Horror Stories

[trifle]

Hamhock, nothing I've read by Straub has scared me, though Ghost Story came close. Julia was OK, and I can't say that If You Could See Me Now was memorable. The only Koontz I really remember was Phantoms, a real oldie, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Have you read Velocity or Intensity? I'd like to hear your thoughts on those.

For mystery/suspense, I can recommend The Mermaids Singing by Val McDermid. And if you genuinely want to be scared? Hell House by Richard Matheson. To this day, that is the scariest book (with the exception of The Haunting of Hill House) that I have ever read. it's one of those books where you don't want to have it in the house afterwards.

[trifle]

Aw, where's the love for horror?

Just posting to say that I finally finished John Harwood's The Ghost Writer, which was terrific. A must-read for anyone who's a fan of Victorian ghost stories. It's about a young man in Australia who tries to piece together his family's mysterious history, using clues from the ghost stories his grandmother wrote years before. Inevitably, he is lured to the ancestral manse--there, things really take a creepy turn. It kind of craps out in the last ten pages, but it's a deliciously unsettling read until then.

[Smilla]

I am desperate to revive this topic because winter always puts me in the mood for horror fic...does anyone have any new "this book/author scared the ever-living whatever" out of me suggestions? I guess I'll throw some out there.

Smilla's top 10 "semi-obscure" horror fic recs (which I haven't really seen discussed in this thread yet):

10. "The Great God Pan," by Arthur Machen. Ew. A short piece from 1894 about, uh, more or less, mad scientists abusing their gifts to try to get a glimpse of the afterlife, which...doesn't have the best effect on people. It's more suspense/ horror, actually, and it has some really sickening moments.

9. "Royal Jelly," by Roald Dahl. I have forgotten the copyright date, (somewhere between '54 and '57) but I think this short one, about a guy who decides that his infant daughter isn't exactly getting the right nutrition and feeds her something...new, is a) super-creepy and b) quite ahead of its time. It came from a period in history when society was first beginning to ask why men weren't more involved in the care and feeding of their children as babies, and doctors and social scientists were starting to encourage men to pursue fatherhood in a more active way. I think Dahl was giving them a creative proposal about the possibilities that could er, flower from that trend.

8. "The Distributor," by Richard Matheson. I never thought I'd encounter fiction that did anything new or exciting with the idea that American suburbs are really just a pile of suspicion, persecution and dysfunction, where neighbors wait perpetually coiled, ripe to lash out at each other with just a moment's petty provocation. Then I found this short story, published in 1961 and supremely freaky.

7. "The Red Chamber," by Edogawa Rampo. Why do serial murderers really do it? There's a provocative answer provided in this short story from the 20s that I found both original and terrifying. This story seems utterly forgettable at first, especially in translation, but I'm still thinking about it two years later.

6. "Feeling Remains," by Ramsey Campbell (2003). The only horror premise I find more frightening than an adult losing his or her mind, especially as the result of paranormal fuckwitage, is the thought of that happening to a child. Ramsey Campbell agrees with me.

5. "An Amicable Divorce," by Daniel Abraham. As Stephen King told us about how he came up with the idea for Pet Sematary, for a parent, the death of one of his or her children is probably the worst nightmare imaginable. The narrator in this 2003 story is a grieving father struggling with the idea that somehow his ex-wife isn't mourning the loss of their son in the same way. One of the best endings to any short story that I've read in years.

4. "Most of My Friends are Two-Thirds Water," by Kelly Link. Ever been a struggling writer? Ever felt..."alienated" by that struggle? Then this 2001 story is for you. Funny.

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."

2. "He," by Joan Aiken. Irish working men and women desperate to reach America in one piece doing something inadvertantly quite desperate while on a ship to America that haunts one of them to her deathbed. Literally. The reason this story, originally published in the '60s, I think, which I read in Aiken's wonderful collection, Tales for Sleepless Nights, is so shriekishly scary isn't so much the grab-you-by-the-throat conclusion, but the fact that the inciting incident which puts the narrator through such strife is, unless I misread it, sort of an accident. After the final paragraph, I had the urge to go, "But, but...it's not like she meant for any of that to happen!"

1. I've got an odd one for this slot. It's not actually a horror fic, and it's a book I kind of hate. Still, because it's utterly unsettling in every sense and looks at the role that pure, unadulterated misogyny plays in even the remotest corners of American lives and relationships, I wish more people had heard of it. In a Country of Mothers, by A.M. Holmes. I don't want to say too much about it, except that it basically asks, "What if your shrink went 'Single White Female' on you? For the craziest reason ever?" Yeah, it could have been constructed more skillfully--like most of A.M. Holmes' writing, it's as if it's trying to be an allegory, but can't quite make it, and because it can't, it's almost like Holmes is suggesting that all men really are that hateful toward women. But she wouldn't really do that...would she? (In my opinion--sure she would! And while one could argue that Holmes doesn't pull any punches in regard to her condemnation of her misogynist female characters, either, the portrayal of the males in her books as women-haters on all levels takes criticism of misogyny to a place even I can't justify.) But if you can finish it, it may be one of the scariest novels you'll ever find.

ETA: Machen's story can be found in The Thirteen Best Horror Stories of All Time (ed. by Leslie Pockell), Matheson's in My Favorite Horror Story (ed. by Mike Baker and Martin Greenberg), Rampo's in Japanese Tales of Mystery and Suspense, Campbell's and Abraham's in The Dark (ed. Ellen Datlow), and Kelly Link's "Most of My Friends..." in The Best New Horror 2001. Roald Dahl's "Royal Jelly" can be found in a number of places, not the least exciting of which is the collection of his short works in which it was originally published, Kiss, Kiss. But if you can't find that, there's always The Best of Roald Dahl.

[Smilla]

My apologies for the double post, but I feel so bad that I killed this thread.

Topic: I'm re-reading Stephen King's Everything's Eventual right now, (hadn't since 2002) and I still think it's good. Probably the best thing he's published in 15 years.

[andreajersey]

I am really enjoying Stephen King's newest, Lisey's Story. It's kind of an epic family type thing, but with definite (and plentiful) horror elements.

[smockery]

8. "The Distributor," by Richard Matheson. I never thought I'd encounter fiction that did anything new or exciting with the idea that American suburbs are really just a pile of suspicion, persecution and dysfunction, where neighbors wait perpetually coiled, ripe to lash out at each other with just a moment's petty provocation. Then I found this short story, published in 1961 and supremely freaky.

I just got finished reading an old copy of Shock I by Matheson the other day. I really liked this story. In fact, its one of the only ones from the book that I still remember much about.

I do remember another Matheson story that was pretty good as well. I don't remember the name unfortunately, but it appeared in the first Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology. It was about a mother who hated her son conditioning him to rely on her to keep away the ghosts and scary things that she made as real as possible for him. This is all found out by police after her suicide. Perhaps not scary, but very creepy in a terrible things people do to each other way.

[Smilla]

Yeah, Matheson really did come up with a lot of demented (and original) plot ideas. And hee. Someone actually read my mini-dissertation on bizarre horror fiction up there.

I knew this thread would pick up in February. I don't know what it is about the dark days of this month that makes everyone want to go back to ghost stories, but I think people are more interested in this around this time of year.

[trifle]

Smilla, you've given me quite a reading list to get through. Any rec for haunted house stories? They're really my favorite thing to read.

[Smilla]

Uhhh, not off the top of my head. Which is strange since I like haunted house fic, too, even though I freaking live in one. I'll try to come up with one and get back to you.

[tipsygrrl]

On the subject of haunted house stories, I've got a nice anthology called The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories and it's got a lot of great classics, plus some newer things. I tend to tune out on anything written after 1950, though, so take that recommendation with that in mind. I also love Manly Wade Wellman's "Where Angels Fear..." and P.G. Wodehouse's "Primrose Cottage", which is about a funny haunting.