“What is your favorite spooky book (i.e. mystery/suspense, thriller, ghost story, etc.)?”
Strangely enough I was asking people for scary book recommendations the other day. I used to devour horror books in my early teens and it didn't matter if it was Halloween or not. My favourite scary books back then were dominated by Stephen King. To this day some of those old ones remain my favourites. The Stand I loved in particular although I don't think it was one of his spookiest. Not so long ago I re read some of them and I think the spookiest is probably The Shining. I think the fact that the family is snowed into a hotel on their own with no communication links sets it off.
Some of my favourite classics are fairly spooky too. Rebecca by Dapne Du Maurier probably doesn't spring to mind when it comes to spooky but it definitely has a suspense/mystery side to it. Plus Mrs Danvers is one of the creepiest characters I have ever come across. The more obvious ones are Dracula by Bram Stoker and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. It's been years since I have read Dracula but I loved it then. No vampire book has ever quite matched up to it. Frankenstein didn't really scare me. If anything I felt a lot of sympathy for the monster. There was one scene though that I did find spooky. Frankenstein and the monster come across each other at sea. Somewhere near Russia I think and the scene was so well described it gave me the shivers every time I read it.
The last book that scared the hell out of me was another classic, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I read it last year for Halloween. There is just something about ghost stories that scare me to death if done well and this one was done well. The fact that children were involved just makes it creepier and these were seriously creepy children. I swear I had to sleep with the light on after reading that.
I would class all of these as a favourite. I don't think I could pick just one but I am always looking for others. Any recommendations? What's the scariest book you've read?
