You may already know how the story ends, but you love the sense of fear and terror you feel with each turn of the page… Reading a story that can scare you over and over again is an absolute treat and a skill that only a very select number of writers are gifted with.
The choices below are just a few of our favorites.ideal halloween costume Preparations are complete.ideal horror movie nighthere are some suggestions that I think would be very good reading…
Reader beware – you’re in for a scare.
“It came out from under the sink!” by R.L. Stine
As a child of the ’90s, R.L. Stine’s creepy Goosebumps books defined most of my formative reading years. Their garishly illustrated covers (special hardcover editions had glowing eyes and made obnoxious noises) further heightened the nervous anticipation of devouring them.
Oddly enough, the one that scared me the most is probably the most ridiculous one in the series. It’s a story about a glowing red peephole and an evil sponge with a tendency to bring bad luck. Anyone who finds it cannot get rid of it without dying. But since this is a children’s book, a loophole can be found to hug a sponge to death (not a bad way).
If you don’t have trypophobia (fear of objects with small, repeating holes), this might not sound too scary, but this applied to my legitimate phobia: the cupboard under the sink. I ventured to open the house once and found a haunting mass of damp cloth, discolored bottles of chemicals, and worst of all, an absolutely huge, thick spider on top of a dehydrating sponge. I still sometimes see it in my worst nightmares. In this sense, R.L. Stine made me think deeply about the terrible secrets that lurk in the hidden places where we feel the safest, and once we discover them, we are forever haunted. I still keep a dish sponge next to my sink. AB
“A Sunny Place for Shady People” by Mariana Enriquez
There are some authors who get giddy when it comes to publication dates. Mariana Enriquez is one of them.
Following her book The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which was nominated for the International Booker Prize, the Argentinian novelist and journalist returns this year with a stunning collection of spooky short stories.
like horror shorts What’s more, it’s difficult to accurately complete any short film within such a limited amount of time. But Enriquez shines in this art form, and is unique in the way he deftly injects an allegorically rich layer into a supernatural tale that explores how we, as a species, deal with guilt and deal with trauma. Especially when faced with earthly monsters like corruption, poverty, rape, and addiction.
The 12 stories that make up A Sunny Place For Shady People, translated into English by Megan McDowell, are mostly about ghosts. From a suburb tormented by the recently deceased, to a faceless rapist who passes down a curse through the generations, to a cult surrounding a drowned woman in a hotel water tank, to a riverbank inhabited by a bird that used to be a woman, Enriquez manages to put a uniquely Latin American spin on European Gothic horror tropes.
If you want an image that will stick with you for days, pick up a copy. Short stories are eerily perfectly written and will keep you glued to the page, seeing just how terrifying the everyday can be. DM
“Tell Me I’m Worthless” by Alison Rumfitt.
Haunted house? Tick-tock. Nuanced queer representation? Tick. A keen insight into the spread of fascism by British political condemnation?A tick too.
“Tell Me I’m Worthless” has the brilliant idea of starting a horror story after the fact right from the beginning. Three years ago, three friends and I visited a haunted house. Not a single person left. The second is a trans woman who lives in constant fear of what happened. And a third friend later became a TERF and engaged in a propaganda war to ruin as many trans people’s lives as possible.
The horror-as-politics metaphor is all over Lambfitt’s sleeve, as this house serves as a demonic source of fascist beliefs, but it works so well because the novel is a truly intelligent discussion of the interplay between fear and fascism, while also presenting some of the most gut-wrenching, satisfyingly menacing horror scenes I’ve read in years. JW
“Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Captures Us” by Anna Bogutskaya
Unlike the other books mentioned here, Anna Bogutskaya’s new book is not interested in causing terrorism. Instead, we want to explore why we feel scared, and how these shifting anxieties have shaped an exciting new era of mainstream experimental horror cinema over the past decade.
A film critic, programmer, and co-founder (among other things) of the horror collective The Final Girls, Bogutskaya knows her stuff, dissecting a new era of terrifying tropes in which haunted houses have become dilapidated rental properties and the Universal Monsters of yore have become us.
It’s a fascinating read for fans of the genre, focusing on perhaps the most important element of horror: the audience’s emotions. What scares us teaches us about ourselves and the world. The sincerity at the heart of all horror is a carnival mirror of evolving social and cultural trauma. However, please be careful. You’ll end up with a very long watch (or rewatch) list.
Oh, and while you’re at it, check out Bogutskaya’s book, Hateable Female Characters: Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate. This was the next one. last year’s favorites. AB
Hergé’s “Seven Crystal Balls”
I’ve never been a big graphic novel reader. But I was and still am a huge fan of Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin series, and I can’t deny that they were the stuff of nightmares for me as a kid. To this day, I often feel like the horror elements of comics are underappreciated.
The fact that Tintin is still a disenfranchised 17-year-old kid with countless people trying to kill him is disturbing enough, but many scenes of his adventures are downright terrifying. The most powerful nightmare fuel for me remains 1948’s “The Seven Crystal Balls.” The story follows seven members of the Sanders-Hardiman expedition as they discover the tomb of the ancient Inca ruler Lascar Capac. They brought back his mummified body. It’s an error, here. Rascal Capac (and his Slasher Smile) enters their bedroom and throws a poisonous crystal ball onto the floor, causing many to fall into a coma. All of them are hospitalized, and every day at a certain time they all regain consciousness and scream out in fear.
The animated series really does justice to these Hammer-style scenes, making them truly terrifying to listen to.
To this day, I maintain a healthy level of prudence towards all artifacts, Inca or otherwise, and historically suppress white colonization for fear of being cursed. Show me a crystal ball with an ancient backstory. If you do, you’ll see that I’m going whiter than most Tintin stories. Because diversity was never Hergé’s strong suit.
The Adventures of Tintin has been made into a movie several times over the years, but if the producers had the sense, they’d lean into the horror potential of the Belgian cartoonist’s work. I encourage you to go back to these so-called children’s classics and note how wonderfully traumatic they are. DM
“The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood
As the US election nears, where women’s reproductive rights – literally in some states – are on the ballot, The Handmaid’s Tale offers a chilling exploration of a dystopian world that feels increasingly eerily relevant. Something about the violence orchestrated for ultimate power and control (think public executions, legally mandated rape), experienced through relatable “ordinary” characters stripped of almost all autonomy and agency, physically shook me and disturbed me far more than turning the last page. A compelling Halloween read (and offers some great costume possibilities), if a little too close for comfort. E.M.
Hanya Yanagihara “To Paradise”
Although not strictly a horror novel, this epic follow-up to Yanagihara’s most successful A Little Life may seem the furthest from it in its first two long pages, set in 1893 and 1993. It is in the third and final book, set in 2093, that Yanagihara’s twisted mind is fully developed.
Set in a Manhattan besieged by an endless pandemic and its restrictive lockdowns, rapid climate change and its claustrophobic effects, and a totalitarian state reacting to both conditions, Into Paradise differs from many similar dystopian novels in Yanagihara’s commitment to presenting misery as a stark inevitability of all civilized life.
Some horror fans are looking for excitement, but if you want to finish a book that’s hopeless and hopeless, this is my recommendation. JW
“A Series of Unfortunate Events” by Daniel Handler (pen name Lemony Snicket)
While it may not be your typical Halloween read, A Series of Unfortunate Events certainly caused some anxiety in me as a child. Not only because my teacher was convinced that my reading record was a lie, but also because there was certainly no author like Lemon Snicket.
This book is rarely full of jump scares, but parents dying in a fire, a woman being eaten by leeches, and a baby being trapped in a birdcage and hanging from a tower might be classified as slightly sinister. However, the real fear was that the adults had no idea what they were doing. Time and time again, the dastardly Count Olaf will continue to pull the hair out of their eyes and endanger the Baudelaire brothers.
In a world full of helpless adults, we must always be on guard against villainous people with tattoos on their ankles. Now that I am clearly an adult, the fear that comes from this realization only increases. E.M.