#every time i find another oral history book i devour it like a mongoose

[organchordsandlightning]

Ooo can u rec a few of ur fav horror books love love love spooky reads :)

🤩oh man here we go let me open the book. a bunch of them under the cut!

Haunted House Classic - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Not the first haunted house story by any means, but a lot of modern haunted house stories draw from this one specifically. A wealthy old man invites a group of people to investigate his house to find concrete proof of the supernatural, only for things to go awry as they realize the house is haunted. Gets really mind-trippy towards the end. Modern - The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas Our protagonist marries a rich man to escape a life of poverty and gain some stability in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Mexican government. As she stays at the hacienda, however, it becomes very clear that something is haunting and watching her every move -- as the staff vehemently deny anything happened to the master of the house's first wife, the protagonist turns to an unorthodox priest for help.

Humor

Grady Hendrix is probably the biggest name in horror-comedy right now, and I'm really enjoying his stuff! My favorite so far of his is How to Sell A Haunted House: in the aftermath of her parents' sudden death, a young woman returns home with her burnout brother to try and figure out what to do with her parents' sizable (and possibly haunted) puppet collection. Really tugs at the heartstrings with the plot being utterly off the wall. Also enjoyed Southern Book Club Guide's to Slaying Vampires by him, about a small southern town that realizes they have a vampire in their midst!

Shlocky

I always have to recommend Riley Sager's books because they feel like reading a B-list horror film: they can be silly, they can be a little shallow, they can be full of unnecessary twists, but they're also a lot of fun and feel like they run with a lot of horror tropes. Home Before Dark is his best-known: growing up, the protagonist's parents exploited the so-called spookiness of their family home (very much a la Amityville Horror). As an adult, she returns to her childhood home and realizes it might not all have been fake.

Sci-Fi Horror

The Annihilation series by Jeff VanDerMeer is really good: a group of scientists given only by their title (the biologist, etc) explore this strange new territory filled with secrets and suspicious creatures, only to realize they may have a traitor in their midst. The first of this series is my favorite, and the dream-like narration might not be for everyone, but the imagery is stunning (and if you do read and like it, audio drama Syntax is heavily inspired by it!)

The Last Astronaut by David Wellington: My god, an asteroid is about to hit Earth (very, very slowly!). To investigate what it's about and how to stop it, a former astronaut and their team go to explore it... only to realize there's more secrets than they realize lying inside, and that it may not be an asteroid after all. Really spooky, ending made me emotional.

Fake Oral Histories (Oral Histories are some of my favorite subgenres of books in general! Basically like World War Z - not written in explicit prose format, but taking advantage of other ways of displaying the story - newspaper articles, interview transcripts, court hearings, etc!)

Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks - Speaking of, the guy who wrote World War Z! A town is found massacred, seemingly by the mythic Bigfoot. Journals and various other articles are found around town that explain the weeks leading up to the final slaughter. Really tense, had a lot of fun.

A History of Fear by Luke Dumas - Grayson Hale, AKA the Devil's Advocate Killer, was sentenced for the murder of his fellow graduate student. His account of what happened is found in his jail cell following his death, where he describes how he was approached by a man who he believes to be the actual devil. The framing device for the book is an editor trying to explore more about the Hale case, and it is really fun seeing the editor's version of the story (interviewing people in the Hale statement, seeing conflicting newspaper articles, etc) and how it compares with Hale's. I do have to give a massive religious trauma/homophobia CW on this one though.

Fantasticland by Mike Bockoven - I have commitment issues about calling any singular book my favorite, but Fantasticland holds a special place in my heart. In short: a series of interviews from a bunch of Disneyland-esque theme park workers, mostly teenagers, about an incident in the park. A hurricane forced everyone to evacuate but the employees, who hid in underground bunkers. Soon they emerge to see the damage, but in the several weeks it takes for the flooding to clear, all social order breaks down and gangs start to form: the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, the Mole People, all based on different areas of the park. I just think it's really cleverly done and a lot of fun (and also, you know, a little horrifying).