Reading Notes: Russian Fairy Tales, Part A

I have never read a Russian fairy tale before, but this book immediately caught my attention when the description said it included vampires and other supernatural creatures. I had been wondering if we would have the opportunity to read myths about vampires, but it makes sense that they come from Russia.
My first impression is that the book is going to be gruesome and dark. The titles of each of the chapters are simple, yet ominous, such as "Friday" and "The Two Corpses." Each of the chapters are there own stories, none of them being related to each other. I plan to continue this theme in my story this week by including a short and mysterious title.
The first chapter, "The Dead Mother", is about a child whose mother passed away in childbirth and whose father has to take care of her alone. The child was uncooperative and refused to eat every time it was fed, which was strange for a newborn. In the middle of the night, the people keeping watch on the child realized that someone had been breaking into the house and breastfeeding the child while everyone else was asleep.
In my story this week, I have the idea to incorporate this idea, but put a more modern twist on it. I also want to write it as a horror story or a thriller, which will be a challenge because I have never written a story like this before. I have always enjoyed reading stories with incredibly detailed descriptions of the settings and characters, while still including the fear factor for the audience. An author that I would like to channel in this weeks writing assignment is Edgar Allan Poe because in his stories, such as "The Raven" and "The Tell Tale Heart." He is notorious for his gloomy and dark writing and also including shocking twists. He is very talented in incorporating symbols to foreshadow future misfortunes. My idea is to have a child who has been adopted by a couple after its mother died in childbirth. The baby doesn't stop crying until about midnight every night and refuses to eat when its adopted mother tries to feed it. When the baby isn't crying, it is sleeping, which is odd for a newborn. They are woken up multiple times throughout the night by noises coming from the baby monitor, but the noises don't sound like crying. When the father goes to check on the child, he sees the child's dead mother standing over the crib with the child suckling on her breast.


The dead mother and her child

Russian Fairy Tales by W.R.S. Ralston