My Favorite Horror Story

Stephen King's "The Mist" novella was a favorite way back when. I liked that he left the mystery intact, and the tense/gloomy/adventurous ending. I don't know what my favorite is now, I'm pretty sure something by TL. I did like most of the stories in Robert Aikman's Cold Hand in Mine last year.
 
Do you mean short story or novel?

My favorite horror short story would have to be "The Picture In The House" by H.P. Lovecraft

My favorite horror novel is "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy. (Although it is a western)
 
I will also add "The Desolate Presence" by Thomas Owen. TL mentioned this author in one of his interviews many years ago. I just unearthed the book while looking through some boxes. I have only read about half a dozen of his stories, and this is the only one I really care for, but it is outstanding. It may be his most well known story because the book is titled The Desolate Presence and Other Uncanny Stories by Thomas Owen. I would highly recommend it to TL fans. It is very Ligottian.

Aethersanctum,
I agree that Blood Meridian is a great "horror" novel. It is one of my favorites too.
 
I thought it might help me to post this question in a community of knowledgable horror enthusiasts. I am trying to put together a collection of good horror stories for my high school class. I read an anthology years ago -- something picked up while traveling in a hostel, and then left behind -- which contained two excellent, spine-chilling stories. One was, I have recently discovered, AM Burrage's 'The Waxworks.' The other I cannot seem to find.
It was about a young boy hidden away with his reclusive mother in the forest, and found after her death. He wouldn't speak, and as far as I can recall, it was believed that she killed him through abuse. Although, eventually it was discovered that the case was exactly the opposite. Few horror stories have chilled me in this way. Any ideas?
 
My memory doesn't usually paint a coherent picture for things I've read in the deep past....

At the moment I'd choose:

"Xelucha" M.P. Sheil
"Phorfor" M.P. Sheil (the entire collection "Shapes in the Fire" is quite remarkable)
"Conflict" Stéphane Mallarmé
"Witch In-Grain" R. Murray Gilchrist
"A Country Dr." Franz Kafka
"the Masque of the Red Death" Poe
"Los of Breath" Poe
"Four Beasts in One; the Homo-Camelopard" Poe
"Lottery in Babble" Jorge Luis Borges
"the Whisperer of the Darkness" H.P. Lovecraft

-If I could Cheat a little, and Consider a couple novels and Poetry, then:

"Maldoror" Comte de Lautreamont
"the Hill of Dreams" Arthur Machen
"Milton" William Blake ( Had some most fantastic dreams after reading this)
"Aha!" Aleister Crowley
"Moon Child" ...Crowley

couple of these are more supernatural then horror...but whatever.



 
O'Brien fans should also check out 'The Spider's Eye'. Uncanny and original.

My favourite horror story is Orson Scott Card's 'Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory'. The tittle is a bit of a mouthful, I admit, but the story is quite simply a masterpiece.
 
Icicle Kite said:
At the moment I'd choose:

"Xelucha" M.P. Sheil
"Phorfor" M.P. Sheil (the entire collection "Shapes in the Fire" is quite remarkable)
Click to expand...

I’ve been meaning to read M. P. Shiel ever since running across a description of his work in Brian Aldiss’s Billion Year Spree, back when I was a teenager too many years ago.

In his essay “Thomas Ligotti: The Escape from Life,” S. T. Joshi says of Ligotti’s prose style: “The closest analogy, on purely stylistic grounds, is the eccentric idiom of M. P. Shiel, although he is not a writer whom Ligotti acknowledges as an influence or model....[Ligotti’s work] stylistically echoes Shiel’s tortuous, metaphor-laden prose-poetry, while at the same time seeking to capture that atmosphere of nightmarish or hallucinatory strangeness that typifies Shiel’s best work.”

I’ve glanced briefly at some of Shiel’s writings on the Project Gutenberg site, and here and there I can see a definite resemblance between the two writer’s styles. But -- at least based on the little of Shiel I’ve looked at -- the resemblance seems to be spotty. Some of Shiel’s sentences and paragraphs don’t seem very much like Ligotti’s. Still, Joshi’s observation is an interesting one -- food for thought for whenever I get around to reading Shiel.
 
Here are a few other great horror stories that I have read recently:

Just TheVery Thing They Wanted by Dino Buzzati
The Phantom Slayer by Fritz Leiber
Shallaballah by Mark Samuels
At the Bureau by Steve Rasnic Tem
Ice Age of Dreams by Michael Cisco
 
bendk said:
Here are a few other great horror stories that I have read recently:

Just TheVery Thing They Wanted by Dino Buzzati
The Phantom Slayer by Fritz Leiber
Shallaballah by Mark Samuels
At the Bureau by Steve Rasnic Tem
Ice Age of Dreams by Michael Cisco
Click to expand...

Your list reminded me that The Alarming Revenge of a Domestic Pet by Dino Buzzati is one of my favorites.
 
waffles said:
Your list reminded me that The Alarming Revenge of a Domestic Pet by Dino Buzzati is one of my favorites.
Click to expand...

That sounds like a good one. I only have two books by Buzzati: The Tartar Steppe and The Siren (a collection of short stories). I have read a couple more in anthologies. I found "Just The Very Thing They Wanted" in European Tales of Terror. His out of print collections Restless Nights and Catastrophe are way too expensive for me. Catastrophe is supposed to be reprinted next month, but it has been slated for publication for years and they keep putting it off, so I'm not holding my breath. Buzzati has written some excellent stories.
 
It seems strange to see a Mark Samuels story cited.

Last time I saw one of his was when he was posting me his early efforts for criticism. I assume they're improved since then (although whether as a result of my criticisms or in spite of them is a matter open to doubt). ;)
 
Obviously anything by Thomas Ligotti, "The Chimney" by Ramsey Campbell, "The House of Usher" by Poe, and "How To Edit" by Richard Christian Matheson. Yes, that last one is actually a short story. Alex
 
bendk said:
I will also add "The Desolate Presence" by Thomas Owen. TL mentioned this author in one of his interviews many years ago. I just unearthed the book while looking through some boxes. I have only read about half a dozen of his stories, and this is the only one I really care for, but it is outstanding. It may be his most well known story because the book is titled The Desolate Presence and Other Uncanny Stories by Thomas Owen. I would highly recommend it to TL fans. It is very Ligottian.
Click to expand...

Thank you, Bendk. I just received a copy of this from an antiquarian friend who insists it's right up my alley, and your comments have helped confirms he is right. I hope to start the book soon.
 
It is almost impossible to choose, because the instant after one has made their choice, one remembers "The Fall of the House of Usher" or "Sticks." These days I am divided between "The Haunter of the Dark" and THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD. It's been two years since I have read WARD, as I am waiting for S. T. Joshi's new annotated edition before I peruse it again.

I've just read Laird Barron's collection OCCULTATION for a second time, and if I can choose a favourite new horror author, he is it. Read "Catch Hell" last night, and gawd it spook'd & thrill'd me! An amazing writer.
 
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