I tore through all the Stephen Kings when I was a kid, which led me on a search for more horror fiction, which steered me toward Dean R. Koontz. I guess you never forget your first: Whispers, Koontz’s breaththrough hit about a woman who is attacked by a man and kills him—but then he keeps returning to torture her further. There isn’t actually anything supernatural in Whispers, which just made it scarier. I know Koontz is kind of an also-ran compared to King, but I will never forget that book; Whispers gave my high-school self nightmares for a while. [Gwen Ihnat]
239 Comments
Agreed on “The Exorcist” as an excellent horror read. I know Stephen King has written tons of novels, but the only one that genuinely scared me was “Salem’s Lot.” Damn, that is a scary vampire book.
Totally agreed on Salem’s Lot!
Salem’s Lot is the only King novel I ever enjoyed (I like a lot of his short stories). It’s probably the only one I read that had been edited in any way? Anyway, it’s the definition of a “good beach read”.
Salem’s Lot is very restrained, as King goes. The prose is more graceful, and he leans heavily on low-key naturalism interspersed with frightening moments (his knack for imagery is really great). The annoying stream of consciousness tics are there – especially in the scenes with the priest – but they don’t overwhelm the book like some of his 80s novels (or even the Shining). He’s a tough writer for me – I’ve read a lot of his books since I was very young, and he is a gifted stylist. But his prose can be really unwieldy, and the guy just has trouble plotting the last third of a novel.
There’s a horror trope I love, the one where the hero knows the monster is coming, and the monster knows exactly where he is, but he has some time to prepare, which only makes things worse. If you grew up dreading the words “wait until your father gets home” you know exactly what I mean. Salem’s Lot nails that.
As a longtime King fan, it’s amusing to think the book that has a serial rapist and a dead baby in it is considered the restrained one.
You’re right about King having trouble “sticking the landing” so to speak, but I always thought he’d be great fun to go camping. Sitting around a fire, drinking and telling stories.Btw, Pet Sematary is the book I won’t EVER read again (full body shiver). To quote Joey from Friends, “that book has to go in the freezer”.😂😎
I used to be a hopeless book snob (maybe I still am) and as a teen thought King was beneath me (yes I basically only read at the time literary fiction and classics—and comic books). Then I was stuck at a Summer camp for a few weeks where I knew I’d be desperate to find some sort of escape, so I picked up Salem’s Lot, The Shining and Pet Semetary (I figured I should start with the vintage stuff) and liked them a lot, especially Lot but I admit after that Summer I never returned to King except short story collections.
Salem’s Lot and The Shining for me. Read a lot of his books in a three- or four-year span, but everything else fell flat or felt strangely coarse.
It’s been decades since I read Salem’s Lot but I’ll never forget when the school bus driver is lured to his bus in the middle of the night and finds all his “young” passengers waiting. Worthy of EC Comics.
+1 Salem’s Lot
Love ‘Salem’s Lot, but the one that got me was IT. I read it when I was 7, which seems too young.
Came here to say Salem’s Lot. Read it when I was 12, scared the ever loving shit out of me. Slept with the lights on for several days, much to the annoyance of my roommate Brewster. God the part where the vampire is floating outside the little boys room, trying to enchant him to invite him in… not sure I slept that night at all.
In high school a bunch of people I know used to pass around a copy of American Psycho one of them had (still sold under the counter in Australia) and it was one of the most disturbing things, not even just books, I’d ever experienced.Not too long ago I was thinking about it and was like “well okay was it really that bad or was it just the mythos of the impact it had that’s built up in my mind for so long that’s made me think it was scarier than it was”. So I decided to open the ebook I had of it and click around a little to read random sections.And… yep. It’s still that bad.
Yes, the book is really disturbing and not really enjoyable for me. The film a lot less disturbing and more enjoyable, because it isn’t so graphic (and implies that all the violence might be a delusion of Bateman anyway), and focuses more on the emptiness of 1980s yuppie life.
This all day. My problem with the book is that, early on, it reads as straight satire. And it’s good. I can get behind it. I see what you’re doing here, Bret. But as it moves forward, and the relentless violence against women becomes more and more detailed and, frankly, ENDLESS, I assume anyone who isn’t a whacko starts to think “ummm … yeah … Bret Easton Ellis might just REALLY hate women.”
I can’t be bothered to find the quote but it’s even more unsettling to know he’s admitted that the book explores a lot of what was going through his head at the time.
I like both the film and the book, but the director (and Bale of course) imbue Bateman with some kind of silly vacuousness where he tries so hard to cultivate an image that he’s a total A-game success and that just makes him more of a dork who coasts on his looks and the shallow success of his vaguely defined career. And any film where Jared Leto gets hacked to pieces is fine with me.
I will never forget the paper towel roll insertion section. Ever. EVER.The movie is only memorable for Christian Bale’s flawlessly made up skin and his teeth/speech impediment.
American Psycho was what I first thought of when I saw the prompt. The bit with the kid in the zoo still randomly pops into my mind.
Family Portrait by Graham Masterton. A combination of the content, the age I read it at and the utterly creepy image on the cover. Still keep it face down on the bookshelf.
Gaahhh. His book “Mirror” (about a demonic ‘30s child star) terrified me so much, I did not want it in the house. That was the first time I was ever that freaked—and I’ve been reading horror since I was a little kid. David Morell’s “Creepers” was further nightmare fuel. (Urban explorers check out a soon-to-be-demolished Asbury Park luxury hotel and live to regret.) Immade the mistake of reading it at a NJ motel during the off-season and actually had to buy a couple of bad novels to get some sleep.
Without a doubt, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, which is by no means a horror novel, full of monsters, demons, or supernatural elements, but about the darkness within the human soul. The protagonist is a Communist functionary who’s been targeted by a purge, and spends much of the time either wrestling with his memories as an agitator and a revolutionary, and the rest dealing with his jailer, whose goal is to make him break and admit the truth of his own fabricated guilt.
What lingers is how, no matter how heroic one is, how dedicated, how convinced of the rightness of reason and truth and your own virtue in this world, you can be worn down. By nothing more simple than patience and time, and the unrelenting stamina of the fanaticism against you.
Oh man, I was thinking of this one from the moment I read the headline of this inventory. No supernatural, no monsters, nothing but the darkness we know lies inside of us all and the existential dread of knowing that no amount of resilience or resolve or bravery can save you from being ground down by externally imposed madness and cruelty. I’ve read a ton of horror, but this is one which had me staring at the ceiling in the darkness under the weight of knowing that the demons were real.
You and I are replying to a year-old post, but adding to your comment the casual replacement of the interrogator was the capper. Presumably someone had fingered him as insufficiently down with the cause as well, and off he goes to suffer the same fate.
If you’re talking genuine fear it was Henry James ‘The Turn of The Screw’. I was alone in my apt. reading the book in bed late at night. Just at the moment when the heroine gets up from her bed, goes into the dark hallway and first glimpses the ghost at the bottom of the stairs BAM! All the lights went out in the entire city and I was plunged into pitch blackness. I’ve never had such a fright in all my life.
I love The Turn of the Screw, “The Beast in the Jungle,” “The Jolly Corner”—all of James’ haunted works. Was so glad to see that The Haunting of Bly Manor put so many of the stories to work—not just The Turn of the Screw (which is still my favorite of James’ shorter works)>
H.P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness. The state of cosmic dread and unspeakable horror this book produces is IMO unmatched by any other written work I’ve come into contact with.
I gotta go with this one as well.
Of Lovecraft’s stories, I found The Colour Out of Space to be the scariest. It conveys the fear of the unknown and the sense of inevitable doom in an unrivaled manner.
The mother pulling such disturbing faces they have to lock her in the attic…that part still scares the absolute shit out of me. It’s such a horrifying concept, left completely undescribed so your brain can do all the heavy lifting. The best/worst kind of horror writing.
That is H.P.s best, IMO. That and the Shadow Over Innsmouth. My pick is a novel by Greg Bear, Psychlone. The main story is probably pretty silly,and is certainly dated, though I found it clever at the time. But there’s a section in the middle that is sort of separate from the main plot. Two or three men trapped in a cabin in the woods. There’s really nothing subtle about it. Think the end of Poltergeist. But the imagery is very vivid. I would love to see at least that part dramatised.
Sort of related ( I read it at HPL’s suggestion in the horror essay) is ‘The Yellow Sign’ by Chambers. I’ve been wondering about the play ever since. A short little nightmare that stays with you.
All of Chambers’ “King in Yellow” stories are worth reading. He obviously inspired HPL and many later authors (such as James Blish’s “More Light”) expand upon the KiY mythos.
Dagon was on the same level for me.
I used to read a lot. As in, every day. And then one day I reached peak fiction and couldn’t do it anymore. I put all my books in boxes, stored them in my parents’ garage, and went out to do other stuff.
But the scariest book I ever read was False Memory by Dean Koontz. I had read a lot of adult books over the years but with this one I overextended, I wasn’t ready for something like this. I can’t remember the details, but it was basically about this guy who’d implant terrifying fears and memories, or I think remove memories from his patients. Brainwashing and haikus, real awful stuff. You have to wonder about the kind of person who manufactures fiction like that.
The story really genuinely scared me and stayed with me, so one day I rummaged through my boxes until I found the copy, went to a random rubbish bin, and threw it away. I didn’t want that book in my or anyone’s library anymore.
I agree with the “House of Leaves” pick. But then this is exactly the sort of horror I like — not gore, but horror in the idea that the universe doesn’t make sense.
Strong agree on The Grin of the Dark. I had been a big fan of Campbell’s 80s stuff and then somehow lost track of him, till I realized a few years ago that he’d continued to put out wild things like this. Besides everything that the reviewer mentioned— and Campbell’s obvious deep love of movies of every kind— it’s got probably the most accurate fictional description I’ve ever seen of how shitty it feels to find yourself compulsively arguing with some weird dipshit of an Internet troll.
Pointless comment – Once on social media I was commenting that Lovecraft Country (the book) was an interesting way to use Lovecraft mythos and a bit more inspired than say Brian Lumley.A comment I received back was something like “People other than Brian have used Lovecraft inspiration in their work too”Too which I thought, well yeah obviously … Then I looked at the name of the person responding – Ramsey Campbell. And it was THE Ramsey Campbell. So fuck me, I told him I enjoyed his books etc etc.
I’ve run into Campbell on the horrorlit subreddit a couple times. I always get a little starstruck.
Came here primed to post about House of Leaves being left off this list but, I suppose I’ll just wander off into the nothingness
For me it was Pet Semetary, hands down. I’ve read a lot of suspenseful novels, but this is the only one that made me feel genuine fright.
I haven’t read it since I was a teenager. I have to imagine it would be even more impactful now that I’m a parent. King at the height of his powers with that one.
i recently tried “high rise” & just couldn’t get through it.
Ballard may… not be for everyone… :)I absolutely love him.
I need to read more JG Ballard. fact.
It may be easier to take Ballard chronologically (by his life, not necessarily publication date). His memoir “Empire of the Sun” (which was the basis of the 1987 film) explains how he went from a life of privilege as a son of British colonials in Shanghai to being interned in a Japanese prison camp during WWII. Pretty much all of his works end up being fictionalized versions of that experience — that when the shit hits the fan, the niceties of civilization fade away and everyone acts selfishly in their own interests to survive.
i did enjoy the book & movie “empire of the sun.”
I was like, “Just leave the damned building!”
As an adult: Misery.As a child: “Grinny”, and its sequel, “You Remember Me”. They’re as different as Alien & Aliens, but they both got right in my head.
Grinny! I still remember how tense I felt reading that for the first time. I bought a copy off eBay a year or two ago, to see if it still held up. Still a great book. Fisk is a brilliant author, and his collection ‘Sweets from a Stranger’ haunted child-me for years.
High Rise was great. Also loved the adaptation with Hiddleston!
He only gets a minor mention, but Paul Tremblay is doing some great work in the horror genre these days. A Head Full of Ghosts (about a young girl whose sister may be mentally ill or possessed by the devil) is flawless and about to be adapted into a film I believe.Dean Koontz I think is an author you need to read his 5 or so best known books then stop before you find out he’s just a cynical hack who recycles his old work without a second thought in order to maintain his record of publishing like 4 books a year.
It is indeed. Though I think that The Cabin at the End of the World is even more disturbing (and better) and I’d love to see that adapted.
Best summary ever of Dean Koontz’s work ever. The first several you read are great, then the plots start repeating. The one consistent trope I remember is the hero and heroine always bang the hell out of each other right before the final confronation with whatever bogeyman they’re fighting.
You should check out Paul Tremblay’s friend Stephen Graham Jones (in fact a character is named after him in Head Full of Ghosts). I recommend “The Only Good Indians” as a starting point or his short story collection “The Ones That Got Away”.
I’ll give him a try, thanks!
Reading The Only Good Indians right now and it’s SO good.
Isn’t his writing amazing?
So amazing. And gruesome
It’s about a cult and a festival devolving into supernatural madness. I feel like no one reads his stuff which is a shame.
To also mention because not a whole lot of female authors are well known for horror fiction.
Two of my favorite spooky tales are written by women—“The Woman in Black” by Susan Hill and “Wylding Hall” by Elizabeth Hand. They are scary, but even more than that, they BOTHER me. Both books are economical (TWIB is 178 pages and WH is only 138 pages) and relentlessly build a sense of dread. I read them every year or so and they still freak me out, even though I know exactly what’s going to happen.
I devoured a lot of King and Koontz at an age that was arguably too young to read that sort of thing, but I can’t say if it *scared* me, as such. However, I have read a few outright disturbing stories that unsettled me long after I read them. I lived in Australia when I was between 8-11 years old (late 80s/early 90s), and at the time Paul Jennings was an incredibly popular kids’ writer (non-Australians are likely familiar with his work thanks to the TV series Round The Twist). He wrote super weird tales, like one where a cruel headmaster finds himself in a personal hell where he’s the one getting the cane from a student – but before this happens he’s sucked down a whirlpool where he sees visions like lobsters dangling a naked man over a pot of boiling water, and they say “I hear they scream when they hit the water.” Jennings also wrote a story about a tiny face that lives inside a garden gnome’s mouth finding its way into the mouth of a teen, who also gets a gnome’s eye on his finger he can see with. And the tiny face bites the kid’s dangly bit at the back of his mouth to make him cry, because once his tears hit the ground they grow into garden gnomes. I swear I’m not tripping balls right now. Finally: UZUMAKI. Read it maybe three or four years ago and, despite a bit of silliness, is an ultimately bleak and disturbing story, not to mention really gross at points.
Fuck yes Paul Jennings. Those eerie, funny, off-kilter stories were so formative for me, in terms of taste and humour and general world view, I guess. The one about the kid guarding the bilbies completely broke my heart as a kid.
YES! Junji Ito is a legend in the manga industry. Uzumaki is my fave work of his, but som of his short form work is chilling. The Enigma of Amigara Fault messed me up bad.
Dan Simmons Carrion Comfort rivals the best by Stephen King, and The Terror is pretty damn horrifying, too.
Song of Kali and Fires of Eden by Dan Simmons are both memorable too
Song of Kali was his first novel, and it’s pretty terrific. Carrion Comfort will always be my favorite.
I’m a huge fan of his Ilium / Olympos books too. Such a weird mix of genres & concepts that it shouldn’t work, but totally does!
“summer of night” gets my vote.
Summer of Night is just aces and such a comparable to It.
one of my faves, i reread it again every few years.
Yes, to all the Simmons recommendations.He has a quasi-historical-biography-thriller book, too: Drood, which is quite something (esp. if one is a past English major and has read a lot of Dickens as well as a lot about Dickens).Simmons is a talented guy.
It’s sitting on my bookshelf, but it’s so thick it scares me.
It’s worth it.
Drood is great (but yeah, it helps that I have a deep love and interest for Dickens, Wilkie Collins, etc). Unimaginatively though I’ll pick his scariest books as being Song of Kali and Summer of Night as well (what happened to that planned movie?) While a very different type of book, I liked Night’s sequel (spin off?) A Winter Haunting a lot too (I know some of the Night characters make appearances in his other books too).
The Terror is excellent. Carrion Comfort is hot garbage that is not helped by the fact that it has aged like milk.
I read Carrion Comfort for the first time earlier this year, off the back of an article just like this one, and was very disappointed. Especially given how much I’d enjoyed Hyperion.
Oh FUCK, “The Terror” is terrifying. A great read for long, dark winter nights! The “carnivale” scene goes from weirdly ebullient to flat-out shriekworthy in a shockingly short span.
Oh man, The Terror is just a wonderful, depressing book. Just one bad thing after. Relentless.
The Devil’s Own Work by Alan Juddhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil%27s_Own_Work
Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, the adaptation of which also features one of the creepiest sudden-corpse jump scares in cinema.That’s scariest. Most disturbing is Cormac McCarthey’s Blood Meridian.
Blood Meridian is so incredibly fucked up
It took me several tries to get all the way through. It’s one of those “glad I did, but never again” experiences.
And The Road, while not necessarily “scary,” is SO FUCKING RELENTLESSLY BLEAK. Man that’s a tough read. I loved it, but never again. UGH
I had to read “The Road” all in one sitting, not just because it was really compelling, but I knew that if I put it down, even for an hour, I’d lose the totally bleak atmosphere McCarthy meticulously constructed. Like, that one scene where the father is debating whether to starve or check out a basement for supplies, because he was worried that his son’s innocence would get totally snuffed out if he saw any more horrors, wow.
But also fascinating, and a probably factual take on what happened to all the bloodthirsty soldiers and Indian hunters once the American frontier became increasingly domesticated. Battling Mexicans along the border for sport was about the only thing left to those guys (thus “The Evening Redness in the West” subtitle, as the sun went down on that way of life).
Blood Meridian is so incredibly fucked upJumping Jeezus on a pogo-stick, that book…I was 75% done with it the first time and had to put it down because it was so dark. It’s clearly a masterpiece though. Probably the closest thing to our generation’s Moby Dick as we are going to get.
In high school I won an award for a surely rather embarrassing essay on the final scene and what I felt it meant in Blood Meridien. I think they were just impressed that I read the book. I loved it but yeah so bleak that I’ve never picked anything by Cormac McCarthy since, although Igather nothing else is quite as nihilistic and bleak.
Child of God is pretty dark too. He has some other relatively lighthearted (comparatively of course) fare like the Border Trilogy.
That’s a great comparison.
That’s why I love it. Blood Meridian is probably one of my favorite books out there, definitely my top McCarthy. I actually gave it to my friend as a wedding present, along with some vinyl. I was originally going to give him “Love in the Time of Cholera” but I realized the subject matter may not be the best for somebody about to have a hopefully long and happy marriage, so I decided on something completely different haha.
I love Ghost Story. I have a dissertation chapter on it discussing the embedded Sears James narrative that is, essentially, a version of The Turn of the Screw.
I haven’t read it in twenty-five years, but it’s still the first book that comes to mind with this question.
I was gonna say. Blood Meridian may not be chiefly a horror novel, but by god if it doesn’t convince you humanity is worthless.
I mean fuck JK Rowling, but Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince. specifically when Dumbledore is drinking the poison and Harry is being attacked in the cave actually terrified my 15 year old self.
House of Leaves is a great creeping unsettling dread. Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark gave me nightmares as a kid.Gerald’s Game, I don’t know if it scared me so much, but I was so unsettled that I couldn’t finish it.
The moon-faced many who is maybe in the corner–so unsettling.
My wife (who is way more into horror than I am) read it then gave it to me. I’m working hard on forgiving her.
Such a creepy book!
Is it basically just the stories compiled here:https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Penpalor is there more to it?
I never followed Creepy Pasta but apparently it was originally presented as a series of short stories? I don’t think there’s any more to it, but as I said above, I knew nothing about it except my wife read it and said it was one of the scariest things even she ever read.
I love both Haunted and House of Leaves (even though I’d say the latter really only works best on 2/3 of its various meta-levels), and I’d add:Little Star by John Ajvide Lindqvist – what a book. Probably one of the most tense and omonous I’ve ever read. There’s moments of fear and violence scattered throughout, yes, but over it all there’s this growing sense that something even worse is coming. And the last ten-twenty pages are some of the darkest and most disturbing I’ve ever read.Muladona by Eric Stener Carlson – a haunting, a plague, a family collapsing, a secret festering, seven nights to save a soul… just a fantastic piece of work, through and through.Luna Park by Bret Easton Ellis – like a more concise and thoughtful House of Leaves, with perhaps a larger focus on character-based horror, this one again crafts a real slow-burning sense of dread. Partially based in reality, even though it, obviously, diverges from this quite quickly, it’s a novel that feels worryingly real and plausible.The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay – as someone else has mentioned, his more famous book, A Head Full of Ghosts has already been optioned for a movie, but this one is his masterpiece, in my mind. It feels disturbingly real, disturbingly possible, the characters all feel like real people (which makes everything even worse) and no matter how you read/perceive what’s going on (and the book keeps you guessing right to the end) there’s no light at the end of this tunnel.And if we’re talking short story collections, both Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud, Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado contain some real chillers.
“cabin at the end of the world” is crap. sorry.
Well, as long as you’re sorry. Admitting it is always the first step.
I found House of Leaves a bit hit-and-miss, but the description of the five and a half minute hallway video really stuck with me and made me feel genuinely creeped out.
I liked CAtEotW, but I thought that the intro was the creepiest part. Somebody telling your kid “none of what is going to happen is your fault,” is chilling.
I prefer A Head Full of Ghosts (Cabin… has been optioned as well, but I think it’s about to expire), but I do like Cabin.. as well.The one chapter about Law & Order SVU in Her Body… had be so confused as someone who has never watched the show. I definitely had to do a quick wiki after, ha.
I tried to read “Head full of ghosts”, it seems like something I would really like. However, I had a very close friend get diagnosed with schizophrenia in my late teenage years, and I saw his family struggle through that even though they were extremely proactive, informed and prepared for things going badly. Even if this wasn’t a story about that, it felt close enough that I just couldn’t read any more. Will check out ‘cabin’.
I discovered House of Leaves in a first year English class (devoted to the vague concept of “experimental fiction” which I think was just an excuse for our prof to teach some of his faves but it was a good class). Interesting, discussing the book as *horror* fiction never came up in class and it’s only recently I’ve seen so many people mention it as an all time scary book.
Wasn’t a fan of Tremblay’s work but loving the Ellis and Carlson suggestions. I’ll need to find Little Star.
Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House”. Things are just ever so slightly wrong at every turn. It lets you know that it’s going to creep up on you, then
pulls the rug out from under you all the same. You know some
kind of terror is coming, but when it comes it’s so much stranger and inexplicable than you expected. It made me change my habit of reading before going to sleep.
What a good list. Varied and from the heart. If you can (and that’s a big ‘if’) put aside how it came about and what it led to—in other words if you can evaluate it in a vacuum—Jay Anson’s novel “The Amityville Horror” is actually pretty scary. I think one of the main blurbs is “This book will scare the hell out of you!” I re-read it some 15 years ago and I agree… Of course it’s slapped with the ultra-dubious “A True Story” (again, what came before and after), but even if it had been a standalone book without any claims to real-life events it might’ve been one of the greatest haunted-house novels ever. I also gotta mention a book whose mere physical presence scared me when I was 8 or so. My parents and older brother—mildly effected by the 70s/early 80s middle-class interest in the supernatural—kept around a cheap paperback called “Enigma of the Poltergeist,” about ‘documented cases’ of real-life hauntings. The content was piecemeal so it would just lay around the living room where they’d occasionally page through it. The thing is, what the book was about scared me, but even the cover scared me: what I took to be an image of a real poltergeist. I would awake early on Saturday mornings and want to go downstairs to make my breakfast and watch cartoons, but I knew the damned book would be on a table in the living room, the actual ghost on the cover looking at me! So I’d stay in my room until someone else awoke and went downstairs. Of course in true fashion, as an adult I found the book in my parents’ basement and actually read through it… fucking ridiculous in how un-credible it was (Gef the Talking Mongoose anyone?), but try telling that to an 8-year-old kid whose family treated it all as true.
+1 The Amityville Horror
I hadn’t thought of the various “true haunting” books that I’ve read. One that always stuck out was Haunted Heartland. I first read some of it while visiting an aunt and uncle on their forty empty acres in northern Michigan. Scared the crap out of me. I snapped up a copy when I found it used some years later.
I have an embarrassing but possibly entertaining story about my brush with The Amityville Horror as a kid: https://letterboxd.com/hob/list/movies-i-was-very-scared-of-as-a-kid/detail/#item-2872909240
Never did get around to finishing that book— maybe I should.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s horror fiction, and he wrote a ton of it, is terrific. It’s like a prose version of a good vintage Hammer film. “Lot No. 249,” an early mummy tale, is hair-raising. His seance stories are a very accurate portrayal of the real thing at the time and an interesting glimpse into the crazy pathology that led Doyle to buy into such snake oil.Stateside, the sadly neglected Mary E. Wilkins Freeman wrote the finest ghost stories I’ve ever read around the turn of the 19th century. “The Wind in the Rose-Bush” and “The Shadows on the Wall” are unnerving gems.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. He’s always been one of the best at creepy imagery, but this book strips down any of his other usual tricks that can distract you from that to present a little kid going through absolute hell from his own parents, plus what’s basically an evil Mary Poppins.
I loved that book, he really is great at getting you into the mindset of kids, especially the sensitive outcast type who aren’t really teens yet but have to face up to adult things like sex and violence (in addition to the otherworldly horror) that they don’t quite understand.
“a woman who is attacked by a man and kills him—but then he keeps returning to torture her further. There isn’t actually anything supernatural in Whispers…” isn’t coming back from being killed supernatural or have the laws of science changed since i went to bed last night?
I’ve never read it, but that made me wonder, too.
Spoiler… if I’m not mistaken, its his twin. I could be wrong, though. Dean Koontz plots tend to run together in my mind.
ok then.
That makes me wonder if it was an influence on the most recent The Invisible Man.I really wish they would have left the question about whether it was the ex or the ex’s brother terrifying her all along unanswered—and fleshed out the brother’s supposedly abusive relationship with the ex growing up a little more. It would have added so much depth to the thematic links between the lingering trauma of abusive relationships and invisible, metaphorical ghosts/demons.The lack of resolution would have made he movie so much more memorable and creepy.
No.
“Lord of the Flies”. I know that sounds pretentious, maybe, but I was 12 when I picked it up at random from my school library, and when ***** is killed it scared me so bad I put the book into my dresser drawer for two days. When I looked at the drawer it was in, I’d hear a roaring in my ears, and distant crashing orchestral music. Seriously.And “The Shining”.
The Shining absolutely terrified me. I’d read King before and loved the horror, but The Shining-I had to give it to my sister and tell her I wanted it out of the house. I was 14. I will not reread but-but I read Dr Sleep when it came out and I loved it.
Yup. I read Lord of the Flies at a similar age and it shook me to my core.
The Haunted cover glows in the dark, which I learned after getting creeped out by a story, deciding to “call it” for the night, turning out the lights, and FUCK THAT FACE IS STARING AT ME FROM ACROSS THE ROOM
Haha yeah i had to sandwich it between a few books on my bookshelf and stay the hell away from hot tubs for a few weeks.
Amityville Horror
Victor LaValle’s The Changeling freaked me out
Book 1 of Stephen King’s The Stand. (Book 2 is ruined by a textbook example of the magical negro stereotype, and I never got to Book 3.)
Richard Matheson’s Hell House, despite a few silly reveals towards the end it is the more overtly sexual and violent brother of Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Or Ray Russell’s The Case Against Satan, which got under my skin in a way The Exorcist doesn’t.
Easily frightened so these might be pretty tame by horror standards.Suffer the children – John Saul, Christine – Stephen King, Coraline – Neil Gaiman
Whatever it is will soon be supplanted by ‘2020: A Year in Review’.
Donald Trump- “Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges Into Success”
No mention of the illustrations in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark? Those splattery images were nightmare fodder enough without even reading the stories.
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons.
The Red Tree by Caitlin Kiernan. Possibly the creepiest book I ever read, nice and queer too.
Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olson, a non-fiction recounting of two fatal grizzly bear attacks in Glacier National Park, Montana in 1967. I read it when I was pretty young and it caused many sleepless nights.Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi, read, again, when I was probably way too young. This introduced me to the terror of being murdered for no reason at all, and the willingness of some people to happily go along with whatever a charismatic lunatic tells them to do.
I read Helter Skelter in my early teens. I enjoyed the book, but perhaps because at the same time I devoured every Stephen King and Dean Koontz book I could get my hands on, the brutality of the true events perhaps didn’t quite register as heavily as they should have. I knew it was non-fiction. My teenage brain and the separation in time from the events probably couldn’t quite grasp the real horror amid a background of fictional brutality. If I re-read the book as an adult, though, I have a feeling it would hit much harder.
Oh my gosh, “Night of the Grizzlies.” That book really is nightmare fuel, especially for people who like to go camping in the wild.
Cask of the amantiallo, hands down.I prefer short stories for horror generally though
Holy cow, Poe’s “Hop-Frog” messed me up for days, and I was in high school when I read it.
For Poe, I would argue for The Masque of Red Death. Or The Black Cat.
Twice in my life I can recall Joey’s ‘put the book in the freezer’ moment. Not so much scared as too het up emotionally to continue.Gerald’s Game – the description of the degloving1984 – when the jig is up.
The Exorcist. Same as the movie.Runners up:Pet Sematary by Stephen King
Masterpieces of Terror and The Supernatural : A Treasury of Spellbinding Tales Old & New / selected by Marvin Kaye with Saralee Kaye (a collection of short stories with several really scary ones)Dracula by Bram Stoker
Came down to see if anyone had mentioned Pet Sematary. That’s one where there were numerous times I had a hard time turning the page. It’s far worse once you have kids.
Salem’s Lot and The Shining are also pretty scary.
100%. I’ve read pretty much everything he wrote up until the mid-90s (when a lot got weird and underwhelming) and have since picked up the newer stuff on a selective basis. I loved 11/22/63, for instance, but it lacks the same just visceral horror that his earlier works evoked. My favorites are probably his first short story collections Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. They aren’t all hits, but the ones that are land hard.
Ah, this must be why this article from a year ago popped up! Anyway, since you mentioned Night Shift and Skeleton Crew – these each had one of the two scariest things I ever read as a kid (probably in the 12-year-old range). “The Boogeyman” from Night Shift, and “The Mist” from Skeleton Crew. The first time I read through The Mist I was absolutely unable to move, and after reading The Boogeyman it wasn’t until (not kidding here) well into adulthood before I could fall asleep without making sure the closet door was tightly closed.
Ha, yeah it took me a few posts to realize I was communicating from someone from the past. Bum bum BUM!
For me it’s probably Scott Smith’s “The Ruins.” It’s just spectacularly riveting and horrifying. And his “A Simple Plan,” while not horror per se, is just as terrifying in its way.
Roald Dahl’s Tales Of The Unexpected had some pretty unsettling material.
I don’t know that I could narrow it down, so I’ll offer one that isn’t likely to be mentioned: Fast Food Nation. In addition to the variety of food production insight that is terrifying on its own, the section on the various crimes and murders committed in fast food restaurants scared HS me enough to completely swear off ever working in food service of any kind.
After my son was born I think I might have had a little PTSD or something. Everything all of a sudden seemed very heightened and the world suddenly seemed like a much scarier place. I was recovering from a planned C-section so I had gotten some great books out of the library I had been looking forward to reading while off work. I started to read “The Ruins” and it was so well-written it made me feel like I was in the jungle with this ominous doom hanging over me. So I put it down and put it in my dresser until it was time to return my library books. It probably wasn’t that scary, but definitely wrong place and wrong time for me.
No way, The Ruins is hella scary! Probably my favorite scary book I’ve read as an adult.
I was just scrolling down to see if anyone had mentioned “The Ruins” yet. I know the premise sounds silly to anyone who hasn’t read it (sentient mimicking vines that kill you) and I understand the terrible movie adaptation pretty much murdered any mystique the book may have had. But man that book wrecked me– after I finished reading it a loose thread on the shorts I was wearing brushed against my leg and I nearly jumped a foot in the air.
I thought the movie was very good in a “Cabin Fever” you are all totally boned kind of way. Unfair horror is an interesting genre, and The Ruins is a good example of it.
The Ruins is terrifying.
Great book.
“The Ruins” is legit terrifying. After I finished reading it, I wondered how long the guardians were going to be able to keep the hill secret. The outside world always finds a way in, eventually.
In the movie, there was apparently an alternate ending where the girl gets away but dies and then you see the flowers growing on her grave, about to spread. Which seemed like something that would eventually happen. Or someone important enough would die that the Mexican government would start hassling the natives and investigating the spot
In the movie, there was apparently an alternate ending where the girl gets away but dies and then you see the flowers growing on her grave, about to spread.Oh, fuck. I hate/love that so much. That’s brilliant/terrifying.
Oh yeah The Ruins was pretty scary. Especially once it becomes clear they’re super super trapped and everything they’re doing is for nothing and no help is coming.
Good list but I Am Dora Suarez, The Treatment, and the totality of the Red Riding Quartet are the most soul sick novels I’ve ever read. I’d also like to say the online novel Worm has some of the most fucked up and scary moments in the whole of fiction.
I Was Dora Suarez is great. All those Derek Raymond books seem like they somehow live in the same universe as V For Vendetta to me, which, I guess, is Thatcherite England.
If limited to novels, I’d have to go with The Ceremonies, House of Leaves, Ghost Story, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. But horror is VERY tough to maintain over novel length, so my real “scariest-ever” list is overwhelmingly short stories or novellas. M.R. James’s Collected Ghost Stories, Thomas Ligotti’s Grimscribe, The Great God Pan, The King in Yellow, most things by Ramsay Campbell, etc.
I was wondering when someone would mention Ligotti
And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts. Bonus points for documenting that America was happy to ignore a disease that caused the death of thousands when Trump was still trying to get a book deal.
Skeleton Crew, but more accurately The Mist. I feel most of King’s best works are his short stories, especially those with vague and open outcomes. The Moving Finger is a VERY close runner-up.
Ahh this is great! Furiously writing all the recommendations down.I had a good laugh regarding the Exorcist, because i distinctly remember when i finished it i was so disturbed i placed it faced down, sandwiched in-between 2 bibles. It really felt like the evil could seep out into my room if precautions werent taken. As for Salems Lot, i placed a rosary on top of the book. Ha!I cant remember which book in particular, but some of James Herbert’s work definitely had me sleeping with the lights on. Because i started my horror novel journey in junior high i must say im slightly numb to it all now.Actually looking forward to having a good scare or two from one of the books listed here. 🙂
“Cell” by Stephen King. I agree, it’s not his best work but there is one scene where the characters wake up and the zombies are just silently standing around the house staring through the windows that honestly sent a chill down my spine.
I like to think Cell was the inspiration for Sarah Marshall’s movie about killer cell phones.
That, and the opening chapter or so was genuinely fantastic. The scariest part I can remember was the girl at the start of the event who only got a glancing “dose” of the signal and immediately started screaming that she didn’t know her name or anything about who she was. That thought still kind of chills me.
Pet Sematary almost made me stop reading. Only other book to do that was American Psycho.
Alex I was coming here to make sure someone had put HOUSE OF LEAVES up. Good pick. I had the same late-night unsettled feeling, which I’ve never had in my life from any movie/anything, and had to take a break. With all the lights on. And then go sleep on the couch upstairs.I was 22.
The Tale of the Neverending Slideshow.
I can’t believe no one’s mentioned It. Maybe it’s because the two film efforts didn’t do it justice, but that’s one book I remember actually having to force myself to turn the page.
The Adrian Mellon Chapter is so creepy. And the Mike Hanlon Derry Interludes where people keep witnessing clowns present at Horrible Historical Atrocities.
Please, I’m begging y’all, stop it with the slideshows.
Not the scariest book in the world, but the scariest reading experience I’ve ever had, for sure.
My family has a vacation home in Michigan, near the lakefront, nestled about 500 steps deep in the woods and dunes. About 40 cottages share a communal beach. In the summer, the days are marginally full of families, and that number dwindles along with the daylight.
In the summer of 1986, I had just finished my freshman year of high school. I had also developed a love of Stephen King’s works. I was plowing my way through his works and brought The Shining, among others, on the week-long trip. I started reading it shortly before 2:00 in a folding beach chair, feet in the water, lapped by gentle waves.
That afternoon, a storm began rolling in over the lake. I was so engrossed in the book that I hardly noticed. It wasn’t until the waves started picking up that I realized what was happening. I moved my chair further and further back from the water’s roiling edge, blissfully unaware that everyone else had left the beach for cover.
As Jack Torrance continued his descent into isolated madness, the wind picked up around me and the skies darkened. Because I was a dumb kid, I wanted to see how this all turned out before I hightailed it for the cottage, resolute that I could finish the final pages before the impending storm.
I finished the book and shivered from both the story and the 20-degree temperature drop that accompanies a summer storm over Lake Michigan. I looked around and there wasn’t a soul anywhere. And, even though the sun wouldn’t set for another hour or so, the storm clouds had dropped everything to dusk-like lighting. I looked up at the staircase, and the shapes of the dense trees that surrounded it, and was reminded of the topiary scene I’d just read. I’ll admit it, I was all alone and scared, and I had no one to blame but myself and the prose of Stephen King. The imagination of a 15-year-old can be an overwhelming thing and that short walk in near darkness turned into a terrifying barefoot sprint up into the woods and safety before full-on lunacy took me over. Of course, once I got back inside and with my family, I immediately picked up It and started reading. Like I said, I was a dumb kid.
I’ve read just about every book King has ever written, and while there are many books that are scarier than the Shining from a pure story standpoint, nothing has ever come close to matching that experience of feeling like maybe you’re the last person in the world and it’s just you against the impending craziness.
good list!I will recommend Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black (that last scene is a kick in the heart) and The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons.And I second 2666.
Horrostör by Grady Hendrix is the only book that has given me a nightmare after reading it. I do wish it would get adapted.
Tbh, the one that messed me up the most is one I just read—the reprint of LET’S GO PLAY AT THE ADAMS’ by the guy whose name I can’t remember right now. Just horridly depressing and brutal, far more impactful that I ever expected it to be.
Books ussualy don’t scare me no matter how hard they try. This is an exception.
How did I miss this list when it came out?????????
I’ve probably posted this soooo many other places but GO READ MICHAEL MCDOWELL. Blackwater and The Elementals are both southern gothic horror and two of the finest pieces of horror writing I’ve ever read. The Elementals is a bit more traditional horror, but Blackwater has more of the horrors of dealing with other people. Both feature fascinating female characters, a strong point of both.
The author collected death memorabilia, wrote the screenplay for Beetlejuice, and also worked on The Nightmare Before Christmas. He died of aids in 1999, and I think he deserves to be more well known. He basically raised a whole generation (two?) of quirky young women with those two movies alone.
ETA: The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories is an absolute masterpiece, as far as collections go. And it’s HUGE. I’d never read most of the stuff inside it and so much of it is just creepy in the best way. Those stories really stuck with me. (The same two editors released a sci-fi one of a similar heft, but I was mostly familiar already with what that one included.)
I really think horror (and sci-fi) work strongest in short story form. They can deliver the punch and then leave you there hanging in a way novels just can’t.
Have you read McDowell’s “The Amulet”? Oh my goodness. The scene in the beautician’s shop HAUNTS ME.
Strieber & Kunetka’s Warday, about a 1980s “limited nuclear exchange” & how it affects/devastates the U.S. Way too real.
Yeah, that’s one that completely stays with you. Agreed.
The first thing I ever read that outright scared me was The Whisperer in Darkness by H.P. Lovecraft. I starter reading it at the tail end of a two month cross country road trip with my family the summer after I got my drivers license. The creeping paranoia of the story combined with the winding country roads, looming pines, and subtle changes in the sky as summer ended and autumn began. When I got to the last word on the last page I was absolutely shaking and had to put the book down and compose myself for a few minutes.
I hadn’t really read a lot of horror (unless you count all those Alfred Hitchcock anthologies I read as a kid, some of which were pretty chilling-The Man From the South, anyone? and a bunch of Stephen King) and then I read The Keep. And there it was. I still love that book but I haven’t decided even now how I feel about the crossover.
Your mom.
Ararat by Christopher GoldenThe Descent by Jeff Longhonourable mention: Psycho movie novelization trilogy
Pet Sematary because it has the most realistic motivations for the characters. What grieving parent wouldn’t do everything in their power to bring their child back?
I read a lot of horror and I don’t get scared easily, but the following books and short stories all made an impression:1. The Inner Room, by Robert Aikman. The most haunting short story I’ve ever read.2. Lost Hearts, by M.R. James. Classic English ghost story with an uncharacteristically gruesome twist.3. The Jaunt, by Stephen King.4. Revival, by Stephen King. His best book in the last 20 years, IMO. An expertly written exercise in creeping suspense with an ending far more Lovecraftian than anything Lovecraft himself ever managed to come up with.5. It, by Stephen King. In my opinion, the greatest horror novel ever written. I read it every Halloween season and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.6. The Dark Country, by Dennis Etchison. Every single story in this collection is a shudder-inducing little gem.7. Hyperion, by Dan Simmons. This one is actually sci-fi. I include it only because the first story, The Priest’s Tale (Hyperion is a loosely connected anthology of short stories in the vein of The Canterbury Tales), stayed with me for weeks after I finished it. I normally find ‘body horror’ dull and ineffective. This… well, this is the exception.
The Jaunt! JFC that is some troubling shit. “It’s longer than you think, Dad! It’s longer than you think!”
Hell yes, “The Jaunt” is probably my favorite short story of King’s though obviously he has hundreds and many of them are very very good. The Men in Low Yellow Coats and that one with the mill basement full of rats are probably the favorites off the top of my head.
The thing about The Jaunt is that it sucker punches you into forgetting its a horror story until the last paragraph. Which is wjy the jumpscare of an ending works so well .
By the way, your love of The Jaunt means that I need to read all of your recommendations here. So thank you!
The Jaunt is hands-down my favorite King story, and I’m a major fan of his work. Just an incredibly imaginative take on what appears to be a very fundamental technological concept. Gangsters dropping people they want disappeared into the teleporter with no set destination was a particularly nasty nugget.
I had forgotten all about The Jaunt.
I’m glad you mentioned “Revival.” That book BOTHERED me. It legit made me lie in bed more than a few nights pondering the horror of that particular vision of the afterlife.
As a kid, I was terrified by “The Figure in the Shadows” by John Bellairs. Great illustrations by Mercer Mayer too.
Good one! For me, it was The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull and the Lamp from the Warlock’s Tomb with the Edward Gorey illustrations.
I think I had aged out of John Bellairs by the time those books came along, but I would have love the Edward Gorey illustrations.
By the way, Mercer Mayer sells his prints at an Etsy shop. You can buy his signed prints from Figure in the Shadows directly from him!
Oh wow! Headed over there now!
The correst answer is, “i was 13, and i read Steven King’s The Talisman.”
I read Stephen King books WAY too young. I can still remember being terrified from passages 30 years later (The Long Walk, Night Surf, Salem’s Lot, Pet Sematary, Survivor Type, Graduation Afternoon – still think about that one). Also, I read “The Exorcist” when I was sick with Strep in 7th grade. The fever dreams were pretty scary.Clearly, no one was supervising what I took out from the library at 12 years old!
Hell ya! Dean Koontz was my go-to in high school.
I watched some scary movies and not lot of scary books.Though I have to put Stephen King’s Pet Sematary here. That book was legitimately fucked up, almost as if it is fated to happen and there’s no way out and that’s horrifying to even think about it.Never again.
I never read much horror, but to my 5th grade brain, The Amityville Horror was absolutely terrifying. The fact that it was supposedly true made it even more so. Now that I think about it, I also used to love freaking myself out reading alien abduction accounts. Once again it was due to the claim that the stories were allegedly true is what made all the difference to me. I spent many a sleepless night expecting a gray to paralyze me in my bed and whisk me away for examination.
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. Religious horror during the black plague in France. Truely unerving stuff.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova scared the shit out of me.But yes also Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, as a kid. Ghost story and joke books were my favorite to get from the little Scholastic book order form. The jokes were terrible but the ghost stories were pretty good.
Nothing made me happier as a kid then filling out the Scholastic books order form except of course actually receiving the books.
My tribe!
It was the best. I also for some reason liked ordering cat posters from that form. Like the ones that said “hang in there.” Then you’d forget what you ordered so when the arrival day came it was like a Christmas surprise.
Thomas Ligotti’s “Songs of a Dead Dreamer” “Grimscribe” and “Teatro Grottesco” are incredible works of horror and weird fiction. The writing, imagery, plots, and meaning (or lack thereof) are among the best in the genres. Surprised he’s not mentioned by more folks here. Laird Barron is another who is fantastic. His Imago Sequence and Other Stories is a classic collection of modern lovecraft and weird.
I think it’s a question of when, mostly. Stephen King, Clive Barker and Dean Koontz scared me because they clicked very well on my teenage state of mind.
btw thanks all for your recommendations. Must drop something here I guess- Koontz scared me at the time, and Phantoms is still his masterpiece. The movie is… fine.- King also did, but mostly when he got into the head of disturbed individuals: “Rage” and “Roadworks”.- Cannot remember anything about the Straub books. Absolutely nothing.- Many times I found myself scared by sci fi stories rather than horror books. Some of the Cordwainer Smith bits, the first Hyperion story, I have no mouth…- Early Clive Barker is fun. There are too many stories and you can pick up the most famous ones, but I enjoyed his debut novel A LOT, The Damnation Game.Yeah that is it. I enjoyed Robert McCammon the best among those 80s horror writers, but I cannot remember being scared by him. Wait, his take on Usher, Usher’s Passing, did.
John Byrne, the comic book artist/writer, wrote a horror novel in 1992 called Whipping Boy, that one I found really scary. Despite only reading it once, it still sticks out in my mind, a shame he never did a lot more of that kind of thing.
Red Dragon, Silence Of The Lambs, Hannibal, Hannibal Risingthey made it so hard for me to sleep.
Misery by Stephen King. I had to put it down so many times and go watch Disney or something. Just so well written.
“2666″ is one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors. I also liked “Haunted” and that’s probably my favorite one by Palahniuk. “House of Leaves” is really creepy too.
“I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream” isn’t absolutely terrifying but it is incredibly unsettling. Good blend of sci-fi and horror. Kind of serves as a precursor to some of the ideas in the “System Shock” series.
Reprisal by F. Paul Wilson is probably the darkest thing that comes to mind
Midnight Mass is one of my favorite novels, but I haven’t read anything else from him. I got excited when I heard about the Netflix show, then realized it wasn’t an adaptation of that book.
He kind of fell apart for me after 11 million Repairman Jack novels that devolved into young adult books. That and his heavy Catholicism showing through in Midnight Mass and a few other stories. But he really had a knack for what would disturb people on a deep, visceral level. Reprisal has some things that are just awful, but The Keep is his best known for a reason.
I’m glad 2666 is included here. Obviously, the chapter detailing the kidnappings and murders of women in and around Mexico City is horrifying, but the rest of the book before and after is deeply, existentially unsettling. Despite all that, I think the book is a modern masterpiece, even if Bolano never technically had the opportunity to finish it.
I want to say something by John Connolly but it’s hard to pick just one. I guess probably his Fractured Atlas novella, from Night Music, his second collection of short stories. (The Fractured Atlas features in a later part of his Charlie Parker supernatural horror/crime detective series, too, which I can’t believe more people don’t talk about. They’re excellent.) Night Music also contains one of the loveliest ghost stories ever, A Haunting. I can’t recommend it enough.
House of Leaves gave me a good panic attack when i was reading it. There’s a description by one of the many editors of the feeling of being pursued from behind, and it worked so well that I felt the wall behind me dissolve and started freaking out.
Really stupid: The Devils of D-Day by schlockmeister Graham Masterton. It’s nonsense about allied tanks being powered by devils in order to defeat the Nazis and some of those tanks still being around and it all ends with giant diabolical monster stomping over the Normandy landscape, but there’s a bit in a mansion where the leads are confronted with a ritual which summons infernal terrors which is really spookily well done. And then in the middle of the night, I wake up and I feel the words of that ritual (which I luckily skipped over) trying to force themselves into my consciousness and out of my mouth and it just won’t stop… Most terrifying night of my young life.
Dean Koontz. At my local used book store, I had the following exchange:Worker: “We do have a lot of Dean Koontz.”Me: “yes, there is a reason for that.”Worker” *chortle*FWIW, nothing creeps me out as much as Lovecraft.
I’ve read a lot of horror, but personally some of the scariest books for me were by Ira Levin. He’s sooo good at suspense. For horror, I thought the hedge animals in The Shining were pretty scary along with the thing in the playtunnel. For Levin, especially (SPOILERS)(1) in a Kiss Before Dying before the first sister gets killed and
(2) in the Boys from Brazil when one of the Nazis impersonates someone and gets into a house and the audience knows it’s not the right guy. There’s just this terrible gnawing fear as he’s let into the house and you know he’ll do something terrible