Best Horror Stories (short fiction and novels)

Cafe Society
1

It’s almost Christmas time - when you celebrate love and light, and then gather round the fire to scare the pants off everyone (at least in the tradition of M.R. James).

A friend posted an alleged list of the best horror stories ever, and it left a lot to be desired. So I started my own. Please add your favorites!

Short stories

H.P. Lovecraft:

  • The Color Out of Space
  • The Statement of Randolph Carter
  • Pickman’s Model

F. Marion Crawford:

  • The Dead Smile
  • The Upper Berth

M.R. James:

  • The Mezzotint

Robert W. Chambers:

  • The King in Yellow

Arthur Machen:

  • The Great God Pan

Christ Priestly

  • Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror (entire collection)

Stephen King

  • Skeleton Crew (entire collection)

Novels

Michelle Paver - Dark Matter
Mike Carey - The Girl with All the Gifts
Neil Gaiman - Coraline
John Ajvide Lindqvist - Let the Right One In
Peter Straub - Ghost Story
Stephen King - The Gunslinger

2

Best decades old short story I never heard of until this year:
Smee by A. M. Burrage

3

“Jerusalem’s Lot” is my favorite King story.

“The Exorcist” is also worth reading.

4

Stephen King — The Shining

5

For Lovecraft I’d choose instead The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Cal of Cthulhu and, for a novel, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
I don’t think I have a favorite Stephen King story or novel.
Robert E. Howard – Worms in the Earth

Clark Ashton Smith – The Colossus of Ylorgne

I still have a special love for Robert Lewis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mister Hyde. If you haven’t read it, do so. It’s much better than any film adaptation.

6
  • Count Magnus
  • The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
7

“It” by Theodore Sturgeon
“The Rats in the Walls” by H.P. Lovecraft
“The Autopsy” by Michael Shea
“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison
“We Are All Completely Fine” by Daryl Gregory
Novels
Carrion Comfort and Summer of Night by Dan Simmons

8

More:
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“The Roaches” by Thomas Disch
“That Only a Mother” by Judith Merrill
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
“The Father-Thing” by Phillip K. Dick
“With Folded Hands” by Jack Williamson

9

Lovecraft

Out of the Aeons (with Hazel Heald)

I’ve loved his works for almost 30 years and there was a time when I was really into the whole mythos (I even bought this) but his stories never really scared me. This one, however, made me feel very uneasy for some reason. I re-read it in my early 30s and, yes, still creepy…

The Dreams in the Witch House also has some unsettling passages.

The other stories, and I must have read almost all of them, are usually good, often absolutely great, absorbing and thought-provoking, but never really terrifying.

Crawford

The Upper Berth

I read it in an otherwise so-so anthology of gothic fiction and found it unexpectedly spooky.

Blatty

The Exorcist

Of course.

Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper

I’d heard of it for a long time before actually reading it and it lived up to the hype. The last lines are haunting.

Among the ones that have been mentioned, these three pique my interest, especially the first one which was named less than a month ago in a similar thread on another board.

Chambers

The King in Yellow

James

The Mezzotint

Machen

The Great God Pan

And two classics, perhaps not that scary, but must-reads all the same:

Poe

The Fall of the House of Usher

De Quincey

Suspiria De Profundis : Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow

So eerily evocative…

10

“Who Goes There?” by John Campbell, Jr, writing as Don Stuart, in 1938

11

Stories of monsters, ghosts, etc., have never scared me.

Examination Day, by Henry Slesar, scared the ever-living fuck out of me.

1984 can keep me awake at nights, too.

12

One of the most chilling horror stories ever written is Schalken the Painter by the great Joseph Sheridan LeFanu.

For great modern horror novels you can do no better than Ghost Story by Peter Straub and Floating Dragon by the same author.

13

Short Stories: “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” by Conrad Aiken
“The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs
“It’s a Good Life” by Jerome Bixby

Novel (YA) Sorrow’s Knot by Erin Bow

14

Blatty’s “Legion” (aka The Exorcist 3) is also a great read. And MR James “The Ash Tree” and “View From a Hill” are my favourites by him.

15

Daniel Lewizinski (sp?) House of Leaves is chilling (novel)

16

My favorite Lovecraft story is “Herbert West – Re-animator”.

I suggest Richard Matheson’s “Prey”.

17

“In the Tall Grass” by Stephen King and Joe Hill. Most disturbing thing I’ve read in years.

I have to warn you, though, if you are pregnant or have recently been pregnant -DO NOT read this story. I’m not kidding.

18

Oliver St John Gogarty wrote “The Most Haunted House of Them All”–collected in A Week End In the Middle of the Week and Other Essays On the Bias.

In which he recounts the tale of the Leap Castle Ghost. Originally recorded by the Anglo-Irish lady spiritualist who resided in the castle & seriously investigated by Yeats before the castle burned. Then ludicrously featured in one of those Ghostfacers shows shot in the reconstructed great house. But Gogarty’s version is the best…

19

“All the Birds Come Home to Roost”
“Flopsweat”

Both in Harlan Ellison’s Shatterday.

20

I don’t know if you count it as horror, but Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer in a Day” will disturb you forever…