Halloween Reads

[Laurel]

Share your favorite scary reads here! You can link to the books, or just reference title and author. Bonus points for turning people on to little-known and/or new authors and works.

Linking to your Amazon affiliate account or any other spammish activity will get you removed from the thread.

I'll start it off:

* * * * *

The author Anderson Prunty writes some good scary stuff.

Particularly appropriate for Halloween are:

Pray You Die Alone: Horror Stories

Bury the Children in the Yard: Horror Stories

Sunruined: Horror Stories

These are three short anthologies of fairly quick reads. Excellent excellent writing, bleak and scary and imaginative. They have a very fireside scary feel to them. Read them aloud to your significant other and you'll be sleeping with the lights on.

 

[lovetoread]

I have to run, but this may be your bestest thread. if'n you ever get tired of Manu, come find me.

 

[knot_sweet]

Neil Gaiman's short stories are good for the vaguely unsettling and macabre feeling.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

This is how I spent my childhood. Mom usta cry afterwards. SK cant touch it. Its beyond art.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUkE9qaVgmo

 

[Laurel]

I have to run, but this may be your bestest thread. if'n you ever get tired of Manu, come find me.

Excellent!

Neil Gaiman's short stories are good for the vaguely unsettling and macabre feeling.

Good call. Any ones in particular that really got you?

This is how I spent my childhood. Mom usta cry afterwards. SK cant touch it. Its beyond art.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUkE9qaVgmo

Nothing there!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Excellent!



Good call. Any ones in particular that really got you?



Nothing there!

Eat your oatmeal and maybe your vision will improve, it builds strong bodies 12 ways, yuh know.

 

[gravyrug]

One of my favorite disturbing stories from one of my favorite short-story writers. http://haytom.us/sredni-vashtar/

 

[Laurel]

One of my favorite disturbing stories from one of my favorite short-story writers. http://haytom.us/sredni-vashtar/

ooohh! Excellent scary story!

 

[gravyrug]

ooohh! Excellent scary story!

He had several, but I can't find my favorite, The Great God Pan. Saki's stuff was either surreally disturbing or hilarious (and disturbing), and sometimes both.

I'll try to find some others as they come to me.

 

[gravyrug]

And it wouldn't be a proper Halloween without some Lovecraft:

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.aspx

 

[RobDownSouth]

Shameless repost

If you like vintage Stephen King, get a copy of NOS4A2, by Joe Hill.

I'm halfway through it, it's fantastic.

BTW...Joe Hill is Stephen King's son. The writing style is incredibly similar.

 

[lovetoread]

Joe is hit or miss.

He doesn't do scary very well, but his best book so far is 20th century ghosts.

http://www.amazon.com/20th-Century-...=UTF8&qid=1380990990&sr=1-7&keywords=joe+hill

His second better one is Twittering from the circus of the dead

http://www.amazon.com/Twittering-Ci...=UTF8&qid=1380990990&sr=1-3&keywords=joe+hill

 

[doctor_insanus]

H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu

Stephen King - Jerusalem's Lot

 

[knot_sweet]

Good call. Any ones in particular that really got you?

"The Hidden Chamber", "Strange Little Girls", "Pages From a Journal...", "Feeders and Eaters" are the more deliberately macabre from his book "Fragile Things"

"Nicholas Was", "BabyCakes" and "Snow, Glass, Apples" are more...oddly uneasy...than macabre from "Smoke and Mirrors".

But honestly, you really need to read both books to get the whole effect. The stories, individually, really are short, but I've left off a couple I thought were equally disturbing because the writing style may not to be everyone's taste.

 

[tactful]

I wonder if this will be classified, as a trick thread, or a treat thread?

 

[gravyrug]

He had several, but I can't find my favorite, The Great God Pan. Saki's stuff was either surreally disturbing or hilarious (and disturbing), and sometimes both.

I'll try to find some others as they come to me.

Aaand, I couldn't find it because it was by a different author, silly me. It was written by Arthur Machen (who also has several other disturbing stories), and here's Project Gutenberg's download page for it:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/389

 

[Laurel]

Aaand, I couldn't find it because it was by a different author, silly me. It was written by Arthur Machen (who also has several other disturbing stories), and here's Project Gutenberg's download page for it:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/389

Excellent, thanks for this!

 

[Fata Morgana]

If you like vintage Stephen King, get a copy of NOS4A2, by Joe Hill.

I'm halfway through it, it's fantastic.

BTW...Joe Hill is Stephen King's son. The writing style is incredibly similar.

I've read his others, liked Heart Shaped Box but not so much Horns. Which put me off reading this one. He writes and looks like his Dad for sure.

 

[evesdream]

When I was in grade 6 my teacher asked us to read a book about animals and do a report. I asked my older cousin for help...he gave me Cujo.

The only other story I've read since that's given me the creeps is "Luella Miller" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/luella.html

 

[lovetoread]

I've read his others, liked Heart Shaped Box but not so much Horns. Which put me off reading this one. He writes and looks like his Dad for sure.

I've not finished Horns, I put it in my DNF list.

 

[Littlefinger]

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson is one I'm reading right now. Very eerie and unsettling. Some don't like it for it's archaic language but I find that it adds to it's allure. Either way you can always try one of the modernized rewrites if that's more your style.

 

[Laurel]

When I was in grade 6 my teacher asked us to read a book about animals and do a report. I asked my older cousin for help...he gave me Cujo.

The only other story I've read since that's given me the creeps is "Luella Miller" by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

http://www.litgothic.com/Texts/luella.html

Ahhh...spooky!!

 

[Farrah]

If you like vintage Stephen King, get a copy of NOS4A2, by Joe Hill.

I'm halfway through it, it's fantastic.

BTW...Joe Hill is Stephen King's son. The writing style is incredibly similar.

I flew through this book. Best of the horror genre I've read in years, and that very much includes the last several SK releases. I even remarked to my boyfriend that Joe may be as good as his dad.

 

[CandiCame]

H.P. Lovecraft - The Call of Cthulhu

Stephen King - Jerusalem's Lot

Why does everyone like Call of Cthullu so much? I know I'm missing something. I don't find it scary or interesting at all, and I know it's my fault because everybody else loves it. It's about a kid who finds a statue at his uncle's. That's it. Statue never comes to life. Statue never causes anything fucked up to happen, like in monkey's paw. It's just a neat statue. That's the entire story.

Of course, I often don't understand why Lovecraft is scary. Like that other story- probably my favorite, where he's ODed on opium and he's having a bad trip- because that is seriously what it's like to OD on opioids. Even that part- especially that part, where he's like, "ancient authors talk of tigers" and later he's like, "No wait... that wasn't ancient authors that was the Jungle Book. The fuck is wrong with me? Oh right, I'm high." And then he starts laughing.

And then he sees that chior of ocean people who tell him to calm the fuck down... That's a good story. But it's not scary.

 

[Phelia]

Has anyone heard of creepypasta? Short scary stories - it's amazing how the brevity can underscore how unsettling they are. Mecha posted some good ones in this thread, and there's a dedicated site for them, but I think the best new ones come from Reddit nosleep.

I like being a-skeered.