A short (ha!) list
Short stories:
Bradbury, Ray. "Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!" (a.k.a. "Come Into My Cellar")
————— "Zero Hour"
Cady, Jack. "The Lady With the Blind Dog"
Grant, Charles L., "Spinning Tales With the Dead"
Kirk, Russell. "There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding"
Lovecraft, H. P., "The White Ship"
————— "Celephais"
McCammon, Robert R., "Beauty"
Straub, Peter, "The Juniper Tree"
Novellas:
Barker, Clive, The Hellbound Heart
King, Stephen, "The Body" (Different Seasons)
Lovecraft, H. P., "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath"
Novels:
Barker, Clive, Weaveworld
————— Sacrament
————— Galilee
Bradbury, Ray, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Cady, Jack, The Hauntings of Hood Canal
Grant, Charles L., In a Dark Dream
Lovecraft, H. P., The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
McCammon, Robert R., Boy's Life
Streiber, Whitley, Billy
Not quite horror:
Barker, Clive, Imajica (novel; fantastique/dark fantasy)
Bradbury, Ray. Death Is A Lonely Business (novel; suspense)
—————. Graveyard for Lunatics (novel; suspense)
Cady, Jack. The Off-Season (novel; mystical realism)
• • •
Movies:
Alien
Aliens
The Gate
Gothic
Halloween
Hellraiser II: Hellbound
House
Last House On the Left
The Lost Boys
Paper House
The Reflecting Skin
Notes: Yes, the first two
Alien films—especially the first—count as horror.
Yes, you read that correctly:
The Lost Boys. While
House II: The Second Story isn't quite as good as the first, it deserves an honorable mention for including among its cast both John Ratzenberger
and Bill Maher.
Of the films on that list, only
Halloween ever truly scared me. I caught it when I was about eleven, and remember palpable waves of fear in dark silence. A very effective ending, in fact, that was reiterated almost immediately when I put some music on to calm my nerves as I tried to sleep that night. It was Styx's
Grand Illusion album, and I was lulling off to sleep when the song "Castle Walls" began, and behind the opening notes of the bass guitar is a quiet breathing sound that I had previously ignored, but which on that night scared me wide awake so that I sat up for several hours reading.
