October Reading List: Plays for Halloween

October has arrived and Halloween magic is in the air! If you're a fan of thrilling tales, spooky stories and things that go bump in the night, then this is the list for you!

Our October list is all about Halloween so prepare to send shivers down your spine and ignite your imagination with these fantastic perusal plays. Perfect for the stage or classroom!

Surviving your teenage years is difficult enough. But in St. Claire, where teens continually violate the rules of Horror Movie 101, it’s practically impossible.

You know the rules: never open a door if someone knocks after the lights go out. If your car runs out of gas and a girl on the side of the road asks you to take her home to mother - don’t. Haunted houses are never a good idea, and neither are cabins in the middle of the woods. And if you use an ancient burial ground to bring someone back, they’ll come back wrong. Everyone knows that.

Horror Movie 101: Failing Can Be Deadly is a collection of haunting, horrifying, harrowing AND humorous scenes that will keep you laughing as you keep your eyes covered.

A school receives a mysterious script about a girl who died long ago. The director disappears. A new director arrives just in time and knows all about the story of the play. In fact, she seems to know it too well. And how did she get the dead girl’s ring?

Are the students of Herbert Hoover High too wrapped up in miscues, awful accents, and stolen boyfriends to notice? Revenge is coming. Who will pay the price when the real world and the play collide?

Each actor must play two vastly different roles in this spine-tingling comedy thriller. Ashland Falls is an easy to stage and intense theatrical experience will keep your audience on their edge of their seats. And the twist ending will make them question everything they've witnessed...

Murdered twins. A lost heart. Evil in the painting. A girl and her mother frozen to death. These are a few of the Gothic ghosts whose stories are dying to be told in this creepy character-filled adaptation. Walk through the open window and join them by the dying fire light won’t you?

Gothic Ghost Stories is a modern adaptation of Victorian ghost stories that is fabulous for a class project or late October production. Large cast staging options offered, and ghoulish make-up opportunities abound!

Icabod Crane is new to Sleepy Hollow and seems to fit right in. He's taking over the choir, courting the wealthy daughter, and sharing a ghost story or two. But not everyone is happy to see Icabod and not everyone thinks he loves ghost stories as much as he says. What happens when Icabod gets a ghoulish surprise?

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - a wonderful adaptation of the Washington Irving story - is excellent for large groups and suitably spooky for Halloween!

Four high school seniors, Amy, Jennifer, Stephanie and Justin, arrive at a country lodge for their prom. But things go askew from the start. They show up at the wrong lodge, their car won't start, the phone goes dead, and disco music plays inexplicably. The lodge is haunted!

The teens are unwillingly drawn into a slightly deranged plot to free the spirit from the curse of Chip Lake. If only Justin can overcome his fear of giant rats, they may be able to save the day.

The Haunting of Chip Lake Lodge leads to a bizarre prom night no one will forget!

Wendy walks into a typical teen support group. Claire thinks Halloween is going to be humdrum as usual. Rachel wants her parents to be nice to her new boyfriend. Three ordinary scenarios… or are they? Is that a werewolf at the support group? A vampire at the door? A zombie boyfriend? With some close encounters of the undead kind, these plays are far from typical and humdrum!

With quick humour and fabulous characters, Close Encounters of the Undead Kind is not your ordinary collection. The plays can be performed individually or all together for a ghoulishly delightful evening.

The thumping of a heartbeat. The creak of a door. The howl of a bitter wind. The gong of a clock tower. The clang of alarm bells. The sound of beating wings getting closer and closer…

Specters, ghosts and ghouls come alive in this vivid theatrical adaptation of some of Edgar Allan Poe’s best-known works. Included are The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Masque of the Red Death.

In Shuddersome: Tales of Poe, Poe’s words rise from the page like corpses from the grave. Be careful. Do you hear that tap, tap, tapping?

Summer camp. The memories. The s’mores. The campfire. The ghost stories.

Dani’s out in the middle of the woods at night, alone, without a flashlight. She meets three girls from another camp, and the new friends tell ghost stories to pass the time.

After each of their stories comes to life onstage, only one story remains to be told – a story none of them saw coming.

The Bottom of the Lake is an awesome combination of ghost stories, urban legends, teen issues, romance, absurd comedy, and film noir, all in a single play!

Thunder and lightning tear apart the night sky while two young women explore the story of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley, who wrote the original novel, and Elsa, mysterious and determined to learn Mary’s secrets, including the most important of all… how to bring the dead to life.

Frankenstein Among the Dead is an easy-to-stage classical adaptation that you have definitely not seen before!