Vintage Horror Stories for Spooky Season


published on September 11, 2025

Looking for a vintage spooky read to enjoy this season?

Author Helen Hoke (1903-1990) from California, Washington County, PA published horror anthologies that’ll give you the heebie-jeebies.

Helen Hoke’s Life & Career

Helen was the daughter of H.L. and Mary Lamb. Her father co-owned the California Sentinel newspaper along with his brother Auburn Lamb. As a child, Helen helped at the newspaper by setting type, and later wrote articles for the paper. 

In 1929, Helen opened a book department in a department store in Pittsburgh. Shortly thereafter, she headed another book department at Bullock’s department store in Los Angeles. In 1934, she became the director of the Julia Ellsworth Ford Foundation for Children’s Literature, a position she held until 1945. Julia Ford (1859-1950), an author and socialite, created the Foundation in 1924, which gave $2,000 for the best juvenile book of the year as well as produced movies for children. 

Spooky Anthologies

In the 1950s, Helen began to edit analogies, and her horror collections stand out as some of the earliest spooky anthologies created specifically with young readers in mind. They introduced generations of kids and teens to classic writers of the weird and uncanny—names like Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and August Derleth—through stories that were chilling but still accessible for school and library shelves. The repeated-title branding (Monsters, Monsters, Monsters; Terrors, Terrors, Terrors) became a hallmark of her editorial style, making them instantly recognizable to browsing readers.

Helen Hoke on the back cover of Weirdies

Helen’s Impact

In total, she edited 29 anthologies of horror and supernatural stories for young adults. For many readers, her volumes served as a gateway into lifelong appreciation of horror and science fiction. They also played a quiet but important role in establishing horror as a legitimate category for young adult publishing, well before the boom of YA horror series in the 1980s and 1990s.

While Helen edited dozens of spooky anthologies, she also edited and wrote other types of stories. Examples include The Fuzzy Puppy (1954), Jokes, Riddles, Puns: the best of brief humor (1959), Patriotism, Patriotism, Patriotism (1963), Whales (1973), and Giants! Giants! Giants!: From many lands and many times (1980). When she passed in 1990, her obituary in the New York Times noted she had written nearly 100 books and ran children’s books divisions at five publishing companies.

Where to Find Books from Helen Hoke

 A few of her books are available in Washington County libraries, and some can be found online.

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