I want to read a chapter and be genuinely scared to turn out the lights
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‘House of Leaves’ was pretty spooky and just a pretty interesting book in general. But I heavily recommend getting an actual physical book for best effect
But I heavily recommend getting an actual physical book for best effect
yeah that’s a book that’s very specifically made to be a book
Oh yeah, i read that for college and it was great
Now I remember that I was the only person in class as well-versed in mythology as the professor so she got very excited when I pronounced Yggdrasil
I was reading a Norse mythology book out loud for someone and I was constantly having to go and look up pronunciations so I didn’t trip over whatever name it was 10 times.
The End of History and the Last Man
Not all of the book is scary, but I remember several of the stories in The King in Yellow by Chambers being good horror. It is a weird book, in that the last half of the book isn’t horror and short stories about Americans living in Paris. But the horror was very influential on both H.P. Lovecraft and True Detective.
King in Yellow is downright beautiful. I recommend anyone who likes the four core spooky stories read the romances which follow after as well, as they have elements of the melancholy which pervades the core four stories and flesh out the world a bit.
I also recommend the short story pair Grave Miracles and Exile in Extremis by Paula D Ashe which takes inspiration from KiY, with heavy heavy heavy CW warnings for, in those stories:
very gnarly CWS
necrophilia, femicide, corpse mutilation of humans and animals, self-mutilation by live people
and a general warning for the book of short stories it’s from, We Are Here to Hurt Each Other has more CWs in the beginning of the book that are absolutely not joking around.
However, it’s also haunting, beautifully written, very spooky and distressing. It’s been 3 years since it came out and it’s still the best modern horror I’ve read.
Seconding this. The first story is set in 1920 as imagined by someone in 1895 and that alone makes it worth a read.
Annihilation is neat
Annihilation is one of my favorite books, and the whole series is amazing. It’s ecological body horror. Really riveting stuff. Read Annihilation!
Chuck Palahniuk’s book Haunted, it’s a short story comp that has a story called “Guts”.
lmao
Don’t masturbate while sitting on the pools filter intake, worst mistake of my life.
I have a few “you’ll read it and you’ll never tell anyone about it” books, that isn’t one of those.
I read a book I picked off of a roommates shelf and wish I could purge it from my memory, had a few scenes that made me a little nauseous and remember texting them “What is wrong with you?”
C’mon you gotta spill. I have to know what book was so repulsive.
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BOOOOOOOOO Cows stinks so bad! It could probably have been good but it’s a little too written by a brit to make it, I guess.
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Yeah it’s been a decade+ since I read it and I have to agree with the people who say it leans heavily on the gross / shock factors. Can’t say I really enjoy that kind of material by and large so I probably didn’t have much tolerance for the more rancid scenes.
One of my favourites is very very gay but incredibly disturbing, also one of those books.
Disturbing for others, but tbh that’s what I’m there for.
Promises to Keep
The Joe Biden book?
It was written by a ghost writer. Spooky!
I remember being very creeped out by the short novel Dark Matter by Michelle Paver.
The Starving Saints - medieval fantasy siege cannibalism horror
I’ve seen people be down on this one recently, but the lesbian stabbings were pretty rad, ngl.
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Yeah on second thought it’s not really ‘scared to turn out the lights’ horror but I dug the lesbian vibes and the description of the first time crawling through the little tunnel genuinely made me feel frightened
Claustrophobia
it’s a nice unsettling ‘n’ gross novel at the very least. Been meaning to read The Luminous Dead by the same author because DEEP SEAAAAA
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This sounds awesome
https://esl-bits.eu/ESL.English.Listening.Short.Stories/End.of.the.Whole.Mess/01/default.html
I love Stephen King’s short story The End of the Whole Mess. Two brothers find a town with a remarkably low crime rate and decide to saturate the atmosphere with its water supply by putting some in a volcano. Bad things happen.
In the first paragraph talking about blood type they use a zero (0) instead of an O, I can’t help but feel like there is something lost from the source when things are auto-transcribed but it’s probably visually identical to the OG text. Why do these things plague me
seems interesting though, ty for postingEdit: got to the end, aside from mild “old-fashioned” language it was good
I think that’s an intentional misspelling. The thing I like most about the story is how it starts with the writer already dying and the language breakdown comes on so subtly.
Oh true that’s probably it, there was a year stated later on where the 0 was an o. I wasn’t thinking about the framing of it, til it gets more obvious at the end. I just have seen that sort of thing in the past when scanned writing gets turned into editable text. I enjoyed this story though! The idea of a wandering compass in the mind searching for true north feels very relatable.
The haunting of Hill house is a classic if you’ve never read it.
Hijacking to say I bounced off that one but loved her later book, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
I saw Corpsemouth by John Langan recommended in another thread. It’s not a novel technically but a collection of short stories. I’m only a couple stories into it but one of them was pretty creepy.
Leech by Hiron Ennes is a really weird body horror. It’s more sad than spooky but I definitely recommend it.
An Other Place by Darren Dash (Darren Shan) is a really weird and spooky novel about a guy who chokes on a plane and wakes up trapped in a city in some other dimension. It is never scary but it is really unsettling and spooky. CW for sexual assault.
I’m a certified Stephen King hater, but Salem’s Lot is a really fun take on what if Dracula landed in rural Maine in the '70s instead. Fast paced, tight the whole way through, genuinely unsettling at times, and a fascinating look into the strange world of rural white Mainers in the 70s.
Tender is the flesh perhaps
Let The Right One In (or Let Me In in the US) by John Ajvide Lindqvist.
Vampire fiction percolated through The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo
The first chapter of The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker was unsettling - not necessarily scary. The whole book is good if you’re into body horror.
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin is very good for psychological manipulation and haunted houses. It had me hearing shit while I was trying to sleep. I can’t tell you what would be a good chapter - the entire book is a page turner.
It also depends on what you find scary. I’m currently reading Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito. You’re reading from the perspective of a female serial killer. She gets hired by a rich family to take care of the house and kids. In the end I’m just rooting for her - not really scary.
