First Horror Novel That You Ever Read?

[Gnosticangel]

Often the first experience of anything sets the tone for what follows. What was your very first horror novel?

My own memory is not extremely exact, but I know that even before I read Dracula and Frankenstein, I found an old copy of "The Werewolf of Paris," (1933) by Guy Endore. Sadism, incest, mutilation, blood drinking and dreams of becoming a wolf; the contents shocked my young mind and haunted my own dreams. The final Lovecraftian report of what was eventually found in the protagonist's grave was a shocker.

I note my unreliable memory, since I also first read Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" around this same period. While this is more strictly a Gothic tragedy-romance, (since mutilated by Disney as bad as any Inquisitor), for me at this time in my life, the horrific story of the grotesque hunchback who was abused and tortured, himself a living ghost haunting the shadowy cathedral, was in effect a horror novel that provided many nightmares.

Now looking back, I can see that these works helped create a colored lens through which I have since viewed many other works, including Ligotti's.

Other readers' first horror novels?