The SYSK Annual Halloween Freaky Spooktacular 2026!

Josh and Chuck revive their annual Halloween tradition by reading two classic horror stories back to back: W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902) and W.F. Harvey’s “August Heat” (1910). The throughline is the danger of getting what you wish for—or what fate has in store for you anyway—delivered through two very different kinds of dread. The Monkey’s Paw is a slow-burn domestic tragedy about a family whose wishes come true in the most literal and ruinous way possible. August Heat is a shorter, eerier piece that trades supernatural machinery for pure, ambiguous coincidence. Together they show how early 20th-century horror moved from Victorian ghost-story conventions toward something more psychological and open-ended.

The Monkey’s Paw: Three Wishes, Three Catastrophes

The Whites—Mr. White, Mrs. White, and their adult son Herbert—live in a small English villa on a cold, wet night when Sergeant-Major Morris arrives for a visit. Morris carries a dried monkey’s paw that, he says, was enchanted by a fakir “to show that fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their sorrow.” Three men can each have three wishes from it. Morris had his three wishes granted, and the first owner’s third wish was for death. He throws the paw into the fire; Mr. White snatches it back.