Most notable horror story writer?

[katelbach]

I think Algernon Blackwood is the best horror writer. For pure terror and horror, The Willows is the best story I've read. It beats anything Poe or Lovecraft did. Arthur Machen comes closest to Blackwood in conveying pure terror and horror in his story The Great God Pan.

Agreed, perhaps excepting The Tell-Tale Heart, which still freaks me out. Think i'll re-read it when i'm reading The Fall Of The House Of Usher for the October short story book club. The part with the beam of light on the eye put me on edge more than anything else i've ever read!

Thanks for the Machen recommendation - will check it out in the near future.

[mortalterror]

ETA Hoffman definitely belongs on that list. The end of his short story The Sandman still sticks in my head, years after I read it, "Spin wooden dolly!" Though I'll add that for classy horror you can add writers like Browning and Coleridge for works like Childe Roland To the Dark Tower Came, or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Lovecraft makes mention of them and other influential early horror writers in Supernatural Horror in Literature. Most of the nominees are relatively recent but people have been writing horror stories since the beginning of narrative. Specifically, I'm thinking of that werewolf story in the Lays of Marie de France, but there must be numerous earlier works. If ancient Greeks could write science fiction stories, then I'm sure they had some version of horror that slips my mind at the moment.

Other good writers which deserve a nod include Charlotte Perkins Gilman for The Yellow Wallpaper, W. W. Jacobs for The Monkey's Paw, Shirley Jackson for The Lottery, Washington Irving for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Nathaniel Hawthorne for Young Goodman Brown, Joseph Conrad steps it up in all of his psychological horror writings, and then there's the Japanese ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan.

[Kyriakos]

I agree about the Sandman, and also Councelor Krespel, which has a similar theme with automatons

[Drkshadow03]

ETA Hoffman definitely belongs on that list. The end of his short story The Sandman still sticks in my head, years after I read it, "Spin wooden dolly!" Though I'll add that for classy horror you can add writers like Browning and Coleridge for works like Childe Roland To the Dark Tower Came, or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Lovecraft makes mention of them and other influential early horror writers in Supernatural Horror in Literature. Most of the nominees are relatively recent but people have been writing horror stories since the beginning of narrative. Specifically, I'm thinking of that werewolf story in the Lays of Marie de France, but there must be numerous earlier works. If ancient Greeks could write science fiction stories, then I'm sure they had some version of horror that slips my mind at the moment.

They definitely had werewolf stories. I distinctly remember the one in Herodotus.

[mortalterror]

They definitely had werewolf stories. I distinctly remember the one in Herodotus.

Well yeah, there are supernatural incidents in the books. For instance, Thessaly had a reputation for witchcraft surpassing that of Salem. There's ghosts in The Orestea and harpies in the Aeneid, but that doesn't make the books horror stories. The monsters that Theseus and Hercules battle are clearly the boogiemen of Greek folklore, and Plutarch talks about the dead rising from the grave, men on fire walking through the streets, strange flights of birds, and what have you; but none of those are more than embellishments to a greater narrative we'd label history, biography, mythology, comedy, or epic.

[Drkshadow03]

Well yeah, there are supernatural incidents in the books. For instance, Thessaly had a reputation for witchcraft surpassing that of Salem. There's ghosts in The Orestea and harpies in the Aeneid, but that doesn't make the books horror stories. The monsters that Theseus and Hercules battle are clearly the boogiemen of Greek folklore, and Plutarch talks about the dead rising from the grave, men on fire walking through the streets, strange flights of birds, and what have you; but none of those are more than embellishments to a greater narrative we'd label history, biography, mythology, comedy, or epic.

Yeah, which is why I didn't label them horror stories. I only meant to point out that many of our horror monsters that we have today have precedents in the ancient world.

Horror, in my opinion, has always been more about mood/tone/emotion it evokes in the reader than what its actual content consists of.

[Brandon1]

Why doesn't King qualify? I'll be the first to admit that he's written his share of garbage, but I truly believe stories like The Stand, The Shining, The Mist, Children of the Corn, Apt Pupil, and Pet Semetary stand at the pinnacle of the horror genre. King truly has a gift for developing character and mood.

Anyways, I voted for Lovecraft. He was a hugely flawed writer, that's for sure, but he was still a genius for ideas and atmosphere.

[Kyriakos]

I am a bit biased against King, which is why i did not include him + i have not read one full work by him (but heavily disliked what of his i read, and also didnt like the movies, apart from apt pupil) and so it would be pointless to have him in the poll.

[JCamilo]

Yeah, which is why I didn't label them horror stories. I only meant to point out that many of our horror monsters that we have today have precedents in the ancient world.

Horror, in my opinion, has always been more about mood/tone/emotion it evokes in the reader than what its actual content consists of.

Yet, the Lamia legend can be very close to what we call horror.
Anyways, talking about ancient world, Persian literature had a considerable ammount of tales reggarding Vampires.

I would mention Beckford Vathek as a notable horror story.

[JCamilo]

By the way, you people are diminishing considerable the real importance of Poe. He did not invented any of the genres people mentions (detective stories, horror, science fiction - well, he invented one genre, which is the Scientific Monography Cosmology Poem named Eureka, but people do not remember it).

The importance of Poe as a critic and even as poet (the few times he hit the nail) join together that he was a thinker of format, the first to defend and develop a clear aesthetical justification for short stories. Until him, almost nobody dared to be a great writer trying to write short prose. He settled the rules which already existed and because of that managed to produce some short of arquetypical horror stories. He may not have produced the best (as short story writers, his followers produced better examples and Henry James, Melville, Maupassant, Conrad (the Horla is either a vampire or ghost story, how can be otherwise) and a few others produced superior psychological stories and Stevenson just was more perfect than him. But he is clear the pioneer that did quite well, for quite so many.