Something Eerie Is Coming to King Street in Old Town Alexandria

A bookshop devoted to the deliciously eerie joins Alexandria's growing roster of genre-specific indie bookstores this fall.

by

Lifestyle

Alexandria's reputation as a haven for independent booksellers is about to take a deliciously eerie new turn. Long Dark House, a bookshop built around horror, science fiction and what founder Chanthal Harris calls "strange stories," plans to open at 1510 King St. this fall, with a target opening date of Sept. 5.

The shop has already staked its claim on Old Town, posting a sign in its storefront window and teasing the launch across social media. It won't be alone in the space: Long Dark House will share 1510 King St. with Madame Coco Emporium, a gift, chocolate and curiosity concept from local entrepreneur Meschelle Armstrong, offering fine chocolates, tea, fragrance and an assortment of curated oddities. Together, the two businesses are pitching the storefront as a gathering place for readers, writers, makers and anyone drawn to the unusual.

More than a bookstore

Long Dark House takes its name from the idea of the threshold — the liminal space between what was and what comes next — and Harris describes the venture as less a retail shop than a "third space" and literary hub for curious minds. Alongside a core inventory of horror, sci-fi and fiction, the store plans author events, book clubs, gifts and a cafe component. Founding memberships are already available, and a Founding Member Preview Night is in the works ahead of the fall debut.

The vision behind it

The bookstore didn't come out of nowhere. Harris is also the founder and creative director of Hemlock & Hearth, an independent, Southern Gothic-influenced fragrance house she launched in Alexandria in late 2025, beginning with candles and body oils and expanding into fine fragrance in 2026. A longtime fragrance collector and student of indie perfumery, she builds her work around the notion of scent as a portal — a way into memory, atmosphere and connection. She rounds out that world with Scent & Stories, a quarterly Southern Gothic literary evening she hosts at Elaine's Literary Salon in Old Town.

Seen against that backdrop, Long Dark House looks less like a first venture than the physical anchor of a creative vision Harris has been building in pieces: the fragrance house, the candlelit salon events and now a horror-and-speculative bookshop, all animated by the same taste for ritual, storytelling and the sensory. A gardener, hobby writer and avid reader who traces her aesthetic to a Southern upbringing and to family and community, Harris has lived in the DMV for close to four years — long enough, it seems, to decide Old Town was the right place to give that vision a permanent address.

Rather than waiting for opening day, Long Dark House has spent the summer introducing itself through a run of atmospheric pop-ups across the area. Fittingly, several double as crossovers with Harris's own Hemlock & Hearth — a witchy summer soirée at Hummingbird Bar & Kitchen (owned by the Armstrongs) among them — while later gatherings promise tarot readings, themed cocktails and the moody, coastal-horror ambiance of a fictional town she's dreamed up. It's an unusually theatrical way to build a customer base, and a signal that this store intends to sell an experience as much as a book.

Part of a bigger chapter

Long Dark House arrives as Alexandria quietly becomes one of the region's most interesting small-bookstore towns — a city that now supports a remarkable spread of independent shops, several of them built around a single genre or community. For readers planning a Saturday of browsing, here's the current landscape:

Friends to Lovers (301 Cameron St.) is the D.C. area's first romance-only bookstore, owned by Jamie Fortin, whose shelves span historical romance, small-town love stories, queer romance, and the fantasy-crossover subgenre known as "romantasy." As ALM readers may recall, the shop endured a devastating fire that gutted its original location just days after its 2024 grand opening, then reopened in a larger, brighter Cameron Street space in the spring of 2025 — a comeback that became a small local legend.

Old Town Books (130 South Royal St.), is the city's go-to general-interest independent, pairing a well-curated selection across every genre with a busy calendar of author talks, workshops, and themed book clubs — from science fiction and fantasy to nonfiction.

Also read: Alexandria Bookstore Owner Launches Ice Cream Company

Harambee Books & Artworks (1132 Prince St.) offers a rich collection of Black literature, history, and art, spotlighting authors from across the African diaspora alongside cultural artwork and voices often missing from chain-store shelves.

In Del Ray, The Company of Books brings a cozy, treasure-hunt feel to a thoughtfully curated mix of new and gently used titles — the kind of neighborhood shop that pairs perfectly with a coffee down the street.

Add Long Dark House to that list, and Alexandria's booksellers increasingly read like a map of passions: romance in one storefront, Black art and history in another, well-loved secondhand finds in a third, and — come September — the eerie and the speculative on King Street.

What ties the newer arrivals together is a bet that specialization, not breadth, is how independents thrive in the age of online retail — that a shop built around a single passionate community can offer something a national retailer can't. Long Dark House is making that bet on the readers who love the eerie, the speculative and the strange.

For a city that just turned 277, adding a bookstore whose whole identity is the space between past and future feels oddly fitting.

Long Dark House is expected to open at 1510 King St. Sept. 5. Details on founding memberships and pre-opening events are available at longdarkhouse.com and on Instagram at @longdarkhouse.

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