With all the reading I do (roughly 30 books per year), I occasionally come across titles that give me the chills and haunt me long after I finish reading them. I’m not talking about horror stories either, which I don’t read anyway as a rule. I get scared easily. It doesn’t take much for me to go from being a chilled-out baby boomer to an anxious insomniac. The smallest gruesome details, even in the most literary of published words, can leave an indelible mark on my imagination.
While I try to avoid reading those types of stories with some element of horror, every now and then, I do read one with a difficult-to-read scene (The Book of Ruth) or I challenge myself to read out of my comfort zone (In Cold Blood). Other times, a book I’m reading has kept me awake at night, the suspense so great I was afraid to sleep.
I’ve scoured my reading lists from the past few years to curate a list of the best, most haunting reads, just in time for Halloween season. These books haunted me in ways I didn’t expect and left a lasting impression.
Why did these titles make my “scary” list?
- They might have contained a gruesome scene of brutal violence that I could not unsee in my imagination.
- Some scenes only hinted at violence, just enough to feed my own fears and prod my imagination to fill in the blanks.
- Some stories contained scenes that kept playing over and over in my head, preventing me from falling asleep at night.
- The story presented a sad, dark view of our future that felt real and viable.
Here is my short list of books that have haunted me over the years. Your own list of scary or haunting books may be different. What is the same is the way these stories make you feel and the lasting impressions they make on your psyche.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
I don’t usually read true crime, but I had heard so much about ICB that I challenged myself to read it. This is considered the premiere example of true crime, and Capote does it with tremendous empathy for the villains. The story doesn’t feel exploitative or flashy either, and the facts are presented in a way that helps you understand the mindset of the murderers and the events that led up to their crime. That is what made this book so haunting, helping readers understand that there’s more to a crime than meets the eye.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Morena-Garcia
This title is the closest thing to horror that I’ve ever read. I had heard a lot about it and I was curious about what the story was about. Morena-Garcia gives a Mexican spin on traditional gothic horror. Well-written with a likeable main character who behaved with greater maturity than her 21 years. The story was packed with a lot of gruesome and paranormal details that were both fascinating and horrifying at the same time.
The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
I still cannot stop thinking about The Book of Ruth, which I read about five years ago.
Though this book is a work of fiction and not horror or true crime, it could easily have been one of them because of the way Hamilton presented the sequence of events. She also included back stories for the two people the main character Ruth was closest to – her mother and her husband. As the story progressed, the reader could see the growing tension and animosity between those two characters up until their final confrontation. This book haunted me in two ways: the brutal violence Ruth witnesses and her capacity to forgive in the end.
A Deadly Game of Magic by Joan Lowery Nixon
Nixon was a popular young adult novelist of the 1970s and 1980s, and I remember reading a few of her stories when I was younger. While the set-up for A Deadly Game wasn’t original – four teens seek shelter in an apparent abandoned house during a storm – Nixon turned their experience into a gripping, spine-tingling page turner around an evil magician who may or may not still be alive. There was no clear sign of violence, no actual blood and gore. But Nixon leaves enough clues, including a guillotine set that the magician had used for his tricks, to make readers use their imagination to fill in the blanks. Sometimes that can be more scary than seeing the horror on the page. This one gave me a few sleepless nights.
One By One by Ruth Ware
This was the first of Ware’s psychological thrillers I read, and what an introduction it was. The story centers around a group of work colleagues who are trapped in an isolated chalet in the Swiss Alps, and one by one, they keep disappearing. The pacing and multiple points of view kept me guessing about what would happen next. The tension was so fraught that I had difficulty sleeping at night. Casual readers of suspense or Ware fans might say that I’m overreacting, that this was not one of her best works. But for me, there was something about the way she weaved in the story elements and tension that kept me looking over my shoulder.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
I shake my head every time I see this title described as magic realism. Sure there is a “special school,” but the specialness has nothing to do with magic. I would describe this story as dystopian much like the Handmaid’s Tale. The story centers around an imagined society that raises orphaned children for a very dark purpose – to be sacrificed to help other people live. As readers see these children grow up and knowing what their future holds, leaves me feeling haunted in ways traditional crime novels do not.
What do you think? Are there any books that have haunted you? What types of stories scare you?
