Horror literature is now well represented wide range names These authors are scattered all over the world. Some are famous in a narrow circle of fans, while others have incredible fees, fame and success. But, regardless of the fame of the authors, some books continue to scare readers even after years and decades. There are so many of them that there are not enough words or time to list this entire list, and everyone has their own understanding of the “terrible” book. Therefore, we will tell you about the ten most terrible books in the world. So, let's go!
10. Our list opens with one of the most famous writers working in the horror genre, Stephen King.
It's hard to argue with the extent of his contribution to the genre, but some of his books can scare the creeps. A striking example of this is "Pet Sematary".
The 1983 book follows a doctor's family who move to Chicago. The neighbor of the head of the family tells many legends about those places, and among them is the legend about the pet cemetery. The Doctor learns that this place is cursed due to the tricks of a certain evil spirit. But, being a realist, the main character decides to check it out on his own. If you want to get a lot of adrenaline, then this book is perfect for you. Horror will accompany you on every page.
Anyone who has read at least one of his books is familiar with his unconventional storytelling style. A striking example how original style can also be chilling - book "Labyrinth".
What could it be more interesting than the worlds, which can be accessed by using the key, which is the book! The horrors that unfold before you are connected not only with the talent of the writer, but also with the imagination of the reader. You build the scenery yourself, choose appearance heroes, capturing the atmosphere created by the author. There are no special effects, incompetent acting, inappropriate actors or fake soundstages in the book, it’s all up to you. Although many popular works, primary source books are still successfully sold both in paper and in the now popular electronic form.
The book takes longer than the film; she must open up, you must feel contact with her, find common ground, and she will generously reward you for your time, revealing her secrets to you, page after page. You can “devour” it in just one night or put it aside for several days, thinking about what you read. A book is always a relationship, it is like friendship - yours and your key to the universe of fantasy. We hope that you will be happy to make friends with the works from our list, compiled in no particular order, and will want to pick them up more than once, because books are like people - they get bored without the attention of their friends.
1) "Pet Sematary"
Release year: 1983
Pet Sematary. Sweet provincial fun, that’s what the site initially thought Louis Creed, who came to new home with family. Children from all over the area brought dead animals here. Dogs, cats, canaries, rats. They were buried in ancient Indian land. In the one that is harder than the human heart. People are not buried in a Pet Sematary. But Louis will have to do it one day - in deep grief, in a fit of despair. But everything you do sooner or later comes back to you threefold.
2) “Call” (“Ring”)
Release year: 1991
After its publication, this novel gained such popularity that it has already been filmed twice - in its homeland in Japan and in the USA. The plot of the work was a Japanese urban legend of the late 20th century. A videotape that has already brought death to four people falls into the hands of journalist Asakawa Kazuyuki. If in exactly a week he does not solve the magic formula for salvation, he and his loved ones will die.
3) "The Haunting of Hill House"
Release year: 1959
An old mansion on a hill brings only grief to its inhabitants. The owners refuse to live in it; the elderly couple looking after the house do not risk staying here overnight. The house has a firmly established reputation as a haunted place. And then one day the silence of the house is disturbed by a noisy company of visitors. Dr. Montague, a paranormal investigator, rents a mansion for the summer to study the phenomena occurring there. None of those who arrived can even imagine what a nightmare this trip will end. The book's popularity was cemented by its two film adaptations - directed by Robert Wise (1963) and Jan De Bont with the participation of Steven Spielberg (1999).
4) Cycle “Cthulhu Mythos”
Years released: 1917-1927
During Lovecraft's lifetime, his works were not very popular, but after his death they had a noticeable influence on the formation of modern popular culture. His work is so unique that Lovecraft’s works stand out as a separate subgenre - the so-called Lovecraftian horror, which most often uses the psychological horror of the unknown. It can also be said that Lovecraft was the first to develop in detail “cosmic horror” about the intervention of aliens in earthly life, which seriously affected post-war science fiction: the author’s influence is noticeable in many works about aliens from outer space.
5) “Omen” (“Sign”)
Release year: 1976
Robert Thorne, an American diplomat, arrives at the hospital to learn that his wife has given birth to a stillborn child. The wife does not know about this yet, and Thorne is offered to adopt the baby, who was born on the same day - the 6th day of the 6th month. The nurse convinced him that the newborn's mother died during childbirth, and she had no relatives. Robert agrees without telling his wife. Soon the parents notice strange things about their son: Damien has never been sick, he is afraid of churches, and people are dying around him. In the Book of Revelation it was said that the Antichrist would come in human form, that this birth would take place on the sixth day of the sixth month at six o'clock.
6) "The Exorcist"
Release year: 1971
Ragan, a sweet, well-mannered eleven-year-old girl, turns into a monster with an animal face and a rough, rasping voice. Her mother, a famous actress, is desperately looking for a way out of this situation, realizing that she is irretrievably losing her daughter every day. The tender soul of the child groans in pain and horror and tries to resist, but the forces are unequal, and the demon who has taken possession of her is already ready to celebrate victory. Meanwhile, priest Karras comes to the family's aid.
7) “Salimov’s inheritance” (“Jerusalem’s lot”)
Release year: 1975
Ben Mears, a writer, arrives in the small Maine town of Salimov's Lot, and almost at the same time a new owner moves into the recently purchased old sinister Marsten house. Following this, he tragically disappears little boy, and then people began to disappear throughout the town - individually and as whole families. Neither their relatives nor even the police could find them. And when hope disappeared, it seemed forever, the missing returned, and the town shook with horror. Ben is one of the few who guessed what it was, and he begins to fight the ancient evil, whose name is vampires.
This novel has many variations of the title depending on the translation. Here we present two of the most popular.
8) "Dracula"
Release year: 1897
Bram Stoker's novel is a well-known classic of the vampire genre, and his Count Dracula is a truly immortal creature who has survived many film adaptations and has become the embodiment of everything most insidious and mysterious that human fantasy is capable of. The reader will hear five voices telling about their nightmarish encounters with Dracula. Beauty Lucy, who received a fatal bite and gradually becomes a vampire; her lover, who cannot find a place for himself out of despair; the courageous doctor recognizing ominous symptoms; lawyer Jonathan Harker, who traveled to distant Transylvania to conclude a fateful deal; his faithful bride Mina. Excerpts from their diaries and letters step by step bring us closer to solving the ominous mystery.
9) “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”, “Mirgorod”
Released: 1831-1832, 1835
The book “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, consisting of eight stories, is divided into exactly two parts. “Mirgorod,” published in 1835, which includes the famous “Viy,” is a collection of stories by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, a site that is positioned as a continuation of “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” The stories in this collection are based on Ukrainian folklore and have much in common with each other. In this collection, unlike Dikanka, where Rudy Panko was, there is no single “publisher” who closes the cycle of stories. Despite the fact that the stories are grouped, they can be read separately without losing the meaning of each story. “Mirgorod” was published in two volumes, two stories in each.
10) "Ghouls"
Release year: 2000
The novel “Ghouls” was published in two books, the first is called “Black Dawn”, the second “Fight”, and the author himself was announced by the publishers as the Russian Stephen King. Based on the mythological concept developed by the author, ghouls are the children of Ahriman, the dark deity of Zoroastrianism, whom he created in opposition to the human race. Ghouls have no soul, they are insidious, unreasonably evil, bloodthirsty and practically immortal, they can only be destroyed by fire or sea water. These monsters are born from the buried human corpses. According to ancient prophecies, once every few centuries Vassakh Gul appears in the world - a powerful leader of the dark army, who arranges a local apocalypse in one particular town and, having destroyed its entire population, grows from the corpses an army of ghouls for the global apocalypse. This is exactly the situation that arises in a small modern Italian city.
11) "Stories"
Release year: 1834-1847
Edgar Alan Poe is a legend of American literature. It seems that all its genres and directions grew out of his work. It is his dark, mysterious figure that runs through all the masterpieces born in the New World. His own works are full of darkness and mysticism. Mysterious dead people, mysterious animals, the Sphinx, King Plague and the Devil himself are his favorite heroes.
12) “Hell Raised Site”
Release year: 1986
A box once created by the toy maker Lemarchand and opening the way to other dimensions. The mysterious order of the Cenobites, who have tasted the highest pleasure that is inaccessible to an ordinary person. And the gates of hell itself, opening into our world. “Hellraiser” has become a world classic of horror, and cult films have been made based on this novel, in the creation of which Clive Barker himself took part.
13) "Captive of Ghosts"
Release year: 1987
Where is the line between dream and reality? What happens in real life and what is just a figment of the imagination? Is contact with the other world possible if nothing exists beyond death? Trying to answer all these questions cost David Ash too much. He never believed in ghosts, did not trust the supernatural, and laughed at them, considering their website to be Photoshop. But this could not last long. Sooner or later he had to come into conflict with otherworldly forces. What awaits him at the end of this terrible, chilling story?
14) “They appear at midnight”
Release year: 1968
In all the sinister literature about other world There is no other creature that evokes greater horror, disgust and morbid interest than the vampire. No other monster was so attractive close attention by recognized masters of this genre, and no other creature from the power of darkness has been able to inspire writers and become the hero of so many and outstanding nightmare stories.
15) “We live in a castle”
Release year: 1962
This book is an American Gothic novel, a real psychological thriller. Selected as one of 10 by Times Magazine best novels site of the year, went through 13 editions. A tragedy occurred in one American family living in their own house near the village: almost all its members were poisoned with arsenic. Two sisters and an elderly uncle are all that remains of the once large clan. Life on the estate flowed quietly and measuredly, but one evening there was a knock on the door, announcing the arrival of cousin who wants to visit his sisters.
16) "Florence and Giles"
Release year: 2010
1891, New England. Twelve-year-old orphan Florence lives with her younger brother Giles in a secluded and almost abandoned mansion. Their uncle cares little about raising their children, and he completely forbade hiring a teacher for their niece. He is sure that the girl can neither read nor write. But Florence, left to her own devices, secretly devolves book after book, disappearing for hours into the cold silence of a huge library alone with Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe. She comes up with her own language, which she uses to tell her story. After the mysterious death of the first governess, the guardian did not burden himself with an overly picky choice of a new mentor. Soon Miss Taylor arrives at the estate. She reeks of misfortune and the scent of lilies. Florence feels that an evil and vengeful spirit has appeared in the house and threatens Giles. Unable to turn to adults for help, she uses all her intelligence and ingenuity to resist him.
17) "Ghost Story"
Release year: 1979
Writer Don Wonderly comes to the small town of Millburn, where lived before his uncle, at the invitation of four old men who call themselves the Nonsense Club; they do what they tell each other at club meetings scary stories. The fifth member of the club was Uncle Site Don, who died at a reception given in honor of the enigmatic actress Ann Veronica Moore. This trip could not have come at a better time for Don. After all, not everything is smooth in his life either: his brother recently died, and Don blames a strange woman for his death, who turned his whole life upside down. In addition, Don hopes to finally write a new novel. But all is not well in Milburn either. A farmer living outside the city discovers that his cows have been killed and bled dry; strange woman appears in the city, and her appearance shocks the members of the Nonsense Club, one of whom commits suicide. But that’s not all: people begin to disappear in Milburn.
18) “The Devil’s Dolls of Madame Mandylip” (“Burn, witch, burn!”)
Release year: 1932
An unusual patient is brought to Dr. Lowell's clinic, an henchman of the famous gangster Ricori. The patient dies, but the cause of death is unknown, and the death itself was so strange and terrible that the Ricori, in collaboration with Lowell, begin an investigation. It soon becomes clear that Lowell's patient was not the first victim to die in this way, and the only thing that unites all the victims of the epidemic are dolls from the shop of Madame Mandylip, a witch who creates small copies of living people and transfers the souls of the originals into them.
19) "Hell House"
Release year: 1971
For about twenty years now, the house of Emeric Belasco, known throughout the city as an ominous abode of ghosts, has been empty. All attempts to cleanse Hell House fail, and those who take part in them either die or lose their minds. Nevertheless, city residents do not lose hope. Physicist Barrett and his wife Edith, medium Florence Tanver and psychic Benjamin Fisher are ready to make another attempt at cleansing. Will the site be able to get rid of the power of dark forces this time?
20) “Vampires. Fantastic novel by Baron Olchevri from the family chronicle of Counts Dracula-Cardi" 
Release year: 1912
The young, rich and energetic American heir of an ancient family, Harry Cardy, comes to the abandoned Carpathian castle of the ancient family Dracula, accompanied by inseparable friends: the brave Captain Wright, the inquisitive young man James, nicknamed Sherlock Holmes by his friends, and the calm, reasonable Doctor Weiss. Written as a parody in response to the emerging fashion for "vampire" novels, this novel is now a classic of the genre.
Which mystical book from our list seemed the scariest to you?
The desire to tickle one's nerves and immerse oneself in a gloomy atmosphere has been inherent in people since ancient times. Horror books were written and published back in the 13th century, in the form of chivalric Gothic novels, gradually transforming into stories about exorcism and ghosts, and later short stories imbued with deep psychologism appeared. Having amassed an impressive cultural history, today horror books come in a variety of genres that border on science fiction, fantasy, and detective stories. Therefore, everyone can find what is closest to them. But best books What horrors have in common is that they provoke feelings of fear and tension.
The collision with the inevitable, the unidentified, that which is beyond human understanding - this topic will always be relevant for any era and any country. Gloomy medieval castles predetermined the appearance of books in the horror genre, as the mysterious corners of family estates, forgotten rooms and family secrets made one think about otherworldly forces. Technological progress mid-19th century, sincere faith in reason, the development of natural sciences forced people to think about the clash of nature and science, so horror books appeared about monsters created by man, who subsequently loses control over his creation. At the turn of the century, man himself became a popular topic, the study of his inner world, comprehension of secrets hidden from the eyes, so the main characters are mental patients, maniacs and murderers. Contemporary literature and writers work with a variety of genres, combining the experience of past generations.
Find your horror book
The KnigoPoisk website allows you to find a suitable work for you. If you are interested in horror, the books listed on the site will help you plunge into a tense and chilling atmosphere. But if you haven’t yet decided on your favorite authors and trends, then it doesn’t matter. Ranking Horror Books will allow you to find the best examples of literature to start with. Read wisely and with pleasure!
If you follow books in the horror genre, you are probably familiar with the name Nail Izmailov. It was under this pseudonym that the writer published two horror novels - “Ubyr” and “Ubyr. Nobody will die." We liked both “Ubyrs” so much that we asked Shamil to make for you a list of books that make you feel creepy in a good way.
So, we give the floor to Shamil: “I have always liked not the canon, but attempts to hack it or use it for unusual purposes. That’s why the list turned out to be somewhat specific. I can only assure you that each of the items on this list not only made me tremble during the play, but also sent me into slight groggy at the end. This, in my opinion, is one of the main criteria for great reading. I tried to avoid well-known positions. The authors are ranked alphabetically."
- Maria Galina, “Malaya Glusha”
- Leonid Kaganov, stories “Khomka” and “Until Dawn” (obscene version)
- Stephen King, "It"
- Stephen King, Misery
- Andrey Lazarchuk, stories “The Mummy” and “Out of the Darkness”
Bixby is your typical tough literary craftsman, having written dozens of scripts for fantasy series and short stories for magazines with flashy covers. One went down in history - this one. A tiny story in a brilliant translation by Arkady Strugatsky (under the pseudonym S. Berezhkov). “We live well!” today it looks rather like a social, and in our conditions also a political pamphlet, but it is not childishly frightening. Or rather, childishly, which is even worse.
Smart Soviet publishers and literary critics adored Bradbury, so they actively positioned him as a singer of humanism and a master of philosophical fiction. The trick was a success: the fans managed not to catch fire dark side the work of Bradbury, who is actually a genius of a cruel parable - despite the fact that pieces from this side came across, for example, as part of the classic “Martian Chronicles” (“There Will Be Gentle Rain”), and even a Soviet movie was made based on the creepy “Veld” . Now, of course, Bradbury has more or less been published, but, for example, his exemplary horror novel “Something Scary is Coming” plowed me much less than the story “The Ferris Wheel” that I read in the magazine “Around the World” as a child. from which the novel, in fact, grew.
Maria Galina is a typical “friend among strangers”: she is rightfully among the top authors of the so-called Bollitra (great literature), while weaving stories from masslite material - and it turns out to be about life, not the best, but ours. The action of the first part of “Malaya Glusha” takes place in the prosperous sleepy Odessa of 1979: a sharashka office called SES-2, whose responsibilities include protecting this section of the Soviet border from the penetration of intangible threats, triggered the invasion of some kind of horror - and the station employees are responsible for this You will have to face not only the party committee, the court and Moscow. You will have to answer with your life and soul. The very short second part takes place in 1987 in a gloomy rural area, through which two stubborn city dwellers make their way to the main village - clearly bruised by something and clearly hoping for something. After the first story, sweeping and desperate, the second, restrained and cold, looks pale - like the quest plot against the backdrop of the multi-linear action of "SES-2". Galina pulls and pulls this pallor with ruthless precision, and then tears it apart towards the jesters, towards Malaya Glusha - until it flashes across the entire sky and lethargy in the chest.
Kaganov aka lleo is a professional laugh-maker, Runet guru and highly technical text writer who can write anything about anything. That's why I don't really like reading it. But I read these couple of stories and was inspired. Very different, hopeless in different ways, equally scary.
The most universal and serious horror from the man who made the low genre highly paid and respectable. There is almost too much of everything in this novel - fear, bright dreams, blood, pages, murdered children, first feelings, violence, love, drunkenness, perversions, flashbacks - in general, what normal fans love King for.
I'm crazy, and my favorite is still the novel "The Dead Zone", published a quarter of a century ago in the magazine " Foreign literature"and has nothing to do with horror. “It” is in second place. The book, which forever inscribed the image of a creepy clown in the gallery of universal evil, was published in 1986. But Soviet children became acquainted with this image two years earlier: in 1984, Vladislav Krapivin’s brilliant story “Summer Festival in Starogorsk” was published, in which a clown sent by aliens scared teenagers a little less.
Among other things, King is interesting for his mercilessly pragmatic attitude towards his own person. He made himself an episodic (and not the most attractive) hero of the epic “The Dark Tower” - and the dramatic phenomena of the writer King a couple of times saved the hellishly drawn-out series from falling into tedious meaninglessness. King generally resorted to less overt exploitation of his own person. It is clear that everyone does this, but not everyone makes the writer the main character over and over again. King did - and won, simultaneously covering related topics of creative crises, graphomania, neurostimulation and what not (The Shining, The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, The Dark Half, Secret Window, Secret Garden, then almost everywhere). In “Misery,” the author closed the topic of responsibility to fans - so much so that most sensible fiction writers have since avoided communicating with lonely, romantically inclined fans with experience in medical institutions and an ax in the closet.
Lazarchuk is actually a science fiction writer who knows how and loves to scare in a variety of ways, both with episodes (in the spectrum from the psychedelic collapse of reality in “Soldiers of Babylon” to the merciless necromagic and chthonic holocaust of “Caesarevna Otrada”), and whole-hearted products like the story “There in the Far Away, Beyond river" (about the voracious Morlocks from the outskirts of the industrial site).
But personally, I was much more frightened by two early stories - about the children’s march to the eternally living Lenin and about the fact that even adults do not need to be afraid of the dark - they need to be afraid of their victory over fear.
A mortally tired vampire girl and her sick quasi-dad create a rustle in the November Stockholm of 1981, in which drunks hate reading Dostoevsky, a starved hero hides enuresis with the help of a foam ball in his pants, and the Soviet Union brings horror into the lives of adult characters no less than maniacs. submarine that ran aground in Swedish waters. A chilly but gorgeous book.
The author of cult fantasy sagas and unnoticeable horror films broke out into the cultural elite, offering the reader a new version of conspiracy theory: Simmons began to destroy ancient mysteries with wild, but carefully substantiated solutions. The most successful was the first experiment, in which the author twice deceives the cunning reader. First, instead of the expected thriller, they slipped in a verbose, tedious and purely realistic reconstruction of the report on the Arctic voyage of the ships Erebus and Terror, which perished in the mid-19th century while setting off in search of the Northwest Passage to Canada. According to Simmons, to the dogmatic planning, arrogance of command and theft of suppliers that traditionally ruined expeditions, a main factor incompatible with life was added: a monster living in the ice that emerges from any clot of the polar night, casually bites a person along with the yard and loves to lay out puzzles from fragments of human bodies . The first 500 pages of the 900-page volume are devoted to a detailed build-up of the nightmare: the crew sits on frozen ships, weekly carrying new corpses into rat-infested holds and looking longingly into the future. And it’s even sadder for the reader. And then Simmons deceives the reader once again, thrusting him and the characters into an ending that was impossible to imagine, and which is gripping, just like in childhood. And scares accordingly.
Not so much a frightening as an alarmingly puzzling cycle of dry, tough and very catchy stories, in each of which the hero, either a Komsomol member of twenty-five thousand, or a Red Army soldier in the flying detachment of the NKVD, or a special doctor, or a bomber with a truck, is faced with scribes and werewolves who jump out from the basements and forests of the Voronezh outback. Much, as Shchepetnev expects, is explained by the machinations of the Soviet government, demolishing churches and blowing up power units, but the author, as, again, he should, makes it clear to the impartial reader that the Bolsheviks only took the lid off the hellish incubator they had not built. A couple of times Shchepetnev, who has long been playing with an alternative course of history, could not resist roughly sticking a classic plot into real village life. To show, for example, how the story of Gogol’s “Viy” would be seen by a left-wing traveler who, according to the party line, spends the night in a church while Khoma is being sausaged to the shouts of “And you, Brutus!” Or how events would have turned out at the U Hotel dead climber“If natural scientists and special laboratory assistants had gathered there, and instead of aliens, zombies and werewolves were playing pranks. I have to report that nothing good came of it anyway. Some of the main characters remained alive - and that's bread. Black like that.
Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker was a theater critic and also the impresario of the famous British actor Henry Irving. He led a stormy bohemian life, was friends with Conan Doyle, and was interested in the occult and Eastern European folklore. Stoker's last passion, which took him eight years, eventually turned into the novel Dracula (1897), which was a fantastic success. The book was so popular that it was even released in a separate edition in a cheap paperback cover. Bram Stoker, of course, did not invent any vampires, but it was in his version that these characters received “recognition,” becoming part of world culture. The prototype of Dracula, the Romanian medieval prince Vlad Cepes, who bore the nickname Dracula (son of the Dragon), blood in literally He didn’t drink, but metaphorically he did: his antics were extremely cruel.
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein came to his creator in a dream: Mary Shelley dreamed of a “pale scientist” collecting operating table living creature. Having accepted the challenge of Lord Byron, her sister’s then friend, who offered to promptly compose a story, Shelley wrote down own dream, having slightly developed it. After some time, this story was completed, turning into a full-fledged novel. The author was not yet twenty that year; It is not surprising that Frankenstein was originally published under a pseudonym. As for the prototype of Victor Frankenstein, one version says that Shelley, while writing the novel, had in her head the image of Johann Conrad Dippel, a German alchemist who tried to create artificial person by boiling in a vat individual parts bodies.
Robert Stevenson
Stevenson was not trained in horror and was not interested in mysticism - he was interested in travel, romance in any form and real life. However, the writer remained in history thanks not only to “Treasure Island”, but also to “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” - a book that was completely unlike its author. Main character, suffering from a split personality, each side of which pulls him towards itself, became the first in a large number of schizophrenic characters in world culture, from Norman Bates (“Psycho”) to Beavis and Gollum. Comic book creators are especially fond of this theme of duality: nowadays, many superheroes suffer from a loss of identity, be it the Hulk or the Green Goblin.
Edgar Poe
In his most famous photograph, taken the year of his death, Poe looks like an unpleasant, swollen fellow, his face grimaced with bile. The poet had enough reasons for dissatisfaction: a difficult personal life, lack of proper recognition, problems with alcohol, poverty. Despite all this (or, conversely, thanks to it), Edgar Allan Poe accomplished a lot in his forty years. The Fall of the House of Usher, Annabel Lee, The Raven, Murder on the Rue Morgue, The Cask of Amontillado - these names and titles have become firmly established in literary usage. The persona of this American classic and founder of the detective genre has long been a real cult, with its own traditions, myths and a famous secret admirer - a man with closed face, who have been visiting Poe's grave on his birthday for many years.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Lovecraft's main book, The Call of Cthulhu, about a terrible deity, has become a genre example. The texts of the writer, little known during his lifetime, became canonical and innovative. It was Lovecraft who laid the foundations for horror associated with the invasion of extraterrestrial forces and created his own Universe filled with myths. The tradition of playing with fictitious primary sources also belongs to this author: the dangerous Necronomicon, mentioned by him in many books, has driven dozens of conspiracy theorists crazy, confident that such a manuscript really exists.
Robert Bloch
American writer, produced in large quantities pulp fiction - “cheap” stories in which horror was intertwined with fantasy. However, the novel “Psycho” went down in history. The story of Norman Bates, a maniac obsessed with his own mother, is based on the case of Ed Gein, one of the most terrifying serial killers ever. known to the world. Arrested in 1957, Gein spent many years killing and dismembering women, keeping their body parts in visible places in his home. Two years later, “Psycho” appeared on the shelves of bookstores, which had great success. This book cannot be called an investigative novel, just as it cannot be called 100% fiction: Bloch, who knew the Gein case only in general terms, turned real story as an excuse for your own fantasies. “Psycho” impressed director Alfred Hitchcock so much that he not only acquired the film rights, but also tried to buy up the entire circulation in order to keep the plot a secret from future viewers.
Richard Matheson
The classic of American literature, who died in the summer of 2013, is known throughout the world thanks to his active friendship with Hollywood. The relatively recent, 2007, film adaptation of Matheson's main novel, "", added new fans to the author, who may not have known that the blockbuster with Will Smith is the fourth film version of the book. Matheson is considered the founding father of the zombie apocalypse theme; those writers who write about pandemics, the coming of the living dead, and so on. (from Stephen King to Max Brooks with his “World War Z”), one way or another develop his ideas.
Stephen King
The commonplace “king of horrors,” despite all its banality, is true to its essence. King is truly the number one writer in the horror genre; thanks to him, phobias, violence, vampires, the otherworldly, became part of a larger culture. Stephen King himself is also a great writer, whose efficiency and phenomenal love for literature cannot but admire. It seems that there is no topic on which King would not speak, there is no genre in which he has not tried himself.
Dean Koontz
Author of dozens of bestsellers, formally number two in the genre after Stephen King. Kunz is a classic example of a craftsman who knows his business and doesn’t lay claim to anything other than large circulations (and they are off the charts - more than 100 million) (which is also, of course, a lot). The story of how Dean Koontz's wife gave him five years to write a bestseller and get rich is revealing and explains a lot. Koontz is fine - books are being sold and written, Hollywood is making films (the latest film adaptation is the thriller "" with Anton Yelchin), but when The New York Times writes that "Koontz reads King and is afraid, King reads Koontz and is afraid", the respected publication recklessly puts there is an equal sign between these authors.
Ambrose Bierce
Clive Barker
British multi-actor, known as a screenwriter and director ("", "") almost more than as a writer. Barker also writes plays, stages them in theaters, writes essays, and produces films.
Anne Rice
Koji Suzuki
The smiling Japanese man, who hates horror and prefers to deal with “normal” literature, is nevertheless famous for his “Ring” trilogy.
