Note: The event is sold out, but Ernest Hemingway's Birthplace Museum continues to present tours and weekly events all year round.
As the quintessential literary man’s man, it’s easy to believe nothing scared Ernest Hemingway. Mentally and emotionally haunted he may have been, but few readers imagine “Papa” as frightened. For that matter, fewer still imagine him having anything to do with the horror genre.
Things change. On Friday, October 20, Hemingway’s birthplace (339 N Oak Park Ave, Oak Park, Illinois) will become a haunted house. Authors Deborah Shapiro, Jennifer Solheim, Julia Fine, and Ananda Lima present Haunted Hemingway, a night of ghost stories read, and sometimes previously written, by the four writers. Guests can expect appropriately seasonal fear, creepiness, and dread, and perhaps a ghost or two—though likely not a hirsute one with a penchant for marlin and bullfighting.
The first event took place in 2022. The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park (EHFOP) already presents Friday@Hemingway’s every third Friday, staging various artistic events. But it was author Rebecca Morgan Frank, the birthplace’s Writer In Residence from 2021 to 2022, who started the Haunted Hemingway tradition, reading with Shapiro and Solheim. The latter two will appear again this year, with two new writers, Julia Fine and Ananda Lima.
Lean, spare, muscular, and earthy are just a few adjectives applied to Hemingway’s prose. Spooky, however, rarely comes up. I mention to Shapiro that folks don’t generally think of Hemingway and horror as bedfellows. She replies it’s more about “supporting and engaging contemporary writers and artists.” It doesn’t hurt that the season and architectural ambience of the Hemingway family home lends eerie panache.
“Hemingway's rambling Victorian birthplace is a bit of a haunted house itself, so the idea of reading ghost stories seems fitting,” observes Shapiro. Author of three novels, Consolation, The Summer Demands, and The Sun in Your Eyes, she admits her oeuvre “isn’t particularly scary or chilling.” While she’s not sure what she’ll read, it’ll be by a horror writer she admires. She does recommend delving into two recent collections. The Jordan Peele-edited Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, and Ghostly, a gathering of classic and modern tales edited by Chicago author and academic Audrey Niffenegger.
I asked each participant to share their thoughts on being an all-woman writers ensemble reading in the boyhood home of literature's biggest alleged purveyor of hyper-masculinity. All extended a professional courtesy, recognizing Hemingway’s talent and big footprint on American fiction, or citing the Ken Burns documentary, which revealed men and their legends don’t always jibe. Still, the idea of Ernest watching from a corner, ready to square off in the literary ring is intriguing.
“I feel like I've developed a reputation as an author known for promoting hyper-femininity, so we'll probably have some kind of epic supernatural standoff,” declares Julia Fine, author of the ghostly The Upstairs House and the tenebrous fairy tale Maddalena and the Dark. “I kid—it's tough to reduce a person or their work to a single political philosophy…He's a complex guy who made a valuable contribution to literature. It's an honor to read in his home.”
Fine says she may read either something from her first novel, What Should Be Wild, or a short story from Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber.
“Angela Carter seems to me the polar opposite of Hemingway in prose and style, and I sort of love the idea of her coming to haunt his house.”
Poet, author, and translator Ananda Lima may read from her debut surreal/horror novel Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (Tor Books, publishes June 2024) which reworks a number of common horror tropes. Lima’s collection offers “bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead,” per the publisher’s description. The title story involves a woman writer who literally sleeps with the Devil. Then again, Lima may not read from Craft... at all.
“I am having a very hard time selecting from a lot of haunted things I love,” says Lima, originally from Brazil but currently a Chicago resident. She provides a nerve-jangling Autumn reading list. A story about a cursed rat by Yohanca Delgado. Another about a slut-shaming ghost by Gwen E. Kirby. And one of her own, featuring women who grow fangs.
“There is also a scene in Katrina Dodson’s excellent translation of Macunaíma, a Brazilian classic, featuring a rolling head that follows the protagonist across state lines… So many great options. I will pick one, but recommend all of these.”
The last of the "ghostesses," Jennifer Solheim, is a writer, teacher, and literary critic. She’s had several stories and essays appear in Bellevue Literary Review, Confrontation, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, and is currently at work on her debut novel. Asked what folks can expect, Solheim answers with a sinister “Muah ha ha ha ha!” followed by a requisite evil rubbing of hands. Asked to elucidate, she says she plans to read an early haunted house story by Carmen Maria Machado.
“She's one of our gothic and horror masters,” she explains, “And it's a fun, fun story to read out loud.”
As for the venue—where Papa Hemingway was once Bebé Hemingway—Solheim paints a picture of the writer’s first home as the shadowy, spine-chilling setting for a good ghost story.
“Hemingway's birthplace both retreats and looms,” she delineates. “It's on a fairly busy street, with a demure sign out front in the same paint colors as the house itself…There are several Victorian houses on the street—along with apartment complexes and more contemporary single-family homes, a few blocks away from the Frank Lloyd Wright Studio—but with the way the Hemingway house is set on the property, its wraparound porch and great trees in the front yard casting everything in shadow…it really does feel like you're walking up to a haunted house. Add a blustery Chicagoland Friday night and you're likely to walk into the place with the creeps. It's pretty perfect.”