Maps of Heaven, Maps of Hell

Thinking of this book still leaves me with a warm, fuzzy feeling. I can’t say precisely why, but this book by a Jesuit monk discussing horror struck me as intelligent and deeply personal.

Conversant with many kinds of scary stories associated with religion, this is the most academic book on my list. The fact that Edward Ingebretsen discusses Stephen King really gives readers something to think about. This isn’t the only book to discuss Stephen King and religion—Douglas Cowan also wrote a book about this—but it does so in a way that brings some “aha moments” to your reading.

With this book, Ingebretsen, a Jesuit priest and Georgetown English professor, wrote perhaps the most pointedly fascinating entry on my list. His subject is the strain of supernaturally horrific religious belief and accompanying demonism and apocalypticism that has threaded its way through American culture since the early European colonial days. His approach is lucid, well-informed, somewhat idiosyncratic, and thoroughly fascinating. Where else are you going to find a book that has a chapter devoted to comparing the stories of H. P. Lovecraft with the poetry of Robert Frost? If Otto’s book is a skeleton key for understanding religion and horror… show more.