Horror Stories

[Wenton]

I'm currently reading Ghost Story by Peter Straub. I can only hope the second half is as good as the first.

[Deleted]

Jun 6, 2009 12:53:57 GMT -4 Wenton said:

I'm currently reading Ghost Story by Peter Straub. I can only hope the second half is as good as the first.

Excellent choice! I adore that book, and have reread it countless times. It is truly terrifying. There's a quote from some critic that says something along the lines of "it gets into your dreams," and I found this to be extremely accurate. I had some very scary, creepy dreams because of this book. I'm a big fan of Peter Straub; I think he's an excellent writer, and he nearly always succeeds in creeping me out. I just finished reading Floating Dragon, and I enjoyed it a lot. It didn't really terrify me, and the word that comes immediately to mind to describe it is "insane" (in a good way), but I thought it was very ambitious and well-written, and there were some truly creepy scenes that stayed with me and made me more than a little jumpy. It's clear that both of these books were heavily influenced by Salem's Lot, given that they both involve a tremendous cast of characters and a town disintegrating because of both internal and external forces.

Another book to have terrified me is Dan Simmons' Summer of Night. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read something scary. The ending was not as good as I'd hoped, but overall the book terrified me. I think Simmons does a great job at scaring the reader without showing a lot of gore or overtly horrific things. I would venture to say that it was one of the scariest books I've ever read, and I'm very particular when it comes to horror.

[Smilla]

I think Simmons does a great job at scaring the reader without showing a lot of gore or overtly horrific things.

Oooh, thanks for the rec. To me, the best horror is the underwritten. IRL, the scariest shit isn't the big, scary monster that comes out from underneath the bed, it's the knock on the door that shouldn't be there, the telephone that can't be ringing but is, the portrait on the wall that suddenly turns up hung upside down. Spine-tingling is much better than gore-splattering.

[Deleted]

Jun 9, 2009 12:50:38 GMT -4 Smilla said:

Oooh, thanks for the rec. To me, the best horror is the underwritten. IRL, the scariest shit isn't the big, scary monster that comes out from underneath the bed, it's the knock on the door that shouldn't be there, the telephone that can't be ringing but is, the portrait on the wall that suddenly turns up hung upside down. Spine-tingling is much better than gore-splattering.

That's exactly how I feel! The glimpse of something or someone outside your window, the unease that something is out of place or not quite right, a whisper in the dark...these are the kinds of things that stay with me after reading a horror novel, the kinds of things that make me afraid to go into a room without turning the light on first or ensure that I look under the bed before going to sleep. I much prefer subtle horror to something that's in your face. I guess that's why I was a little let down by the ending of Summer of Night -- it seemed that the majority of the book was flat out creepy, but towards the end it became more anvil-like. There's a sequel to it, too, called A Winter Haunting. I enjoyed it, and it was straight psychological horror, but the plot floundered at times and it didn't always work. It was not nearly as good as the first book, IMO.

[Smilla]

Just started yet another horror text: Pretty Monsters, by Kelly Link. It's tasty. She's like this bizarre hybrid between Stephen King and Beatrix Potter.

[trifle]

Sorry, but I can't contain myself any longer: Halloween is coming! Halloween is coming! Halloween is coming!

So it's time to discuss Halloween reads. The ad at the top of the page is for The Castle of Otranto; is it suitably scary? I've heard that either Castle or The Monk is dreadful, but I can't for the life of me remember which...

[Smilla]

Can't answer your questions, trifle, although I am ridiculously excited for Halloween this year for some reason (haven't really given a fuck for a while, but I'm willing to go with it). My Halloween books this year will include this, re-reading this, and trying to finish this.

[trifle]

Smilla, I loved The Sundial! I read it when Y2K rolled around--it was very trippy. Now if I could just locate my copy of The Bird's Nest I'd be a very happy camper. I bought them together, and that's the one I've been meaning to read for a while now.

Re: House of Leaves, I loved it...until I didn't any more. I read every footnote slavishly until about 30 pages from the end, I just rebelled. I couldn't take it anymore! So the adventures of Johnny whathisname were left a'danglin'. The book just wore me down and I've never picked it up again.

I think I will finally get around to reading one of your previous recs--The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories. Nothing like a good collection of short stories for Halloween. I've already re-read one of my favorite shorts--The Spook House by Ambrose Bierce. It's available here:

The Spook House

[Smilla]

Really enjoying my trek backward through classic horror fic. Frankenstein, Dracula, "The Turn of the Screw", all tasty. In other thoughts, my girl Edith really knew how to lay it down in the ghost story department.

[Deleted]

3. "The Hortlak," by Kelly Link. Kelly Link is actually my literary alter idem. I think "The Hortlak" is a great and spine-tingling horror story because it successfully purports to be almost an entirely different genre (more like socio-political suspense fic, or a piece concerned with total surreality) right up until the very end when you realize...oh. I've been had. And creepy. As Link coyly wrote in an introduction to this story for an anthology of short fiction called The Dark: New Ghost Stories: "There are several different ghosts in this story, but more important, there are several different kinds of pajamas."

Smilla, I read this today at work and ...I don't get it! Please help, I hate when I don't get things...