Recommended Halloween Reading

The Telegraph is already getting into the spirit of October with its list of  fifteen scary books to terrify you this Halloween.

The masters of horror are cited, including Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe.

Also included are two of the best psychological horror stories, Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House.

There is a nod to various contemporary horror writers with the inclusion of Stephen King's Pet Sematary and Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box. Peter Straub's Ghost Story also makes the list, as does British writer Susan Hill's The Woman in Black. (You may have seen the film version with Daniel Radcliffe.)

To view the full list and see how it compares with your own list of all-time favorites, please click here.

New Theory Concerning the Black Death

New research suggests that the Black Death, which decimated London's population in the 14th century, was passed from human to human as a pneumonic plague. It was previously believed that the disease was a bubonic plague spread by rats.

A burial site has been uncovered in central London as part of the Crossrail excavation project, and samples from the victims have been analyzed to determine the cause of death. The new theory is that the disease spread to the lungs of sufferers, who then passed it on to others, by coughing. Many victims would have died within 24 hours with the survival rate being much lower than for the bubonic plague. Worldwide, the Black Death is estimated to have claimed 75 million lives.

For the full text of the article in The Telegraph and a video on the burial site discovery by Crossrail engineers, please see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10731180/Bodies-of-Black-Death-victims-give-up-their-secrets.html.

The new research is discussed in the documentary "Secret History: Return of the Black Death," which will air on Channel 4 in the UK on April 6, 2014, at 8 p.m.