Scariest book to read during winter? Perhaps. Before Jack smashed in the door with his “Heeeere’s Johnny!” there was the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel. Published in 1977, it was the master of horror’s third novel. It was merely the blueprint for the 1980 Kubrick film, the adaptation of which King himself dismissed at one time. It’s all there: the snowbound winter, the hedge-maze creatures, the ghostly ballroom, the clairvoyant child, REDRUM, and Jack Torrance, typing away at his book…
It’s the idea of an eternal love burn for someone — a love that literally never dies — that is the painful terror at the center of this towering classic. The daddy of all Gothic horror tales and the archetype of the literary and entertainment century, Count Dracula of Transylvania delivers to this day his hypnotic allure through the novel’s epistolary style. A true embodiment of folkloric elements are immortalized in Count Dracula’s desire for blood, and for Lucy.
Any chills generated from this Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 masterpiece come from a place of severe mortal consideration. The gifted McCarthy creates a desolate and gray nightmare of a post-apocalyptic world, where an unnamed father and son travel with rags and a pushcart, struggling to survive while also questioning the reason for doing so. This family’s love is punctuated with some of the most horrifying and pulsating moments in any book. After all, there’s a few other people alive in this hellhole, and they have to eat too. Truly not for the faint of heart.
She’s one of the queens of modern literature, churning out roughly a novel a year, and her seeming preoccupation in all of her works with dead bodies, slayings, and erotic obsession go the paranormal route in this collection of short and disturbing stories. In the title story, “Haunted,” we follow two young girls on their explorations of abandoned houses, leading us to the one they absolutely shouldn’t have visited. One of the more vague and creepy stories is “Poor Bibi,” about a family lamenting the demise of one of their pets. Edgar Allen Poe-esque for sure, but streaked with Oates’ peculiar fixation on the Gothic genre.
Well, there’s Shirley Jackson, who ripped a hole through the idyllic 1950s America with her benchmark and short horror story, “The Lottery,” sparking controversy in the general public. This 1959, full-length novel is cited by many as the greatest haunted-house story ever written. Dr. Montague, a paranormal expert, invites two women to live with him in the supposedly haunted Hill House for the summer. What ensues transcends creaks and apparitions. The character’s psyches and bodies are assaulted viciously by whatever it is that possesses this home.
One of the rare successful novels with a film counterpart just as great (the Roman Polanski/Mia Farrow one, not the 2014 remake with Zoe Saldana), Levin’s classic horror story works in any year. A chic Manhattan couple move into the Bramford, an old apartment with some irksome neighbors. And then, Rosemary gets pregnant. Sensational, utterly realistic-seeming, and even creepier with its urban milieu, the story’s heart-pounding revelations unfurl masterfully. You cannot, shall not put this one down.
Blatty wrote the book and then wrote the screenplay for the famous, crowd-shaking 1973 film. It’s supposedly based upon an actual exorcism in 1949. Blatty takes us into a house in Georgetown where a Hollywood actress’s 12-year-old daughter, Regan MacNeill, becomes demonically possessed. The final third of the book deals with the arduous exorcism of Regan by two Jesuit priests. Many sections of the book are as revolting as anything ever written, but Blatty does not ever take us into far-fetched territory. As with Rosemary and her baby, those who believe in the intangible, religious forces of good and evil may be thoroughly convinced of a horrifying situation like this occurring.
If you grew up — or had kids — in the ’80s and ’90s, perhaps you made the mistake of reading this together by the fireplace. It’s not so much the tales but those illustrations that accompanied them…my God! Stephen Gammell’s black-and-white sketches are some of the most disturbing ever seen. It’s unimaginable how kids could take this book, let alone adults. I’m still scarred for life.
Halloween. Christmas. July 5. September 30th. 1984. 1888. 2014. The story was relevant and continues to be. If you’ve never taken the journey to Airstrip One in superstate Oceania, then you’ve never looked at society as you should. Halloween is a singular eve of ghouls and goblins, but an Orwellian future is an eternal horrorshow.
Some of them are sad poems (“Lenore”). Some of them are cautionary tales of dishonesty (“The Tell-Tale Heart”). Some of them are about past actions catching up with you (“The Black Cat”). Some of them are about the very depths of our disturbed, forlorn souls (“The Raven”). Edgar Allan Poe takes mystery and macabre to unprecedented levels, and reminds us that at the bottom of anything grisly or horrifying is the dark human landscape.
