Horror books to read this Halloween
As the time for horror movie marathons and sleepovers with ghost stories approaches, it’s only fair for me to equip you with some horror fiction recommendations as your friendly neighbourhood book nerd. These are in continuation with my previous post about thrilling books to read in October but this time I’m recommending books for the lovers of ghostly, grotesque horror. For my faint-hearted friends who’d still like to engage in being spooked without being scarred for life, I reckon my previous post would be more helpful.
And for the ones here to be scared shitless and have nightmares for days, let’s get on with the horror recommendations.
(A/N: The skull-based rating system is meant to indicate how scary the book was according to me to give you a fair idea of what you’re getting into. More skulls just mean that it didn’t let me sleep at night and is not indicative of whether it was my favourite book or not.)
If you want to read horror with paranormal or supernatural elements, where ghosts, possessions, exorcisms and hauntings are the main focus of the story then these are for you.
Goddess of Filth by V. Castro
Five best-friends summon their Aztec ancestors at a sleepover turned séance. One of them gets possessed by something ancient and powerful. An unsettling story about ancient powers, female rage and a possession-gone-right in the backdrop of summer in Texas.
scary rating: 💀💀
Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
A group of friends decide to hang out. Their chosen location- an old mansion from the Heian-era built over the bones of a bride with the walls packed with girls, sacrificed to keep her company. A classic ghost story with a haunted house and a group of adventurous characters. You can imagine how that ends.
scary rating: 💀💀💀💀
The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
A girl on a search for her aunt who she finds out about after the death of her mother. An aunt that went missing in a small town after running away from home when she was young. She retraces her aunt’s steps to the town and the motel that she worked at- a motel with mysteries of its own. Told in two perspectives, this story is a gripping mystery with a dash of paranormal.
(I also highly recommend- The Broken Girls by the same author. It’s also a mystery with paranormal elements written in a captivating way which makes it hard to put down.)
scary rating: 💀💀
If horror with elements of monsters or ghost hunting fascinate you,
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
This one is more of a YA fantasy but before you just decide to skip over to the next one let me tell you how creepy this was. It’s a dark fantasy where a boy finds pictures in his grandfather’s journal which leads him to an island of mysterious people- an orphanage for the peculiar. The pictures accompanying the text add to the chilling effect of the atmospheric writing.
scary rating: 💀💀💀
The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
An agency that hunts ghosts in London. Headed by a charismatic teen, accompanied by his two ‘employees’ they find sources of the haunting and help people being plagued by spirits. It’s an adventurous and spooky YA horror series that I personally recommend if you’re interested in one. There’s ‘found family’, talking skulls, murder mysteries and sassy characters.
scary rating: 💀💀
If dark magic, cemeteries and tragedies are your thing,
Pet Sematary by Stephen King
A family that moves into a small, university town and discovers the pet sematary- the place where all the townspeople bury their dead pets since the town was founded. Except there’s something more sinister in the air than just dead bodies of the town’s dogs. This one doesn’t get scary until the last hundred pages but don’t let that stop you from picking up this book from the ‘Master of horror’- Stephen King. It explores grief, death and family dynamics in an unnerving way.
scary rating: 💀💀💀 (mostly for the last hundred pages though)
If you like the scary vibes of ‘an isolated town’ and humans deciding that ‘it would be a perfect place to explore’,
The Lost Village by Camilla Sten
A filmmaker decides to make a documentary about the ‘lost village’. A village in the middle of nowhere where all the townspeople disappeared overnight except for a woman stoned to death at the town centre and a newborn baby. The story follows the journey of the filming crew as they uncover the truth about the village and its residents.
scary rating: 💀💀💀💀💀
If you like horror with teenagers being stupid and small town vibes,
Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones
While I personally didn’t enjoy this novella, this novella does have an audience as it’s highly recommended on booktube. A teen prank escalates from fun to frightening really quickly. And there are mannequins involved. (For the people who are as scared of mannequins as I am- the way they just stare at you with those empty, soulless eyes)
scary rating: 💀💀💀
Considering Body horror as a completely different sub-genre in horror is the least I can do to make sure that I don’t traumatise you by mistake. So these books are for the ones who enjoy reading graphic depictions of rot and ruin, and grotesque literature about the most perverse things you could possibly imagine. Fair warning, if you have a weak stomach, I would not recommend these for you.
(A/N: Yes, these books do make me wonder about the sanity of the authors and the depravity that a human mind can come up with. I’ve created the list in order of how gross the books were, the first one being unsettling and the last one being utterly disgusting.)
Uzumaki by Junji Ito
Junji Ito is the king of body horror and you can’t change my mind and that’s why there is a manga on this list. Uzumaki is written in chapters that seem like short stories all set in the same universe of a small town that becomes infested with spirals until it all comes together in the end with stark, chilling clarity.
Things have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca
An online sadomasochistic relationship between two young women that originates in a chat-room and takes a turn for the worse. Written in a captivating way this story is very depraved and horrifying. Totally recommend it for people who enjoy body horror.
Woom by Ralston Duncan
A man visits a motel with a sex-worker and tells her stories. The motel where his mother died. I personally would not recommend this to anyone but a seasoned reader of this genre. It’s shocking and it made me physically flinch.
(Check the trigger warnings before reading this one. You name it, it’s probably in this one.)
Dead Inside by Chandler Morrison
A narcissistic man with very questionable taste in women meets a maternity-ward doctor with a taste for questionable meat. The amount of depravity in this book is unfathomable. It’s vile and disgusting and I honestly don’t know why I read it in the first place.
(Again, trigger warnings. Check them. I don’t want to be the reason you’re traumatised for life.)
Ig,you had the most chill down your spine than compared to most of the people in this winter
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