/horror/ general megathread; literary edition - Everything horrific, from stephen king to walking in on your parents fucking

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Internet War Criminal

Internet War Criminal

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Dec 9, 2015
So now I'm about to finish The Dark Tower and I'm gonna need to read something new. So let's talk about shit we've read that we liked, shit that mostly in the realm of horror for the most part.

I might actually pause and read Insomnia, Hearts in Atlantis, Talisman and Black House before I finish TDT and WttKH but yeah after I'm gonna be done with SK for a while and gonna need some more books to read. So just go ahead and share and shit.


For my part, if you've never read Stephen King, imo you can't go wrong reading:

The Stand (uncut)
IT
The Dead Zone
Salem's Lot
Pet Sematary
The Shining then Doctor Sleep
Cujo
The Dark Tower series (wait until you've read more SK)

If you want more realistic and gritty shit, I'd recommend his Richard Bachman stuff, specifically
The Long Walk (one of his best books, period)
Running Man
Rage

Outside of SK, I'd say my favorite horror is House of Fallen Leaves but it's also experimental as shit and not for most people. It's hard as fuck to explain. Basically someone buys a house, and realizes that the inside of the house is larger than the outside, and finds a door that shouldn't be there. And then it gets all fucked up like a literary acid trip where even page format and storytelling style is fucked with. A complete mindfuck. Fantastic, but not for most people.
 
lit·er·a·ture
/ˈlidərəCHər,ˈlidərəˌCHo͝or/
written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit.

Not manga or comics or any of that shit, please. Actual books. Thus 'literary edition'.
 
Internet War Criminal said:
lit·er·a·ture
/ˈlidərəCHər,ˈlidərəˌCHo͝or/
written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit.

Not manga or comics or any of that shit, please. Actual books. Thus 'literary edition'.
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to walking in on your parents fucking​

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That a book too? where can i get that and are there pictures in it?
 
joke
/jōk/
a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, especially a story with a funny punchline.


also relevant:

au·tism
/ˈôˌtizəm/
a developmental disorder of variable severity that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior.
 
H.P. Lovecraft is probably too obvious of a recommendation. He's often a much better lore-writer than a story teller in my opinion, but his stories are short, widely available, and usually pretty interesting. At The Mountains of Madness is probably his best work; The Haunter of the Dark is my personal favorite story, and The Outsider is an amazing short story that you can finish in a few minutes.

Edgar Allan Poe is an interesting recommendation, because he was actually a lot more diverse of a writer than people seem to realize. He wrote romance, sci-fi, adventure, mystery, and a surprising amount of comedy. That said, his horror and gothic writings are what he's most known for. The Masque of the Red Death is my personal favorite, which along with The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Black Cat are probably what you know him for.

Algernon Blackwood can be kind of hit or miss for me, though he does have some really good stories. The Willows, is my personal favorite (and a favorite of HP Lovecraft), and The Wendigo is likely the story that brought the Algonquian myth into popular culture (though the story itself doesn't seem to have much in common with the myth or the modern cultural phenomena).

Robert W. Chambers, from what I can tell, mostly wrote historical fiction and adventure stories. However, his short story collection The King in Yellow is in my opinion one of the greatest works of weird fiction out there (well, the first half, anyway).

And a shoutout to Lord Dunsany, a high fantasy and horror author who was a massive inspiration to Lovecraft. I haven't gotten around to reading Dunsany yet, apart from The Gods of Pegana, a series of myths involving a fictional pantheon that served as a direct inspiration for some of Lovecraft's elder gods (specifically Azathoth).


Most of these author's stories are in the public domain, so they're easy to find online if you don't mind ebooks/pdfs. And if you don't mind audiobooks, HorrorBabble on YouTube has done readings of a lot of these author's stories.
 
I have a nice hard copy of Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow.

My pick is The Repairer of Reputations. Don't know how many times I've re-read it, but it is just...ah-mazing. What I like best is that Castaigne is an unreliable narrator and you can take him for having delusions about being successor to the throne...or supernatural fuckery with his trips to Mr. Wilde.
There's an awful lot of supernatural and ghost stuff, and I just don't care for it. I like books where you have relatable situations and characters. With this, the relatable aspect being: Who hasn't run into an unreliable narrator or seen/knew someone with brain damage or mental illness.

It makes the horror more palpable. This REALLY COULD happen to any of us. And the hell--like in Stephen King's 1408--is Lovecraftian, alien, and CUSTOM MADE to the individual.

Also have a beautiful hard cover Lovecraft treasury. The Colour Out of Space is my first love. Also In the Mountains of Madness, The White Ship, and The Temple is GREAT if you like claustrophobic rides reminiscent of John Carpenter's The Thing!
 
Constellationzero said:
I have a nice hard copy of Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow.

My pick is The Repairer of Reputations. Don't know how many times I've re-read it, but it is just...ah-mazing. What I like best is that Castaigne is an unreliable narrator and you can take him for having delusions about being successor to the throne...or supernatural fuckery with his trips to Mr. Wilde.
There's an awful lot of supernatural and ghost stuff, and I just don't care for it. I like books where you have relatable situations and characters. With this, the relatable aspect being: Who hasn't run into an unreliable narrator or seen/knew someone with brain damage or mental illness.

It makes the horror more palpable. This REALLY COULD happen to any of us. And the hell--like in Stephen King's 1408--is Lovecraftian, alien, and CUSTOM MADE to the individual.

Also have a beautiful hard cover Lovecraft treasury. The Colour Out of Space is my first love. Also In the Mountains of Madness, The White Ship, and The Temple is GREAT if you like claustrophobic rides reminiscent of John Carpenter's The Thing!
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Repairer is definitely the best story in the book. Though there's also something about the haunting short poems in The Prophets' Paradise that stuck with me. I might be reading too much into it, but it almost feels like they're all telling a disjointed narrative together.
 
Read the dream quest of unknown Kadath. It is the best novel I have ever read, it isn't all horror, but there are some quite typically Lovecraftian passages in there too. My copy is probably one of my most valued posessions.
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The Troop by Nick Cutter, aka Craig Davidson. A brilliant tale of body horror written by one of the best writers of any genre in the world today. After reading this, you'll never take another weight loss tablet again.

 
I'll probably give it a chance based on your review, but holy shit that's a terrible cover, it looks like canadian wilderness, photoshopped lightning and a cabin on the side. I've seen ebooks with better covers.
 
John Langan - The Fisherman
Contemporary weird/horror fiction that pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson and many other old masters while still being its own thing. Starts very lowkey with the narrator (Abe) talking about how he picked up fishing as a means to find some peace after losing his wife. Sometimes when out fishing in the wilds, Abe thinks he percieves a faint presence that may be his late wife.
Turns out one of his colleagues at work is also into fishing and similarly bereaved of loved ones. They bro together from these sad circumstances and go on fishing trips. One day, Abe's friend suggest they try their luck in an obscure location called Dutchman's Creek, a place surrounded by... rumors.

In this novel, Langan conjures up some of the greatest, awe inspiring vistas of cosmic menace and dark terror I've ever encountered. I read this book some years ago and the more mysterious and vague aspects of the narrative are still messing with my head.

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Anything at all by Robert Aickman, although pic related includes some of my all-time favorite stories. Aickman is probably the definition of "not for everyone" - aside from being very British and long-winded, his stories are open-ended and operate on a kind of nightmare logic where nothing is ever explained and the horrors are never defined. Things just happen, like in the split second where a regular dream suddenly becomes a nightmare.

Masques of Satan by Reggie Oliver. Basically anything by Reggie Oliver. He's the modern heir to M.R. James. If you're into that.

Brian Evenson's short stories

Dagon by Brian Chappell. I'm not even sure how to describe this one. It's very, very loosely based on the Cthulhu mythos, and gets labeled as Southern gothic, but it's also a literary novel, and about half of the book involves relentless physical and psychological torture. This book unfolds like a bad dream and made me feel like I was losing my mind.
 
two short stories come to mind. i'll revise the descriptions later since it's late and my brain is turning into miso soup.

- the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman: a woman starts showing signs of mental illness, and her husband attempts to help by making her stay at home and do nothing for several days so that she can rest. in reality, it just makes her psychosis spiral out of control because now she has all the time in the world to ruminate on her delusions. the story somewhat hits close to home because i also lose my shit when i don't have enough to do.

- a good man is hard to find by flannery o'connor: a family takes a road trip from georgia to florida for their vacation while a convicted killer happens to be on the loose. after a while the grandmother mentions an old plantation with a secret panel that they could check out, which gets the kids all excited and whiny and annoying until dad gives up and makes a detour. except oopsies that plantation was actually out in tennessee, and when grandma realizes this it kicks off some really unfortunate events. o'connor's plain, detached writing style is unsettling, like you're listening to someone describe a horrible incident that they're only kind of familiar with and don't really care about.
 
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Can't go wrong with good ole Lovecraft

When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Jove's fair image Man was shap'd at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next design'd;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to man,
Th'Olympian host conceiv'd a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Fill'd it with vice, and call'd the thing a NIGGER.
 
Valancourt Books has done a great job reprinting lesser-known horror novels and short stories. I think the Michael McDowell novels might be the best of the bunch, but it's hard to go wrong with anything they've done.

Robert McCammon is focusing mostly on historical mysteries these days, but he wrote some of the best horror novels of the 80s. I thought Swan Song was a better post-apocalyptic saga than The Stand.

Ramsey Campbell is a living legend. He's a good novelist, but his short fiction is probably where he's at his best. I particularly enjoyed his collections Demons by Daylight and Dark Companions.
 
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