Deck the halls with gore and cobwebs!
The Halloween season is well underway, and for those of you in search of bone-chilling reads, we’ve compiled a list of our thirteen spookiest stories. From mysterious disappearances and brutal murders to haunted manors and ghoulish curses, there’s something to send shivers down everyone’s spine.
Read on – if you dare!
1. The Curse of Loch Ness by Peter Tremayne
When London-raised Jeannie travels up to Scotland to determine the future of the castle she’s inherited on the banks of Loch Ness, the odd housekeeper, weird wailing and general eerie atmosphere leave her with a lot of questions. In a bid to find answers, Jennie explores her relatives old quarters and discovers a journal, where she learns of a horrible truth that the castle and lake are hiding…
This is a menacing story of the marriage of man, myth and magic in a nightmare world of compulsive horror and evil.
2. The Silent Stranger by Aileen Izett
After her husband confesses to having an affair, Isabel flees alone to the South of France to supervise the renovation of her brother’s recently acquired château.
Isabel loses herself in her work alongside the grumpy ex-pat Greg, until one day a beautiful young girl, Eveline, mysteriously appears on the remote grounds, entirely mute and clutching a bullet in her palm. Who is Eveline and what is she looking for?
3. The Man Who Would Be Jack by David Bullock
In 1893, two years after the last Ripper murder, Detective Inspector William Race met with two journalists working for The Sun and told them that he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper.
In The Man Who Would Be Jack, the author re-examines Inspector Race’s and the journalists’ findings and uncovers startling new evidence to support the idea that Thomas Haynes Cutbush was Jack the Ripper. This is a fresh, exciting detective and whodunnit story that whips along at a cracking pace.
4. Dyatlov Pass by Alan K. Baker
In February 1959, a group of friends went on a ski-hiking trip to a remote mountain in the northern Urals. Something killed them . . .
When a rescue expedition eventually found their camp, they discovered that for some unknown reason, the nine friends had cut their way out of their tent (instead of simply opening the flaps) and fled down the mountain, half undressed and without their shoes. Some had died of hypothermia, while others had strange injuries which one medical examiner stated were consistent with a high-speed car crash.
5. Scarecrow by Eaton K Goldthwaite
Lt. Joe Dickerson is a consultant to the Connecticut State Police, and he does not want to be in Sudwich. The small Connecticut town has three industries – the mills, controlled by an old man sick in bed – fishing, and the arts.
But now the Scarecrow has arrived, and it looks as if Sudwich is developing a fourth industry—murder. Can Dickerson unravel the mysteries before it’s too late?
6. Mirror of the Night by E.C. Tubb
From master storyteller, E. C. Tubb comes ten chilling tales of dark fantasy and supernatural horror.
Set against a wall of trees, the old mansion squatted like a decaying beast, scabbed with lichen, beneath the sagging eaves. Lightning flashed over the twisted chimneys and brought into bright prominence the flaking bricks and mouldering tiles. The relic of a bygone age, to all appearances, empty and with no sign of life, but as lightning flashes again against the windows, some fickle form flickers in the glass.
7. The Locust Farm by Jeremy Dronfield
Carole Perceval lives alone on a remote Yorkshire farm, trying to forget a painful past in the solitude of the moors. Her life is one of tranquil routine, until one rain-swept night when a dishevelled figure appears from the darkness.
The man has no memory, no idea who he is. He is exhausted and desperate, and the farm is his only refuge. Both of them dream of escape. Of change. Of redemption. And both are about to step into a nightmare.
8. The Nightmare Whisperers by John Burke
They were the Gifted Ones. These members of an ancient bloodline have an uncanny ability to enter into people’s dreams and invoke nightmares, or to implant subconscious ideas a victim would believe to be their own.
But what if the Gifted Ones should one day rise up and seek to meet up with their own kind, and suppose one of them had deadly intentions? Who (or what) could possibly counter their almost unfettered power?
9. Something’s Alive on the Titanic by Robert J Sterling
Something is alive on the Titanic — something powerful and malevolent that protects the once-great ocean liner from the rapacious intentions of those who would desecrate her grave. Whatever is down there was first encountered by a classified mission in 1975, and they could never speak of it.
Now, a new group of men and women want to retrace the steps of that original voyage. The rumours of monsters and apparitions can’t be true, can they?
10. Demons by Daylight by Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell, known for his Lovecraftian mastery of the horror-fiction genre, presents a collection of short stories and supernatural tales set in the disconcerting world of what seems like our reality.
Rooted in the haunts and byways of London and Liverpool, his tales are peopled with the restless youth of today, the atmosphere of today’s world. It’s this uncanny element that makes his stories so captivating and spine-chilling.
11. The Lighthouse Keeper by Alan K. Baker
In December 1900, three lighthouse keepers vanished without a trace from the remote Scottish island of Eilean Mor. An emergency relief crew was sent to man the lighthouse, and at the end of their month-long duty, they resigned from their posts, never to speak of what they had experienced.
In the present, a group of environmental researchers arrives to observe the wildlife. The team discovers a note — a warning of something ancient and powerful and strange beyond imagining…
12. Snowbeast! by Peter Tremayne
When Ellen MacDonald arrives for a surprise visit to her uncle’s remote lodge on the lower slopes of the snow-swept Cairngorms, Doctor MacDonald is on a most unusual case.
At the time-hallowed monastery of St Bechan, a brother has fallen dangerously ill with a mysterious sickness. The doctor’s diagnosis suggests a baffling fever, but to the monks of St Bechan, steeped in the dark myths of the Black Peak, it is a case of possession.
13. All Hallows Evil by Valerie Wolzein
For Susan Henshaw, the trick is that somebody has been murdered. The treat would be finding out who did it. And all the clues point to his “grieving” widow. At first, Susan Henshaw thought the body in the library was a Halloween trick – but then she saw the blood and heard the man’s dying gasp.
Then a second body was found stabbed on his front porch. Now, as Susan begins to investigate the deaths, she uncovers secrets that a killer would go to any lengths to keep hidden…
