100 Favorite Horror Stories - NPR Reader's Poll Summer 2018

August 18, 2018 2:24 PM

A solid list. The list takes in some of the early entries in the popular sub-genres (zombies, werewolves, vampires) but also includes cosmic horror, short story collections and others.
posted by Werod (35 comments total)

Okay these are pretty good.
posted by Artw at 2:43 PM on August 18, 2018

Since the judges recused themselves from nomination, I'd like to put in a good word for Grady Hendrix. Horrorstor and My Best Friend's Exorcism were both great.
posted by Flannery Culp at 3:00 PM on August 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

A decent list.

No film of The Other? What about this one?

Very English-language-centric.

I think they picked 1818 as the starting point, since there's no mention of first-gen Gothics (Lewis. Radcliff) or Walpole.
posted by doctornemo at 3:02 PM on August 18, 2018

WGood list! And very happy to see my favorite horror story on there: The Willows by Algernon Blackwood. Extraordinary short story that still makes me shiver to think about it.

I’d add an honorable mention to one other (very) short story: Ambrose Bierce’s short story The Boarded Window. It defies categorization as horror, but definitely left me with a sense of dread that has not yet, so many years later, completely dissipated.
posted by darkstar at 3:08 PM on August 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

Great list, though it instills in me the empty horror of knowing that I’ll probably never read every entry before I die. So the list itself has become entry number 101.
posted by ejs at 3:22 PM on August 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

Also, since the whole point of lists is to debate what was included, I will say that as excellent as it was, it’s a travesty to include Stephen King’s “The Body” in a list of horror stories, and it’s also a travesty that Clive Barker didn’t get a second entry for “The Damnation Game.”
posted by ejs at 3:31 PM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

No Ligotti?
posted by symbioid at 4:16 PM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Jackson surely deserves to be on there more than once, but can we really count “The Lottery” as horror?
posted by mr_roboto at 4:29 PM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

They included The Red Tree and Experimental Film, so I approve. They are both excellent horror novels.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:32 PM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

No film of The Other? What about this one?

The phrasing in the article is "lacks a hit movie version" rather than that there is no film version. That 1972 film (directed by Robert Mulligan best known for the classic To Kill A Mockingbird), while fun, is not in the same league as Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist. It had a very lackluster theatrical but it did gain a second life on TV where it became a bit of cult film.

While I think this is a solid list of English language classic horrors, one book I think it is missing is William Hope Hodgson's House on the Borderland. A creepy favorite.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:09 PM on August 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

If they're going to include the Reddit-based serial novel, Penpal, why not The Interface Series?

(Smashing list, tho.)
posted by LMGM at 6:32 PM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

I think they picked 1818 as the starting point, since there's no mention of first-gen Gothics (Lewis. Radcliff) or Walpole.

Yeah, if you're going to include Rebecca, then you can't really exclude Radcliffe et al. Maybe nobody wanted to get through The Mysteries of Udolpho? The last time I taught it, I had to keep saying, "yes, there's a point to all the landscape description! Hang in there!" But Walpole and Beckford are both really short. Also, Polidori.

"Goblin Market" is horror? I...suppose? If we're doing Gothic/horror verse, then certainly "Lenore," responsible for popularizing the "folks, check to make sure that your boyfriend is alive before you take off with him" trope.

Le Fanu's Carmilla is a good choice, but short fiction is where he really shines; my personal fave is "An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street."

James' "'Oh, Whistle...'" is an interesting case, because it's both genuinely scary and hilarious at the same time--if you know your horror tropes, you can see James deliberately ticking them off, one by one. (No, do not take a vacation. Why are you wandering around in ancient sites? Dude, did you just remove a whistle from that mysterious mound?! Arrrrgh, translate the Latin before you try to play it...) Wilde's "The Canterville Ghost" is probably too funny to qualify for the list, but it's the same mode pushed to the extreme.

E. F. Benson's fiction gets kind of repetitive when taken in large doses, but I love "The Room in the Tower."
posted by thomas j wise at 6:50 PM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Great list, a lot I need to catch up on! An opinion about "Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark" I can't endorse enough,

"it's Stephen Gammell's "ugh get it off me" illustrations, in all their skin-crawling scribbly watercolor blot glory, that haunt everyone who ever found this in their school library as a kid. They reissued this with updated, cutesified illustrations a few years ago — SACRILEGE. Gammell or get out."
posted by AndyP at 7:05 PM on August 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I will be checking the list.

In the meantime, what do you all recommend for someone loves the thrill of a good horror story, but dismisses stories of zombies, ghosts, and werewolves (not frightened by things that don't exist) and is put off by gore? Also, not interested in stories of crime/murder—while horrific, these don't scratch the same horror-story itch for me.

The notion of a house that is bigger on the outside than it is on the inside (or vice versa?) seemed like a very promising premise for a horror story, but I found the layout of House of Leaves so off-putting that I gave up early on.
posted by she's not there at 8:05 PM on August 18, 2018

For house-related creepies, try 1408 by Stephen King. It’s about a haunted hotel room. It’s in the collection Everything’s Eventual.
posted by Autumnheart at 8:29 PM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Apart from Barker, who had a more international audience, nothing from the 70s/80s British Horror Boom: James Herbert, Shaun Hutson etc... Huge in their time and place I suspect they'll fade away now as time passes.

(Ramsey Cambell was of the same era but, ironically as he wasn't as big a seller, he's been much more influential by localising lovecrafian horror in his own country/county)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:12 AM on August 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

what do you all recommend for someone loves the thrill of a good horror story

Fancies and Goodnights, by John Collier. A collection of tales, short, sharp and macabre.
posted by SPrintF at 5:41 AM on August 19, 2018

Oooh, I thought "Goblin Market" was a great addition. As was "Young Goodman Brown", which I'd almost forgotten about but was very creepy. I'm glad to see Joe Hill on the list. His Heart-Shaped Box was the closest thing I've found that made me feel like I was reading a Stephen King (his father) book again for the first time. I'll have to get NOS4A2. I hope he is able to churn out books at the same rate as his dad.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle should have been on here but otherwise it was a super solid list.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:12 AM on August 19, 2018

Solid list (if, as doctornemo notes, English-centric, even WRT things available in translation) and nice to see John Bellairs - where it all began for me, as a reader of horrror- on the kids's list. Robert Aickman is a notable omission, though, especially in a year that finally saw a new US edition of his short stories.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:15 AM on August 19, 2018

> And very happy to see my favorite horror story on there: The Willows by Algernon Blackwood. Extraordinary short story that still makes me shiver to think about it.

and here I came to complain that overall the list is fantastic but I was irked that they included The Willows in place of my favorite horror story The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood. At least one of us left totally satisfied.

(but seriously The Wendigo fractured my little child brain when I first read it and to this day I can still read it and be physically affected by it in a way that no other horror literature can touch. It pushed all the right buttons at all the right time and left a permanent mark.)

> I’d add an honorable mention to one other (very) short story: Ambrose Bierce’s short story The Boarded Window.

I would also like to have included Bierce for the title alone of one of his collections, Can Such Things Be? which I find myself asking aloud any time a set of stupid issues shows up at home or work.
posted by komara at 8:39 AM on August 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

I was terrified by both "The Wilows" and the "Wendigo". The value of lists like this is that you learn about Algernon Blackwood (or M.R. James or whomever) and then you can go to Dover Books and buy a cheap collection of stories..
posted by acrasis at 9:05 AM on August 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

Team Willows, by a considerable margin. You should all totes read both though.
posted by Artw at 9:07 AM on August 19, 2018 [4 favorites]

Huh. I just realized I’ve never read The Wendigo, despite loving The Willows.

Thanks for the recommendation — looks like I have the rest of my Sunday planned!
posted by darkstar at 10:08 AM on August 19, 2018

I definitely felt Aickman's absence too. Though I'm thrilled be to hear that NYRB has brought back one of the collections!
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 12:18 PM on August 19, 2018

Added recommendation for Feed by Mira Grant. It's a highly political (and aren't all zombie stories?) and snarky take on the genre. I'll order a couple of these that I haven't read yet, because the stuff I have read confirms the quality of the list. Also, I totally didn't realise that Clive Barker was American! I thought the weird location-agnosticism of the films was because he was from the UK.

Definitely read the Exorcist if you've only seen the film (and, y'know, want to read horror).

Slight disrecommend for The Girl Next Door: it's based on horrific true events, so if you like escapism, go elsewhere.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 1:28 PM on August 19, 2018

Wait, what? Clive Barker is from Liverpool. You were correct the first time!

I was surprised not to find any Dan Simmons on here. his Carrion Comfort and Summer of Night were hugely affecting to me in my youth.
posted by ejs at 2:57 PM on August 19, 2018

Right you are! I misread the article as "never treated with much respect in [his native] United States".
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 3:03 PM on August 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh, my fiery feet would be a good user name.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:08 PM on August 19, 2018 [4 favorites]

Clive Barker was certainly born in the UK and to me is very much an English author - despite his work having international appeal, helped by having a film series - but he's lived a long time in the US and is now (may be*) a US citizen.

*a lot of sources say he's British, but others including interviews say he's taken up American citizen ship or he's going to
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:23 PM on August 19, 2018

Pleasantly surprised to see Exquisite Corpse on this list. It fucked me up very early in life--and I went on to happily devour literally everything else the author ever wrote. I sometimes consider re-reading it, but I'm not sure I can.
posted by rhiannonstone at 11:55 PM on August 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Glad to see The Ruins on the list. I had very low expectations when I started it but was whimpering in terror by the end.
posted by orrnyereg at 8:49 AM on August 20, 2018

Er, hello, it me, the editor, and I'm glad y'all are enjoying this year's list! I work on these polls every year and yeah, there's always something big that doesn't make it in -- either because the readers didn't nominate it or the judges didn't think it deserved a place on the list (James Herbert, for example -- barely got enough reader love to make the semifinal list, and the judges felt that with only 100 titles there were better things we could be doing). I'm immensely indebted to this year's judges -- Tananarive Due, Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones and Ruthanna Emrys -- for their expertise and patience. (BTW, Dan Simmons did make it in, for The Terror, but we've been having some CMS issues -- refresh and hopefully it'll show up?)
posted by speedlime at 1:00 PM on August 20, 2018 [10 favorites]

Also, judge Stephen Graham Jones's book Mongrels was really good. It's a werewolf (or were-something) story. I have a weakness for werewolves, and there are way too few GOOD werewolf stories around.

I also agree this is a pretty great list.
posted by Archer25 at 2:23 PM on August 20, 2018

Hey, thank you, speedlime, for editing that list!!

I’ve downloaded the list itself For my “Need to Read” book pipeline for the next year. Lots of interesting work on there I’m looking forward to diving into over the coming months. :)
posted by darkstar at 5:45 PM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Seconding the un-rec of The Girl Next Door. Deleted that from my Kindle the instant I finished it; wish I could delete it from my brain.

It was horrifying - but I wouldn't classify it as horror.
posted by invincible summer at 5:52 PM on August 20, 2018 [1 favorite]