Recommended Horror Writers and Stories

[Mr.lucifer]

Could someone recommend me some good horror writers or stories besides:

Poe and his works
Lovecraft and his works
Bram Stroker and Dracula
Mary shelly and Frakenstein
S. King and his works
Le Fanu and his works
M.R. James and his works

[JCamilo]

Arthur Macken, William Beckford, Henry James...

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Came in here ready to write H. P. Lovecraft, haha.

[Syd A]

I'm currently reading "American Fantastic Tales" (Library of America) - two volumes of dozens of horror and fantastic tales by American authors. Only one tale per author, so Poe and Lovecraft are not over-represented. It's a pretty good collection.

[MystyrMystyry]

Stories by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) not exactly classic horror but different kind of horror - highly recommended!

[Lokasenna]

I second Henry James, particularly The Turn of the Screw.

[mortalterror]

1.De Maupassant- The Horla
2.Henry James- The Turn of the Screw
3.H.G. Wells- The Island of Dr. Moreau
4.Robert Louis Stevenson- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
5.Arthur Machen- The Great God Pan
6.Richard Matheson- I am Legend
7.W.W. Jacobs- The Monkey's Paw
8.Shirley Jackson- The Haunting of Hill House
9.Robert Browning- Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
10.Samuel Taylor Coleridge- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
11.E.T.A. Hoffman- The Sandman
12.Horace Walpole- The Castle of Otranto
13.Anne Rice- Interview with a Vampire
14.Sheridan Le Fanu- In a Glass Darkly
15.Matthew Gregory Lewis- The Monk
16.Charlotte Perkins Gilman- The Yellow Wallpaper
17.M.R. James- Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
18.Ann Radcliffe- The Mysteries of Udolpho
19.Oscar Wilde- The Picture of Dorian Gray
20.Marie de France- Bisclavret (The Werewolf)
21.Pliny the Younger- Letter to Sura
22.Algernon Blackwood- The Willows
23.Nikolai Gogol- Viy
24.Max Brooks- World War Z
25.William Faulkner- A Rose For Emily
26.Ramsey Campbell- Alone with the Horrors
27.Fritz Leiber- Conjure Wife
28.Charles Maturin- Melmoth the Wanderer
29.Charles Nodier- Smarra
30.Washington Irving- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
31.Nathaniel Hawthorne- Young Goodman Brown
32.Tsuruya Nanboku IV- Yotsuya Kaidan
33.Gaston Leroux- The Phantom of the Opera
34.Peter Straub- Ghost Story
35.Thomas Harris- The Silence of the Lambs
36.William Peter Blatty- The Exorcist
37.Thomas Ligotti- The Nightmare Factory
38.Charles Dickens- The Signal Man
39.Horacio Quiroga- The Feather Pillow
40.Perceval Landon- Thurnley Abbey
41.Ray Bradbury- The Small Assassin
42.Edgar Allan Poe- The Cask of Amontillado
43.H.P. Lovecraft- The Call of Cthulhu
44.Stephen King- The Shining
45.Bram Stoker- Dracula
46.Mary Shelley- Frankenstein
47.Pu Songling- Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
48.Theophile Gautier- The Dead Leman
49.Gustav Meyrink- The Golem
50.S. Ansky- The Dybbuk
51.Erckmann-Chatrian- The Man-Wolf
52.Maurice Level- Those Who Return
53.George Eliot- The Lifted Veil
54.Ambrose Bierce- The Death of Halpin Frayser
55.Rudyard Kipling- The Phantom Rickshaw
56.Oliver Onions- The Beckoning Fair One
57.Isak Dinesen- Monkey
58.Prosper Mérimée- The Venus of Ille
59.Robert W. Chambers- The King in Yellow
60.Ira Levin- Rosemary's Baby
61.Edward Bulwer-Lytton- The House and the Brain
62.William Hope Hodgson- The House on the Borderland
63.Friedrich Schiller- The Ghost-Seer
64.Johann Ludwig Tieck- Wake Not the Dead
65.Jacques Cazotte- The Devil in Love
66.Alexander Dumas, pere- One Thousand and One Ghosts
67.Paul Feval, pere- Vampire City
68.Jean Ray- Malpertuis
69.Arthur Conan Doyle- Lot 249
70.Lafcadio Hearn- Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
71.Julio Cortazar- House Taken Over

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Did you make that list up mortalterror, or find it somewhere?

[JCamilo]

1.De Maupassant- The Horla

The day is boring so...
Well, for psychological stories I would add Melville's Benito Cereno.


2.Henry James- The Turn of the Screw

James has a serie of short ghost tales which are interesting too.


3.H.G. Wells- The Island of Dr. Moreau
4.Robert Louis Stevenson- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
5.Arthur Machen- The Great God Pan

His story The terror and also Jade figurines (I think) are quite good. Those Jade figurines made that AntiChrist movie with Williem Dafoe seems silly.



6.Richard Matheson- I am Legend

The history I like that he wrote is the one that the guy keeps receiving phone calls from someone who goes claiming to be god, voices in his head, etc. In the age of mobile phones, call centers, etc it turns in something else.



7.W.W. Jacobs- The Monkey's Paw
8.Shirley Jackson- The Haunting of Hill House
9.Robert Browning- Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came
10.Samuel Taylor Coleridge- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
11.E.T.A. Hoffman- The Sandman
12.Horace Walpole- The Castle of Otranto
13.Anne Rice- Interview with a Vampire

Really?I find she worst than Rowling. I mean, she makes King seems like Poe...


14.Sheridan Le Fanu- In a Glass Darkly
15.Matthew Gregory Lewis- The Monk
16.Charlotte Perkins Gilman- The Yellow Wallpaper
17.M.R. James- Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
18.Ann Radcliffe- The Mysteries of Udolpho
19.Oscar Wilde- The Picture of Dorian Gray
20.Marie de France- Bisclavret (The Werewolf)
21.Pliny the Younger- Letter to Sura
22.Algernon Blackwood- The Willows
23.Nikolai Gogol- The Overcoat
24.Max Brooks- World War Z
25.William Faulkner- A Rose For Emily
26.Ramsey Campbell- Alone with the Horrors
27.Fritz Leiber- Conjure Wife
28.Charles Maturin- Melmoth the Wanderer
29.Charles Nodier- Smarra
30.Washington Irving- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

This and almost all Irving stories are more comedies. He does not believe the supernatural, joking about it all the time. Albeit, they are an ABC of how to construct the athmophere of a gothic tale.


31.Nathaniel Hawthorne- Young Goodman Brown
32.Tsuruya Nanboku IV- Yotsuya Kaidan
33.Gaston Leroux- The Phantom of the Opera
34.Peter Straub- Ghost Story
35.Thomas Harris- The Silence of the Lambs
36.William Peter Blatty- The Exorcist
37.Thomas Ligotti- The Nightmare Factory
38.Charles Dickens- The Signal Man
39.Horacio Quiroga- The Feather Pillow


I found this too similar with Dracula chapter about Lucy's death. Quiroga has an story which a pack of dogs try to prevent Death from reaching their owner, much more interesting.

[mortalterror]

Did you make that list up mortalterror, or find it somewhere?

Part I made up from memory, part I cobbled together from previous litnet horror threads, and a brief perusal of H.P. Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature.

[Kyriakos]

Some of your list are not horror though. For example The Overcoat is by no means a horror story, exceptional literature though it is ;)

And i am happy that you included Hoffmann's The Sandman.

[mortalterror]

Some of your list are not horror though. For example The Overcoat is by no means a horror story, exceptional literature though it is ;)

A guy comes back as a ghost and starts stealing people's coats, ie a ghost story.

[JCamilo]

Besides Lovecraft, there is also Italo Calvino collection of XIX supernatural tales. It is a guide of a shorts.

http://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Tales-Visionary-Italo-Calvino/dp/0679755446

[Kyriakos]

A guy comes back as a ghost and starts stealing people's coats, ie a ghost story.

Well it is a ghost story, again marginally since that is by no means the center of the plot, and it only happens in the very end, but this is a list of horror stories, which it definately is not :)

[manolia]

Came in here ready to write H. P. Lovecraft, haha.

hehehe you beat me to that comment : ]]

[JCamilo]

Well it is a ghost story, again marginally since that is by no means the center of the plot, and it only happens in the very end, but this is a list of horror stories, which it definately is not :)

Define horror, many "horror" stories do not even supernatural elements.

[LuggageFan]

There isn't a whole lot of good horror stuff out there, IMO. I like scary books, but the vast majority of it is just about gross-out and blood and gore. That's not scary, to me - it's just repulsive.

[JCamilo]

I doubt we can define a good horror text by its capacity to scary people. It is more the capacity to create moody and atmosphere. For example, Red Hidding Hood and Blue-beard are cleary scary stories. That is their objective. Maupassant has a very good re-telling of Red Hidding Hood, but modernized (to his time) as a normal crime.
Many horror writers - Le Fanu and Irving for example, have stories that are more mockering of horror, as if they tried to mock the people who get scared around the bonfire with the stories.

Poe, lacks "boo", in a sense he works leaving people upset and does not end it. That is probally the best trait of a short story, around the proverbial bonfire you create tension and when the audience is distracted you go for the "boo", ending the narration. If we look well, Macbeth and Hamlet are in the sense great horror stories.

[Kyriakos]

Define horror, many "horror" stories do not even supernatural elements.

I would say that horror stories either have some cosmic element that causes horror, or some psychological one. In the case of the Overcoat, it is a story with humour, on the other hand very tragic, but it cannot make you fearfull of anything in it. The cause of Akaky's destruction is simple, even mundane: he is in a way like an insect that is crushed under the foot of the indifference of his contemporary society towards people like him.
Even when he becomes a ghost, and does indeed frighten some people in the narrative, he is still presented in a comedic way (for example i recall his enlarging mustache! ).

The Overcoat is one of my favourite stories. I have read it many times, and not even in the first one did i feel scared, or uneasy, or at least noted that other people might find it horrifying. Thus i do not see it at all as a horror story.

[JCamilo]

But then, you can not define something universal (the genre horror) with your personal experiences, right? I never got scared by reading any of those stories for example.

Horror does not really scare, take Sleeping Hollow: it is actually a comedy. Icaabod is scared, but the reader laugh of him. In other hand, people may get scared from Kafka Process and the upsetting destiny of K.

rYou can counter saying Dickens 3 ghosts are not horror story or maybe they are. I would say, Gogol is a new kind of horror, a urban form, which predates Stevenson, Kafka and Borges who could do all this with or without cosmic elements and where we are like Poe, impressed by the size of the universe.

[Mr.lucifer]

There isn't a whole lot of good horror stuff out there, IMO. I like scary books, but the vast majority of it is just about gross-out and blood and gore. That's not scary, to me - it's just repulsive.

Sturgeon's Law-90% of everything is crud

[Kyriakos]

But then, you can not define something universal (the genre horror) with your personal experiences, right? I never got scared by reading any of those stories for example.

Horror does not really scare, take Sleeping Hollow: it is actually a comedy. Icaabod is scared, but the reader laugh of him. In other hand, people may get scared from Kafka Process and the upsetting destiny of K.

rYou can counter saying Dickens 3 ghosts are not horror story or maybe they are. I would say, Gogol is a new kind of horror, a urban form, which predates Stevenson, Kafka and Borges who could do all this with or without cosmic elements and where we are like Poe, impressed by the size of the universe.

I see your point. I do not agree though that it is less eccentric than my own definition, to claim (like you did) that stories which can be defined utterly as belonging to other genres (such as magic realism, or realism) are in reality horror, no matter that they do not go out of their way to horrify.
Interesting that when i first read The Trial i thought it was very funny. Granted back then i knew nothing about Kafka's diaries, and later on i came to be of the view that the Trial was intended to be utterly tragic.
Gogol was known for his humour, but also for his ability to paint a tragic image.
This co-existence of tragedy with comedy in his work probably is even more striking in the short story "Diary of a madman", but exists in the Overcoat as well.

If one was to take your reasoning a bit further, then what is there to stop one from claiming that stories such as (Gogol's) The Nose are also horror, since they present some gruesome event? (the nose of someone being cut-off).

[JCamilo]

No, of course not, isnt the nose the forefather of those tales where people is haunted by themselves (hands, feet?). Some classify the Nose as a doppleganger story, theme of Stevenson and Poe?

Borges, magical realist, wrote a Cthutulu story, mostly because he is very influenced by English gothic stories.

[Kyriakos]

It is in my view as well a Doppelganger tale, since effectively the nose becomes an antagonist, and lives the life the protagonist wanted to live :)

But that story is sunk in comedic elements, even from the beginning.

Also there are many stories that have dark elements, which are not horror (in my mind). For example Tanizaki wrote a large work about some japanese warlords, and one in particular who developed a perversion out of looking at severed heads of enemy soldiers being washed by attractive women. He wanted to be one of those heads. This is quite dark, but the story itself is not horror, but realism, and relies mostly on psychological elements (on the surface as well, since below the surface every story relies obviously on such elements).

I think that for a story to be horror the writer has at least to be trying to present something that frightens. Now most adult readers will not feel really scared by a story, but they can realise the intent being existant to cause such an emotion. ;)

[cyberbob]

Private Memoirs and Confessions By a Justified Sinner by James Hogg could qualify as an early horror story.

It's somewhat like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde except it's actually interesting and fun to read (funny because it's actually older) and the characters are a lot more well developed.

The fiendish Gil-Martin is one of my favorite antagonists of all time.

I give it the utmost recommendation.

[ScribbleScribe]

I"m reading I Am Legend right now and I'm finding it a page-turner. :)

[laymonite]

Baudelaire.

[LuggageFan]

Sturgeon's Law-90% of everything is crud

Oh, right - I'd forgotten he said that. :D But he was right.

[Mr.lucifer]

Oh, right - I'd forgotten he said that. :D But he was right.

It really goes for all forms of media. Its the 10% that we stick around for.

[ScribbleScribe]

Sorry if I'm repeating myself but I am finding that I'm really enjoying Richard Mathesons short stories. There are a few duds but its worth it to stick around for the gems like Mad House and Dance of the Dead.

[LuggageFan]

Sorry if I'm repeating myself but I am finding that I'm really enjoying Richard Mathesons short stories. There are a few duds but its worth it to stick around for the gems like Mad House and Dance of the Dead.

Hell House was okay, just. Hunted Past Reason was dreadful.

I've enjoyed other things he wrote, sometimes very very much, but in light of the fact that his talent is variable, I can't really put him in the same league as Poe, or even Ramsay Campbell, whose short stories are invariably thrilling and frightening.

[Kyriakos]

Got any suggestion for a specific R. Campbell story i could look into? :) I haven't read anything by him.

[LuggageFan]

Got any suggestion for a specific R. Campbell story i could look into? :) I haven't read anything by him.

Oh, gosh, yes! I think my favorite is "The Show Goes On" from Dark Companions which is an early collection of his stories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Companions

Out of print, but resellers have it. Can't recommend it highly enough. Just about every story in it is a winner. In my opinion, no other modern writer even comes close to his talent at that form, though I'm open to correction.

Enjoy!

[ScribbleScribe]

Hell House was okay, just. Hunted Past Reason was dreadful.

I've enjoyed other things he wrote, sometimes very very much, but in light of the fact that his talent is variable, I can't really put him in the same league as Poe, or even Ramsay Campbell, whose short stories are invariably thrilling and frightening.

Wait, Hell House = Mad House? I thought those were two different stories.

[LuggageFan]

Wait, Hell House = Mad House? I thought those were two different stories.

Hell House was a novel; Mad House was, apparently, one of his short stories. Let me check wiki.

Yes, see above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Matheson

[Nicci]

ooh I love good horror writing. Thank you for this thread!

[mortalterror]

Does anyone think that Faust deserves to be listed under horror stories? The whole of the action revolves around a man's pact with the devil, and they even go to a witch's sabbath. It has all of the trappings of the genre story although it never attempts to arouse feelings of fright in it's readers. Likewise, Paradise Lost is a story about the Devil, but it's not a horror story either. The supernatural elements are raised almost in an allegorical way to talk about fate, justice, longing, and man's capacity to sin, whereas in a horror story the supernatural is invoked solely in order to threaten the mortality of a human being.

Also, I organized my list chronologically:

100 Pliny the Younger- Letter to Sura
1200 Marie de France- Bisclavret (The Werewolf)
1764 Horace Walpole- The Castle of Otranto
1766 Pu Songling- Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
1772 Jacques Cazotte- The Devil in Love
1787 Friedrich Schiller- The Ghost-Seer
1794 Ann Radcliffe- The Mysteries of Udolpho
1796 Matthew Gregory Lewis- The Monk
1798 Samuel Taylor Coleridge- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
1816 E.T.A. Hoffman- The Sandman
1818 Mary Shelley- Frankenstein
1820 Johann Ludwig Tieck- Wake Not the Dead
1820 Charles Maturin- Melmoth the Wanderer
1820 Washington Irving- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
1821 Charles Nodier- Smarra
1825 Tsuruya Nanboku IV- Yotsuya Kaidan
1835 Nikolai Gogol- Viy
1835 Nathaniel Hawthorne- Young Goodman Brown
1836 Theophile Gautier- The Dead Leman
1837 Prosper Mérimée- The Venus of Ille
1846 Edgar Allan Poe- The Cask of Amontillado
1849 Alexander Dumas, pere- One Thousand and One Ghosts
1855 Robert Browning- Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
1859 George Eliot- The Lifted Veil
1859 Edward Bulwer-Lytton- The House and the Brain
1866 Charles Dickens- The Signal Man
1872 Sheridan Le Fanu- Green Tea
1874 Paul Feval, pere- Vampire City
1876 Erckmann-Chatrian- The Man-Wolf
1885 Robert Louis Stevenson- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
1887 De Maupassant- The Horla
1888 Rudyard Kipling- The Phantom Rickshaw
1890 Arthur Machen- The Great God Pan
1890 Oscar Wilde- The Picture of Dorian Gray
1892 Arthur Conan Doyle- Lot 249
1892 Charlotte Perkins Gilman- The Yellow Wallpaper
1893 Ambrose Bierce- The Death of Halpin Frayser
1895 Robert W. Chambers- The King in Yellow
1896 H.G. Wells- The Island of Dr. Moreau
1897 Bram Stoker- Dracula
1898 Henry James- The Turn of the Screw
1902 W.W. Jacobs- The Monkey's Paw
1904 M.R. James- Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
1904 Lafcadio Hearn- Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
1907 Algernon Blackwood- The Willows
1907 Horacio Quiroga- The Feather Pillow
1908 William Hope Hodgson- The House on the Borderland
1908 Perceval Landon- Thurnley Abbey
1909 Gaston Leroux- The Phantom of the Opera
1911 Oliver Onions- The Beckoning Fair One
1914 Gustav Meyrink- The Golem
1914 S. Ansky- The Dybbuk
1923 Maurice Level- Those Who Return
1926 H.P. Lovecraft- The Call of Cthulhu
1930 William Faulkner- A Rose For Emily
1934 Isak Dinesen- Monkey
1943 Fritz Leiber- Conjure Wife
1943 Jean Ray- Malpertuis
1946 Ray Bradbury- The Small Assassin
1951 Julio Cortazar- House Taken Over
1954 Richard Matheson- I am Legend
1959 Shirley Jackson- The Haunting of Hill House
1967 Ira Levin- Rosemary's Baby
1971 William Peter Blatty- The Exorcist
1973 Anne Rice- Interview with a Vampire
1977 Stephen King- The Shining
1979 Peter Straub- Ghost Story
1988 Thomas Harris- The Silence of the Lambs
1991 Ramsey Campbell- Alone with the Horrors
1996 Thomas Ligotti- The Nightmare Factory
2006 Max Brooks- World War Z

[JCamilo]

Well, first part certainly. Some years ago, we collected several histories about devil pacts - which are all horror - and Goethe Faust shares elements with all of them. If a oral storyteller use them to scary, why cann't one use Faust? A very (much more fantasy however) similar story lie Peter Schlemihl by Von Chamisso (instead the soul, it is the shadow) is a gothic horror tale, so why not? Plus, all those american moralists stories with Mr.Scratch like The Devil and Daniel Webster, even with some humor, are horror. And Doctor Faustus the intelectual version of it.
Now the fable of genres, Rosa's Grande Sertoes Veredas é a deal with the devil story. And Fernando pessoa has an unfinished poem about Faust too... would them be horror....

[Kyriakos]

Another story which, if one is loose about characterisations, could be called horror, is Kafka's "In the penal colony". Definately the darkest of Kafka's stories (which is something, considering they are all dark ;) ) it is violent, relentless in the portrayal of pain, and very powerful writing all-around.
Normally i wouldnt name it as horror though, since it is obviously an allegory about Kafka's self-destruction, with writing (a form of writing plays a crucial part in this story) as a means to bring that about.

Horror or not, it is one of my favourite stories :)

[faithosaurus]

There's this one book, Sleeping Beauty by Phillip Margolin.

I warn you, if you are sensitive about subjects such as rape, this isn't the book for you.