The most recommended haunted house books

What I loved about McKinnon’s thriller was the darkly twisted and funny ride she takes you on from the get-go.

In the opening pages, Lucas admits he had his wife murdered, so this is not so much a “whodunnit” as a “will-he-get-away-with-it” story.

McKinnon gives the reader a peek inside the mind of her very messy, down-right vile protagonist. Lucas shares all the details of his devious plan—how his heart-breaking past justifies what he did, how he charmed his way into his wealthy wife’s life, married her, then carefully executed her demise.

The most compelling thing about the novel is that Lucas is kind of hard not to love, despite being utterly despicable. That’s not easy to pull off and McKinnon does it delightfully.

It might be unusual to choose an alphabet book intended for babies and toddlers in a selection of Halloween books, but the art in this book and others in this series is worth collecting, even if you don’t have little ones to share the book with. There have been a lot of little ones reading books on my lap over the years, both my own children and now grandchildren, and I’ve learned that there are certain favorites that I might as well keep close at hand rather than shelve in the hallway with the other picture books. A few years ago I stumbled across B Is for Boo, and I loved the illustrations so much that I have collected nearly a dozen more books in Greg Paprocki’s series of alphabet books. The illustration style might best be described as “retro,” and whether readers grew up in the 1960s like… show more.

There’s no place like home, especially when it’s Wakefield Manor, where ghosts and memories are trapped in an endless loop. When the introverted, quirky protagonist Sam (who reminded me of my favorite Shirley Jackson character—Merricat Blackwood) is forced to welcome her estranged, pregnant sister back to the decaying family manor, Sam’s already-frayed nerves are pushed to the limit. But when her sister’s arrival becomes the catalyst for disturbing visions of a faceless boy with a penchant for cruelty, Sam seeks answers in the claustrophobic halls of her ancestral home. Who is this monstrous, cruel boy? What does he want? Seething with tumultuous family dynamics and a plot as complex as it is unsettling, the atmosphere of It Will Just Be Us had me enraptured from the very first pages and didn’t let go until the gasp-inducing ending. 

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.

Published in February, 2022, this is the most modern of my five choices. An impressive debut by an author who lives in a one-hundred-and-fourteen-year-old haunted house, The Hitman’s Daughter embodies modern Gothic, with its atmospheric setting in a haunted, historic, past-its-prime hotel/chateau, a gruesome murder, a whiff of the supernatural, and a kick-ass heroine (Mave) plagued by her past (and daddy issues.) Thanks to a massive New Year’s Eve blizzard that traps Mave and the chateau’s high-society guests at the scene of a crime, this felt like a twisted, claustrophobic game of Clue.

Jennifer Crusie writes some of the funniest heroines I ever met. I adore her voice and I wanted to add her to my list. When I went to Jen’s blog ArghInk to ask her which of her heroines was over forty. She said Andie.

Andie’s ex-husband North wants one last favor from her as closure. Help him settle the two delinquent orphans he inherited from a distant relative. He knows Andie can handle anything.

Her new fiancée isn’t pleased. When Andie meets the two children she quickly realizes things are much worse than she feared. The place is a mess, the children, Carter and Alice, aren't your average delinquents, and the creepy old house where they live is being run by the worst housekeeper since Mrs. Danvers. What's worse, Andie's fiancé thinks this is all a plan by North to get Andie back, and he may be right.

I read… show more.

The only book I've listed which claims to be a true story. My father owned several volumes written by Harry Price and by far the most interesting to me as a boy was the story of Borley Rectory. Though I now view Price’s narrative through more skeptical eyes, it still sends a chill down my spine when I read his claims of ghostly writing and sightings of the mysterious nun walking on the moonlit grounds. Alas that the building has long disappeared…I'm certain that I would have been drawn to it. Thinking about it, perhaps it is better that it has gone…I may be a cynical observer, but irrational fear of the unknown lives just as actively in the sceptic as it does in the convinced. 

I’ve always loved a good Gothic novel, but Moreno-Garcia raised the bar with this book.

Part mystery, part romance, part haunted house story—this novel runs the gamut from eerie to enchanting. The menacing secrets of High Place, set against the backdrop of glamorous 1950s Mexico, drew me into an intriguing plot that was as captivating as it was frightening. 

I found this book gripping and suspenseful; in short, I couldn’t put it down!

It begins with a séance in a haunted house. What a great way to start a murder mystery! The folks in this tight-knit community have interesting quirks and fascinating backgrounds, providing a host of possible perpetrators.

This is a masterful look into how people find reasons to grow suspicious of each other, and to treat each other less-than-kindly. Chief Inspector Gamache is having devastating problems of his own: someone in the organization is out to destroy his life.

Who can he trust? How can he solve this murder while watching his own back? My first Louise Penny book will not be my last. (I’ve already bought two more.)

As the name might suggest, this novel is very much a spiritual descendant of Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, with a very similar setup: ghost hunters visit a haunted house that’s been abandoned for decades. That, however, is where the similarities end. In Matheson’s work, the haunting is more physical, with bodily threats to the ghost hunters at every turn, and the psychological and spiritual terror it inflicts does far more damage to them at each step, turning them against each other in violent and sometimes deadly ways.