Anna Lyon, the ghoulish gal behind the online-only store, officially launched the passion project in late July, but as an avid horror reader and fan, it’s something she’s thought about doing for a long time. “It’s a culmination of, really, a lifelong love of books. I’m a massive reader. Like many readers, I’ve dreamt of having some kind of passion project that involves books,” she explains.
“I also really just love horror. It’s obviously a horror bookstore, and I chose that because I’ve been seeing more and more genre-specific bookstores pop up, like romance-only bookstores or something,” she adds.
With just under 100 books in stock at any given time, Lyon prefers to source her titles through thrifting, as well as purchasing publishers’ overstock for newer releases, which is both eco-friendly and more affordable for customers, she notes. “Then, additionally, I was really passionate about it being sustainable, so I chose to go the secondhand route. I just love thrifting, and I’m very concerned about the climate crisis,” she shares. “I also just wanted to make sure the books were accessible to people, because books can be very expensive.”
By carefully curating the Wicked Basement catalogue, she makes sure to include a wide variety of writers, many of whom might not be as mainstream as, say, Stephen King (though she has him, too), but who, as queer or BIPOC authors, are providing an important voice for often overlooked communities. “A lot of these books are my favorite horror novels. I haven’t read everything, but I’m very intentional about the authors I’m selecting. I want the authors to be diverse,” Lyon explains.
“Basically, I want anyone to be able to find something for themselves. That can be a range of things, like Stephen King, of course, or a modern queer author," she continues. "There’s definitely a vast array of horror on there, and I do that with intention and with the hopes that someone can find at least one horror story that can work for them.”
Through Wicked Basement, Lyon is also connecting more with the local horror scene, and recently participated in her first vendor market at the Creepatorium, the event space owned and operated by local horror shop HORRID. Having some face time with other like-minded enthusiasts meant she could chat about everything horror as well as introduce aficionados to the literary side of a popular genre more often associated with movies.
“I ended up talking to people and giving people curated recommendations. It was so cool to have that in-person community,” Lyon says.
“I’m finding that a lot more people are into horror than I really anticipated,” she adds. “I know they’re out there, but it’s really all kinds of people. I encountered a lot of people who said, ‘I love horror movies, but I haven’t read a lot of horror books. Where should I start?’ I love Stephen King, but I try to offer people something a little bit different, especially if that’s the only horror they’ve experienced.”
Wicked Basement Books aims to offer something for everyone. Skull crow sold separately.
Courtesy Anna Lyon
“It’s just exciting to be alive at the same time as them, because they’re taking different perspectives and turning horror into something unique in the modern age,” she says. “And I think that’s so cool that [Graham] lives here in Colorado.”
Lyon, who grew up in Tennessee, describes herself as a scaredy-cat kid who was easily spooked. Like many a scarred millennial, her introduction to literary horror came in the form of the popular young-adult series Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, by Alvin Schwartz. (Who else still can’t pop a pimple without half expecting a nest of spider babies to burst from it?)
“Honestly, I think I was a very, very anxious child who could not avoid thinking about the dark things in life. I just gravitated toward horror,” she confesses, adding that being scared stupid after watching the 2002 film The Ring in a friend’s basement — and not dropping dead after seven days — gave her a newfound appreciation for the genre. It also inspired the name of her shop.
“That has led to the basement I have now because I had that experience — we would watch horror movies down there,” she explains. “I just thought, ‘This is the best way to consume horror, and someday I will have a basement.’”
Now, after living in Denver for seven years, Lyon finally has her lair: She became a homeowner at the beginning of the year. The basement is currently filled with creature comforts and books.
“I wasn’t planning on opening a store, but I just wanted a horror basement. I’m not at all surprised that I turned it into a business,” she says. “It’s my little horror cave. It’s so nice and dark down there.”
While Wicked Basement Books is her “millennial side hustle” whenever she’s not holding down her regular desk job during the workweek, Lyon is excited to see just how big her little shop of horrors will grow, even if that means it eventually escapes the confines of the basement.
“I mean, I'm running it out of my basement, so that’s the limit of space that I have. I never want to feel like I’m drowning in books,” she quips. Sounds like an R.L. Stine storyline...
“I love that the stakes aren’t super high, and it’s just something very fulfilling on the side,” she continues. “I opened it with the hopes that maybe someone would buy a book, and it’s definitely exceeded my expectations and continues to. If it happened to get bigger, I would love to devote more time to it, even something full-time. That would be a great fantasy.”
Right now, she’s happy to fill a handful of online orders each week and set up at local events whenever possible. She plans to be at HORRID’s Alternative Market on October 6 next. The most thrilling aspect, she admits, is just how pumped everyone she’s encountered seems to be about Wicked Basement Books.
“I’ve felt this sense of excitement about how specific it is,” Lyon shares. “People are just really into the fact that it’s horror and aren’t sad that I don’t offer anything else. I’ve been overwhelmed by that reception.”
A voracious reader, Lyon consumes more than 100 books a year, on average, including a ton of horror (shocker). It’s freeing, she muses, to read or watch fiction about otherwise terrible things.
“I’m a big proponent of the idea that horror is this really great, controlled environment where you can live out the darkest aspects of life,” she says. “It can be exciting and comforting and therapeutic.”
But Lyon's reading list isn’t all horror all the time. She guesses that about a quarter of it does fall under the genre, but she also enjoys nonfiction and literary fiction, even if those genres serve as more of a palate cleanser before she finds her next haunt.
“I tend to go through these phases where I’ll read ten horror novels in a row,” Lyon says. “But it’s nice to take a break and read a literary fiction or a nonfiction. It can just get so dark. There’s so much incredible horror out right now, but it can be very visceral and stick with you when you start having nightmares.”
Tender Is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica’s 2020 dystopian cannibal novel, is one such example.
“I didn’t eat steak for like two years," Lyon recalls. "I read it in 2020, and I think about it every single day. I swear, a day does not go by that I do not think about that book.”
So she knows breathers here or there are necessary.
“It’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take a break and read this lit fic book,'" she says. "But I always go back to it."
Learn more at wickedbasementbooks.com.
