Best books on religion, horror, and the supernatural

matt cardin

matt cardin

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The book recommendation website Shepherd.com invited me to create a grouped list of "the five best books" on any theme of my choice. I chose "religion, horror, and the supernatural" (which, incidentally, is the title of a college course I once developed and taught). The result was published today. I targeted my choices to appeal to a broad audience, so there's nothing too abstruse among them. Anyway, I thought this might be of general interest here, even though I didn't include anything by Ligotti.
 
Thanks, I've read the Otto book and "The Exorcist" is on my to-be-read shelf, but I will have to get hold of the other three books.


I found the S.L. Varnado book Haunted Presence: The Numinous in Gothic Fiction very readable on this topic, maybe that one would be in a top ten list...
 
I actually had Varnado's book on the list originally, but then I realized I had accidentally named six books instead of the ceiling limit of five. I made a judgment call to keep the other five, and I'm still not sure I eliminated the right one.
 
matt cardin said:
The book recommendation website Shepherd.com invited me to create a grouped list of "the five best books" on any theme of my choice. I chose "religion, horror, and the supernatural" (which, incidentally, is the title of a college course I once developed and taught). The result was published today. I targeted my choices to appeal to a broad audience, so there's nothing too abstruse among them. Anyway, I thought this might be of general interest here, even though I didn't include anything by Ligotti.
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I hit the ground running with this list. I've read three of them already: Religion and Its Monsters by Timothy K. Beal, The Secret Life of Puppets by Victoria Nelson, and The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. I initially thought I had read The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto, but upon checking it turns out that I read Beyond Psychology by Otto Rank. Wrong Otto. The Rudolf book is on Audible, so I may listen to that one. I usually try to read philosophical works in book form so I can mark up the book with light pencil jottings to help me remember certain ideas, etc. but I am getting to the point where it doesn't mean anything anymore. (Not that it ever did to begin with.) The Ingebretsen book looks entertaining. I liked the books that I did read. Some of the more harrowing scenes in Blatty's book never made it to the screen, which is a shame, but necessary. It's as good a movie as you can hope for from the material. I listened to an audible book last year dealing with 'real' exorcisms. Mental illness is a horrible thing. I mean that for all involved. A good movie that I know you are aware of, but maybe some of our newer members may not, is Frailty directed by Bill Paxton, starring him, Matthew McConaughey, and Powers Boothe. When I first viewed it, I liked it so much that I searched to see if it was based on a novel. But from what I gathered, it looks like it was based on an original screenplay by Brent Hanley. It was partially inspired by The Binding of Isaac.

I probably would have included something by Lovecraft on my list.
 
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Great call on Frailty, whose reputation as a mostly undersung semi-classic is, I think, largely deserved. I included a sound clip from it ("Demons are taking over the world") in my song "Daimonica," as it was one of the movies that was rattling around in my psyche in the mid-aughts when I was creating the music that eventually coalesced into my Daemonyx album.

Regarding Lovecraft, I considered including something by him on my list, but then I figured I'd let the Lovecraftian religion-horror connection be folded into some of the books I did end up including (as Nelson, Ingebretsen, and Beal all devote some space to the man and/or his work) in order to make the coverage broader.
 
The Secret Life of Puppets feels like a revelation as you read it. What's more, though Ms. Nelson doesn't mention Ligotti, virtually the whole book feels as if it has his spirit hovering over, behind, or somewhere near it. An amazing work, truly.
 
Lesternixon said:
I was given the opportunity to compile a list of "the five best books" on any subject by the book review website Shepherd.com. "Religion, horror, and the supernatural" was my selection (which, incidentally, is the title of a college course I once developed and taught). The outcome was released today. There is nothing overly complex in my selections because I tried to make them appealing to a wide audience. Regardless, even though I didn't include anything by Ligotti, I thought this could be of general interest here.
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So . . . what exactly is this reply about? Who wrote it? It's like a ChatGPT re-rendering of my own original post at the top of the thread. Hello? Echo? Is it live or Memorex?
 
Thanks, Jon. When there was a sudden rush of sign-ups with weirdly anonymous-sounding handles in recent days, I had wondered whether it was an influx of bots.
 
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