Everyone enjoys a good horror story, and with Hallowe'en just around the corner, I figure it's as good a time as any to suggest some terrifying reads to scare you shitless. Here goes.
1. "Ghosts With Teeth" by Peter Crowther
How many ghost stories have you read where the ghosts don't really do anything except show up and look creepy? In my case, far too many. Now, imagine that all that changed; imagine if, instead of being mischievous spirits who just liked to move stuff around, poltergeists were supernatural sadists with the ability to control your mind. In this story by Peter Crowther, the ghosts want to hurt you, and there's nothing you can do to stop them. Now that is some scary shit.
2. House of Leaves, by Mark Z Danielewski
Some books will make you afraid of the dark. Some will make you afraid of strange noises in the night. House of Leaves will make you afraid of your own house. I can't quite explain how Danielewski makes this novel so frightening, but there is something deeply disturbing about the idea that your own home may be entirely beyond your control. If you only read one book about a book about a film about a house this year, read this one.
3. The Little Oxford Book of Nasty Endings
I read this when I was about nine, and I had nightmares about it for ten years. There are a lot of stories in there, most of which I can't remember, but in one that has always stuck with me, a small town is hit by a hurricane-force wind. Twenty four hours later, it comes back. Then twelve hours later, then ten. Eventually, the townspeople come to the realisation that they, and the rest of the world, will be engulfed in a never-ending storm. I've always found that idea profoundly disturbing - the idea of realising that you'll be trapped in an horrific situation, and it will never end, and there's nothing you can do about it. There's a great deal of originality in this collection, which is something too few horror authors possess. There should still be a copy in the children's section of Gants Hill Library, if they haven't got rid of it in the last decade and more.
4."I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream," by Harlan Ellison
There's something uniquely terrifying about the idea of Hell. Waking up after your death and realising that you will be tortured, for ever, is just about the most frightening thing I can think of, so it's fitting that this entry deals with a similar concept. The Hell that Ellison creates is not an afterlife - instead, it is the aftermath of a nuclear war, where the four surviving humans have been imprisoned by a near-omnipotent supercomputer that takes its only pleasure in torturing them relentlessly. The final line of the story - which is also its title - is truly chilling.
5. Learning Kneeling by Howard Barker
Howard Barker is well-known for putting his characters through hell, but even in a body of work filled with horrific subject matter, Learning Kneeling stands out. The main character - the ironically named Sturdee - has a seemingly perfect life, until a group of men from an unidentified militia break into his house and begin torturing and killing his family. This isn't your standard home invasion story, though - what really drives home the horror is the way Barker humanises his characters, and makes the audience care about them. I'm still not sure if I like this play, but it's certainly an intense experience.
6. The Room by Hubert Selby Jr
It's a little known fact that Tommy Wiseau based his film on this book. Well, it's not so much a fact as something I just made up, but tell that to the next person you meet who's seen the film and watch their reaction after they've read Selby's novel - I garuntee it'll be funny. The Room concerns a man who has been locked up pending trial for an unspecified crime, and it takes place almost entirely within the confines of his mind as he takes the reader through an almost unbearable series of revenge fantasies against the police officers who arrested him. Selby is seriously inventive when it comes to the tortures that his protagonist dreams of inflicting on the officers, and it's that creative approach to suffering that makes this novel such a hard read. I couldn't finish it - maybe you can.
7. The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter is rarely referred to as a horror writer, largely because fans of so-called "literary writing" tend to hold the horror genre in contempt, but a surprising number of his plays are quite obviously horror stories, in that their primary purpose is to frighten the audience. A Slight Ache and The Dumb Waiter both fall into the horror category, but I've decided to go with his most well-known and most controversial play, The Birthday Party. The real fear in Pinter's horror plays is the fear of the unknown, a subject he explores to terrifying effect in this story of a man who lives in a boarding house in an English seaside town, who is sought out by agents of the shadowy yet menacing government agency for whom he used to work. What really elevates this story above Pinter's other horror plays is the way in which he writes about the smaller fears of everyday life, but manages to make these things as frightening as his main storyline.
Well, that's my list - if there are any stories that have terrified you that weren't included here, feel free to let me know in the comments. Happy Hallowe'en.
