Horror Literature

[The Chibi One]

Happy Halloween, fellow travellers! Is there anything more basic bitch than starting a horror-themed thread on the 1st of October?

Nevertheless, I searched and couldn't find any dedicated horror /lit/ thread; if there is, chalk it up to my being stupid and navigate people to the proper one.

What are your favourite horror novels? Horror short stories? When did you start reading horror? Do you go for film/series adaptations of books/stories you've read? Did you start with stuff like Goosebumps and moved on to big-boy leagues?

I'll start: I began reading horror literature as a wee lad, with Stephen King in his eighties crazy era. During the nineties I must have consumed upwards of a thousand shitty trade paperbacks, the Goosebumps series, and anthologies from local authors, Clive Barker, Masterson, Lovecraft, Straub, Poe, Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark, classics like Dracula, etc. etc.

I don't really believe in favourites but rather titles indicative of one's preferences. With that in mind:

House of Leaves is the single most accomplished horror work in the literary sense.
King is good to read and unwind but has only penned one truly scary novel (It). I read it when I was about twelve though.
Thomas Ligotti has the most unsettling atmosphere but you need to read a number of his stories to get the sense he is going for. (I recommend The Nightmare Factory).
Incidentally, the most "liminal" of Ligotti's stories I have found to be "The Bungalow Houses." For some reason it evokes a signalwave-like feeling. If you've read it, you know what I mean.
Most stuff (80% by my estimation) in the 'extreme horror' subcategory is uninteresting at best. Liked Necroscope, though, before it went batshit. The Girl Next Door, not so much.
Going through local horror anthologies can net a diamong in the rough. By my experience, a horror anthology will have two good stories out of every ten, but those two will be really good.
80s trade paperback covers are peak kino.
The Haunting of Hill House had a good adaptation, but I actually liked it more when they went loose in their adaptation with The Fall of the House of Usher.
Hellraiser is the best novella adaptation, because it was made by Clive Barker. Second place goes for The Exorcist III, based on Legion. It's always fascinating watching creators adapt their own work, with the peak being, of course, Maximum Overdrive.
Anything recommended on IG/TikTok is probably not worth it.

IDK, go crazy, spook each other out and give rec's.

 

[Waninem]

Does Phantom of the Opera count? I know the musical's more of the romantic side but the original book had people navigating death traps and stuff. Dracula of course is legendary and so is a lot of the stuff Lovecraft wrote like Color Out of Space and The Dunwich Horror, but honestly I'm struggling to recommend much more since I haven't read that many horror books. I vaguely remember one concerning some kids and an Egyptian mummy in a tomb but I can't remember the title. If manga counts as literature, then of course Uzumaki, Tomie, The Enigma of Amigara Fault, and basically everything else Junji Ito ever drew can fit in the recommended pile as well.

 

[The Chibi One]

Great picks, Waninem, I never thought of Phantom of the Opera as a strictly horror story, more in the general Gothic canon, but I also don't consider Frankenstein to be horror, and more sci-fi within the Gothic tradition, so take whatever I say on the matter of characterisation with a grain of salt. Could it be the one you mention is Curse of the Mummy Tomb from R. L. Stine? I have Goosebumps on my mind ever since I started the thread.

The Enigma of Amigara Fault

Which was the first story of his I read in a local fantasy/horror magazine that would contain some shorter manga stories too, it was peculiar because they would include the Drizzt comic stories and then go straight to black-and-white pages. I still think that, outside of Gyo and Uzumaki which work as lengthier narratives, this is his best setup and culmination. There is an instigating event (and earthquake), then people act unsettlingly trying to enter the holes, and in the end we get a jumpscare yet nothing is explained. It works precisely because whatever you conjure up will be more unsettling to you than any explanation he could have given, having set the mood. This also works for aspects of his other stories, like the one with the town with no streets where there was no distinction between public and private property, which is a deeply unsettling premise. At some point

Spoiler

There were "slug-like" creatures with elongated heads and numerous eyes spying on people through peepholes. They are never explained, unlike the main villain of the story who is a serial killer haunting the heroine, but they are the most memorable part in my opinion.

 

[Taleisin]

I am a big fan of the authors already mentioned, so I'll offer a less known horror author:

Michelle Paver's books Dark Matter (2010) and Thin Air (2016) stand as some of the best modern atmospheric horror without being overdone. Genuinely chilling. I haven't read her other horror novel Wakenhyrst (2019), but I know she also has another horror novel upcoming called Rainforest.

As for horror manga, my favourite has to be Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto. Will make you feel like you're going insane.

 

[The Chibi One]

Noted, Taleisin, thanks for the recs. I haven't read any recent ones so I'll check those out when I find the time. I didn't really consider mangas when I started the thread, Tsutomu Nihei's has some designs I would categorise as horror but I haven't really read anything strictly horror-themed besides Junji Ito and various one-shots plus The Drifting Classroom. One I remember liking back in the day was MW which is suspense/horror-related; I found out about it because it's considered an odd inclusion in Tezuka's oeuvre and the villain is seen as the inspiration for Johan Liebert. I'll check Homunculus out (isn't that the one that's been making the rounds with the panel where a leaf is covering a character's face? I keep seeing that online lately).

Speaking of manga I would also branch out to comics, in that I have never read a good horror comic. Good ones are tangentially horror-related (Sandman, Spawn, the Arkham Asylum graphic novel, etc) but nothing captures that unsettling vibe mangas do, at least for me.

Also, stuff like Crossed is shit-tier, and arguably Blackgas did that premise better.
/rant

 

[Punp]

I find Kafka to be horror. It is very much a psychological and bureaucratic horror. I'm thinking specifically of The Trial which has a lot in common with trying to get medical help in the UK.

I'm reading through Frankenstein at the moment. It's really difficult terrain in terms of lumpy word usage, so I've got Junji Ito's version sitting in reserve.

I'm also a big fan of Junji Ito and I have the majority of the Viz books.

We were talking in chat and mentioned that the best way to consume Ito is on a 4chan thread through scans that were partially translated and passed from user to user. As this form of piracy has got me to spend about £300 on his books, I will pay it forward by doing it again. Read right to left obviously, it's manga.

I present to you: the long dream (1/2).

 

[Punp]

The long dream (continued).

 

[Waninem]

Punp, you're the best. Just wanted to say that.

But goodness, what a sad story. That's pitiful, dreaming of being married for hundreds of years only to wake up and learn it was a lie. I hope whatever endless dream they get locked in is a good one...

 

[roadsidewildflower]

don't really believe in favourites but rather titles indicative of one's preferences. With that in mind:

Smart picks OP! Speaking of the adaptation of Hill House, I thought the Haunting of Bly Manor was really good (scariest thing I ever watched, though I say that as someone who usually cant get through scary movies bc they're too much for me lol)

Something a little off the wall I'll throw out there: Han Kang's novel The Vegetarian. It's a quick read, it'll only take a day. It won't "scare" you in a horror movie sense. But the central character is wracked with gruesome dreams and descends into a kind of psychological horror, and we see her slow rotting not through her perspective but in three parts from the perspective of others. One of my faves

 

[nsequeira119]

I find generally that a full reading of William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land lifts my spirits in any season, but especially near Halloween. I'm amazed at the number of people who have never heard of it- it's had a tremendous impact on my own expanding mythopoeia and deserves to be regarded as an all-time classic.

 

[roadsidewildflower]

Something a little off the wall I'll throw out there: Han Kang's novel The Vegetarian. It's a quick read, it'll only take a day. It won't "scare" you in a horror movie sense. But the central character is wracked with gruesome dreams and descends into a kind of psychological horror, and we see her slow rotting not through her perspective but in three parts from the perspective of others. One of my faves

Replying to my own post like a nerd bc she was just awarded the nobel prize in literature! I liked her before it was cool, I promise, therefore I am cool!! This is a valid syllogism.

 

[greyetch]

>THE TERROR

It is by Dan Simmons who wrote Hyperion (great sci fi, not horror at all).

The TV adaptation is remarkably good as well. Here's a trailer, it works for the book and the show.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUZKjdewbZQ&ab_channel=BBCTrailers

 

[Punp]

>THE TERROR

It is by Dan Simmons who wrote Hyperion (great sci fi, not horror at all).

The TV adaptation is remarkably good as well. Here's a trailer, it works for the book and the show.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUZKjdewbZQ&ab_channel=BBCTrailers

I've got this waiting in the wings to watch. Will shuffle it up the list, cheers.

 

[ipod]

House of Leaves is the single most accomplished horror work in the literary sense.

Been reading that recently.
Really impressed by the story telling approach, and the scary bits do not disappoint.
Although I am reading it on a Kindle, so I think much of the so to say in-hand experience is quite lost.
I would definitely recommend getting a printed copy to anyone that is interested into picking it up and reading it.

I'm not that big into horror literature, but I enjoyed "Pet Sematary" by King.
This one also, I would recommend.

Btw, craazy suggestions, thanks guys :D

 

[Punp]

Pet Sematary is good. I also liked The Shining by King, though I think I prefer Kubrick's psychological horror take.

That said, the book has living hedge animals and it's hard not to be reminded of that childlike fear of the unreal becoming real.

I thought King's vampire book Salem's Lot was pretty good, but he has a habit of deviating from the story and forgetting what he's writing about. The latter half of the book just sort of dithers out.

While on the topic of King, have any of his books featured a protagonist who wasn't a writer from Maine?

Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist is a great read about the heart-racing raw nature of faeries. Would recommend that.

While not a horror story, The Meg (novel which the film is based on) is an excellent boomer suspense novel about a guy in his fifties who still goes to the gym and asian women in their 20s fall at his feet (and he's not over the hill) who hunts a giant shark.

 

[The Chibi One]

Regarding Stephen King, I have read most of his stuff, including the Bachman books, and The Dark Tower, and him going around in circles can be both good and bad, but it really depends on the framework of the narrative he has gone for in each novel. Him spending pages upon pages detailing the minutiae of small-town shenanigans and relationships might seem boring until the creepy stuff occurs, but it helps establish the setting as a "normal" one, and the horror is all the more effective for it. This is best exemplified in Needful Things (arguably one of his better novels) where the relationships between residents are detailed excruciatingly but it establishes the ending (which also kinda suck, but King is a meme for this anyway).

I think the meme about King writing shitty endings is that, by engaging with most of his corpus, I have drawn the conclusion that the dude just likes writing for its own sake. He pens novels at a phenomenal pace (I stopped keeping up years ago but from what I see he is still going strong) but he also produces much better material than people churning out books at similar speeds. It is obvious he gets lost in the narrative and begins expanding the cast and backstories of each narrative just because writing is his special interest.

Many of his books have featured protagonists that relate to him perhaps in general sentiments and outlook only, instead of the usual alcoholic writer with a sardonic wit song and dance. Even the guy from Insomnia reads like how King would probably imagine himself as a retired senior citizen. The Bachman books go completely against his usual shtick, with varying degrees of success. I have kept my translated copy of Rage from 1985, since it is unlikely it will ever be reprinted. I think there was backlash against it particularly after Columbine for influencing school shootings.

His real-life accident and near-death seems to have influenced much of what came after it, including wrapping up The Dark Tower.

I maintain his book On Writing is the best work in that "sector." It was insane that a guy who has been associated with cheap trade paperbacks and "shlock" had more poignant observations on the literary art than most literary professors in their peer-reviewed journals.

 

[Skookumsquitch]

It was Welcome to Dead House, the first Goosebumps book, that first got me into horror. It's still, to this day, the creepiest one in the series I've read. Since then, horror has been my favourite genre.

My next horror read that I could remember was the brand-new released book The Troop by Nick Cutter. I was far too young to read this and as much as I loved what the book did to me, I'm not sure I was able to finish it.

After that, I went on to 'lighter' horror books, like Stephen King's The Mist  and The Tommyknockers. Simultaneously, I began enjoying historical/maritime horror, like The Terror by Dan Simmons (an excellent show too), and The Boats of the Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson. I especially loved the latter because it's even written in time-accurate English, which makes it slightly more challenging to read albeit more unsettling.

And, hitherto, cosmic horror has always been at the back of my brain. It's always been a genre that I've loved the concept of, but always felt frustrated that no one is able to  perfectly portray the true fear of something incomprehensible—even, dare I say, H.P. Lovecraft. Most tend to go with 'absolutely massive world-eater God-like thing,' which is just... bleh. However, I must say The Colour Out of Space has done the genre best so far imo.

So yea. Those are my most notable ones. Honourable mentions go to Dead of Winter by Brian Moreland and Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury.
I plan on getting serious with writing all the stories I have planned once I get settled down. Some of them horror, like my planned books Old, Piny Trees and the Cold, Briny Seas, and Jerkwater is Fixt, and some not, like my way-too ambitious Canadian epic Canvasback Greyling or my simple thriller Coquihalla Coop-Coop. Coming to a library near you!

 

[zelenogradskiy]

Diary of a Murderer by Young-Ha Kim is definitely one of the scarier books I've read. It's been about five years since I read it, and maybe it was just the period of my life in which I found it but I had a genuine fear of developing dementia at the ripe old age of 16. So I would definitely recommend. It's a really quick read, I got through it in a day.