/lit/ - Literature

>>23910101
I used to have a book of supernatural tales compiled by Lovecraft. The guy had "naturally) a good eye for and taste in horror, and in his introductory essay he pins down a good few of the defining traits of a good horror story of the time. It's surprising then that, despite his creativity, he utterly lacked the ability to generate real tension or visceral horror in his stories. It all amounts to "it was very scary and beyond comprehension ". I realise that the content of his tales are meant to be "beyond language", but Chambers manages to convey a similar sort of idea with the Yellow King and Lovecraft was an admirer of his. I'm not even tagging on the guy, because I respect what he was doing. But it makes it hard to enjoy his tales as horror

>>23910265
Any other recs? I've been reading lovecraft too and his stories are really dry. I'm a little disappointed since stuff inspired by him has more texture than he does lmao. All I really want are more dynamic characters and way more tension without these verbose descriptions that mean absolutely nothing.

>>23910265
Blackwood has great prose but lame ideas except in the Wendigo and the Willows.

How we feeling about this Ligotti bros?

>>23909317

>>23910441
The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (mentioned above) is very good, at least the actual Yellow King stories are, because it has a few romantic short stories mixed in, weirdly.
I remember another great story from that collection being "The Spider" by Hanna Heinz Ewers and "The Double Shadow" by Clark Ashton Smith. The latter is sort of in the realm of fantasy-horror, but the sense of otherworldly dread that I pointed out as lacking in Lovecraft is quite well set up in that story.

>>23910678
*Hanns, not Hannah.

Okay, got a weird ask for you guys.

What are some good horror stories (or novels) that takes the whole harlequin/Commedia dell'arte aesthetic for its stories?

I’m asking because I know Ligotti does this really well with his stories. But I’m curious to see if other authors have done it too.

If you’re not sure what I’m asking for, pic related should help. Stories with that kind of aesthetic.

https://www.artofeurope.com/burger/burg1.htm

There's a full moon out tonight

>>23910101

>>23910101
I have that edition, it's great. Del Rey has some outstanding artwork.

>>23910265
Shadow over Innsmouth is truly creepy though

Ligotti reader here. Previously I mentioned how I was somewhat underwhelmed with the Songs of the Dead Dreamer collection which currently I'm still working through and since I had some extra time today I decided to skip ahead a bit and go for a seemingly well regarded story in Grimscribe titled, "The Last Feast of Harlequin". Going in I wasn't aware it was a sort of ode to Lovecraft but I can confidently say its my favorite story of this type not written by the man himself. In truth I was genuinely very impressed and now I'm eager to dive further into this more mature collection, though for now I'll double back to finish his first set which is starting to feel like somewhat interesting juvenilia by comparison (it does have its moments though, Alice's Last Adventure was rather amusing).

>>23911119
meh i think lovecraft characters are so dry i didn't really care much and i thought OOOoooOOO my family are actually creepy crawly monsters ahhh im one too was dumb

A serious question for you anons: do you ever get really frightened while/after horror stuff? I remember clearly that when I was a kid I got terrified after reading The Amytyville Horror, but growing up I could never get that feeling again. I've read countless horror books and short stories, and even though liked some of them, none was able to scare me ever again, so at the end I just don't read them anymore. Is this a recurrent thing?

>>23911152
Loss of imagination as you become an adult.

>>23911152
Tbf, AH is creepy af

>>23911130
You are a commodity of a creature born into a globalist world where identity is actively assaulted by both technocrats and Marxists for entirely different reasons. You have no idea how terrible a revelation it would be to discover the identity you've inherited is nothing like what you thought it was, that you are not the thing you thought you were.

>>23911152
no, the only time i remember feeling terror is jean genet's the balcony

>>23910441
Have you read TED Klein's Dark Gods yet?

Probably gonna finish The Wendigo tonight.

>>23911277
>Why shouldn’t rats eat a de la Poer as a de la Poer eats forbidden things? . . . The war ate my boy, damn them all . . . and the Yanks ate Carfax with flames and burnt Grandsire Delapore and the secret . . . No, no, I tell you, I am not that daemon swineherd in the twilit grotto! It was not Edward Norrys’ fat face on that flabby, fungous thing! Who says I am a de la Poer? He lived, but my boy died! . . . Shall a Norrys hold the lands of a de la Poer? . . . It’s voodoo, I tell you . . . that spotted snake . . . Curse you, Thornton, I’ll teach you to faint at what my family do! . . . ’Sblood, thou stinkard, I’ll learn ye how to gust . . . wolde ye swynke me thilke wys? . . . Magna Mater! Magna Mater! . . . Atys . . . Dia ad aghaidh ’s ad aodann . . . agus bas dunach ort! Dhonas ’s dholas ort, agus leat-sa! . . . Ungl . . . ungl . . . rrrlh . . . chchch . . .

>>23911843
Wow, it's Joyce if Joyce was kino

>>23911277
>Marxists
*fascists, but yeah

>>23911277
>blah blah globalist marxist leftist jewish....
has it ever occurred to you that not everyone wants to define themselves by the parents/ancestors they don't even get to choose, whi brought them into this shitty world without their consent and with a diceroll on genetics, country/state, financial status etc.?

>>23910101
I have several stories published and many more poems

>>23912199
yeah yeah everything is either fascist or marxist sure

>>23912675
How about you stop talking about dumbass /pol/ shit and tell me what your favourite horror book is or what horror book you're planning on reading soon

>>23912681
Pic related

>>23912711
Interesting! I know absolutely nothing about Chinese horror, and have no idea if there are great Chinese horror novels/collections because no one talks about them and/or they're not well known over here

>>23912711
nta but what are some essential Chinese horror novels?

>>23912209
Not reading your post past the green text. Didn't say that. Eat shit and die.

once more declaring my fondness for Lovecraft's The Night Ocean. great atmosphere, and I like how it's not the tale of someone who fell right into the "depths" of all the horrors (as most of his protagonists do, such as in Innsmouth or Red Hook) , but instead someone who just saw... something. Feels more relatable in a way.

Is there a good horror chart recovered from the sticky?

wow literally everything Lovecraft wrote was basically just a ripoff of this guy huh

>>23910265
>he utterly lacked the ability to generate real tension or visceral horror in his stories
I disagree with this but in any case Lovecraft is more about existential terror rather than tense and visceral terror. The horror does not come from coming face to face with something horrific, but from the conclusions arrived at after facing the horrific. It’s all explained rather explicitly in The Call of Cthulhu which is essentially the lovecraftian/cosmic horror manifiesto. .

>>23911107
Artist is Michael Whelan, his artwork has appeared in some metal albums as well.

>>23911126
Yes I loved that story as well, it’s a tribute done right because it has the basic Lovecraft framework but Ligotti incorporates his own imagery, motifs and philosophy really well. Most Lovecraft tributes just come across as pastiche, like Jerusalem’s Lot by Stephen King which I read recently.

>>23914145
He said Machen was better

>>23912949
Japan is known for horror, china is not. But they have the hopping Qing vampires.

pretty good

>>23913366
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Tales_from_a_Chinese_Studio

You can find an unabridged English translation on Anna’s Archive under the name “Strange Tales from Liaozhai”.

There’s 6 volumes.

>>23911152
I just got creeped out the other night alone in my house after reading some Brian Evenson stories

I'm retard and haven't finished The Wendigo yet

Finally finished The Wendigo :) Do I read Panzram next, or The Eyes? Think I'll read Panzram; The Eyes I think I'll need to work my way up to. I wish I could find a book similar to Perfume. Perfume is probably my favourite horror novel and I wish I could erase it from my mind so I could read it fresh again.

Reading Panzram now, not exactly horror but not unenjoyable either. I just made fresh coffee so I might yet get to The Eyes tonight. After that I'm probably gonna skip on The Willows. I liked The Wendigo but not as much as I expected, and I want to read something a bit more modern, maybe: but in all reality I'll probably read The House On the Borderland after The Eyes just because Lovecraft really loved it and was very influenced by it. Then maybe after all those I'll read The Willows, because I like my horror to be sub-200 pages, and it'll be another one to tick off my yearly tally of books read. I really need suggestions for books like Perfume, though!! Happy Hallowe'en MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
PS if you want to read disturbing and completely fucked up KINO, Story of the Eye is unmatched. I think my favourite part was when the two protagonists are fiercely making love in a field during a violent storm. The imagery goes from disgusting yet arousing to bizarre to over the top violence and iconoclasm. It's pretty great.

>>23910265
Oh, fun that such a general exist. I'll post some thoughts.
1. The White People by Arthur Machen is my favorite horror story.
2. Thomas Ligotti is unreadably bad. Let me tell you a story to preface with. When I was in elementary school I once wrote a note to "prove" I was a werewolf, by literally writing on the paper "Ahhh I'm turning into a werewolf!!" and then tearing the bottom half of the page off. I was SURE my friends were about to have their fucking minds blown, until one smartass piped up, "Why would you still be writing if you were turning into a werewolf?" In fact it was my own mind that was blown. I learned that I was fucking retarded. So anyway, I'm giving Ligotti a try and see that he ends one of his stories this same way. Like a retarded elementary schooler. I can't remember the name of the story but he has some authoress getting like vacuumed by some ambiguous dark force and literally writing out, "Oh fuck! Oh shit! My vision is leaving me! I think it's--ACK!" And I was like wow that's fucking terrible, but maybe it was just a rare misfire from someone who was literally honored with a Penguin Classics edition. So let's skip to his most highly recommended story, the one about the clown festival. HE DOES THE SAME FUCKING THING AGAIN. At the end the main character, who is writing, literally writes out his exclamations of "Oh fuck! Oh shit! Why are you turning into a worm, spooky clown! Don't do that shit! Ahhhh!" I don't understand how a professional gets away with this behavior. Obviously I dropped him at that point.
3. I really wish someone would write a literary horror classic on the level of Dracula. Something that just totally stomps on the rest of the genre and dictates horror for the next couple centuries. There was once a world where vampires weren't mainstream, then Dracula came along and changed literature and cinema forever. Somebody do that again. Thx.

Finished Salem's Lot, it was a fun read and I enjoyed the story but I still don't really care for King's writing style. The only thing that bothers me is that I can't figure out what Barlow's plan was. The furniture shop seems pointless after everyone in the town is a vampire, surely only the occasional traveler would go to the town at all with the stories about it and there would be nothing else open during the day to give people a reason to stay there until night. Seems like feeding that many vampires in one area would be impossible without constantly expanding which would eventually attract far too much outside attention. Unless vampires in this world don't have to feed to survive and Barlow could have kept them under control. Still a solid vampire story though.

Picrel has got some pretty sp00ky stuff, especially towards the back.
>It would seem something strange was going on in Kingman. A heavily redacted FBI document, written about four months after the bombing, recounts information provided by a man very familiar with the remotest parts of the outlying desert there. The man, who had been out hiking during this time, heard what he thought was a plane going down and saw a plume of smoke. Fearing somebody may have been hurt, the man went towards the plume and eventually saw two strange people in the distance with no vehicle, which he said was “highly unusual” where they were. When he got closer to them, they “disappeared” but there were tracks on the ground and they had “obviously” hidden in some nearby brush. In retrospect, the man thought maybe he had witnessed a “test run” for the OKC bombing. Not long after this occurred, he returned to the area and saw “a large group of individuals clad in white robes with colored sashes” and a large trailer. He could not understand how they got the trailer so far out into that terrain. The area, he said, was filled with “isolationists, survivalists, paramilitary groups and some religious individuals all focused on Idaho” (probably referring to Aryan Nations.) The man advised that he had lived there for a long time and was very knowledgeable about these “cult groups.” He had heard, from a source he refused to name, that McVeigh had visited a couple of these desert dwelling paramilitary groups and that McVeigh had only been a “good soldier” in the plot, “not a general.” He believed that “when all is said and done," this area of Arizona would yield the individuals directing McVeigh. 71

>>23914836
>Dr. Ewen Cameron, funded by the HEF and Rockefeller Foundation, expanded upon Wolff’s work in his experiments in a sanitarium at McGill University’s Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal (1957-1964). His subjects consisted mostly of depressed homemakers that checked in for nerves and anxiety; for which they received large doses of LSD, Thorazine, Seconal, and high-voltage electro-shocks as Cameron sought to obliterate their memories and fully regress them into infantile states. Afterwards, Cameron placed them in sensory isolation rooms, keeping them in drug-induced comas for months at a time, all the while playing nonstop recorded messages as a way of reprogramming their underlying personality structures, in a process Cameron called “psychic driving.”

>>23914841
>That same year, West accepted the first of many seemingly simultaneous appointments at numerous military and V.A. facilities and began research under two top-secret MKUltra-funded projects entitled “psychophysiological studies of hypnosis and suggestibility” and, as part of this, authored a report entitled “Studies of dissociated states” outlining his findings:
>[Dr West]:The literature concerning clinical entities ordinarily considered to constitute the dissociative reactions is fairly well limited to case studies of patients with fugues, amnesia, somnambulisms, and multiple personalities. Unpublished studies by the writer have led him to a greatly expanded concept of dissociation. […]There is considerable experimental evidence pointing to the significant role played by dissociative mechanisms in the production of the various phenomena of hypnosis. In fact, hypnosis may be considered a pure-culture, laboratory controlled dissociative reaction. Of the entire phenomenology of the various states described above, there is not one single manifestation which cannot be produced experimentally in the hypnotic subject. Thus, through the use of hypnosis as a laboratory device, the dissociative mechanisms can be studied with a high degree of objectivity […] Experiments involving altered personality function as a result of environmental manipulation (chiefly sensory isolation) have yielded promising leads in terms of suggestibility and the production of trance-like sates. There is reason to believe that environmental manipulations can affect the tendencies for dissociative phenomena to occur […] all of the above recommended experimental procedures will require special equipment, special methodologies and special skills… [a] research team is being developed at [redacted] a unique laboratory must be organized and constructed. This laboratory will include a special chamber, in which all physiologically significant aspects of the environment can be controlled. This chamber will contain, among other things, a broad-spectrum polygraph for simultaneous recordings of a variety of physiological reactions of the individual being studied. In this setting various hypnotic, pharmacologic, and sensory-environmental variables will be manipulated in a controlled fashion and quantitative continuous recordings of the reactions of the experimental subjects will be made159 Like CIA-funded researchers Drs. George Estabrooks and Martin Orne, West advised the CIA about the creation of multiple personalities through hypnosis, post-hypnotic suggestion and amnesia, enhanced by mind-altering drugs like LSD and other methods such as electroshock and in combination with classical operant conditioning. West’s unique research interests landed him a number of prestigious appointments and professional positions and, throughout his career, he wrote prolifically about a number of MK-related topics. A good portion of West’s work remains classified.160

Communion by Whitley Strieber is pretty good. I didn't read the last ~10% of it though because eventually the narrative stops and it's all speculation until I'm assuming the end. It's a good read, still – very spooky.

Hiw did you first get into horror lit, bros? For me it was picking Stephen King novels from my dads bookshelf starting around age 12

>>23914909
When I was exactly 9 years old, as I clearly recall because I remember thinking, "I'm nine years old," my mother took my favorite picture book called, Tom's Wild Kitty-Cat, and spreading it out on the living room floor she squatted over it and, me watching, pissied and shittied all over the open pages, farting shitting poopy piss all over my favorite book. I was sitting on the couch behind her, and got a clear view of her contracting and constricting anus as it shoveled out chunks and snippets of slapping shit. I was too shocked to be upset. I said, "Mom, why?" and she slowly turned her head all the way around like an owl, smiling strangely. She said, "Who's mom?" and then the rest of her body caught up to the direction her head was facing in a single crab-like revolution, and she came scampering with incredible rapidity towards me. Words can't even begin to describe the terror I felt. I was sure that if she got her manicured claws on me I would suffer a fate worse than death... perhaps even impossible for the human mind to conceive. It's difficult to explain how I knew that. Human logic can never compass inhuman evil. I jumped over the back of the couch and ran literally for my life... out of our apartment, out into three feet of snow. I stumbled and looked back, and saw her still scampering like a crab, still squatting as if shitting but she had emptied both bladder and bowels long since. So anyway, the therapist recommended when I was around 13 (and living by then with my father, to whom I had successfully escaped, by running all the way from Kansas to Georgia, like a reverse runaway slave), the therapist recommended, as I say, to try reading some scary stories, as it might help "purge" me of some of my "trauma", like how some rape victims occassionally just need a man to choke them and slap the shit out of them and basically relive their rape. She didn't put it to me in those terms, but she did often draw attention to her phat thighs in her pantyhose by scratching them and sometimes even just running her hands down them absentmindedly. I think she knew what she was doing.

Almost finished Panzram's autobiography and right away my major takeaway is that I did not expect to be this entertained. It's pretty exciting despite or even in spite of his incorrigible degeneracy and recidivism.

It’s so cheesy but Laymon can usually write a good splatterpunk

Anyone read the Missing 411 series? Spooky shit.

>>23914967
Creepypasta is so back

>>23910101
Begin and end with the Gothics

I'm reading this. It's good but I can't really buy the character of Duane. It feels like a Dan Simmons self-insert. An 11 year old reading Wittgenstein? Come on now.

>>23914909
coincidentally through the collection posted in the OP (along with The Horror in the Museum in the same series) at 12 or 13. my brother was into Lovecraft so I already knew the name, but I can't remember what finally pushed me to look for his stuff at the bookstore.
as he was my only point of reference for horror literature, I remember I was initially disappointed when I started reading some of his influences like MR James because I thought every horror story was supposed to end on a shocking italicized twist lol

>>23911107
The only problem is it's not long enough, I'm reading their Road to Madness companion book and there's a lot of stories there which I would also consider essential (including The Lurking Fear incidentally)

>>23911152
I only ever get scared when listening to audiobooks, there is some societal component of hearing someone else tell the tale, even if it just a recording.

>>23913366
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Master_Would_Not_Discuss
another one, there is a collection on AArchive that has over a thousand pages.

>>23915350
I really dislike him, creepy dude and obvious pedo who just turned his fetishes into books. Worst of all he is just a bad writer

>>23915839
He’s a bad writer but sometimes sexual content is important
Art should explore the crude and vulgar and the obscene

>>23915801

>>23915882
Sexual content is important if it's written well, and Laymon can't do that. He does not explore sexuality in any meaningful way

>>23912681
I just finished the Imago Sequence collection. Overall it wasn't anything special, most of the stories felt pretty forgettable to me. I probably enjoyed the "Hour of the Cyclops" the most, it was a fun one to end on, but that was more of a parody than a straight-up attempt at Lovecraftian horror. The titular Imago Sequence was probably the most stand-out of the serious stories. "Procession of the black sloth" felt overrated to me, if it wasn't for the hype I would have probably forgotten the story already.
Started listening to The Fisherman, I'm only half an hour in and it already has me hooked. Hopefully it delivers on the hype this general has for it.

>>23914909
I was 9 years-old and somehow managed to convince my mom to buy me a copy of the Gunslinger by Stephen King at the supermarket because I thought the cover was really cool. I liked the book and so started reading his other works at the library (I was already an avid reader, though I mostly read fantasy). I moved on to read Lovecraft because I wanted to know what all those references to his works in games were all about.

>>23914909
It's been a slow process, I've always liked horror movies but I was never that interested in the books, I preferred sci-fi and such. I read Carrie in high school and really didn't like it. Much later I read Books of Blood and I think that was the first horror book I really liked

>>23911152
I still get creeped out a little bit on occasion. I think its largely connected to just having an active imagination and what happens to stimulate it at the right time and place. I remember a story Lovecraft wrote a story about a friend of the main character being killed and replaced by an evil entity and pretending to be normal at first and the mc slowly figures out that his friend is just gone and here's this thing wearing his skinsuit just thinking at how creepy that would be raised the hairs on my neck. Still I certainly don't get as frightened as I used to as a child. I grew up on Poe since my grandmother read my the Raven and I remember checking out a collection of his in second grade at the school library and I still pretty vividly recall being traumatized all day and on the bus ride home after reading The Black Cat, haha.
.

>>23916023
I got "The Lurking Horror" in that early-90s bundle of classic Infocom games. Not terribly scary but effectively creepy, within a fun satire of engineering-oriented undergrad academia (here MIT). Also a lot of people around me were making references to "Cthulhu" and then there was that Illuminati! book.
So mostly my introduction to HPL was via literally-sophomoric parody.
I finally picked up HPL when I was 20 or so.

B_U_M_P_

>>23915362
I see your Laymon and raise you this

>>23917094

>>23911152

The Statement of Randolph Carter gave me the greatest shudder when it comes to horror. Most books stay with me after the fact but that made impact when I read the ending of the Lovecraft story. It may seem simple to other people but at the time i read it at quite a mature age it struck me more than any other.

>>23917445

>“Which is why, ultimately, we need to flame the place, Roz. And it's also why we should be eating more meat as a species. Each new vegetarian recipe Mankind allows is a recipe for disaster.'
>'That sentence would be brilliantly funny, Nick. If it weren't also terrifyingly true.'
>'I know, Roz. If only I could allow myself to appreciate the stark humor of it. Yet the reality is, these vegetarian fast-food outlets are the wild west of the modern convenience snack. And we've only just begun to realize the full implications of messing about with supposedly "healthy" ingredients that Mankind can neither taste nor understand.”

>>23918426

>“The very same. But she never returned. Dwayne waited and waited, but always heard nothing. Eventually, he set off to see where she’d got to, knocked on Strain’s door . . . then he disappeared, too.’
>‘What, right there at the door, like David Copperfield?’
>‘No, no, he went in. Presumably then something happened to him inside the house, which stopped him coming out again alive, because he was never seen again. It wasn’t a magic trick, or anything like that.’
>‘I see. So, almost as if he was murdered, then?’
>‘Exactly,’ said Capello, fresh tears starting to flow.”

>>23918450

>“Roz, I need you to do this,’ I said, although I didn’t, in actual fact – that’s just a lazy phrase which helps steer a lost narrative back on course when readers are giving up in droves, and is, ironically, a major sign of bad writing. But I knew Roz would have encountered that a lot in her career as editor of books by authors other than me, and would no doubt have employed it herself to fix failing narratives in desperate situations, and thus I used it here to snap her attention back from her own internal abyss.”

>“She may well have whispered, ‘I’ll miss you,’ once I’d gone, but I couldn’t hear that from where I was, and as this is first-person narration and therefore not omniscient, we just won’t know.”

>>23917445
I would love to read those Guy N. Smith books but you've gotta take out a second mortgage to afford them

Just finished reading I'm Thinking of Ending Things (which is thriller rather than horror, I know) and the ending sucked so badly... I'm disappointed cause the story was actually good and gripping up to the last twist, which undermined everything else.

Do any of you have some recommendation of books with the aspect of "hiding from someone / running from someone", but that actually follow through with it till the end?

Thanks, anons.

>>23912566
I just love it so much bros

Started this tonight.

>>23919908
Let us know how it goes. I've got that paperback too and I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

>>23919952
Will do. I'm three chapters in. So far it is not some insulting hit piece on D&D like Mazes & Monsters or Darkest Dungeon. Hell, the author name drops D&D, Traveller, and Runequest as other RPGs and he even presents a monster Stat block that mostly resembles an actual one from D&D. Furthermore, he depicts a game that sounds halfway like an actual group, complete with shit talking each other.

>>23919908

>HO-GOBLIN

The sequel starring my ex

>>23920067
>Mazes & Monsters
>DnD hit piece
I watched that movie and thoroughly disapointed that it wasn't a hit piece at all. The main character was already suicidal and Tom Hanks was a recovering nutcase. If anything, it felt like a cash in on DnD's popularity.

Are there any books that capture the existential terror of knowing that no matter what I achieve in life, how much luxuries and free time and money I have, how much love I receive from others, I will never truly be satisfied with life, because my appetite for stimulation is insatiable?

>>23920584

Against Nature - Joris-Karl Huysmans

Best/worth Stephen King's books since 2000?

>>23921178
112263 is up there

>>23921178

Revival is really good. I found the conclusion of Outsider incredibly disappointing. King seems to be enamoured with these airport thrillers and writes in that style from time to time which is incredibly irritating. Old King at least had grand aspirations for combining horror with modern respected literature. He was also a fan of guys like John D. Macdonald and Richard Stark but those guys oozed style that these modern thriller writers lack.

>>23920584
Faust

>>23911045
I loved Negative Space, thinking about reading the author's other novel which is apparently a great depiction of 4chan-type internet culture

>>23921227
>>23921240
What about The Institute? I want some bureaucratic fiction, like the "Control" game, does it fit?

>>23921339

Funnily enough i started reading it a couple of weeks ago. Havent finished it yet (just a 100 pages) but the smart kid trope grates a bit so far but i like the older character the book starts with. Its basically a sequel to Firestarter which i love the first half of but hate the second. Hopefully this does a better job. Ill start reading again tonight. I blow through the first 100 pages of books and come back to them later. Its a bad habit and i have about 20-30 unfinished books.

Is it worth reading?

>>23911045
The fisherman was fantastic

Currently reading this, enjoying it a lot as the bitter retail worker i am

>>23921396

YES! Stays with you.

>>23921396
Yes, it's fantastic.

>>23911152
There's a really good Alex Beyman story that made me cringe (could end the post here) at my neck for the rest of the night after reading it. It made me realize the best horror makes you second guess your own reality so yes I'd say it's possible for words to frighten.

Any other fans of Perfume?

>>23922186
Yeah, always put it on before dates with my bf.

>>23922186
Hell yeah, it's one of my favourite books in general.

I loved The Butcher's Table. made getting through the other stories worth it, which were just kind of whatever and I almost dropped the book

taking any other pirate horror recs if you got 'em

I have a story in a Lovecraftian journal and an anthology on body horror

Ive always wanted King to write a sequel to The Stand or a set of short stories and novellas. Turns out a new set stories has been announced but written by different authors. Happy but disappointed as its less likely that King will write any.

>>23923014
Reddit fucking loves that book but I just found it kind of okay. No real reason I can put my finger on, it just didn't resonate with me. (no pirate recs, sorry)

>>23923150
That's a killer cover but I think I'll be passing on that one

>>23923252
>That's a killer cover but I think I'll be passing on that one

Wayne Brady from Whose Line is supposedly one of the authors....... so yeah

>>23910101

Read Interview with the Vampire. I loved the writing, the vivid details that drew me into the story and the dream like feel at parts. And the philosophical exploration of what it means to be a vampire and be immortal was very interesting to me. However the story lingered way too long at parts without moving forward and Louis became a very irritating protaganist to follow as the story went on, though I understand why. It was honestly exhausting to read after Part 2 yet I couldn't put it down. I'm glad I read it but I doubt I'll ever reread more than certain sections again.

>>23910101
A master class in American social politics.

I don't understand 18th and 19th century gothic stories, I'm reading an oxford collection of them and they all suck.

>>23911152
>>23916400
>what happens to stimulate it at the right time and place
"Place" is an underrated aspect to consider.

Last time I got spooked when reading as an adult was at my old nighttime security job. The floor I was posted at was under construction, so there was barely any light, lots of odd erratic noises, and machinery/electronics would randomly turn on and off since things weren't fully installed yet. Other than the guy who would come up every few hours to cover me while I was on break/lunch, I was there by myself. Reading 2001 while on shift there turned the HAL confrontation into a full-on horror sequence for me. It wouldn't have been as scary if I had read it at home.

So next time you're reading a horror story, try reading it somewhere that's not so comfy.

Impulse bought pic related from my local book shop a few days ago because I'm on a Ray Bradbury kick. Never read it before or knew what it was about, only had heard of the name because it's one of his famous works.

Decided to crack it open now. I knew it took place a week early from Halloween from the synopsis, but I didn't expect to be so close. First page says Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight. It's October 24th today and 15 minutes til 3 AM local time. Lucky me.

>>23924591
You don't understand the plot, you're unfamiliar with the gothic genre, or you just don't like the stories?

>>23924591
1890 is the cutoff year for me aside from Frankenstein

>>23924140
Now read The Vampire Lestat, it's even better. Queen of the Damned is alright too, but after that the books get progressively faggier (as in, homoerotic) so you can stop there and not miss anything of value

>>23925233
>not being a The Monk enjoyer

Essential redneck/hillbilly horror?

>>23925628
The Bighead by Edward Lee
Off Season by Jack Ketchum
The Woods Are Dark by Laymon
Last Days by Adam Nevill

Maybe not essential but a few that come to mind for that subgenre

>>23910101
bump

>>23921396
I this a few days ago, I'm liking it so far.

Up next

>>23926125
This nigga is listening to the opening credits!

>>23926125
This book gay as hell

Almost finished Panzram. Here's an excerpt.

>>23926803
me when I don't get my coffee in the morning xd

The back cover of The Eyes. K, I'm sold.

>>23926976
Let us know how it is! I wonder how much of it is genuinely disturbing stuff, and how much of it is edginess.

>>23911126
Ligotti is at his worst when homaging Lovecraft. He buries his own talents under a flood of imitation, when his talents are greater than that of Lovecraft's

>>23927636

fuck off st joshi. lovecraft is undefeated.

>>23919669
Look at that guy and his little teepee 50 yards behind him!
I love it too, anon. If you all haven't read it, do so and read every word. It's tempting to skim but the repetitious prose is important for the whole vibe of the thing.
Then you can read House on the Borderlands which has the same feel but not written all weird.

Crypt of the Moon Spider is bad 30 pages in. Very dull language/prose. Not remotely spoopy. Hope it picks up.

Looking for more like this, any recs besides John Langan's short story collections?

>>23928321

Revival by Stephen King. The emotional story as in The Fisherman gives weight to the cosmic terror.

>>23928325
based revival recommender

>>23928325
Thirding this rec, you've gotta read Revival

Anon might enjoy reading this, so I shall include it here.

>Because we remember pain and the menace of death more vividly than pleasure, and because our feelings toward the beneficent aspects of the unknown have from the first been captured and formalised by conventional religious rituals, it has fallen to the lot of the darker and more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in our popular supernatural folklore. This tendency, too, is naturally enhanced by the fact that uncertainty and danger are always closely allied; thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities. When to this sense of fear and evil the inevitable fascination of wonder and curiosity is superadded, there is born a composite body of keen emotion and imaginative provocation whose vitality must of necessity endure as long as the human race itself. Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.

https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx

>>23915540
Yeah, Duane sucks, but I notice that writers with a lot in general. If it's not some kind of writer/journalist they like to use artists or things like that for their self-insert too.
I liked the church kid in that book the most. As someone who grew up going to a Christian school, it was nice reading a story where the pastor wasn't trying to molest the kids or a greedy villian. Sadly, going to that school was basically the happiest days of my life, and the opposite of how books, movies, etc, show those kinds of experiences.

>>23910101
Im finding ligotti to be pretty dull so far.

>>23927636
>when his talents are greater than that of Lovecraft's
I definitely disagree. Ligotti hasnt drawn me in at all unlike Lovecraft where his very first story I read was great.

3 stories into The Eyes. So far I'm a bit disappointed. I thought the story about the Nazi pilot was gonna be about him entering a scenario like picrel; it definitely was "emetic," though, I'll give it that.

>>23926976
Author name?

I'm a published horror writer, AMA

>>23929374
Whats the scariest food

>>23929378
>scariest food
Worst I had was okra, or maybe eating pig trotters.

>>23929374
How did you get your start with writing?

>>23929374
Will you post your book stack of recommended horror books, based on works that inspired your style and in general monumental to the genre?

>>23928246
>voluntarily commit yourself to upper class psychiatric hospital
>room is described as like a prison and the head nurse/orderly is a massive cunt and may be a bit retarded
I just don't buy it.

>>23919908
Halfway through. It's mostly a teenager getting picked on for being from our of town and playing "Hobgoblin" and him being a girlfriend while his mother finds new love (the father died in the beginning). Just the slightest bits about a literal hag so far.

I swear, almost every horror novel I ever read has no business being 300+ pages or anywhere near 90k words, much less exceeding them. They should all be 60k or less.

>>23921408
I couldn't get past 40 pages of the Fisherman. The writing was just so bad and the plot was not going anywhere.

Thoughts on Clive Barker? I started with Weaveworld and I fucking hated it. There were bits of clever and pretty writing in there but it totally failed to engage me on any level whatsoever. Okay so there's this guy... and something mysterious happens to him... then there's a carpet... then there's a couple of weird cryptic freaks throwing around cryptic dialogue... then there's a girl... then there's another world... then there's magical creatures who are so much better than boring normbot humans... but they need our help... I tapped out when they unrolled the carpet and then had a boring council where they immediately started talking about finding a way to roll it back again because they shouldn't have unrolled it.
Just could not bring myself to care about anything, it all felt so disjointed and obtuse and poorly paced and weirdly mundane. It's like he wanted me to care about the plot and the characters without putting in the work of making them interesting. He introduces some random magical characters at some point and then in no time at all something happens to these literal whos and I'm supposed to care and be touched by their plight? Just left me feeling weird. Okay this guy died and that other guy got arrested and beaten by cops, and?

Then after a few weeks break reading something else I picked up Imajica and after just under 100 pages my first impression is "This is like Weaveworld if it actually succeeded at doing what it set out to do". The mystery hooked me, I'm interested in what's going on, the characters and their pasts and motivations are actually compelling to me, I can't wait to find out more.

But with how disappointed I was in Weaveworld, which everyone said was his best, I'm not sure I want to continue after. Anyone have a similar experience?

Anything that mixes cyberpunk with horror?

>>23930397

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdKyPkClmBg

All my audio content is free. Read by various Youtubers, with background ambiance, sound effects, etc.

https://audio.com/alexbeyman

>>23929892
Barker's fantasy novels trudge at the start but it pays off to stick with them (except for maybe The Great & Secret Show and Everville, if only because the third book in that trilogy isn't out yet). But do regard those books as his fantasy work rather than an extension of his horror stuff

>>23929602
Poems in journals
>>23929639
Horror is a huge genre, which is why I have wide influences. I don't have a stack right now, but here is a list:
>classical influences
>Odyssey
>Iliad
>Metamorphoses
>Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus
>medieval influences
>Canterbury Tales
>early modern influences
>Doctor Faustus
>Titus Andronicus (gory play)
>The Faerie Queene (particularly book 1 and the monster, Errour)
>modern infleunces
>Lovecraft's Dunwich Horror (scared me most as a kid), Call of Cthulhu (for its three part structure and first mention of the word, Holocaust), The Shunned House (makes me sick to my stomach), and the dreamlike sequence in Kadath
>The Great God Pan by Machen
>Black God's Kiss
>Laymon's Beast House trilogy for the humourous and silliness of it

>>23930495
What do you think of Stephen King?

>>23928325
revival traumatized me, read it as a teenager and genuinely fucked me up, never had a book had such a toll on me, sent me straight to therapy
Stephen king is the king of horror

>>23910265
>Chambers manages to convey a similar sort of idea with the Yellow King and Lovecraft was an admirer of his

King in Yellow with the Cult is proxying for anarchist and bolshevists infiltrating Western Europe (The Secret Agent, Conrad). It doubles as political satire/horror at the same time, and in truth, isn't all that far removed from explicit gnostic fears that were in the air for a nascently post-christian Europe on the cusp of titanic world wars for global hegemon dominion.

>>23929374
So how hard is it to get published?

>>23930643
He has his place in keeping the publishing industry afloat, but he is quite a bad stylist and brought nothing novel to the horror genre
>>23930749
In magazines and journals? Not hard at all, just make a habit of sending out every week or month.

is it sensual?

So I'm halfway thru The Eyes, and one notable thing I'll say is that every few stories I think, "okay, this is the worst one yet." It's that kind of bad. One story is about a Nazi pilot watching a chick be dismantled by a machine thing, and another is about a guy committing paedophagy. This makes me consider reading Ryu Murakami because I've heard his stories are really depraved in like creative ways.

>>23929892
If you want horror from Barker, definitely check out Books of Blood. It's incredibly varied, and has some very unique horror ideas that still hold up today.

>>23930972
It's a shame to hear it's that bad. I can definitely recommend In the Miso Soup, it's a great novel that explores what it means to use violence.

>>23931102
Oh, well, I meant "bad" as in the stories outdo themselves. Some of them are pretty disgusting but there are relatively more prosaic ones sprinkled throughout too. I would still recommend it. It's definitely a fucked up book though, but I'm a total dyed in the wool metalfag as well as a big true crime fan so I'm kinda able to externalize it, you know? It's no different from Cannibal Corpse's lyrics. Oh, and the prose happens to be quite superb.

>>23931126
With the first 3 stories you said it was a bit disappointing, so they get better as you go along?

Between Blackwood, Robert W. Chambers, MR James, Machen, Le Fanu and them, who has the best prose?
Sorry but I'm a prosefag, it's fairly important to me.

>>23931211
I haven't read James yet, but definitely Blackwood.

i just finished 'the king in yellow' collection. (includes repairer of reputations, the mask, in the court of the dragon, and the yellow sign)
what did I think of it?

>>23931362
I don't know, you tell me man

>>23931381
uhh, it was like 10 pages of interesting content packed into 150 pages.

the stories can be hard to follow, lots of old english words and phrases make it hard to parse, there are elements or details of the story that just go completely unresolved and unexplained, It feels like too much time it spent on character backstory when the full story is only like 40 pages long, and the actual thread that connects them all, the actual interesting part about the 'king in yellow' play, the yellow sign, hastur, ect. are extremely loosely and vaguely alluded to, and just makes me want more fleshed out rules for everything, how it all works. I want hard magic, soft magic sucks and makes me angry!

>>23931390
I thought it was very easy to read for an older work, and not as long-winded as some of them. I personally thought it was great, with a slightly different kind of horror in each story.

>>23931390
To what end would that serve? The point of TKIY is the mystery and terror of an unknown realm and reality. You are not asking for horror or terror, you want fantasy.

Also, magic that is not sufficiently explained is not necessarily soft magic. If I use real technology that you cannot explain that does not make it soft magic. Either way, almost no fantasy, horror, or science fiction author ever bothered caring about "hard magic/soft magic" silliness.

>>23930495
Thanks for the list, Anon.
And going from poems to Horror is an interesting path. Is your poetry horror related? Other than, Poe maybe Dante, never thought about "horror poetry". Definitely something to explore further while listening to some dark cello during this Halloween season.

>>23930880
>In magazines and journals? Not hard at all, just make a habit of sending out every week or month.

Is it really that easy? I was worried that horror also was doing the whole "We don't publish white men anymore" like in general publishing.

>>23931390
idiot cuck

>>23931565
Most horror comes out of poetry. Read Lovecraft’s essays on the matter.
>>23931595
Just send out and ignore any journals that call for BIPOC then. Everything you submit is voluntary. And I don’t really give a shit about politics of representation either way, so if you’re obsessed with that then don’t pick up the pen. It should be a higher calling.

>>23931811
Are you Laird Barron?

>>23928550
good read. side note I also realize how much better writer people used to be. modern stuff seems closer to high school writing than someone who was deeper educated.

>>23931144
No I didn't mean they were disappointing, I meant the stories are "bad disgusting." Like in one a guy straight up eats a little girl and the narrator goes on about how he garnished her flesh with her feces and it was pretty putrid. It still manages to read well, though, like you can tell he's a good writer despite the "emetic" subject material. I read one story before bed and it was about these guys who pretend to be disaster relief people so they can go to the sites of (I'm assuming nuclear) bomb blasts and rape and cannibalize the desiccated survivors. It's pretty sick, both in a "cool sick" kind of way and a bad way.

>>23932065
>ng, I meant the stories are "bad disgusting
Imo bad writers tend to want to use excessive violence or gore to shock the reader instead of actual writer quality.

>>23932253

Read my first Ligotti last night. I started with 'Purity' in Teatro Grottesco. Really captured that nightmare feeling that I love in horror lit. Gave me the same feeling that I got watching Eraserhead for the first time as a stoned teenager. I've not been able to get the final line out of my head for some time. What are your thoughts on families, bros?

Ligotti is too much of a raging sperg atheist for me.

>>23932259
name how many writers in western canon used gore and sex in their books. Tolstoy, tolkein, dante, milton, etc etc. None of them did and its a timeless because of it. cope all you want grimdark.

>>23932306
Heh.... don't post in this thread until you've accepted how the universe really works, Sheep....

>>23932306
I got his collection and after 5 stories in a row were about a little boy or a little girl I realized he was just a sweaty faggot and moved on

>>23932349
Honestly writers with evident psychologial traits are for the birds. You need to be tight enough so faggots can pore over your description of a tree and wonder if there are latent homosexual themes. Then you are a professional.

>>23932349
>>23932306
so far im not finding him to be very good. ive done alice, flowers and frolic and it starts very slow but gets to an interesting point but then just withers away into nothing interesting.

>>23932287
All Teatro Grottesco feels like it could take place in Eraserhead’s world, I think that’s his best collection but also his most experimental, none of the stories are traditional narratives and follow dream logic and repetition.

I've been reading the Beast House series and I just finished the second part. it has been a fun read but the second part wasn't as fun as the first one. I'll probably read the rest on next year's october.
In these days I'll probably start Murakami´s Hardboiled Wonderland.

Which post-Lovecraftian authors would you recommend if the only one I read and liked so far was Aickman? Ligotti seems like too much of a tryhard to me based on what I heard.

Who is the anti-Ligotti of horror lit?

>>23933021
Frank Peretti?

>>23932316
Violence is beautiful.

>>23910101
Barker’s Midnight Meat Train gave me the heebie geebies

>>23932316
Yeah it's not like De Sade is part of the Western canon or anything lmao

>>23932962
I read The Cellar a couple of weeks ago. Really quick read. There's something about Laymon's writing style and the creative choices he makes.

>>23932967

Maybe try Ray Russell. The complete gothic stories are good.

Nerds. Books can't be scary!

>>23933167
thankfully they make televised football and Saw movies for negroes such as yourself
>>23933720
De Sade is a listicle writing troon

>>23933867
>De Sade still triggering "MUH CLASSICS MUH CANON" normies 200+ years beyond the grave
kek based

>>23933867
I prefer pro wrestling and J-Splatter movies, personally

Boompa

My bedroom smells like coom and stale sweat
Horror for this feel?

>>23914853
I was reading about this guy earlier this week. This man wrote the famous Catherine Deneuve - David Bowie horror movie Hunger and he had an abduction experience. He wasn’t some random hick. It is harder to discredit them when they are actually decent citizens and they claim these things

>Devil in the Belfry by Poe
>2/3s of the story is setting up a picturesque German village full of stereotypes
>then the devil shows up and beats the shit out of the belfry keeper
>he rings the bell 13 times at noon and everyone goes apeshit
>the end
I feel like I've finished all of Poe's good stories, and these are the only ones left.

>>23935208
FYI “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” was his low point. It’s a lame story based entirely on an unfunny, stupid joke. Either that or any of his early comedy stories which were so bad nobody even bought them (he wanted to be a comedian early on. Not many know that).

Unless you are 18 or younger you have no use for Poe. He is baby crap for getting into literature but then hopefully you branch out. Be wary of anyone calling Poe a favorite as an adult because they probably read mainly genre shit or haven’t read anything since school.

>>23935222
Poe is my favorite. Fall of Usher, Tell Tale Heart, Pit and Pendulum, Rue Morgue, Black Cat, these stories are all great. I just dont get why so many people compile his complete works when it's so clear which ones are good and which arent.

>>23935226
Uhhh… Because he had a limited output of short stories and you can’t fill a whole book with the handful you listed.

>>23935241
Every complete work of Poe is a goddamn Bible well over 800 pages. It would be nice to have a more curated collection of his stories that isnt a huge chonkster.

I just read The Malignant Matrix by Ligotti. Can somebody spoonfeed me an analysis of this story, as I thoroughly do not get it.

Thoughts about Moonchild?

>>23935189
The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker

>>23935189
Kathe Koja - The Cipher

>>23935612

good king crimson song

Any good "Saw" like horror?

>>23935222
Poe is considered America's best poet, wtf are you on about

Cozy horrors, written since 2000 (so, not Bradbury or early King)?

>>23935612
good iron maiden song

>>23936364
He is considered the best poet by dilettantes and people who barely read. Also America is a cultural waste land so that isn’t some kind of btfo like you think it is. We don’t have many truly A+ writers here in our history. It is all second rate when compared to the greats of Europe.

>>23936443
That's funny because it's Europe that considered him America's best poet

>>23936455
“America’s best anything” isn’t the win you think it is. Poe is middling despite what anyone says.

He has a very small output of great stories which are fun but then a huge mass of shit like “uh, he said he bets the Devil his head that he can jump it but he couldn’t so the devil literally came and took his head. Lmao” Poe is the naked emperor with no clothes in American literature. He coasted off a handful of stories.

>>23935929
>>23936440
No, the other one, by Aleister Crowley.

>>23936464
According to who? You? Ok, I'll go with a hundred years of ppl saying it over once instance of a retarded namefaggot on an image board. Let's see your output. Oh right, you are just jealous. Gotcha. Congratulations ig

>>23936475
I mean, any opinion on this board can be boiled down to nameless randoms complaining about something or praising it. I don’t see why you need to single out my opinion compared to any of the other opinions posted in this thread or on this board.

>>23936480
Because you're wrong? That oh so sacrosanct thought ever enter your thought patterns, pumpkin? No? Keep your stupid opinions to yourself or be prepared to be called out. No skin off my nose, I'm ANONYMOUS. Dumbass

>>23925652
>Last Days by Adam Nevill
Phenomenal book but not redneck/hillbilly at all.
Any other reqs for fans of Nevill? I'm reading House of Small Shadows currently.

>>23936485
I was going to make an ironic post about that Poe short story I don’t like but I just realized that “Never Bet The Devil Your Head” is a reworked version of Chaucer’s Friar’s Tale. The devil takes the man’s head after he sarcastically bets the devil on it and in Friar’s tale the woman curses “the devil can take both you and this pot to hell!”

Poe isn’t even original.

>>23936495
Boohoo

>>23936488
Checked, check out The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp.

>>23936503
For real, Poe is decent but he is awfully pedestrian. If you post on here I’d like to imagine you could graduate to more difficult fare. Genre shitters will bitch and moan yet it is the truth.

>>23911152
I wish but no. I just become immersed in the atmosphere

>>23931930
No. I don't like his writing. I'm more into dense prose.

>>23937377
nta, but I thought Barron already has some pretty dense prose at times. What kind of authors do you mean, shit like Henry James?

>>23936854
Poe is influential in ways so numerous it's almost impossible to list. He's the grandaddy of gothic literature, with more contributions to it than Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley. His stories are enigmaric, full of literary references and hidden meanings, and his prose is great. The things he does with just one character, no dialog, and a dark room in The Pit and the Pendulum is nothing short of amazing. The only reason anyone would ever consider Poe mid is if you read his stories strictly for the plot, and all the beauty of his language goes over your head.

Bump

>>23936854
Poe is still one of America's greatest writers, he still eclipses every single horror author that's put their pen to page since his death, and they will be reading Poe on spaceships for centuries long after anyone ever gave a shit about people like King or Ligotti.

Who is the Cronenberg of literature?

>>23938831
>one of America's greatest writers
tallest midget

>>23938835
Virtually everyone talks around my post. “He is influential! He is important and has nice stories yadda yadda”

I never said he was bad. I said Poe was pedestrian. He is the sorta thing people who don’t read often would cite as a favorite. I also said that he only had a few very memorable stories and then a whole volumes worth of forgettable trash like Bet the Devil Your Head. For every Raven or Pit and Pendulum, he wrote like ten Toby Dammits.

>>23921240
>John D. Macdonald
you and me could be friends

>>23938833
Cronenberg was clearly inspired by the works of William S. Burroughs and J. G. Ballard, although their writtings are more sci-fi/experimental rather than horror.

>>23921339
i enjoyed it
kinda got 'stranger things' vibes

>>23939118
Alright you smug-ass pomeranian, what would be a patrician horror writer for you?

>>23937490
> Poe, Edgar Allan. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, but no longer. One would like to have filmed his wedding.

I agree with this opinion and it isn’t even degrading him. Poe is awesome if you haven’t read anything else in the horror genre or just in general. He is a great starting point to enter literature but calling him best of all time is deluded. Also his total output was largely fillers

Time for crab

>>23939136
after seeing the success of those two crab video games it does seem there is an audience for crab related media. did pixar ever do a crab movie?

>>23939130
Some favorites you will likely degrade despite not reading them:

>Selma Lagerlof
I read her saga and found it compelling. It is adventure mixed with the supernatural so I thought it a great Halloween time read. The Christian minister leaves the church and he joins up with an evil Miller who may be the devil (it is hinted at but it is one of those wonderful books where the supernatural can go either way).

The tale where the woman Elizabeth must steal away the devil’s wife from his decrepit manor and the devil chases after her on sleigh. As he stops her, he reveals he has her beloved Gosta unconscious and she must either let him be sent to perdition or give his wife up. That tale was a favorite for the spooky season.

>Krasznahorkai

An experimental writer who focuses on politics but from a way which I consider horror. The zombie like citizens of a small town are brainwashed by the Bolshevik leader- a deformed literal Prince (ie Machiavelli) who controls the zombies to wage terror.

>Arabian Nights

The spooky stories of ifrits and ghouls haunting people and fighting them appeal to me. I love reading in particular the dervish’s tales during the Halloween season.

All of those I consider first class horror.

>>23939136
Seen this image a few times now. Is the Crab extended universe worth delving into?

>>23939263
Unfortunately they're long out of print, but if you don't mind reading them in a non-legal way they're very much worth reading if you're into b-movie/pulpy or "trashy" horror.

>>23921396
about halfway into reading this i became confused, i was like "is this supposed to be a retelling of the stand but with a different apocalypse?" but ostensibly the books aren't related at all. it felt very weird.
good description of the way the apocalypse went down, but then again it was good in the stand too. idk to me they're practically the same book, both their upsides and downsides

>>23939143
name me a good compilation/edition of arabian nights please.

>>23939508
Malcolm C Lyons

Lyons and Richard Burton are the only two English language writers to have translated the Nights fyi. If it isn’t either of those two then don’t even bother buying it because it is an abridgment of some kind.

>>23939508
They are the only two to have translated the entire “Calcutta II” manuscript from the 1800s is what I meant.

Good horror with heavy surrealism?

>>23937463
I like Lovecraft and Dunsany and Hodgson
Laird Barron is very basic bitch to me

>>23939677
Randolph Carter stories
Edgar Allan Poe
Oscar Wilde's short stories and Picture of Dorian Gray

>>23939555
>>23939557
thank you!

>>23939677
Thomas Ligotti - Teatro Grottesco
Comte de Lautréamont - Maldoror
Brian Evenson - A Collapse of Horses
Kathe Koja - The Cipher
Mark Z. Danielewski - House of Leaves

Why is The Bloody Chamber so comfy bros?
And what is everyone's favourite and least favourite story from the collection?

>>23939985
It's hard to pick favourites and least favourites when the whole collection is consistently great. For least favourite maybe The Snow Child, since it's so short and I would've loved to have seen a more fleshed out story. It's still a good story though. The Bloody Chamber, The Erl-King, The Lady of he House of Love, and Wolf-Alice are all fantastic.

>>23940332
My least favourite is Puss in boots. For me it doesn't match the overall mood of the book and it disrupts how it flows. My favourite is probably The Lady of the House of Love.

>>23940375
That's true, Puss in Boots is a lot more jovial and upbeat than the other stories. The Lady of the House of Love is a good choice, such a strong atmospheric story.

>>23914801
>At the end the main character, who is writing, literally writes out his exclamations
he's not telling the story in present time, he's writing the account of all past events up to that point before he kills himself. you're thinking of lovecraft, who does that exact thing at the end of dagon

Here's a horror story idea I think might've exist already:
>The story is about a little boy, who believes he's being chased by a pedophile
>He tells his parents and most people about it but they don't believe him
>Even though the pedophile is real
>One day, he's visited by a strange person who may be some sort of guardian angel
>He promises the boy to help him capture the pedophile... but it'll come with a price
>The boy doesn't really know what the price could be but he accepts the angel's help
>After this, he tries to come up with some sort of Home Alone type schemes and shit
>At some point, he encounters the pedophile and tries to get him to chase him
>Then he finally captures the pedo and then calls his parents so he can prove the pedo's existence
>But something happens: They switch bodies
>The two look at their own hands and then at each other
>The boy laughs while the creepy old pedo starts panicking
>The parents show up and realize the boy was right all along, but not that he's no longer their son anymore
>The police show up and identify the pedo as someone with a long history of child abduction and sexual abuse
>After being beaten up in prison, the pedo is on death row and is sent to the eletric chair while everyone watches
>The pedo screams and cries about how he wants to see his parents and that he's not who they think they are
>Nobody believes him
>Meanwhile, the kid watches the death row and smiles with an evil grin

>>23941016
Guardian angels aren't usually evil jerks.

Happy Hallowe'en, /lit/.

>>23941016
Yeah, that sounds like a great story. You should definitely write it.

>>23941052
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UTg3c1tn9DQ

>>23919908
Finished. On the whole, it does not deliver. You get a D&D nerd struggling with fitting in at a new high school, having a girlfriend trying to understand him, and him being picked on by the jocks. A second storyline involves his mother learning about the dark and lurid past of the castle that she and her son are staying at while she works for the foundation. The first hint of anything promised by the front or back cover is ~100 pages in, and then next to nothing for another 200 pages until the final chapter when shit goes down. It has a kind of based climax I will admit, but everything that was in the last chapter could have been throughout the novel rather than the last 40 pages.

Also, no, the monsters are not real in any context of the story.

>>23941975
Thanks anon. Back to the bottom of my TBR pile it goes!

>>23942962
It's not worth the time reading honestly

>the marionette following the narrator of The Clown Puppet around and just perpetually trolling him while he's trying to work

What

>>23923033
What?

I read the english translation of "The king in the golden mask' By Marcel Schwob. The stories were very enjoyable, the vocabulary at play descriptive. Cruel and captivating, and each story is very short as well. Would suggest for anyone who likes history and horror rolled into one.

>>23945243
I've had this in my sights recently, nice to hear it's good!

>>23910101
EDMUND EMIL KEMPER : LE GÉANT « CO-ED KILLER » DE SANTA CRUZ
Lorsque vous vous retrouvez en face d’Ed Kemper, vous le qualifiez tout de suite de bonhomme impressionnant : il a 44 ans et mesure plus de deux mètres pour environ cent soixante kilos. Son quotient intellectuel dépasse 140. A l’occasion du tournage d’un documentaire, Serial Killers : Enquête sur une déviance, j’ai eu l’occasion de rencontrer Ed Kemper pendant plusieurs heures en compagnie d’Olivier Raffet, le réalisateur de notre film. Condamné à huit reprises pour meurtre au premier degré, Kemper échappe à la peine de mort qui vient juste d’être abolie dans l’État de Californie (elle a été réinstaurée depuis). Il purge sa peine à Vacaville, non loin de San Francisco, la prison la plus peuplée du monde occidental avec près de dix mille détenus. Ed Kemper appartient à la catégorie des tueurs en série organisés. Toutes les citations de Kemper proviennent de cette interview effectuée en novembre 1991. Interroger Ed Kemper n’est pas une tâche aisée. Quelques jours auparavant, John Douglas, patron du Département d’analyse criminelle du FBI, m’avait relaté l’anecdote suivante : à la fin des années 70, son collègue Robert Ressler rend visite à Kemper, pour la troisième fois, dans sa prison de haute sécurité pour une interview en tête à tête. Au bout de quatre heures, Ressler appuie sur la sonnette pour appeler le gardien. En quinze minutes il sonne trois fois. Pas de réponse. Kemper prévient son interviewer : cela ne sert à rien de s’énerver, c’est l’heure de la relève et du repas des condamnés à mort. Avec une pointe d’intimidation dans la voix, Kemper ajoute, en grimaçant, que personne ne répondra à l’appel avant au moins un quart d’heure :
« Et si je deviens dingue tout d’un coup, tu aurais pas mal de problèmes, n’est-ce pas? Je pourrais te dévisser la tête et la placer sur la table pour souhaiter la bienvenue au gardien... »
Pas très rassuré, Ressler lui répond que cela rendrait son séjour en prison encore plus difficile. Kemper lui réplique qu’un pareil traitement envers un agent du FBI lui apporterait au contraire un énorme respect auprès des autres prisonniers :
« Tu t’imagines quand même pas que je suis venu ici sans moyen de défense ! dit l’homme du FBI.

HORROR
A
L
L
O
W
E
E
N
-------2025 reading list
The River of Night's Dreaming
t. KEW
Number 13
t. M.R. James
The Haunted Dolls' House
t. M.R. James
The Haunted Hotel
t. Wilkie Collins
The Living Dead
t. Robert Bloch
Ancient Sorceries
t. A.Blackwood

>>23945315
Each story is fairly bite sized and very easy to read in a single sitting, but dense with detail. Im gonna be keeping the book for future re-reading ! !

>>23945932
I've read "The River of Night's Dreaming" and "Ancient Sorceries", and both are great.

>>23946019
I can recommend Malpertuis by Jean Ray, also recently published by Wakefield Press!

>>23945655
Big Ed is still alive, Beware :-0

>>23945655
According to wiki his mother and grandmother were turbo bitches.

Many such horror stories

Best horror set in a mental institution?

I did not care for Frankenstein.

>>23947785
Whaaaaat? It's because it's quite by a woman, right...

>>23948394
*Wrote not quite

>>23929374
Where do I even find journals and magazines to submit to? Being at the start of everything, I cannot even find anything.

I'd like to be a scholar of horror literature. What are some academic standard books on the matter?

Think S.T. Joshi but not Indian.

Is this any good? Based on the description it sounds like comfy horror.

>>23948394
>>23948395
It started off interesting, but it drags in the middle and the climax is unsatisfying. When people are like "OMG can you believe Shelley wrote it when she was 18" I'm like yeah I can tell.

>>23948505
That's fair, ty for sparing me the vitriol

>>23947778
>Best horror set in a mental institution?

https://alexbeyman.substack.com/p/the-facility

>>23948446
>endorsed by Paul Tremblay
Is he the Gaiman of horror lit? Endorses everything, but his own work is shit.

>>23948411
https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/
All prospective writers ITT should look out to see any calls for submissions. I use The Grinder. Narrow your search via genre or pay grade.
Send out to journals you read. You need to start with poems and short stories. Don't go for the big novel right away. Don't self-publish.
>Which journals?
If you want, send me an email and I can tell you about the journals I send to. They're specifically there to hone ability and work towards the betterment of yourself as a poet or writer.
author@dmitriakers.com

Started They Thirst by Robert McCammon (author of Swan Song) the other day and it's fucking KINO. A sleazy, disturbing, graphic take on vampires taking over Los Angeles.

Fuck it. Should I read Books of Blood?

>>23950444
I don't think it's that good but most anons do. I read them when I was 17

>>23950444
It's a great short story collection. Both consistent in quality and diverse in topics.

Aickman is severely underrated and everyone should check at least pic related.

>>23951544
I'm planning on reading Cold Hand in Mine next year. He's got three other collections by the same publisher (that all look sick), are they all equally good or are there specific ones I should check out after Cold Hand in Mine?

>>23951620
Definitely check out the other three by faber.

>>23951664
I'll keep my eye out for all three then!

>>23951544
I've read Wine Dark Sea, wasn't blown away but enjoyed enough to put this on the backlog.

Finally finished The Eyes. Preddy gut.

The gap between Ligotti's best and the majority of his fiction is pretty crazy. Every half-dozen or so stories I read by him, I'll read one that floors me and encourages me to keep reading his stuff. But the majority is dull as dishwater.