Reading the 20th Century discussion

With Halloween almost upon us I have started this thread to discuss our favourite horror and/or supernatural books.

I'm not a great fan of the genre however do quite enjoy the occasional ghost story.

Last year we read The Haunting of Hill House at around this time of year which I thought was excellent.

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is an atmospheric, subtle and creepy exploration of madness, acceptance, and the supernatural. Shirley Jackson cleverly allows readers to draw their own conclusions as the notorious Hill House starts to affect its visitors.

Here’s my review

Anyway, that's a long winded way of introducing the discussion and inviting you to share your favourite books about ghosts, horror, the supernatural and so on.

What do you rate? And why?

When I was a teenager I read....


The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

...which I recall finding very scary.

I'm no longer sure to what extent I conflate it with the film which was also memorable, to say the least.

Has anyone read it recently?

This is quite a polarizing genre.
Supernatural/psychological works best for me. This usually involves the subject having no or little control over their destiny, quite like dystopian novels, which in there own way are horror, in the wider sense.
Other horror are gore, which to me aren't scary, why you may ask.
If you recall the film 'Predator', Arnold Schwarzenegger and his troops were tasked with neutralizing a threat, after a skirmish green blood of the predator is found on a leaf, at which point Arnie utter the line, "If it bleeds we can kill it". So that is my view of gore horror.

I have read 'Christine' by Stephen King and really liked it, disappointed by the film though.

Michael wrote: "Supernatural/psychological works best for me"


I think for me too Michael. Leaning more towards the psychological end of the spectrum. It's why I enjoyed The Haunting of Hill House so much.

And why, despite not being a horror book, except in a loose sense, I am enjoying Strangers on a Train

I, personally didn't find The Haunting of Hill House at all scary. I think psychological horror is more frightening. I found John Connolly's The Killing Kind much more scary. I think a lot depends on your age and frame of mind when you read a horror book. Like Michael, I find gore is unpleasant, but not scary.
I think The Handmaid's Tale was scary. The fact that a section of the population can be made helpless much more frightening than things that go bump in the night

I love Shirley Jackson. Another favourite author in this genre is F.G. Cottam (although they are more creepy than scary - I'm not good with scary).
I am also a huge fan of Phil Rickman

A new book I want to read is Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country

In his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy. For comfort, he turned to his bookshelves, back to the ghost stories that obsessed him as a boy, and to the writers through the ages who have attempted to confront what comes after death.

In Ghostland, Parnell goes in search of the ‘sequestered places’ of the British Isles, our lonely moors, our moss-covered cemeteries, our stark shores and our folkloric woodlands. He explores how these landscapes conjured and shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema, from the ghost stories and weird fiction of M. R. James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood to the children’s fantasy novels of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper; from W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn and Graham Swift’s Waterland to the archetypal ‘folk horror’ film The Wicker Man…

Ghostland is Parnell’s moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – and what is haunting him. It is a unique and elegiac meditation on grief, memory and longing, and of the redemptive power of stories and nature.

Ghostland sounds very interesting - thanks Susan

My daughter has just been telling me about Ghostland, and there was an article about it in the Eastern Daily Press earlier this month, where Parnell chose eight of the most haunted places in East Anglia:

https://www.edp24.co.uk/going-out/gho...

I've not read....


The Woman In Black by Susan Hill

...however I have the impression I would find it terrifying

Proud and solitary, Eel Marsh House surveys the windswept reaches of the salt marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway. Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the house's sole inhabitant, unaware of the tragic secrets which lie hidden behind the shuttered windows. It is not until he glimpses a pale young woman, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk of the woman in black - and her terrible purpose

I wasn't mad about it, to be honest, and I didn't like the ending. I saw the play too, many years ago now.

I’m easily scared 😱

Me too. I really dislike horror movies, although I am braver with books :)

I’m the other way round. I get caught up in books 👻

More caught up I should say

Susan wrote: "I wasn't mad about it, to be honest, and I didn't like the ending. I saw the play too, many years ago now."

Agreed - left me feeling a little disappointed.

I didn't think much of the film but I do think Susan Hill has written some good creepy stories

A friend recommended Ira Levin to me earlier


Anyone read any?

Ira was author of the suspense classics Rosemary's Baby, The Boys from Brazil, and The Stepford Wives

His novels - and their cinematic interpretations - gained cult followings, paving the way for the modern popularity of the horror genre.

Stephen King described Levin as "the Swiss watchmaker of suspense novels", adding: "He makes what the rest of us do look like cheap watchmakers in drugstores."

I tend to enjoy supernatural to horror, I like sci fi too.
Our personal beliefs will dictate what is good or in this genre, or indeed if this genre is worthy of reading.

I read Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives some years ago, Nigeyb. I seem to recall liking them.

Jill, I've enjoyed lots of Susan Hill's books, just not that one, particularly.

Michael, that's an interesting point. I'm not religious and I don't believe in ghosts, but I would still read a book by Phil Rickman whose main character, Merrily Watkins, is a vicar, or a book about the ghosts I don't believe in!

On the whole I prefer older ghost stories, such as The Signalman by Charles Dickens or The Old Nurse's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell, and stories by M.R. James. I also just read quite a scary short story by one of my favourite classic detective authors, Margery Allingham - I forget the title, but it was in the collection The Allingham Minibus.

Short stories tend to work better for me in this genre than full-length novels, although I did like The Haunting of Hill House.

I read Rosemary's Baby and Stepford Wives as a teenager - I thought they were interesting rather than scary as such (and I also scare easily).

I remember being creeped out by Woman in Black - probably because Hill is such a brilliant, controlled writer who really knows how to ramp up the tension to (literal) screaming point!

Funnily enough, I read Stephen King's Pet Sematary over the weekend and after reading lots of reviews from readers being freaked out by it, I found myself giggling!

My scariest story ever is Henry James' novella The Turn of the Screw - don't read it alone :)

I agree about The Turn of the Screw - very scary.

So scary, that the first time I had to read it on the tube with bright lights and crowds of people around me!

I read Rosemary's Baby and A Kiss Before Dying. I think Baby on a long-distance train and have a vague memory of being easily startled.

I've never liked Stephen King's books. At the urging of a friend, who loves his books, I have read two. The Shining which was, meh, and certainly not scary like the film (which freaked me out completely when I was young) and the one about JFK, which I enjoyed more, but which had a terrible ending.

I also loved Turn of the Screw and read a modern version, based on it, which I enjoyed, but the name escapes me now.

Horror or supernatural stories do seem to work better when they are short stories or novellas, don't they?
Perhaps it is too difficult to keep up the suspense in a full novel without becoming silly, too improbable or turning into a 'gore-fest' (which I'm not a fan of either).
I can usually 'believe' in ghosts and supernatural events for the duration of the story. In real life I tend to think there is probably a rational explanation, even if I don't know what it is. Some (otherwise?) very sensible, down-to-earth people do accept supernatural explanations for unexplained events however, so I would not rule them out altogether.

Susan wrote: "I also loved Turn of the Screw and read a modern version, based on it, which I enjoyed, but the name escapes me now"

Maybe Florence and Giles?

I generally agree, Val, about short stories over novels when it comes to horror - a book that really worked, though, to get me spooked was The Little Stranger. Maybe because like Hill House it is ambiguous and layered and has all kinds of other things going on about class and gender.

I thought even that one could have been improved with some sweeping cuts, but I agree that it has a lot more going on than just the horror element.

On a related topic, the Guardian has a list of books about or set in graveyards: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

199 cemeteries to see before you die 😍


Just my kind of challenge

Thanks Val

Susan wrote: "I've never liked Stephen King's books. At the urging of a friend, who loves his books, I have read two. The Shining which was, meh, and certainly not scary like the film (which freaked me out compl..."

Yep Susan, totally agree with you about ‘The Shining’.

Have you read ‘Misery’? Thoroughly enjoyed that one - Annie Wilkes...what a character!! In the book the victim narrates some script from one of the previous ‘Misery’ series of books - not sure why Mr King included this as it seemed unnecessary to me and appeared to bring nothing to the actual story.

I am not keen to read any more Stephen King to be honest, Ian.

I quite like a graveyard though, so that sounds like an interesting challenge. I am keen to find where my maternal great-grandmother is buried, as she had a pauper's burial, making it a challenge to discover her resting place.

I've only seen the film adapation of Misery


Superb - and very frightening

I don't enjoy horror books or films, whether the horror is natural or supernatural.

But I love a touch of the supernatural in other genres, whether unexplained visions or prophetic dreams or trances.

On the topic of the supernatural, I must mention as fun, with honourable and totally unscary ghosts The Far Traveller by the author of the Tommy Hambledon spy stories.

So Halloween is coming around again. We have our buddy read The Apparition Phase but what is on your radar?

I am reading The Haunting of Borley Rectory: The Story of a Ghost Story and also The Dying Squad

Not ghostly or supernatural but I'm having a craving to reread Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books. She's such a misanthrope and is in love with her suave psychopath/murderer which puts the reader in a deliciously uneasy position. Moments of violence are spaced out but when they come, they are horrific.

Very good point RC - horror comes in many guises

Very true. I've never read Ripley. Still on my TBR list.

My spooky reads this month so far have been The Workshop of Filthy Creation, it was fun. Not a great novel, but not bad. I agree with other readers who said it would make a good movie. My standards for spooky October books is much lower anyway.
A re-read of Beyond Black, just as creepy this time as the first time I read it, and it’s Hilary Mantel.
And the novella Carmilla. According to the forward Carmilla, written 25 years before Dracula, is one of the most influential in the vampire genre. I liked it, perfect for a dark October evening.
I’ve also read a few ghost stories from different collections I have.

I just started Jawbone. I got it because it nominated for National Book Award for Translation, then saw that it is a horror story, a “dark fairy tale,” so I guess that works for October.

The Apparition Phase sounds really good! I love the Victorian Gothics, but I definitely remember the 70s, those were my teenage years (don’t do the math, I’m really only 39) and I’d like something different this year, so I think I’ll get this.

I generally don't get on well with more modern supernatural/horror stories, partly because I don't much like gratuitous gore or being frightened, and partly because I don't believe in ghosts or the "supernatural". However, I do find some historical horror enjoyable (like M.R. James!) - and I found Carmilla and Dracula itself interesting and rather involving.

40-odd years ago I read (and still have my copy of) Living In Fear: The History Of Horror In The Mass Media by Les Daniels, which I can recommend if you can find a copy anywhere.

It sent me off reading all kinds of stuff: H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce etc, and quite a few Gothic horror novels, much of which I enjoyed reading, but mainly from an enjoyment of the prose (sometimes deliciously over-the-top) and an interesting "so that's how they did it then" feeling. Nowadays I still enjoy M.R. James, whose stories are beautifully written and crafted, and would quite like to read some Bierce again, but that's about it.

I don't like being scared either, Sid. I never watch horror films at all and I prefer the kind of novels that are interesting, rather than frightening. F.G. Cottam, Phil Rickman or those with a sense of place, time and character, like The Apparition Phase, or The Loney

I don't watch horror films either and don't like gore but do like that shivery, hairs on the back of your neck feeling from MR James, Henry James and all those female writers of ghost stories that Virago used to publish from the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries (e.g. The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, The Virago Book of Ghost Stories: The Twentieth Century).

Something that some of those Virago women did that has been picked up by translated fiction, especially that from Latin America and Latin American women, is to use the tropes of the horror/supernatural genre to expose current political realities.

So Virago women have written of things like a haunted saucepan and ghosts of women betrayed and abandoned to highlight domestic drudgery, exploitation and oppression.

Contemporary writers such as Mariana Enríquez have used that existing literary tradition to use the supernatural to expose contemporary political realities such as the streets of Argentina, Nicaragua etc. being haunted by the 'missing' and the ghosts of tortured opponents to dictator governments.

I do like translated horror from Japan, Korea, Scandinavia, Latin America as I think they do interesting things with the roots of the tradition and take the genre in fascinating new directions.

I don't generally like horror/ghost stories. But I started reading Deep Waters: Murder on the Waves by Martin Edwards. Not really ghosty but some of the stories almost seem that way.

I don’t like being scared and do not like the gore, serial killer, demonic possession stuff. I like the books where the characters and the reader sense that something unseen is about. Andrew Michael Hurley is good for that. I loved The Loney and Devil's Day and just started Starve Acre.

I read Jawbone during the day and Starve Acre at night.

I loved The Loney.

I had to read The Uninvited during daylight hours. It wasn't really that scary but there were ghosts.

Jan C wrote: "I had to read The Uninvited during daylight hours. It wasn't really that scary but there were ghosts."

I felt the same way about the film version.

Starve Acre did not disappoint.

Good to hear, WndyJW. I remember enjoying it too.

I hope Andrew Michael Hurley writes something soon. I’ve read the 3 creepy stories on the moors and want more!