Halloween, an age-old holiday that has dominated American culture for a century, has helped to produce some of the scariest and creepiest novels of all time. From Southern Gothics to terrifying gore novels, a list of the creepiest books of all time are seemingly endless. Horror classics like Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray have detailed moralistic lessons for their readers, while others make their readers keep the light on at night. Incredible novels like The Haunting of Hill House have been adapted into successful television shows, while others have topped the best sellers list.
Novels for kids like the Goosebumps series has created a whole generation of horror lovers, who have gone on to read classic novels like The Shining and The Turn of the Screw, the former which details a haunted Colorado hotel, and the latter telling the story of a governess who begins to see hauntings around her. More modern horror novels like the House of Leaves, which utilize confusing and complex structures and employ side notes and unreliable narrators, create a disturbing book filled with anticipation. Other famous horror novels don’t utilize common tropes like jump scares or gore, but rather creepy creatures that live in the night. Famous book series like Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice set blood-thirsty vampires in 18th century New Orleans, and detail their increasingly horror-filled lives.
Numerous horror novels are often deeper than shallow Halloween-esque tropes, instead telling a moral or making a social commentary through their novels. The House of Leaves, a creepy horror book, has actually been described by its author, Mark Z. Danielewski, as a love story. As well, novels like The Haunting of Hill House and The Turn of the Screw explore the power of the human psyche, and debate whether the ghosts being seen are real, or a figment of the protagonist’s imagination. Great horror novels are able to create a sense of dread, and a horrifying climax, without relying on movie tropes of jump scares, insane asylums, or abandoned homes. Halloween books like The Shining, the Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Hill House, The House of Leaves, Interview with a Vampire, Dracula, IT, The Silence of the Lambs, The Omen, and numerous others have become cultural icons, all for their ability to completely terrify their reader’s.
And as Halloween is around the corner, pumpkins out and ghosts roaming, a spooky good book is the way to go.
