But for some of the most entertaining and ghoulish Halloween reading, we recommend Early English Books Online (EEBO). EEBO offers digital facsimiles of every book printed in England and English books printed abroad from 1470 to 1700. Including the first printed versions of Spenser, Bacon, More and Shakespeare, EEBO is a virtual library of primary sources treating the English Renaissance, early scientific and medical investigations, the development of transatlantic trade, the Elizabethan stage, and religious and political tracts of the English Civil War.
Each book, pamphlet, and broadside in EEBO is fully cataloged, meaning you can search for subjects such as ghosts, witchcraft, monsters, or apparitions and retrieve items on those topics no matter what strange langvagge, wordes, or speling might be in the book title. Here you will find such thrillers as:
The deemon of Marleborough, or, More news from VVilt-shire in a most exact account of the aparition of the ghost, or spirit of Edward Aven : published heretofore, but now much augmented, with many more discoveries, containing wonderful passages, from its first appearance there, to the 24th of Jan., 1674/5 : being the examination of Thomas Godard, the said Avens son in law, taken before the major, and other magistrates of that borough. . [London : s.n.], 1675.
The strange vvitch at Greenvvich, (ghost, spirit, or hobgoblin) haunting a wench, late servant to a miser, suspected a murtherer of his late vvife: with curious discussions of walking spirits and spectars of dead men departed, for rare and mysticall knowledge and discourse, / by Hieronymus Magomastix. London : Printed by Thomas Harper, and are to be sold by John Saywell, at the Greyhound in Little Britaine, 1650.
The world turn’d upside down, or, A plain detection of errors, in the common or vulgar belief, relating to spirits, spectres or ghosts, dæmons, witches, &c. in a due and serious examination of their nature, power, administration, and operation...Balthazar Bekker. London : Printed for Eliz. Harris at the Harrow in Little Britain, 1700.
A further account of the tryals of the New-England witches with the observations of a person who was upon the place several days when the suspected witches were first taken into examination : to which is added, Cases of conscience concerning witchcrafts and evil spirits personating men / written at the request of the ministers of New-England… Increase Mather. London : Printed for J. Dunton …, 1693.
A pleasant treatise of witches their imps, and meetings, persons bewitched, magicians, necromancers, incubus, and succubus’s, familiar spirits, goblings, pharys, specters, phantasms, places haunted, and devillish impostures : with the difference between good and bad angels, and a true relation of a good genius…London : Printed by H.B. for C. Wilkinson … and Tho. Archer and Tho. Burrell …, 1673.
Doctor Lambs darling: or, strange and terrible news from Salisbury; being a true, exact, and perfect relation, of the great and wonderful contract and engagement made between the devil, and Mistris Anne Bodenham; with the manner how she could transform her self into the shape of a mastive dog, a black lyon, a white bear, a woolf, a bull, and an cat; and by her charms and spels….London : Printed for G. Horton, 1653.
Want to continue the frights forward in time? Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)serves as a sequel to EEBO, with every book printed in England or in English through the “long” 18th century, from 1700 to the early 1800s. Here you will find digital facsimiles for more than 180,000 works–almost 33 million page images. It’s more than enough scary stuff to last you until Halloween 2021.