25 of the Most Terrifying Best Horror Books Of All Time

Books Literature can be a moving, beautiful artistic experience. Skillful writers can bring us face to face with scenarios and emotions that we may never encounter in real life, expanding our understanding of both the universe and our fellow human beings.

It can also scare the living daylights out of us. Horror novels don't always get the respect they deserve; just because something is scary doesn't mean it's not `` literary '' or well-made art, but if the core purpose of a story is seen as `` polluting you with fear, '' for some reason that story won't much gain respect. Of course, a story can be terrifying without necessarily being a great art. If your goal is to be so scared of a book that you put it in the freezer and book a hotel room for a few days, here are twenty five books that may not be the per se best horror novels, but certainly the scariest.

Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Terror and Madness

Literally Everything Edgar Allan Poe Wrote

Poe had a knack for infusing everything he wrote with visceral dread. His characters and narrators lean towards the mentally fragile and insane, people who are haunted by things that can be literal or expressions of their faulty thought processes. Regardless, stories like The Tell-Tale Heart or The Cask of Amontillado maintain their power to petrify more than a century and a half after their publication, as Poe taps into the fundamental fear we all have that the world and the people around us are not what they seem.

See Also: The Best Short Stories

House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition

House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski

Simply put, House of Leaves is one of the most terrifying books ever written. From a fairly standard horror premise (a house turns out to be a bit bigger on the inside than is strictly possible) Danielewski concocts a dizzying story with multiple unreliable narrators, typographic mysteries and looping footnotes that manage to get the reader into the story and then create them question their own perception of thatstory, it's a trick no one else has managed to achieve such a dramatic effect, making this novel more of a participatory experience than any other literary work - which, given the dark madness at its core is not necessarily a pleasant experience.

Rosemary's Baby

Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin

The film adaptation has supplanted the novel in pop culture, but the novel was a big hit for Levin - and the film sticks so well to plot and dialogue that you really get a sense of the novel by looking at it to watch. The story of a young woman who becomes pregnant after a nightmare is shocking not from the familiar turn of the baby's parenthood (hint: not her husband), but from the growing isolation Rosemary experiences as her suspicions about everyone around her. grow around. There are so many threads connected to the terror, from the emotional and economic insecurity of a struggling young couple to the simple fear a mother has for their child, all expertly tied into a story that keeps you awake at night.

The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

When you think of cliches in horror fiction, the haunted house is at the top of the list, an idea so often done that it is often an unintended parody. Shirley Jackson was no ordinary writer, however, and she takes the concept of the haunted house and perfects it. The Haunting of Hill House is simply the best haunted house story ever written. The fears come not only from the malicious actions of a house that consciously appears angry, but also from the claustrophobia we experience from the novel's unreliable narrator, Eleanor, whose descent into madness is slow and excruciating, beginning only after we fall asleep. are lulled. a false sense of security from the apparent recognisability of her early persona.

Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

The great sage Pat Benatar once sang that Hell is for children. Golding's story of children stranded on an island without supplies or adult supervision is absolutely terrifying for one simple reason: nothing supernatural is going on. It's a story about inadequately socialized people descending into cruelty, because that's our basic nature. You look into the abyss in the middle of this novel and the abyss looks back.

We must Kevin talk we need to about Kevin

talk by Lionel Shriver

Another story about the terror of children, the horror inherent comes this story that the people we create eventually are their own people - and possibly strangers to us. Not everyone has a close and loving relationship with their parents, and while the idea of ​​your own children growing up to be criminals is unpleasant, most people assume that they will at least recognize themselves in their children. But what if you don't? What if your child -your child- is an empty monster?

Night Film

Night Film, by Marisha Pesslhole

In the internet age it is pretty easy to fall down a rabbit on the pop culture obsession, and there are still dark areas of culture that haven't had a wiki created around them. Peel's story of a mysterious underground filmmaker whose films may or may not contain hints of dark force and gruesome events, and the journalist who becomes obsessed with him, asks the reader how to make sure there is a clear line between fact and fiction. wedge of doubt, presents a terrifying fiction to fill that space.

Ring

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Ring, by Kōji Suzuki

The novel that inspired the horror films of the same name, the premise is well known: Anyone who watches a mysterious videotape of creepy images is told they will die in seven days - and then they die . The investigation into the tape and how to avoid this grim fate leads to what remains an incredibly shocking backstory involving rape, smallpox, and a forgotten pit. Technology has changed, but terror never really relied on VHS tapes - it's the concept that ideas can kill, that you can be doomed simply by experiencing something, that's so horrifying.

Penpal

Penpal, by Dathan Auerbach

Starting from the idea that we are often blinded by the details we can see, making it impossible to see the bigger picture, Auerbach's debut began as a series of eerie stories on the Internet. The episodic nature of the story is ideal for the effect it achieves; the narrator tells that he was a young boy and sent a penpals request attached to a balloon with his classmates, including his best friend Josh. He doesn't receive an answer until almost a year later, and shortly afterwards his life takes a turn for the bizarre. A series of tragic and strange things happen to him and everyone around him, creating a sense of fear that only increases when the truth is revealed.

Carrion Comfort

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Carrion Comfort, by Dan Simmons Simmons

' novel follows different groups of people who have The Ability, a psychic power that allows them to take control of others remotely and force them to perform any action. When one of their dolls kills someone, the person with The Ability is strengthened and strengthened. Simmons does not shy away from the implications of this power on history and the future, and the book will destroy any sense of security you have in the world around you, revealed as possibly just a global board game for those who can control us all as pawns.

Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary, by Stephen King

Several of King's books could be on this list, but he often fights the terror of his stories with the richness and humanity of his characteristics and the proliferation of his stories. Pet Sematary manages to be his most terrifying novel through its simple, devastating concept: a magical graveyard where buried things come back to some sort of life - but aren't what they once were. From that simple idea, King rises to a climax that gets under your skin in a fundamental way, most horror stories fail.

The Girl Next Door

 

The Girl Next Door, by Jack Ketchum

Horror often revolves around the corruption or distortion of social norms and rules; once you feel that you can no longer rely on the natural social order, literally anything is possible. Ketchum's disturbing novel about the unimaginable abuse that two sisters endure when forced to live with their mentally unstable aunt and her three ferocious sons is based on real events, but it's the central theme of an adult that gives official sanctions to the atrocities that make this. The story is so terribly gruesome.

Blindness

Blindness, Jose Saramago

Helplessness is a key factor in much horror; most people believe that they are in control of their destiny and their lives, and horror is often effective in reminding us how little control we actually have. An epidemic of blindness leaves the population of an entire city locked up in a mental institution, while society collapses inside and without. The cruelty and descent into animalistic madness is all too realistic, and Saramago manages to capture the terrifying confusion and helplessness people experience in a society that is no longer functioning.

Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West

Blood Meridian, by Cormac

McCarthy McCarthy's entire writing style and technique is terrifying; the man could write a shopping list that drips the reader with fear. This tale of extreme, relentless, and ubiquitous violence in the American West emerges under a semblance of the unreal to become allmanages to pull off too real, and the greatest trick McCarthyhere is to reveal the most terrifying aspect of the story. make: the main character. death - the only act of cruelty that he does not depict, leaving to our imaginations the horrors enclosed in that scene - which is infinitely worse than anything he could have evoked.

Exquisite Corpse

Exquisite Corpse, by Poppy Z. Brite

Brite's most famous novel follows two serial killers who initially planned to kill each other, but upon discovering a fellow traveler, instead engage in a wave of gruesome sex and murder. The actual way the couple come up with a plan to kidnap, torture, and then consume a beautiful gay man named Tran is the kind of thing that can be just shocking, but Brite constantly takes into account the value of existence and what we all could do. do with the time we have left - time that we all too often imagine is infinite, when of course we will all be consumed by something one day.

Something Wicked This Way Comes: A Novel

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

Bradbury's epic childhood and adult ruminant tells the story of a magical circus that comes to a small town and offers residents dark gifts they didn't know they were savages - especially the carousel that can change your physical age, aging boys who yearn to mature, and middle-aged men and women who yearn for their lost youth to grow younger. Knowing that the worst horror in the world is losing the natural order of your life, Bradbury perfectly captures the combination of fear and excitement that everyone experiences as they crack the mysteries that separate them from adulthood.

Hell House

Hell House, by Richard Matheson

What Matheson taps into in this classic haunted house story is the universal fear that we are already lost, already broken. A team is hired to investigate the existence of an afterlife by exploring the notoriously haunted Belasco House. A team comes in and slowly succumbs to the influence of the entity within - an entity that only uses their own weaknesses and secret shame against them. Their descent into the depths of terror is therefore too near for comfort - for anyone reading the book knows all too well that they have weaknesses, as well as secret shame.

The Stand (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions)

The Stand, by Stephen King

Warning: This book can be extremely terrifying to read during a pandemic! That's right, The Stand is about a deadly virus that is nearly destroying the world. If you're not already paranoid when someone close to you coughs or sneezes, this book will definitely help you there. With how relevant this book is to the present day, and the fact that it is one of the best Stephen King books of all time, now is definitely the time to make it.

Haunted: A Novel

Haunted, by Chuck Palahniuk

Told in alternating chapters depicting a group of aspiring writers voluntarily secluded in an unusual writer's retreat and the stories they write, Haunted not only contains one of the most disturbing short stories ever ("Guts," which caused several people to pass out when Palahniuk read it publicly). It's also a deep dive into the madness as the reality TV-obsessed characters begin to sabotage their experiment in a quest for fame. suffocating fear that Palahniuk employs grows so incrementally that you don't notice it until you suddenly realize you've already held your breath for five pages.

Dawn

Dawn, by Octavia Butler

Although technically science fiction, this story of humanity is centuries after a devastating apocalypse is in many ways outright terror. Lilith is one of the last remaining humans, awakening in an outdoor yard. The aliens, three-sexes and many-tentacles, offer Lilith a deal: they will help her repopulate Earth, but their price is to breed with humanity to acquire humanity's 'talent' for cancer. (and the creative possibilities it offers) while blunting their self-destructive tendencies. The horror permeated every page is subtle, but it exerts tremendous mental pressure as you progress through the story.

Dracula

Dracula, by Bram Stoker

Of course you've heard of Dracula, but have you really read the book? If not, it's time to read the vampire novel that started it all. Unlike some of the charming vampires we see in pop culture today, Dracula is much darker and takes you into an evil and twisted storyline. You won't find any sparkle or soul here, and trust us when we say the book is much better than the movie.

The Ruins

The Ruins, by Scott Smith

Smith's story is deceptively simple: a group of tourists in Mexico looks for an archaeological site where a friend has set up camp; they find a pyramid covered with strange vines, the land around it salted and barren. Once on the pyramid, they discover their friend's dead body, covered with the vines, and that the nearby villagers have arrived with guns to force them to stay on the pyramid. The vines are one of those simple monsters that seem so easy to defeat at first glance, but the unrelenting doom that slowly descends on the characters proves otherwise.

Bird Box

Bird Box, by Josh Malerman

Malerman's intense story of a world that is slowly crumbling as people go murderously crazy after seeing mysterious creatures - simply called The Problem - is so scary because the reader only has the information the characters have, and that's not much. The world is collapsing and the survivors can only shut themselves off from the outside and try to avoid the worst, leading to a torturous exhaustion of hope that renders the reader defenseless against the gruesome images Malerman conjures up.

Ghost Story

Ghost Story, by Peter Straub

A good old-fashioned ghost story designed to terrify and entertain, and Straub's seminal novel does both. Five old friends meet regularly to exchange ghost stories, but when one of them mysteriously dies and the survivors begin to dream of their own death, a secret from their past is revealed - and the simple pleasures of a ghost story become theirs. most terrifying explored. ends by a master of the form.

Beloved (Pulitzer Prize Winner)

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

If you think of don'tBeloved as a horror story, you're not paying attention. Morrison's skill as a writer comes into its own as she takes the reader through what is arguably one of the saddest and most horrifying stories on paper. There is no more terrifying sequence than the long slide into madness as escaped slave Sethe, convinced that the young woman who calls herself Beloved is the daughter she murdered in an attempt to protect her from slave traders who came to claim them, is getting thinner and weaker as she gives all she has - including food - for Beloved, who keeps growing.

Have we really left out scary books? Let us know in the comments.