Spooky season is my favorite. I’m a horror girl through and through. Movies, books, video games, horror is my favorite genre. There’s just something about picking up one of the scariest books you’ve ever read and huddling in your comfiest chair during the darkening months of the year that can’t be matched by other media. They turn our incredible imaginations against us to capitalize on exactly what will scare us the most. These books will worm their way into your mind and won’t be quick about leaving.
- The Shining
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I had to start with, what I consider to be, Stephen King’s most terrifying novel. For those who don’t know the story, Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic who takes a job as the caretaker for the Overlook Hotel. He and his family will live at the hotel in the winter months, during its off season, while it is unreachable due to snow, and he will be responsible for its maintenance. He moves in with his wife, Wendy and son, Danny. It doesn’t take long for the evil presence in the hotel to begin to appear to them and torment them.
The Shining is deeply unsettling from the very first page. We know that Jack has a history of angry outbursts and don’t entirely trust him even before we get to the hotel and he starts to be influenced by malevolent forces. It is almost inevitable that he would turn menacing in the isolation of the cold hotel. Unlike much horror media where kids and dogs are off limits, Stephen King never shies from putting children in danger and following through. (Pet Semetary anyone!?) It is with this knowledge that we follow Danny, often unsupervised, throughout the haunted hotel, frequently wishing he would stay with his mother. Not exactly safe, but at least not facing the ghostly apparitions alone.
If this is still on your TBR this might be the spooky season to pick it up. Or to read it again. It is as scary the second time as the first.
- In Cold Blood
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Horror isn’t always born from imagination. True monsters aren’t ghosts and vampires, they’re people. In Cold Blood is scary because it’s real. This novel tells the true story of the Clutter Family’s tragic murders. On their farm in Holcomb, Kansas in November of 1959, Herb, Bonnie, and their teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon, were murdered. In Cold Blood tells the story of the investigation, trial, and sentence that follows from the perspective of the townspeople and investigators.
Told in a narrative style, In Cold Blood will get to you. And it should. The book is a pioneer of the true crime genre but is also an exploration of the effects of collective trauma, empathy fatigue, and how one event can change so much, and yet so little.
This won’t be for every horror reader. A lot of us like our scares firmly in the realm of fiction, but a list the scariest books wouldn’t be complete without acknowledging that all our fictional fears are born from those in reality.
- The Hunger
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Many of us have heard the story of the Donner Party. A series of both misfortune and poor decision making leads to death by starvation and cannibalism while trapped for the winter in the mountains during their attempt to reach California settlements. (They were tantalizingly close.) The Hunger is a fictionalized account of this journey with added supernatural elements. Is the endless bad luck due to some curse? Perhaps Tamsen Donner is a witch! Is there something evil waiting in the mountains? Whispering to the party? Telling them to do terrible things?
As an avid Oregon Trail gamer in my youth, when I saw this at my local bookstore I knew it would be up my alley. What I didn’t expect would be the well written slow madness that crept through the party. The way I could feel it crawling among the group making them each question the motivations of others, placing blame where they could. Once people start to disappear, chaos reigns in everyone’s minds. Neither others nor the very mountains can be trusted, and everyone’s hold on their sanity is tenuous.
- Bird Box
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This book became a successful Netflix special starring Sandra Bullock. I haven’t seen that yet and if you haven’t read the book, I hope you haven’t either. Bird Box’s horror is deeply rooted in the unknown. The story is told from the point of view of Malorie, a woman living in a horrific alternate modern day where horrors pepper the landscape and getting so much as a sideways glimpse at them will lead to your death. The story is told in an alternating time line of flashbacks and modern day while she tries to find safety with her 2 young children in a world full of horrors.
Bird Box is chilling. We spend the novel sure that something just out of sight is waiting to pounce. And for the most part, it is. We never know when the creatures are nearby. There isn’t a moment of safety. Malerman creates an atmosphere that is thick with dread and there are few moments that it isn’t felt. We are desperate to understand the creatures that linger in the background of every scene and, in their mystery, our minds are more than happy to fill in the gaps. I found this book haunting. The fact that there are two children that Malorie is responsible for in such an environment is particularly unsettling. How do you keep a toddler from taking off a blindfold?
- Devolution
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When I was looking through the extensive list of horror books I’ve read to pick the scariest books, yes I have a problem, this one jumped out at me. It was a bit of a surprise hit when I read it. I mean. Come on. Big Foot isn’t scary. It turns out Max Brooks’ style of fictional, but reads like non-fiction can indeed make Big foot feel like he is chilling in your suburban neighborhood just behind the shrubbery. In Devolution, a group of wealthy people head to an eco village to be closer to nature. In turn, they find that nature may be coming closer to them. Perhaps a little too close. The book is told from journal entries of one of the residents that is discovered after the group is found massacred. So we, as the reader, already know where this is headed.
There is a lot to talk about in this book about the way people, even those who claim to be eco friendly, treat the world. A lot about the presentation of ourselves verses the reality. But then… There’s bigfoot. Hiding behind a tree, stalking the residents, hungry for human flesh. And holy crap he is scary. The feeling of being watched permeates the pages. It also has the reader screaming to the protagonists that they should really consider getting away from the scary things in the forest. These people had plenty of warning and they kinda got what was coming to them. It’s like the slasher victim the runs into the house instead of down the street. Just, why? But even when we don’t always love them, and we know how it ends from the beginning, we are on the edge of our seats hoping they’ll make it out.
Hopefully you’ve found something new to scare you a little this spooky season. Every year I look for something that really gets me. I’ll let you know if I find anything this year. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve read so many that it gets hard to find something great, but they’re still out there. My Lewis-o-Lantern is already up on the front porch reminding me that he is pretty fearless, but the wind still scares the shit out of him.
If you’re looking for more of the scariest books for spooky season check out these books that remind me of my childhood Goosebumps days.
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