I’m thoroughly sick of the real horror story currently in progress and am looking to read some good fiction. I like the old Stephen King stuff but haven’t much cared for anything he’s written in the last 30 or so years. I still remember the chapter in "Salem’s Lot "when a priest refused to toss a cross aside and it lost it’s power to protect him from the vampire because he’d shown he had no real faith that god would protect him even without it. I wonder how many christians, so proud of their “faith”, would pass that test? Of course atheist would be screwed, so I guess we’re all lucky none of that shit is real. Anyway…got any ideas for a good horror story read? I liked “The Shining” too, so not just vampire stuff.
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How about some classic Poe, such as The Pit and the Pendulum?
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I’ve been a fan of H.P. Lovecraft since I was in high school, so I’d recommend his stuff. And Poe is also an excellent suggestion. I also just finished reading a series of books by Michael Penning that he refers to as his Book of Shadows series. It begins 100 years after the 1692 Salem witch trials in colonial America, and deals with one of the women hanged for witchcraft vowing revenge. It continues the story for at least 4 books(so far), and I’d recommend it as well, I liked what I read.
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Maybe read current events about Trump’s second presidency?
I think the current news is about a million times more frightening than any Stephen King or Dean Koontz novel.
Also, have you ever read Peter Straub? I also think highly of John Saul.
I wrote a couple of horror short stories that were published in Blood Moon Rising.
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I have an unusual suggestion. Nightmares of Eminent Persons, and Other Stories by Bertrand Russell. Among these, The Existentialist’s Nightmare is possibly the most noteworthy. Worth persevering with is Zahatopolk, as bizarre as it is, because it’s a suitably devastating critique of religion into the bargain.
Download your copy from here.
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It was not exactly a jump-scare type of book, but the textbook I was forced to use for the course I took in thermodynamics at university was horrific. So horrific that I ritually defaced, defiled, and destroyed it after the exam.
LOL I’m afraid it would all be gibberish to me. A simple calculation they had to do in the movie “Apollo 13” made me sick to my stomach. They had to get it right or they’d bounce off the atmosphere and be forever lost in space. Geez, I’m trying not to hyper ventilate thinking about it.
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What I found more intimidating than the math (which, as astronauts, they would – especially with help from ground control – be able to ace). It was executing the maneuver manually with what appeared to be an improvised line-of-sight / dead reckoning method, and also using the LEM thrusters to do things they weren’t really designed to do, pushing around the dead weight of their disabled ship. So it wasn’t just getting the math right, it was executing the maneuver according to the math, under difficult conditions.
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I know a great horror book you can read.
It starts off: "In the beginning . . . "
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Steven King’s: The Jaunt
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Do you remember the “A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” The book opens with the discovery that the world is about to be destroyed to make way for a galactic freeway. So taking off on that theme we learn that the White House maintenance staff have been replaced by aliens who have replaced the toilet with a device that mimics a black hole. With each flush the swirls become stronger and larger until it reaches critical mass and starts sucking its users down the drain, then the white house itself and the surrounding buildings. Now the question is will it stop at the city limits, the country’s borders or will it suck the whole world down the drain. Another question is where is the drain’s exit. Of course it would have to come with a disclaimer that warns that events in the movie are in no way, related to present day.
I’m reminded here of the Grand Guignol theatre in Paris, which used to stage some stomach churning horror plays for its audience. After World War II, it declined and closed.
The last director of the theatre, Charles Nonon, explained why the theatre closed:
“We could never equal Buchenwald. Before the war, everyone felt that what was happening onstage was impossible. Now we know that these things, and worse, are possible in reality.”
That has been a spectre looming over every horror story since. Namely, that someone will take history into an epoch that exceeds the worst imaginings of horror fiction creators. I suspect we’re on the verge of such an episode …
It has been said that every era’s horror movies reflect the fears of that era. So in the 1950s and 60s we had the fear of nuclear radiation or outright nuclear war and various takes on that; later movies shifted their focus to things like computers or nanotechnology run amok, etc.
I found the recent remake of Nosferatu to reflect this age’s latest angst. The wealthy Count Orlock is said to want “to eat the whole world” and Nosferatu himself admits that he cannot love because “I am nothing but desire”.
What is Nosferatu but a representation of ultra-rich oligarchs who want everything for themselves and care not what they are taking away from ordinary people?
I was going to make a wise crack about the BuyBull too 
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