/lit/ - Literature

Is there a genuinely scary weird fiction story?

>>21846478
While I really liked the willows, I found that his “The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories “ collection really was reminiscent of staying in haunted houses at night, going to cemeteries at night and other wrathful locations, few authors can truly capture the atmosphere like Blackwood.

>>21846674
I think going into any book seeking that genuine kind of action-fear like in a movie is a bad approach, literary horror is much more about using the horrible and supernatural as aesthetic elements and creating certain qualia reminiscent of, as said before, wrathful/terrible mindstates, whether this be philosophical in nature, manic (like maupassant’s Horla) scholarly like MR James, religious like Machen, or of the natural locations, folklore and of the headtrip-paranoia of a philosophical type, these three being what Blackwood does very very well.

>>21846711
>I think going into any book seeking that genuine kind of action-fear like in a movie is a bad approach, literary horror is much more about using the horrible and supernatural as aesthetic elements and creating certain qualia reminiscent of, as said before, wrathful/terrible mindstates, whether this be philosophical in nature, manic (like maupassant’s Horla) scholarly like MR James, religious like Machen, or of the natural locations, folklore and of the headtrip-paranoia of a philosophical type, these three being what Blackwood does very very well.
well you just shifted the goalpost of weird fiction to all of literary horror. there's some books that have given me more fear than any movie ever could, they just weren't 'weird fiction'.

>>21846478
I read this ages back and I remember the general boat trip much more clearly than the supernatural bit.

I remember that the threats were invisible, sort of extradimentional, drilled holes into people, and if you looked through waving willow leaves you saw a sort of, like, series of giant interlinked reshaping humanoid torsos flowing into the air in columns like an eldritch lava lamp or something.

Thing is I don't know anything about plants and never cared about plants in books so got the wrong end of the stick and thought willows were sort of like, thick flexible/flowy fronds with silvery undersides. For me throughout the entire story "the willows" were like knee to waist high and the characters could only look through the leaves while lying down.

>>21846478
I-IS THAT... THE WILLOWS? AAAH I'M GOING INSANE! HELP ME, SWEDEMAN

The Willows has been one of my favorite recent reads. Pure atmosphere that cashes all of its checks.

I think maybe The Hospice comes close. And if you want to count it as Weird The Testament of Magdalen Blair had a moment that snuck up on me.

The Summer People by Shirley Jackson has a similarly ominous tone. I really like how much she can do with so little.

>>21846478
What I like about Willows is the minimalist approach. Only two humans, the landscape, and the mystery.

Really didn't like The Willows. I don't understand the love for it. I didn't find its subtlety or minimalism particularly effective.