’t the only thing carried in DNA. Blackness, like any Golden Fleece, is both a birthright and what lies at the end of a quest.”
-(Jackal) Erin E. Adams
Am I Still Reading My Way Across Africa?
Yes!
My Spooky Read For October Comes From The Country Congo:
Tell me what you all are reading in the comments, it doesn’t have to be a horror ;D
Afro Reads Culture Corner: Literature, Art, & Music
NoViolet Bulawayo wins the best of 25 years of the Caine Prize
Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Boy Solider, is writing a new book
Archive Liberia has a study group will take place every Saturday from October 4 to November 1, 2025, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET on Zoom.
Found out rapper, Earl Sweatshirt’s dad is well known South African Poet, Keorapetse Kgositsile
Wayétu Moore, author of She Would Be King, offers writing advice
Found an Ethiopian/Eritrean artist on Tik Tok, then realized she’s also on Substack 🤩🤩 Her solo debut titled: The Habesha Project is a free virtual exhibition that launches today, Oct. 1st
How art is used to promote awareness in a war zone, FREE CONGO!
Forget Brent Faiyaz, if you’re not listening to Venna, then what are you doing???
I watched John Coltrane’s documentary: ‘Chasing Trane’. Can we say magical 🙃
Just started ring shout at 4.15 am on Thursday morning the 2nd of October I am in Australia
Omggg one of my favorite professors put me on to The Deep and I bc adore that book (especially as one of the girls who dreamed of being a mermaid when I was little 😂)! Another one of my favorite educators recommended My Sister The Serial Killer, so I’m taking this as my sign to revisit and write about these. 🙂↕️