What makes horror literature so pervasive is that its need to evoke the necessary atmosphere and sense of emotional dread is utterly dependent on who we are as readers -- as people. As children, we might be afraid of the shadows looming from a half-closed closet door or of the monster we believe lies under the bed. Terrors of the imagination run wild at that age. As adults, our fears become more sophisticated, more grounded in worldly events. They become the death of a loved one, the terminal illness of a small child, the fear of our lives running out of our control. Horror, by nature, is a personal touch -- an intrusion into our comfort levels. It speaks of the human condition and forcibly reminds us of how little we actually know and understand.

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• 
  [*]Clive Barker
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  One of the classic horror authors, you can’t go wrong with his short stories. If you are looking for a novel I would recommend “The Damnation Game". He is of course the person behind the stories of Candyman, Hellraiser, and The Midnight Meat Train, to name some of his movies.
  
  [*]Robert Bloch(bengraven)
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Author of psycho, and was mentored by Lovecraft.
  
  [*]Stephen King
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  If you have never heard of Stephen King......then I am dumbfounded. Probably the biggest name is horror fiction, and for good reason. The Shining is a novel that still creeps me out to read at night, and you won’t find many horror novels quite as epic as “It" or “The Stand".
  
  [*]Richard Laymon
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Laymon is one of those authors that horror fans love, but you don’t hear much about. A movie has never been made from one of his books. But they are gleefully full of gore, depraved sex, and situations that any horror fan should enjoy.
  
  [*]Monica J O'Rourke
  Amazon Page Link
  Women are woefully underrepresented on this list. I would love to see more on it. O’Rourke has written the book that made me more uncomfortable than any other with “Suffer The Flesh". The only other thing I have read by her is the short story “Jasmine and Garlic", which was quite revolting.
  
  [*]Edward Lee
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Lee represents something of a turning point in my horror fiction reading. When I discovered his books, I discovered a treasury of some of the most depraved, disgusting and wildly amusing books I have ever read. I personally think The Bighead is his masterpiece, but The Pig/The House and the Infernal Series are also excellent. He also has a few novels as tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. Very very graphic stuff.
  
  Wrath James White
  Amazon Page Link
  Writes very gory, very sexual novels. Not sure what to say beyond that. Read if you have a strong stomach.
  
  [*]Conrad Williams
  Amazon Page Link
  Conrad Williams feels to me like a continuation of Clive Barker. His novels tend to have a touch of otherworldly fantasy too them, no unlike a Gaimen novel. His short novellas, “Nearly People" and “The Scalding Rooms" are excellent as is his novel “The Unblemished".
  
  [*]Ramsey Campbell
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  One of the old school writers of horror that isn’t quite as well read as Barker or King. Some complain about his slow pace, or generally boring novels, but I don’t see that. To start I would recommend Ancient Images or The Face that Must Die.
  
  [*]H.P. Lovecraft
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Come on, you now who Lovecraft is. He left a mark on horror fiction that lasts to this day. No horror author is uninfluenced by his work, and it stands to this day as some of the most imaginative fiction.
  
  [*]Brian Lumley
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Lumley is a british author heavily influenced by Lovecraft. Some of his books like Titus Crow are directly influenced by Lovecraft. He has a lot of series, with different themes, like the insane vampire series starting with Necroscope, the science fiction series, House of Doors, and the fantasy series Hero of Dreams(directly inspired by Lovecraft’s dream stories).
  
  [*]Thomas Ligotti
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Ligotti is an interesting writer. Mostly short stories with very surreal landscapes and stories, he appears to be the modern version of Lovecraft. This is no small praise. I can’t really describe his stories other than saying rather than plot and characters, it is the decaying lands that fill the stories are the characters, and your mind will keep returning to them long after you finish reading.
  
  [*]Greg F. Gifune
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  I am not quite sure what to write about Gifune. Don’t be put off by the cheap looking covers of his paperbacks, there is some quality writing here and a great imagination.
  
  [*]Brian Evenson
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Brian Evenson is amazing. Used to be a teacher at the University of Brigham Young, he was told he could not write the books like Altmann’s Tongue and still work there. He was basically fired. Many of his books use imagery and language of the Mormon church like Dark Property and Last Days. His book Father of Lies is a very thinly veiled story of members in the Mormon church. But you don’t have to know these things to enjoy the amazing prose and vivid images that he paints.
  
  [*]Dean Koontz
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Dean Koontz has written a LOT of books. They are enjoyable enough, particularly to me, the earlier ones, like phantoms and night chills. The problem is when you read too many of his novels you start to see his common themes and characters. I won’t mention them, so that you can still enjoy his books, but don’t read too many at once is my advice.
  
  [*]John Saul
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  I think of John Saul, Dean Koontz and Stephen King as something of the beginner’s horror trinity. These are the authors that really started me down the path of being a robust reader of horror fiction. John Saul writes very readable books about ghosts and experiments gone wrong and usually about bullied meek mannered kids.
  
  [*]Brian Keene
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  I have read a bunch of Keene’s work. He has a lot of books under his belt, and is always a good standby, but he doesn’t stand out to me as great or as terrible. I enjoy his books, but I don’t generally seek them out. Give them a shot and let us know what you think!
  
  [*]Carlton Mellick III
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  He writes books so bizarre it is a bit of a stretch to call them horror. You have probably seen some of the names and laughed, like “The Haunted Vagina", “The Cannibals of Candyland" and The “Morbidly Obese Ninja". His books seem to take a bizarre concept and just run with it in a completely logical way. They are juvenile and written simply, but sometimes you find something amazing in them. I really recommend “Apeshit", which was almost a revelation to me.
  
  [*]Rick Hautala
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Personally I think this guys novels are awful awful trash. But I have read my fair share of his books, usually found via the Goodwill method above. Perhaps they are better now, I haven’t read any of them in probably a decade and a half.
  
  [*]William W. Johnstone
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Unlike Rick Hautala, Johnstone writes b-level horror trash that is crazy enjoyable. Lots of cultists, zombies, satanic demons, and all that good stuff. Just search for his book called “Rockinghorse" and check out that cover!
  
  [*]Bentley Little
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Personally I have never read anything by Little. However many horror fans whose taste I respect have repeatedly recommended his novels to me. I will be reading some of his books as soon as I can.
  
  [*]Tim Lebbon
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Much like Bentley Little above I have yet to read any of Lebbon’s novels. I have on my nightstand a copy of “The Thief of Broken Toys" which looks interesting and I keep meaning to start.
  
  [*]Laird Barron (ebris)
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  You guys need to check out Laird Barron's works: the Imago Sequence. Occultation and The Croning. He's a modern Lovecraftian-inspired writer. He's one of the few who decided not to add onto Lovecraft's pre-existing Mythos and create his own - one that he is bringing to life with some incredible and imaginative prose, and one that is absolutely horrifying in its own right.
  
  [*]Tim Curran
  Amazon Page Link
  Wikipedia Page Link
  I discovered Tim Curran by browsing the books in the Delierium Novella Series. I started out reading The Underdwelling, which was a good little book. Then I moved onto The Hive, which was a really good sequel to Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. Now I am reading Dead Sea, and it is really good. Really really good, actually giving me nightmares, and making me scared to read it at night. That hasn't happened in years. I am going to read everything by him now.
  
  [*]Joe Hill(joeyjoejoeshabadoo and Alligatorjandro)
  Wikipedia Page Link
  Author of Heart Shaped Box, Horns and 20th Century Ghosts
  

• The Pilo Family Circus - Will Elliott
• Zombie - Joyce Carol Oats
• Anno Dracula - Kim Newman (Dresden)
• In The Miso Soup - Ryu Murakami (kmm182)
• The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart - Jesse Bullington (Maklershed)

• Genital Grinder

• Infected - Contaigious - Scott Sigler
• Autumn - David Moody

• The Walking Dead - Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard
• Manga by Junji Ito

• TBD

• Deadgirl

• The Exorcist
• The Omen

• Alien
• The Thing
• The Host

• Hostel
• Seven Days
• Martyrs
• A Flower of Flesh and Blood (8BitsAtATime)
• The Devil's Experiment (8BitsAtATime)
• The Human Centipede I & II
• Saw Series

• In the Mouth of Madness
• Black Swan
• Antichrist
• A Serbian Film(8BitsAtATime)
• Lake Mungo(bigboss370)
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) (Reuenthal)
• Xtro

• Paranormal Activity

• 
  
  [*]David Cronenburg
  IMDB Page
  His remake of “The Fly” became a classic on it’ own, “The Brood” is one of the most thought provoking horror films I have seen, and is just a great and unique director.
  [*]Oren Peli
  IMDB Page
  Best known for the Paranormal Activity series, I was fairly impressed with “Chernobyl Diaries”, and his television series “The River”
  [*]Frank Henenlotter
  IMDB Page
  Best known for the Basket Case series, my favorites are “Brain Damage” and “Bad Biology”.
  [*]Herschell Gordon Lewis
  IMDB Page
  Do you think these torture porn movies like Hostel and Saw are new? Those movies are simply harkening back to the movies of this era, and the genre was largely started by this man. These movies seem laughable now, but they were quite shocking at release.
  [*]Brian Yuzna
  IMDB Page
  I really like “Return of the Living Dead III”. Other than that he is pretty well known for trying to bring Lovecraftian stories to the movie screen.
  [*]Wes Craven
  IMDB Page
  Nightmare on Elm Street? The Hills have Eyes?
  [*]John Carpenter
  IMDB Page
  Halloween, The Thing, In the Mouth or Madness, come on, you know John Carpenter.
  [*]Dario Argento
  IMDB Page
  Argento created classic movies like “Suspiria”, “Deep Red”, and others. While his older works have an amazing style, his more recent movies, like “Mother of Tears”, seem to be lacking some of that magic.
  [*]Stuart Gordon
  IMDB Page
  Like Yuzna above Stuart Gordon is a fan of Lovecraft and it shows. He has adapted several Lovecraft stories like Re-Animator, and Dagon with varying levels of success.
  [*]Alfred Hitchcock
  IMDB Page
  Creator of “Psycho” and “The Birds” Hitchcock is a legend not just in horror films, but in movie making in general. No movie fan should be missing his movies.
  [*]Sam Raimi
  IMDB Page
  Evil Dead series, “Drag Me to Hell” are Raimi’s claim to fame in the horror world.
  [*]George Romero
  IMDB Page
  Creator of the modern zombie movie.
  [*]Rob Zombie
  IMDB Page

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari(1919)
• The Golem(1920)
• Nosferatu(1922)
• Häxan(1922)
• The Phantom of the Opera(1925)
• Dracula(1931)
• M(1931)
• Frankenstein(1931)
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde(1931)
• Freaks(1932)
• Vampyr(1932)
• White Zombie(1932)
• The Old Dark House(1932)
• Island of Lost Souls(1932)
• King Kong(1933)
• The Black Cat(1934)
• Bride of Frankenstein(1935)
• The Wolf Man(1941)
• Cat People(1942)
• I Walked with a Zombie(1943)
• Diabolique(1955)
• The Bad Seed(1956)
• The Curse of Frankenstein(1957)
• Horror of Dracula(1958)
• The Tingler(1959)
• Eyes Without a Face(1959)
• Peeping Tom(1960)
• Psycho(1960)
• Mask of the Demon(1960)
• The Innocents(1961)
• Carnival of Souls(1962)
• Whatever Happened to Baby Jane(1962)
• The Birds(1963)
• The Haunting(1963)
• Onibaba(1964)
• Repulsion(1965)
• Viy(1967)
• Hour of the Wolf(1968)
• Rosemary’s Baby(1968)
• The Devil Rides Out(1968)
• Night of the Living Dead(1968)
• Valerie and Her Week of Wonders(1970)
• The Abominable Dr. Phibes(1971)
• Daughters of Darkness(1971)
• Blacula(1972)
• The Last House on the Left(1972)
• Don’t Look Now(1973)
• The Exorcist(1973)
• The Wickerman(1973)
• Deathdream(1974)
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre(1974)
• Profondo Rosso(Deep Red)(1975)
• Jaws(1975)
• The Omen(1976)
• Carrie(1976)
• Suspiria(1977)
• Eraserhead(1977)
• The Hills Have Eyes(1977)
• Dawn of the Dead(1978)
• Halloween(1978)
• Nosferatu(1979)
• Phantasm(1979)
• The Brood(1979)
• Cannibal Holocaust(1980)
• Friday the 13th(1980)
• The Shining(1980)
• Dressed to Kill(1980)
• The Howling(1981)
• The Beyond(1981)
• An American Werewolf in London(1981)
• Poltergeist(1982)
• The Hunger(1983)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street(1984)
• Re-Animator(1985)
• The Fly(1986)
• Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer(1986)
• Evil Dead II(1987)
• A Chinese Ghost Story(1987)
• Hellraiser(1987)
• The Vanishing(1988)
• Jacob’s Ladder(1990)
• The Silence of the Lambs(1991)
• Man Bites Dog(1992)
• Candyman(1992)
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula(1992)
• Dellamorte Dellamore(Cemetery Man)(1994)
• Scream(1996)
• Ringu(1998)
• The Blair Witch Project(1999)
• The Sixth Sense(1999)
• Audition(1999)
• The Devil’s Backbone(2001)
• The Others(2001)
• 28 Days Later...(2002)
• A Tale of Two Sisters(2003)
• High Tension(2003)
• Ju-on: The Grudge(2003)
• Saw(2004)
• The Descent(2005)
• The Orphanage(2007)

• Paranormal Activity 4
• VHS

• American Horror Story
• 666 Park Avenue

• Scary stories to tell in the dark
• John Bellairs
• Goosebumps
• Coraline (movie and book)

• H.P. Lovecraft Goes to the Movies: The Classic Stories That Inspired the Classic Horror Films
• 101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die
• Nightmares in Red White and Blue

• The SCP Foundation
• PENPAL

All around the house is the jet-black night;
It stares through the window-pane;
It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light,
And it moves with the moving flame.

Now my little heart goes a beating like a drum,
With the breath of the Bogies in my hair;
And all around the candle the crooked shadows come,
And go marching along up the stair.

The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp,
The shadow of the child that goes to bed—
All the wicked shadows coming tramp, tramp, tramp,
With the black night overhead.

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FelixOrion said:

www.scp-wiki.net/

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Hilbert said:

I am not quite sure what I am reading here, but it is fascinating!

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joeyjoejoeshabadoo said:

I'd recommend Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill. Great story and genuinely creepy moments.

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Ebris said:

You guys need to check out Laird Barron's works: the Imago Sequence. Occultation and The Croning. He's a modern Lovecraftian-inspired writer. He's one of the few who decided not to add onto Lovecraft's pre-existing Mythos and create his own - one that he is bringing to life with some incredible and imaginative prose, and one that is absolutely horrifying in its own right.

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Ichor said:

I am a HUGE horror novel fan, but it's been a long time since I've read something genuinely good. It feels like most new horror is sticking to the track that gore=horror, hell what's with the sudden abundance of necrophilia?

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Dresden said:

No Kim Newman? The man wrote the best vampire novel since Stoker, Anno Dracula.

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"Whitechapel, November 1888: Jack the Ripper is committing his last known act of butchery in the one-room hovel occupied by the luckless harlot, Mary Kelly. And beneath the bed on which the fiend is cruelly and cheerfully eviscerating his victim cowers a fifteen-year-old boy....This is just the start of the extraordinary adventures of Trevor Bentley, a boy who embarked on an errand of mercy and ran into the most notorious serial killer in criminal history, a boy who became a man as he travelled on a quest of vengeance across a wild and untamed continent--a boy who brought the horrors of Jack the Ripper to the New World."

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bigboss370 said:

You should add the movie "Lake Mungo" to your list.

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FelixOrion said:

www.scp-wiki.net/

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Hilbert said:

I am not quite sure what I am reading here, but it is fascinating!

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Replicant said:

CTRL + F "Uzumaki"

.......... :/

Technically it's not a novel, more like Graphic novel but it's a must for any horror fan.

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Graphic Novels:

The Walking Dead - Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard
Manga by Junji Ito

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ThirstyFly said:

I've read some of Gyo and have seen the movie. Never got around to Uzumaki though, I should pick that up too. Is the movie any good?

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ThirstyFly said:

First post:



I've read some of Gyo and have seen the movie. Never got around to Uzumaki though, I should pick that up too. Is the movie any good?

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Astaereth said:

Warning! Long post is long. This is all Books!

If you're looking for recommendations, you could do worse than starting with Stephen King's Danse Macabre, an overview of the horror genre as a whole which also focuses particularly on 1950-1980. That book led me to classics like The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House as well as some not-quite-so-famous authors (Straub, Ramsey Campbell, Jack Finney) and some downright obscure stuff (like the out-of-print-but-totally-worth-finding glorious pulp novel, James Herbert's The Fog).

If you're looking for something different than the normal zombies/vampires/werewolves, take a look at some epistemological horror:

-House of Leaves (an experimental novel about a fictional textbook examining a fictional movie in which a house is slightly bigger on the inside than it is on the outside)
-Flicker (which presents a journey through a "secret history" of film)

If you DO like vampires, you'll like every single version of Let the Right One In, including the original novel by John Lindqvist, the masterful Swedish adaptation of the same name by Tomas "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" Alfredson, and the equally good (but subtly different) American remake, Let Me In.

Junji Ito is great, particularly Uzumaki.

For kids (and people who like YA stuff!) I'd recommend Dan Well's trilogy beginning with I Am Not A Serial Killer, a series of books about a kid who might grow up to be a sociopath--or a very good person. I won't ruin the twist but they're very good, like a YA version of the Dexter novels, only well-written.

Skewing a little younger (or at least less murdery) are the wonderful and atmospheric novels of John Bellairs, who wrote what you might call Gothic boy's adventure tales (all with covers by Edward Gorey, so that tells you something). They were favorites of mine growing up, as they built worlds that were very "lived in" and memorable characters--and they didn't hesitate to be truly eerie, either. Start with The House With a Clock In Its Walls but don't miss The Mansion in the Mist.

And for one of the funniest and scariest novels I've ever read, check out David Wong's internet masterpiece, John Dies at the End, a novel that has been lauded as "cancer-inducing" and "riddled with typos".

I've never anything by Clive Barker that beat his Books of Blood (I think he's just better at short stories than he is at novels), but they're so goddamn great that it's hard to care.

Half of everything Peter Straub writes is gold, but which half? I favor the mannered mania of Ghost Story, the extremely chilling (and extremely English) Julia, and a handful of truly magnificent, gut-wrenching short stories (of which the best are probably A Short Guide to the City, Blue Rose, and Bunny Makes Good Bread.

A short primer on Stephen King. I've read virtually everything he's published, but unless you're that into him, you really only need to read the following (of his horror fiction):

Novels:

-The Stand
-It
-The Shining
-The Dead Zone
-From a Buick 8 (very different from his normal fare)
-Pet Sematary
-The Long Walk (and if you like that, the other Bachman books)

Short story collections:

-Night Shift (highlight: "Strawberry Spring")
-Skeleton Crew (highlight: "The Mist")
-Everything's Eventual (highlight, and one of the single scariest shorts I've ever read, "1408")

Other authors worth mentioning: Lovecraft (of course), whose stories can be found free and legal online, but also his contemporary (and better, in terms of prose) Arthur Machen (start with The Great God Pan). Robert W. Chamber's short stories, The King in Yellow. Richard Matheson, of course, but also his son, Richard Christian Matheson, who wields short stories like icepicks. The horror fiction of Chuck Palahniuk (particularly Haunted). Brett Easton Ellis's novels American Psycho and (the Stephen King-influenced) Lunar Park. Steve Alten's gloriously stupid giant shark thriller Meg. Anything by Daphne du Maurier. And if you haven't read Bram Stoker's Dracula, gtfo.

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Astaereth said:

And for one of the funniest and scariest novels I've ever read, check out David Wong's internet masterpiece, John Dies at the End, a novel that has been lauded as "cancer-inducing" and "riddled with typos".

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David H Wong said:

Plus I get like a dollar every time somebody buys one, so there's that too.

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David H Wong said:

Plus I get like a dollar every time somebody buys one, so there's that too.

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