The best supernatural books that will scare you witless

I feel that this is Stephen King at his best. His strength lies in his depiction of relatable characters and situations that intersect with something uncanny and frightening. One of the attractions of his type of horror is that there is always an element of mystery.

For most of this book, I wasn’t entirely sure if The Overlook Hotel was actually haunted or if it was all a manifestation of Jack Torrance’s imagination as he slowly descended into insanity. I had to know! The atmosphere, the scares, the personal conflicts, the surprises, and the ever-growing tension are all compelling.

Like Stephen King, Clive Barker has an impressive list of horror-themed novels for all tastes, ranging from fantasy to deeply disturbing and graphic horror tales like Books of Blood. This book skews more toward fantasy but still has its share of scares and disturbing imagery.

A young boy is sent on a whimsical and horrifying imaginative adventure. It’s like a modern-day Grimm fairy tale, right up my alley.

This is more of a general recommendation for the myriad of terrific horror-themed short stories that I’ve been reading since I was young. The Most Dangerous Game, The Birds, The Upper Berth, anything by Poe, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Specialty of the House, the list goes on. And on.

These types of short stories always have a disturbing premise that makes you shudder; they are paced so that you can’t turn the pages fast enough and often end with a stunning twist. I picked this book since I feel it is a quintessential example of this genre and because I have a personal bias since I used it as the basis for the pilot episode of my TV series. 

My mother’s favorite horror story. (She called them “Ooo-yeah!” stories) It’s a ghost story where the principal characters are as haunted as the mysterious house they’re investigating. It's a terrific character study with lots of subtle hints that the ghosts are real. Or are they?

One lasting memory is the scene where Eleanor and Theodora are in bed and terrified by growing sounds that imply something other-worldly is closing in on them. One asks the other to stop squeezing her hand so tight, to which the other replies. “I’m not holding your hand.”  Yikes.

Along with ghosts, vampires are solidly in the pantheon of go-to horror staples. What makes this one unique is that the story is told from the perspective of the vampires, humanizing them, so to speak. It treats their hunting and feeding as natural and necessary functions.

I was particularly fascinated with the evolution of Rice’s characters as they deal with the reality and challenges of being immortal and the interpersonal conflicts that they create. It’s particularly compelling when it comes to the character of Claudia, who matures intellectually while forever trapped in a child’s body.

The sultry nature of Louisiana and its dark gothic mansions drifts from every page, which makes it an odd book to read while lying on a sunny tropical beach during a holiday. I was so immersed that every time I put it down, I had to take a few minutes to shake it off and come back to reality.