I'm looking for some good.... horror

E

Et cetera

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I found this place through google and I thought maybe you guys could help me out here. I've never been a huge novel reader until recently when I started reading King. I never looked into horror novels before, and maybe that's why I never really got into reading novels, because I've come to realize I really can't stand the other stuff. There's something about horror that I find really intriguing, which I'm sure all of you do as well.

Like I said, I've been reading King. I've read through Pet Semetary, Night Shift, Carrie, Skeleton Crew, Tommyknockers and Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Okay, I didn't read through all of N&D - it was just too goddamn stupid. And as for the other books, the only one I went away from feeling satisfied was the Tommyknockers (even though it could have used some major editing... yikes). The other novels and short stories fell apart in the end. Pet Semetary was a cop-out with that demon. The begging of Carrie was incredibly disgusting, and the end was like watching a really bad action movie. I can't figure out why people say these books scare them so much.

Anyways, I bought a collection of classics - Stoker's Dracula, Shelly's Frankenstein and Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde. I haven't started on J&H yet, but christ, Dracula and Frankenstein are dull. Frankenstein in particular. I mean, I thought a lot of the horror was going to come from building the monster - a task that was accomplished in all of one paragraph; then it's back to "oh well my friend came over and we had a cup of tea and we watched the sunset and...", not to mention the obscene overuse of "big" words. I just don't get what's so great about these books, and how they ever pioneered a genre.

I apologize for that being so long. What I am looking for is some good horror novels - especially stuff that really crosses the line, then goes an extra mile. Do you guys have any recommendations?
 
I may be misreading you, but it sounds a lot like what you're looking for is more the visceral horror sort of thing, "rawhead and bloody bones", as it was once called. There's plenty of that around today (the descendants of the spatterpunk movement make that pretty much inevitable), but frankly it's the shallowest part of the horror spectrum and requires little skill or imagination. don't mean this to sound condescending, but it really is a case of this being the shallowest element of good "horror" writing....

If I am misreading your complaint here, then I apologize, but the examples you give seem to point in that direction rather strongly. Certainly the comment about the Wendigo in Pet Sematary (not a demon, but an elemental -- the very soul of the northern woods itself), along with the assumption about the "horror" in Frankenstein being about the building of the monster (a relatively minor point in the novel, yes, as it had very little to do with what she was aiming at, though more time was spent on this than what you infer), certainly seems to lead to the physical side of horror, which is much more repulsion, grotesquerie, and morbidity than any deeper emotional chord being struck. And if you've been disappointed in these, I strongly suggest you skip The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde....

As for the use of "big" words.... Well, at the time these books were written, these weren't considered particularly exceptional words in someone's vocabulary. They were words the literate reader was quite familar with, let alone the literate writer (who was working in the tradition of literature itself rather than a particular genre, necessarily). The fact that they are considered as difficult now only demonstrates how much less truly literate we, as readers, are now than was the case then.

Incidentally, they didn't "pioneer" the genre... and they were separated by about 80 years, for that matter (Frankenstein being publishe in 1818, Dracula in the late 1890s). They were part of a long line of tales, beginning with The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764) or, to be a bit pedantic, an episode toward the end of Tobias Smollett's The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom (1753), and extending through the present day. They were heavily influenced by the Gothics of the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Frankenstein being, in fact, often considered as part of that school, as Dracula is often considered as one of its more recent offspring), but they were also influenced by the schools of thought of their time, including the scientific discoveries and philosophical arguments, which are much more germane to the point of these novels than is mere "shudder-coining".

However, if you're looking for something that "steps over the line"... well, depending on what you mean by that phrase, you might try some of Clive Barker's earlier work (before he took to writing such lengthy tomes) -- The Books of Blood, The Damnation Game, The Hellbound Heart, etc.; or Brian Lumley's Necroscope series (which certainly has a lot of physical horror in it, to say the least); or some of the books by John Farris; some of Dean Koontz's work; or (as mentioned) the splatterpunks:

Splatterpunk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's a bit on Lumley's Necroscope, as well:

Necroscope (series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
No, that's not what I'm looking for at all. I want psychological horror - not blood and guts movie style horror (as I mentioned, Carrie repulsed me, it didn't scare me). I'm just saying that I didn't find the King stories I read as frightening. As for Frankenstein, it seemed to me that way too much time was spent on things that had nothing to do with the story at all. By the time I drudged through that and got to the part where he actually builds the monster - it was over in a paragraph, afterwords going back to the same old mindlessness, and I felt incredibly cheated. I want deeper fears being struck, but that's why I'm asking for help, because these didn't do it for me. When I mentioned "big" words, what I meant was that she seemed to be overcompensating her vocabulary just to sound intelligence. You know what I'm talking about? It became dull and redundant. Dracula, fortunately, wasn't like this for the most part, and I'm still planning on going back and finishing Stoker's novel when I feel up to it.

What I mean by "stepping over the line" is probably best explained by what I thought about Pet Semetary. The book was good, for the most part - the ending, on the other hand, was horrible. Gage doesn't come back as some sort of enlightened undead child, he comes back as a demon. Pure, 100% no-Gage-here demon. Then he kills everyone in two pages. That's not scary - that's a cop-out. In the intro, King talked about how when writing Semetary he felt he had crossed a line many times; and he did, except for the ending. Crossing over the line? Make Gage a warped version of his former self, filled with love and hatred for his dad who loved him so much risked everything to bring him back, but in doing so locked his soul to the Wendigo for eternity. Torment him with visions of this Mimac hell. Make Jud come to the realization that his actions in burying up on that hill was the biggest mistake in the world. Make Gage an unwilling participant in the death of them both.

I hope I made some sense.
 
Thanks; that clarifies things considerably. On Pet Sematary... I can see what you're saying, but I think (and this is going on a reading of the novel many years ago) there are elements of a lot of that with Gage... though in a limited sense. And, really, it wasn't Gage that was at issue here, but his father. Gage (being an innocent) was no longer there to be trapped by whatever came out of that Micmac burial ground; it's his father's torment in knowing that what he was doing was a complete violation of trust on all sides, yet driven to do it because he can't stand the loss of his son. He's already had the experience of knowing what the result would be (with Church), so he's forewarned... and does it anyway. Also, there may be a subtle hint with Jud that all isn't what it seems, when the (pseudo-)Gage has his confrontation with him, and what he says to him. This is one of the times, it seems to me, when King was playing things more subtly, and that particular layer opens up a whole different can of worms....

As for Frankenstein... remember that the title of the book is Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. It wasn't truly about "horror", not once it got past the original impetus to "write a ghost story" that came out of that party at the Villa Diodati. Instead, the novel was -- as was the case with nearly all of Mary's work -- very concerned with social issues, the theme of the outcast (Victor and his creation are essentially twins, mirror images of each other, for example), and examining the duality of our nature. For example: there are hints in the novel -- carried out with great restraint and skill -- that the creature isn't quite as innocent as he often seems; that he may in fact be informed by an infernal spirit whose aim is the damnation of Frankenstein through his own (Victor's) actions. He therefore becomes a double symbol for both Victor's potential salvation or destruction, depending on how he interacts with his unnatural offspring. And so on. So I'm afraid I have to disagree about time being spent, etc., as very little in that book is extraneous, unless one is looking for the very straightforward tale of the creation of a monster... which is only the veriest germ of this surprisingly complex and well-woven tale. (I say surprising, as it was her first book, written before she was 18.) It's a much, much subtler and more layered book than that.

Psychological horror? Richard Matheson is a good bet. (And there's a man who does believe in crossing the lines; he puts his characters through sheer unmitigated hell, whether it be Robert Neville in I Am Legend, Scott Carey in The Shrinking Man, or just about everyone in Hell House.) Thomas Ligotti is someone who does a very good job of blurring the lines and making the everyday into a nightmare by undermining one's sense of reality and presenting the reader with the firm conviction that (in Mephistopheles' words) "This is hell, nor am I out of it". He's also just a damn fine writer. Ramsey Campbell also does psychological horror very well, and repays close attention with many of his works.
 
You want psychological horror? Try Ramsey Campbell, Robert Bloch, Robert Aickman, Charles L. Grant, T.M. Wright, Peter Straub, Dennis Etchison, Ira Levin, Thomas Tryon, Thomas Tessier.

Here are some:

The Doll That Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell(Don't let that title fool you. It's not entirely that gory.)
Night Of the Claw by Jay Ramsey aka Ramsey Campbell
The Parasite by Ramsey Campbell
Any novel by Ramsey Campbell
Psycho by Robert Bloch
Psycho II by Robert Bloch
Any novel of psychological suspense by Robert Bloch
Painted Devils by Robert Aickman
Cold Hand In Mine by Robert Aickman
Any novel by Charles Grant
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin
The Other by Thomas Tryon
Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
Phantoms by Thomas Tessier
Any other novels by Thomas Tessier
Strange Seed by T.M. Wright
Any novel by T.M. Wright
Dark Side by Dennis Etchison
Red Dreams by Dennis Etchison
Talking In the Dark by Dennis Etchison
Death Artist by Dennis Etchison
The Dark Country by Dennis Etchison

This above list is not entirely complete. This is just to give you a gist on novels and stories of psychological horror. ;)
 
Well,Bloch is the way to go with PSYCHOLOGICAL horror,evidently.
 
some of Clive Barker's books have their moments, although there are also plenty of places where the horror is repulsive gore rather than psychological.

try Weaveworld, which has plenty of terror as well as the gore (if you are lucky, you might be able to get a copy with Cabal included as well, and that is one of my favourites as it makes you rethink what a monster really is)
 
Yes, I certainly recommend Ramsey Campbell, particularly Incarnate, and his shorter fiction as well, starting with Demons by Daylight rather than his Lovecraftian fiction. T. E. D. Klein is another good writer, if unprolific.

I like what I've read of Ligotti, which is not much.
 
If you're after pychological horror, try The Shining by Stephen King. Apologies if it's been suggested already, I did a ctl F and couldn't see it.
 
A big yes to Robert Bloch and Thomas Ligotti. Both do psychological horror very, very well indeed, though Ligotti is not so easy to get anymore.

There's also Iain Banks' Wasp Factory.

So does Richard Matheson and all his books are well worth the read; and I personally liked Stephen King's IT, Salem's Lot and Shining. Also rather liked Rose Madder.

Clive Barker's early books, as has also been mentioned, fit your bill too. The Books of Blood and Hellbound Heart and Cabal.

You might want to give the local libraries a shot though instead of going out a buying a bunch of books and then disliking them. If you like any or some you could then go along and get more.
 
A lot of libraries have a 'If you liked this author try...' book. Also the staff may know a bit.
 
I second Lioness on that and it does help a great deal when you're working towards finding what you would like to go on with reading and exploring further. Many people here are very food of horror in writing and you'll get a slew of suggestions. Libraries would be handy. And I believe there are several very good online sites as well for complete books and well as short story collections.
 
If you dont have problem with classic 1800's writing. Try Edgar Allan Poe's horror stories. Some of his horror truly creeped me out. They are more pychological horror and building up the atmosphere. That is if you dont mind short stories.


If you are Stephen King fan you must read Salem's Lot, it also appears to be what you are looking for. It was very pychological horror and not about gore,blood.
 
Yes I like that he didn't try and demonise the vampires and was honest about the darkness in everyone. It was not always easy to hate the supposed monster when held up against the monstrosity in the humans.

He did the same thing with Cycle of the Werewolf. It's a good study on the way the characters change and evolve as the cycle progresses and more people are killed. There was at least one point where I was cheering for the werewolf.
 
Nesacat said:
Yes I like that he didn't try and demonise the vampires and was honest about the darkness in everyone. It was not always easy to hate the supposed monster when held up against the monstrosity in the humans.

He did the same thing with Cycle of the Werewolf. It's a good study on the way the characters change and evolve as the cycle progresses and more people are killed. There was at least one point where I was cheering for the werewolf.
Click to expand...

Yeah that made it interesting. Vamps wasnt the over evil monsters they are in most movies.

What truly scared and gave me a wonderful creepy feeling when i was reading it was that it was a cozy small town and the people you got know before things started happening.
 
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