“The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child.”
Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad by MR James
The Wood of the Dead by Algernon Blackwood
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
At the Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft
“The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years – if it ever did end – began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.”
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Raven by Charles L Grant
It by Stephen King
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. [The house], not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty year s and might stand for eighty more.”
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Hell House by Richard Matheson
The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
“I still get nightmares. In fact I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares.”
Insomnia by Stephen King
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell
The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker
“True! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am! But why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses – not destroyed – not dulled them.”
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Island of Doctor Moreau by HG Wells
“The blaze of sun wrung pops of sweat from the old man’s brow, yet he cupped his hands around the glass of hot sweet tea as if to warm them. He could not shake the premonition. It clung to his back like chill wet leaves.”
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
The Strain by Guillermo del Toro
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk
“The seller of lightning rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied.”
The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub
The Terror by Dan Simmons
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
The Stand by Stephen King
“A real witch gets the same pleasure from squelching a child as you get from eating a plateful of strawberries and thick cream. She reckons on doing away with one child a week. Anything less than that and she becomes grumpy.”
The Witches by Peter Curtis
The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
The Crucible by Arthur Miller
The Witches by Roald Dahl
“Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow. On the surface, all the girls in the shower room were shocked, thrilled, ashamed, or simply glad that the White bitch had taken it in the mouth again.”
Carrie by Stephen King
Dark Dance by Tanith Lee
lost boy lost girl by Peter Straub
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
“A whispered name. The boy stirs in his sleep. A pale, vaporous moon lights the room. Shadows are deep.”
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates
Silent Children by Ramsey Campbell
Hideaway by Dean R Koontz
Haunted by James Herbert
Solutions
1:C, 2:D, 3:A, 4:B, 5:A, 6:C, 7:C, 8:D, 9:A, 10:D
Scores
2 and above.
About as scary as a three-year-old in a white sheet, going "wooo!". Back to scare-school for you
5 and above.
Could do better. Less trick or treating and more revising the core Halloween texts, this year
8 and above.
Not bad at all. You certainly have a stock of scary stories to tell around the campfire
10 and above.
Terrifyingly good. Are you Stephen King?
