Halloween is approaching, and you’re just itching for some spooky content to freak you out while drinking your pumpkin spice. But either you don’t know where to look, or you’re fresh out of ideas. Not to worry, alas, what is Fabularis for, if not to help you with the stress of choice?
This top 5 will cover most (if not all) horror types for your fancy, so there’s sure to be something for everyone here. You might notice that the House of Leaves is not on this list. That’s because we discussed that book in this post about the best weird books everyone should try. Otherwise, rest assured it would have been on this list, too.
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5. Dracula, Bram Stoker
The granddaddy of vampire literature, and possibly all gothic horror literature. We would be remiss not to recognize this masterpiece.
Old though it may be, it never ceases to deliver on skin-crawling descriptions that will make the most hardened modern horror enthusiast shudder. It is rife with historical conflicts, beliefs, metaphors, and reflections on the superstitious zeitgeist. Not to mention the masterful prose.
“How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”
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4. Dagon, H.P. Lovecraft
Put Down your pitchforks, I know about Call of Cthulhu. However, I am of the firm belief that Cthulhu is not a good starting point for most people interested in Lovecraft’s work. Allow me to make my case.
Dagon has one of the best opening lines in literature, ever: “I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more.”
How can you not keep reading that?
Furthermore, it is a short piece, and it best encapsulates most of the themes of Lovecraft’s famous opus. On top of all that, it has absolutely 0 rampant racism, which might put off readers from some of his other work (say, Cthulhu).
See how I tend to be correct? Please, hesitate before doubting me again, dear reader. And enjoy the master of dreamy, slimy, grotesque and the incomprehensible.
“Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear.”
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3. I have no mouth, and I must scream, Harlan Ellison
Set in a future world where an extremely hateful computer took over the world, this gut-wrenching piece is one of the more disturbing ones I have encountered. It was reportedly written in one night - One shudders to think what prompted Mr Ellison to write up such terror in one go.
In this story, the computer is disgusted in humans and uses earth as the most vile punishment it can inflict upon its remaining few inhabitants. Past all this, it’s the ending that will stick with you forever once you put it down.
“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”
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2. The Terror, Dan Simmons
You wanna know what makes this extra scary? It’s based on a true story. Yeah, good luck sleeping.
The Terror is a magnificent ship set to sail the Northwest Passage, a small crack through the north pole. Accompanied by an equally aptly named Erebus (the primordial darkness of Greek myth), they got themselves in quite the pickle.
See, on their way to China, the sea froze over and they got stuck in the middle of hundreds of miles of nothing but ice. More trouble came when summer rolled around, and the ice didn’t give in, as it was expected to do.
Given the fact that it combines the merciless cold with the unfathomable ocean and utter isolation, this will make you grateful for every second you spent in your warm bed.
“The captain of HMS Terror often thought that he knew nothing about the future - other than that his ship and Erebus would never again steam or sail - but then he reminded himself of one certainty: when his store of whiskey was gone, Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier was going to blow his brains out.”
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1. The man in the black suit, Stephen King
The choice of author was a no-brainer, but the story was tough. It was a close tie between this and Jerusalem’s Lot, which you can take as an honorable mention. But since we have already discussed Lovecraftian horror, this one won.
This is the creepiest and most intense depiction of the inevitability of death I can think of. What makes it more creepy, it’s from the point of view of a child. The King of horror depicts death as a tall man in a black suit, stinking like a bucket of rotting fish, who kills everything it touches. And it wants to eat the boy.
It’s not about the monster-of-the-moment, though. It’s about when the boy grows up and knows that the monster will eventually find and catch up to him. The paralyzing dread of unavoidable death. A masterclass on horror, gross-outs, and sheer terror.
“What you write down sometimes leaves you forever, like old photographs left in the bright sun, fading to nothing but white. I pray for that sort of release.”
There you have them, masterful authors and their masterpieces. If none of these gives you so much as a shiver, I suggest you get that checked out. Enjoy the spooky season reading, you rampant scare goblins.