This story is part of WTOP’s Small Business September coverage. Each week, WTOP will be highlighting small businesses across the D.C. region, along with financial, government and other organizations that help our small business community thrive.

The Long Dark House on King Street looks like an ordinary storefront, but inside it is filled with horror … books. While the themed boutique bookstore may initially give off creepy vibes with its darks walls and vivid book jackets, the new shop is warm and inviting. The shop’s owner wants it to be not only a place where people can find a hidden literary gem, but also like-minded people to discuss vampires, ghosts and Lovecraftian tentacled monsters.

Long Dark House opened earlier this month and the only problem the shop has had is keeping books on the shelf. Avid horror readers lined up outside the store like vampires needing a bite.

“Honestly, I am shocked,” Chantal Harris, the owner, told WTOP. “I had a lot of dreams opening this, but I never would have expected such a warm reception from the community.”

“My favorite part has been people reacting to kind of coming in and it truly feeling like stepping into a different world,” Harris added.

Harris has been a fan of horror since she was a young child, watching scary movies and television with her mother and science fiction with her father.

“I just remember having really fun experiences growing up, playing games with my siblings, scaring my parents,” she said. “So, for me, even though it might seem counterintuitive, horror brought a lot of joy to me in my life, and I feel like there’s so much that’s underappreciated in the genre.”

When most readers think about the horror genre, one “shining” author comes to mind — Stephen King. And while he remains at the top, Harris and her staff want to highlight authors that many are not as familiar with.

“There’s just so much out there that when you come into, like, the Long Dark House, you’re going to find things you’ve never heard of, you’ve never seen, and I think that’s an important part about us,” she said.

The shop does not just have a horror section, it has horror subsections, such as Horromance, Kids’ Horror and even a section of “Palate Cleansers” with more whimsical stories if your recently finished paperback left you haunted.

“We also are going to curate fun displays just kind of based on different subgenres. We might be Southern Gothic one month, botanical horror and climate fiction another,” she said.

She also has a section dedicated to local horror authors. This week she is highlighting the latest work of Alma Katsu, “Fiend,” which Harris described as the show “Succession,” but instead of Brian Cox, there is a 1,000-year-old demon.

With the rise of e-books and Amazon, many bookstores such as Borders fell by the wayside. But Harris said independent bookstores are making a comeback. Long Dark House is not just a place to purchase the book you already want, but instead to discover your new favorite author or subgenre of frights.

“I think we are missing community in a lot of ways,” Harris told WTOP. “I built this with this idea that it would be a third space to fill that gap. We would, of course, sell books, have great gifts, but we would also be a place for folks to gather.”

In that spirit, the shop is hosting community events, including Sunday morning children’s story time hours, horror and sci-fi book clubs, role-playing games, crafting parties and writers’ workshops.

She said the horror genre and experiencing fear through literature can be very cathartic, and that’s why so many readers and viewers are attracted to the genre.

“It’s a safe way to deal with a lot of the fears that we have. I think it’s a safe way to process a lot of the things that probably a lot of us are scared of,” she said, adding that reading the darkest stories involving humanity can really shed light on to the kindness and resilience in the surrounding community.

“I think what’s so fun is that some of the people who write some of the scariest stories that I’ve read are some of the kindest, most gentle, like fun people that you could meet,” she said.

Long Dark House will host a “Grand Opening Celebration, Part II” on Saturday.

Source