100 books like The Crying Child

I have read this book more times than I have read any other book, and on my seventh read, I think I finally figured it out. I love a book that keeps you guessing, that keeps you wondering what’s real and what’s an illusion, and in this short novel, Henry James achieves just that. Are the ghosts real? Is the governess going insane?

James makes both possibilities equally likely—and equally frightening. My favorite ghost stories and horror novels are those that are ”about” something beyond the surface-level plot, and James creates a subtle queer sub-theme that is another reason why I keep reading this book again and again… 

This book had the greatest influence on my desire to write my own ghost story.

I liked the stalwart Brit characters, Roderick and Pamela, even though they were a bit slow putting together the clues. I figured out the secret before they did, which only added to the fun. The writing style is old-fashioned enough to add to the atmosphere, and the story is beautifully told.

Jackson’s Gothic horror flows like black chiffon over a yawing window. That’s how I felt reading about Hill House. I loved the way the house sneaks up with its psychological weights swinging and jarring. Eleanor possesses a dark ambiance. She desperately needed to belong to something or someone, and I couldn’t let go of that.

Her emotions and fears were right there with me. But it was the romantic underbelly that got me: Eleanor’s romance with Hill House. The statuesque gardens, the light, and shadows, all tempted her into its sinister realm. As it tempted me. I felt deeply for Eleanor, wanting to belong to something extraordinary to replace her dull life. Shirley Jackson is quoted as saying, “I delight in what I fear.” This book proves it.

This was a favorite of mine when I was about twelve, and probably should be considered a YA book. It’s a sweet and romantic tale with ghosts that are very real and fascinating historical details of the American Revolution.

I didn’t mind that each ghost told his or her story as if writing a novel—it worked. Charming rogue Peaceable Sherwood was a favorite character of mine as a child and was still very appealing to me when I reread it as an adult.

Another haunted house story, with a similar emphasis on atmosphere. A sister and brother visit a friend whose house is infected with competing ghostly forces. A constant sense of dread permeates the atmosphere. Blackwood keeps the reader on edge, waiting for the shoe to drop. And that’s it. It may pale by today’s standards of horror, but the novel excels at how ghostly presences vie for dominance.

Although this book is only a few years old, it should be considered a classic in the genre of evil houses. A young woman inherits her mother’s childhood home and decides to convert it into a hotel. Only the place comes with some surprises: ghosts, demons, and an ancient evil that has been locked away in the dark basement. Now that evil is loose again, and the bloodshed and death are just beginning. Author Chantal Noordeloos doesn’t hold back with the frights or the blood, as person after person suffers a horrible death while poor Freya discovers her true destiny is not what she planned, and that the place they call Lucifer Falls might never let her go. 

I will read absolutely anything that Richard Estep writes. He has written books about the Villisca Ax Murders, Malvern Manor, and other crazy-haunted places. This one, about a site in his native England, is utterly terrifying. Estep writes with a very straightforward, matter-of-fact style (his writing reminds me much of my own style), and the evidence he presents for this haunted site is deeply chilling -- especially since his team is one of the groups that has investigated the Cage. 

While there are haunted house-like novels before James’s 1898 classic, this in many ways is a granddaddy of modern haunted tales. An isolated country estate? Check. A creepy housekeeper? Check. Two even creepier children, possibly possessed? Check, check! When the unnamed narrator is hired as the new governess in a remote country home in England, she arrives to find that her two young wards are already nearly corrupted by the ghosts of the former governess and groundskeeper. As she works to save them, the narrator herself is threatened, both by the ghosts and by the children she’s meant to save. The psychological possibilities of this book, however, linger at the edges of the text, threatening to undermine the whole notion of what this haunting really is.

I can never get enough ghost and haunted house stories that have social commentary themes. This is one of the books that helped inspire my own book. Trevor Riddell’s parents are separated, and Trevor and his father move to his lumber-robber-baron grandfather’s mansion in the woods of the northwest, where Trevor’s father and aunt hope to talk their ailing father into a big-money real estate deal involving the house and land.

This book has everything I love: ghosts, intrigue, mystery, history, emotionally-complex antagonists, and epistolary story-telling through letters and journals. Woven into all that, Stein manages to insert a moral about conservation and trees (and other things I’ll let you discover on your own). Ghost stories have a history of being morality tales, and this is a modern version—true to the tradition—that I really enjoyed.

Edward Gorey is a forever favorite of mine, a pen and ink artist popular for the dozens of strange and macabre little books he created. The West Wing is unique in that it has no words at all, and the story is told entirely through his meticulous pen and ink images. Without a plot, or even any characters, there is only mood and vibes, and they are spooky and mysterious. Each page shows a different part of The West Wing and its seemingly endless rooms with their hints of ghosts and the feeling that someone has just left, or that something horrible has just happened. It’s my favorite haunted house story of all time.