“Beware The Autumn People.”

The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse

“The mob-mind, said his subconscious. You're symbolic of the crowd. They came to study the dreadful vulgarity of this imaginary Mass Man they pretend to hate. But they're fascinated with the snake-pit.”

— Ray Bradbury

“Sunsets we always liked because they only happen once and go away. “But, Lena, that’s sad.” No, if the sunset stayed and we got bored, that would be a real sadness.”

— Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1)

So like....where does Ray Bradbury fall on the cozy horror scale?

Because there's a coziness in the nostalgia of long ago Halloweens in The Halloween Tree.

There's a coziness in the Elliotts family, made up of monsters, ghouls, and one perfectly average boy, from The Dust Returned.

There are even cozy aspects in Something Wicked This Way Comes, that even when there's a dark carnival changing and warping people, William Halloway still finds comfort and reassurance in the presence of his father.

Bradbury sure knew how to make horror stories memorable and terrifying, and yet, some of them feel like a warm blanket on a chill, autumn night.

“Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.”

—

Alberto Manguel

comic adaptation of Ray Bradbury's The Fog Horn

The Last Night of the World

“Maybe because it was never October 19, 1969, ever before in history, and now it is and that’s it; because this date means more than any other date ever meant; because it’s the year when things are as they are all over the world and that’s why it’s the end.”

— Ray Bradbury

“So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.”

— Ray Bradbury, “Zen in the Art of Writing”