My Favorite Horror Story

As many have pointed out, there are so many excellent horror stories out there, but I'll mention three off the top of my head:
The Willows- Algernon Blackwood
The White People- Arthur Machen
Compulsory Games- Robert Aickman
I mention this last story by Aickman because I read it recently and it has stayed in my mind like a virus, especially because of the following haunting passage: 'But after life has begun to run away from us, nothing is ever again really credible, nor does it matter.'
For me, Aickman is more scarier than Lovecraft. That may be heresy to some, but who cares.
 
Aickman is better than everybody, so it's not too much of a damnation of the Providence poet.
 
I haven’t read everything obviously but here’s some that spring to mind when I read the thread title.

The Birthday of the Infanta - by Oscar Wilde
The Mezzotint - by M.R. James (Edit: On 2nd thoughts Whistle and I’ll Come... is better)
City of the Singing Flame - by Clark Ashton Smith
It - by Theodore Sturgeon
Last Feast of the Harlequin - by Ligotti
The Dowager of Bees - by China Mieville
The Quiet Room - by V.H. Leslie
Cold Snap - by Robert Shearman
 
Here's my attempt at a little CPR on this thread...

The Pattern - Ramsey Campbell ( Which I first read in the collection My Favorite Horror Story, so thank you, Poppy Z Brite.)

The Picture in the House - HP Lovecraft

The Swords - Robert Aickman

Gas Station Carnivals - Thomas Ligotti

Mysterium Tremendum - Laird Barron

The Events at Poroth Farm - TED Klein

The Blood Drip - Brian Evenson (Along with his "The Second Boy," and "Black Bark" which share similar set-ups. And I'd advise reading those first.)

Making Snakes - Christopher Slatsky

The Summer People - Shirley Jackson

It Only Comes Out at Night - Dennis Etchison

Still Water - Joel Lane (The entirety of Lane's Where Furnaces Burn is an immense pleasure.)

Little Lambs - Stephen Graham Jones

Stillborn - Nina Kiriki Hoffman
 
The Black Cat (Poe, 1843)
The Yellow Wallpaper (Gilman, 1892)
The Yellow Sign (Chambers, 1895)
The Novel of the Black Seal (Machen, 1895)
The Spider (Ewers, 1908)
The Room in the Tower (Benson, 1912)
Fumes (Grabinski, 1913)
The Judgement (Kafka, 1913)
The Music of Erich Zann (Lovecraft, 1922)
The Caterpillar (Ranpo, 1929)
The Night Ocean (Barlow, 1936)
The Hill and the Hole (Leiber, 1942)
Skeleton (Bradbury, 1945)
Bianca’s Hands (Sturgeon, 1947)
The Axolotl (Cortazar, 1952)
Ravissante (Aickman, 1968)
Passengers (Silverberg, 1968)
Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan (Ballard, 1968)
The Nighthawk (Etchison, 1978)
The Brood (Campbell, 1980)
Tissue Ablation and Variant Regeneration: A Case Report (Blumlein, 1984)
The Pear-Shaped Man (Martin, 1987)
The Peephole (Giraudon, 1992)
Our Temporary Supervisor (Ligotti, 1997)
Vrolyck (Samuels, 2003)
Metamorphosis A (Kiernan, 2006)
The Animal Aspect of Her Movement (Golaski, 2008)
The Last, Clean, Bright Summer (Llewellyn, 2014)
Born Stillborn (Evenson, 2015)
Mare’s Nest (Gavin, 2016)
 
Nemonymous said:
my review today of WHAT WAS IT? by Fitz-James O’Brien

dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/07/26/fitz-james-obrien-what-was-it/
Click to expand...


I think, in hindsight, this review somehow landed on the actual answer to the title’s question —
the concept of money!

From an internet biography of FJOB - “On his twenty-first birthday in 1849 he came into his inheritance of around £8,000 and left for London. There he ran through his money in two years of luxurious living. […] He never returned, never again lived within his means,… […] …he amusingly satirises his poverty, it made him famous;”
 
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My top two since my teens have always been The Masque of the Red Death and The Music of Erich Zann. There are many other amazing horror stories, some much more scary than those, but aesthetically, they are at my pinnacle. Ligotti is super close in many instances but I think that I absorbed Poe and Lovecraft so early, and have continued to value and revere their work, unlike so many of the other assessments of my youth, that these two cannot be displaced.
 
bendk said:
I have an entertaining book that is called My Favorite Horror Story. It was published by DAW Books in 2000. The editors asked fifteen contemporary horror authors what their favorite horror story was. The story was then prefaced by a brief reason why the author liked the story.This book is similar to Horror 100 Best Books except it deals with the short story. This is the contents page:

"Sweets to the Sweet" by Robert Bloch Chosen by Stephen King
"The Father-Thing" by Philip K. Dick Chosen by Ed Gorman
"The Distributor" by Richard Matheson Chosen by F. Paul Wilson
"A Warning to the Curious" by M.R. James Chosen by Ramsey Campbell
"Opening the Door" by Arthur Machen Chosen by Peter Adkins
"The Colour Out of Space" by HPL Chosen by Richard Laymon
"The Inner Room" by Robert Aickman Chosen by Peter Straub
"Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chosen by Rick Hautala
"The Rats in the Walls" by HPL Chosen by Michael Slade
"The Dog Park" by Dennis Etchison Chosen by Richard Christian Matheson
"The Animal Fair" by Robert Bloch Chosen by Joe R. Lansdale
"The Pattern" by Ramsey Campbell Chosen by Poppy Z. Brite
"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe Chosen by Joyce Carol Oates
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce Chosen by Dennis Etchison
"The Human Chair" by Edigawa Rampo Chosen by Harlan Ellison
Click to expand...

It has been almost 25 years since this book was published. A new generation of horror authors has risen. Not to mention the horror authors who didn't participate in the original volume. It would be nice to see another volume published. I would like to hear what story meant a lot to the current crop of significant horror authors and why it was meaningful to them. Thomas Ligotti, Clive Barker, Laird Barron, Adam Nevill, Michael Cisco, Simon Strantzas, Richard Gavin, and others. Who else?
 
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