How can one describe Spooky Season?
To start with, well, Halloween, of course. October vibes filled with grinning, flickering jack o’ lanterns, decorative spiderwebs strewn across the aged pillars of a porch, and cardboard skeletons taped to front doors. But it’s more than just one night of candy-filled pillowcases and shouts of children demanding treats.
It’s a true season. A special time of the year when the wind doesn’t just blow, it howls.
When dry leaves crunch beneath your feet and the occasional puff of icy air tickles the nape of your neck, raising goosebumps and causing you to shiver, as if someone had just taken a couple of steps across your grave. It’s when the sky gives up its summer blue for winter gray, and the brittle arms of the nearby trees tap-tap-tap at your window in the middle of the night, requesting entry.
And few things capture the spirit of the spooky season better than a good, old-fashioned, scary story; one that resonates with more than just chills and thrills, but that also captures the feel of the season itself: those brittle leaves, that cold gust of wind heralding a coming winter, the rustling twigs at the window and the stone-faced sky overhead.
To that end, the following is a list of eight novels that will deliver, in spades, on those autumnal-themed, often frightening, always disturbing, spooky season vibes.
HELL HOUSE by Richard Matheson
Matheson’s classic is a dark tale dripping with dread and filled with creeping, hurtful shadows that will haunt you long after you’ve closed the book. Along with Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, this is one of the most terrifying haunted house novels ever put to page.
HARVEST HOME by Thomas Tryon
A folk horror masterpiece about a small community and a newly arrived family doing their best to integrate into local customs, even if the customs seem outdated, slightly malicious and perhaps even a touch insane. A monstrous slow burn that grows darker and darker the further it strides toward a haunting climax you’ll never see coming.
THE STAKE by Richard Laymon
Known for his brutal, take-no-prisoners horror, this particular Laymon novel feels more like a great B-movie that one might watch on late-night television; a throwback vampire story packed to the teeth with pulpy, bloody scares.
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury
A literary masterpiece with prose that dances on the pages like wind-blown leaves; a coming-of-age story about two boys, a haunted carnival, and the Devil himself, who’s just arrived to offer you the ride of your life (even if it’s your last).
CACKLE by Rachel Harrison
A sly, sardonic take on a modern-day witch trying to get along in a small town, where not everything is as it seems, and where one needs to be careful about who they choose as friends. This breakout novel by rising star Harrison delivers humor and high-stakes horror in equal doses. One of her best, and the perfect treat for the season.
THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR by Anne Rivers Siddons
A suburban nightmare that will creep slowly into your nervous system, crawling deeper and deeper with each turned page until the scream building at the back of your mind is finally given full throat. A terrifying stylistic mashup of Andre Dubus and Stephen King.
COME CLOSER by Sara Gran
In lieu of putting The Exorcist on yet another list of horror novels, I’d recommend this alternate take on possession by Gran, who relays the story of a young woman tortured by a growing psychosis that oscillates between a mental breakdown and the possible infiltration of a demonic entity. A sly, fiendishly creepy novel that will seep beneath your skin.
DARK HARVEST by Norman Partridge
A fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled, supernatural story by a master of the genre, that is equal parts thrilling and horrifying. A small town, coming-of-age nightmare that introduces the fiendish, murderous Sawtooth Jack, one of the scariest Halloween-themed monsters ever put into print.
SALEM’S LOT by Stephen King
Arguably the greatest modern novel of vampirism, this King classic is a hotbox of small town horror that feeds directly into that autumnal vibes of wind-slapped shutters, short days and long nights, crimson-soaked sunsets, and the tapping on your window that you pray is the errant branch of a nearby tree, and not a pointed fingernail attached to the grinning, hungry visage of a blood-sucking creature of the night.
