Putting together a list of the best Stephen King books is not an easy feat. Stephen King is one of the most popular writers of all time and a master of horror. To say he’s influenced the genre lastingly would be an understatement. His books are so popular they almost ...
Dean Koontz is an American writer and a master at his work. You will see so for yourself, if you check out the best Dean Koontz books. Most people would consider his work to be part of the thriller genre, but he often blends in elements of science-fiction, horror, mystery, ...
Stephen King is a master of horror and one of the most popular and most successful horror writers of all time. Over the course of his long career, he’s written over sixty novels and two hundred short stories. I’ve been a fan of Stephen King ever since I was a ...
Stephen King is one of the most successful fiction writers of all time. Over the course of his career, he’s written over sixty novels and over two hundred short stories. While he’s most famous for his novels, many Stephen King short stories are also fantastic works of fiction. Stephen King ...
Howard Phillips Lovecraft or H. P. Lovecraft is probably my favorite horror writer of all time. Howard Phillips Lovecraft There’s something about his style, the scope of his works, and of course his many creations that make the man’s work so fascinating to me. Not to mention cosmic horror itself, ...
As a horror writer, I’ve always been reading, yet most of what I read were works of classical literature. Recently I started to read the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe was a writer whose stories I was well familiar with. Yet, it was mostly ...
As a horror writer, it’s only natural for me to read the works of other horror writers. It’s not only that though, I’m also a huge fan of anything that’s disturbing, scary or downright weird. That’s why I put together a list of the best horror books I’ve read. Over ...
Putting together a list of the best Stephen King books is not an easy feat.
Stephen King is one of the most popular writers of all time and a master of horror. To say he’s influenced the genre lastingly would be an understatement.
His books are so popular they almost always make it into the New York Times’ Best Seller list.
Stephen King is a writer known by almost everyone. Many people, myself included, grew up reading Stephen King’s works. Others know him because his work inspired some of the greatest horror movies of all time.
Stephen King
While his name’s synonymous with horror, he’s a much more prolific writer. He’s written science-fiction, fantasy, and much more, including essays and even a memoir.
Getting started with Stephen King can be tough. Over the course of a career lasting half a century, he’s written over sixty novels, various novellas and over two hundred short stories.
For this reason, I put together a list of the best Stephen King books.
Dolores Claiborne might be one of the more controversial entries on this list, but I enjoyed it and regard is one of the best Stephen King books.
The book is a 300 page monologue given by the titular character. Even more interesting, the book doesn’t contain any supernatural elements.
Dolores Claiborne tells the story of an elderly lady. When her even older employer, Vera Donovan, is murdered, Dolores becomes a suspect.
During her interrogation, Dolores tells the long story of her relationship with Vera. Yet, her story starts long before she met Vera. We learn of her abusive, failing marriage and her husband’s death. It also details Vera’s mental and physical decline and the toll it took on the people around her.
Dolores Claiborne is far from a pleasant story, but the reader, similar to those interrogating her, will find himself drawn in and wanting to find out how it continues.
The greatest thing about Dolores Claiborne, however, is that she differs vastly from Stephen King’s earlier heroines, who were almost always passive and interchangeably.
While Dolores Claiborne is a controversial novel, one fans are divided on, I urge you to read it.
The Long Walk was one of the first Stephen King novels I read. Incidentally, it was also the first novel he ever wrote. Stephen King wrote The Long Walk eight years before Carrie was published and eventually released it under his pseudonym Richard Bachman.
The novel can be best described as a dystopian, psychological thriller. One hundred teenage boys take part in a contest that’s known as ‘the walk.’ The winner gets anything he desires.
The boys have to maintain a speed of four miles per hour and walk on without pause. They get three warnings for slowing down before they are executed by the military personnel present. This continues until only one boy is left.
The Long Walk is a fantastic novel that gives us a lot of insight into the human psyche. It shows how empathy, mercy and kindness are lost and how nothing but uncaring numbness remains.
It’s a psychological thriller that’s much more chilling than many of Stephen King’s other, more usual novels.
What I came to enjoy the most was that Stephen King could make something as mundane as a walk a truly terrifying experience. The characters, too, were interesting and one always came to wonder ‘who’s next.’
While not for everyone, this short dystopian novel is a great, earlier work by Stephen King. I can’t help but regard it as one of the best Stephen King books.
Under the Dome is one of the newer entries on this list, but it has a long history. Stephen King started the novel back in 1976, but didn’t pick up the draft until the 80s. Yet, the novel’s eventual publication should only happen in 2009.
The premise of Under the Dome is as simple as it is strange. One day, the town of Chester, Main is encased under a mysterious dome. It appears out of nowhere and cuts the inhabitants off from the rest of the world. No one can go out, and no one can go in.
While some inhabitants try to figure out what’s going on, others desperately cling to power.
The novel’s major theme is how people would react knowing they are stuck together in the same location forever.
While Under the Dome comes with some great characters and ideas, what I loved the most was the scenario. I’ve always loved stories that are set in enclosed locations and how people handle such a situation.
Under the Dome doesn’t disappoint and many fans regard it as one of the best Stephen King books.
The Outsider is one of the newer entries on this list, but it’s amongst my favorites of Stephen King’s newer works.
It also won the Goodreads Choice award for Best Mystery and Thriller in 2018.
The novel starts when the mangled body of an eleven-year-old boy is found in a park. DNA evidence points towards Terry Mailand, a local Little League coach and teacher.
As it turns out, though, Terry has an alibi and is thus released. Soon enough, however, more and more horrible and puzzling details about the case are revealed.
While the first part of the book might hint at it being a typical crime thriller, this impression couldn’t be more wrong.
It’s a fantastic novel with a plot that’s nothing short of unsettling.
What elevates it to one of the best Stephen King books, however, is the novel’s twist, which can only come from the pen of a true master of horror.
The Dead Zone is one of Stephen King’s true science-fiction novels.
After a tragic car accident, Johnny Smith, a schoolteacher, falls into a five-year-long coma. After waking up, he discovers that he’s able to see into people’s past and future.
When he eventually shakes hand with a corrupt politician, Greg Stillson, he’s able to see the man’s future. Stillson rises to power, becomes President of the United States and will lead the world into a nuclear war.
Knowing the future, what will Johnny do? Is he responsible for changing it? And if so, how’s he going to do it?
The Dead Zone is a timeless thriller, one that feels even more relevant today than it was during the time of its publication.
It’s also a fantastic introduction to Stephen King’s works, since it’s straightforward and comes with an easily digestible style.
While Stephen King’s novels are often criticized for their endings, The Dead Zone is not one of them and brings us one of Stephen King’s very best endings.
While The Dead Zone might not be the most outstanding novel on this list, it’s still a classic and amongst the best early Stephen King books.
The Shining, published in 1977, is one of Stephen King’s most celebrated novels. Doctor Sleep is the long-awaited follow-up novel.
The story follows Danny Torrance, the once young boy from The Shining. He’s now a middle-aged man. While hard to shake off, he’s finally overcome his horrible childhood memories. He leads a relatively normal life, joined an AA group and works at a nursing home in New Hampshire.
Because of his paranormal abilities, he’s able to comfort the dying and makes crossing-over into the afterlife easier for them. For this, he’s known as Doctor Sleep.
Yet, when he meets a young girl, the twelve-year-old Abra, with an even stronger version of the shining, the two of them find their lives in danger.
For there’s the True Knot, a group of murderous paranormals who derive their powers from the paranormal children they torture and murder.
While quite different from its prequel, and, in my opinion, not as good, it still makes for a great psychological read and a satisfying continuation for those who loved The Shining. Doctor Sleep is definitely amongst the best Stephen King books.
On Writing is a book that’s part memoir and part advice book on writing.
The first half of the book comprises a memoir in which Stephen King tells us about his life from childhood until he became a successful writer. It’s full of anecdotes to inspire writers and those who want to become one.
What’s great is that Stephen King doesn’t hide his own-struggles, setbacks and problems and even talks about his addictions. Interestingly, we also learn of the two high school girls who served as the basis for Carrie White, and the dream which inspired Misery. He also recounts the events leading up to his near-fatal car accident in 1999 and the time following it.
In its second half, the book offers insight into the craft of writing, Stephen King’s methods and his way of finding inspiration. He outlines his process, how to structure a story, how to come up with characters and his idea of the perfect sentence.
On writing is a fantastic book for those who want to write themselves. While much of his advice might seem surface level, I believe he shares the most important bits and pieces on the craft.
What I also loved is that Stephen King doesn’t sugarcoat things. Instead, he can even be a bit discouraging. Yet, he’s always realistic.
While parts of the book are tailored more towards aspiring writers, I believe the book’s first part, the memoir is a great read for any fans of Stephen King.
Different Seasons is Stephen King’s first novella collection, and, in my opinion, his best. It contains such classics as ‘The Body,’ ‘Apt Pupil,’ and ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’ who are all fantastic reads.
The Body is one of the greatest coming-of-age stories of all time and served as the basis for the movie Stand by Me.
It tells the story of four boys who set out to find a dead body. Over the course of the novella, they have to not only confront their own demons but also real life bullies and other dangers. It’s a brilliant novella and by far the best in the collection.
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption tells the story of a man who was sentenced to life for a crime he didn’t commit. Now he’s got to survive in a place run by a sadistic warden and other violent prisoners. Soon enough, he plots to escape.
Apt Pupil tells the story of a teenager who befriends an old man in his neighborhood who turns out to be a Nazi criminal. Yet, things soon turn even more disturbing.
The last novella in the collection, The Breathing Method, is the strange tale of a woman who learned a new technique for giving birth. It’s an odd little tale, written as a story within a story.
While The Breathing Method is rather weak, the rest of Different Seasons is absolutely fantastic and each novella is deserving of their place on this list of the best Stephen King books.
Needful Things is a novel set in the peaceful town of Castle Rock.
One day, a mysterious man, named Leland Gaunt, appears in town. He promptly opens a curiosity shop that sells anything a customer might desire. That’s where the store’s name, Needful Things, comes from.
Yet, while none of the items have a price tag, they are all for sale. It’s just that Leland Gaunt wants something else as payment.
What starts out as small pranks and misdeeds soon leads to chaos and plunges the entirety of Castle Rock into madness. For many of the residents will pay any price to get what they want.
While Needful Things was originally panned by critics, it’s far from a bad novel. No, it’s amongst the best Stephen King books out there.
It features a fantastic villain who’s amongst Stephen King’s all -time best. He might be a supernatural being, but he knows exactly what people want and manipulates them as he sees fit.
Needful Things is a combination of suspense, blood and action that comes with a great, unexpected ending.
What I loved the most about Needful Things, however, was how far people will go for their desires and how their greed drives them to do anything, even murder. We witness how easy it is for good people to turn bad, for friends to turn on friend, and for family to turn against family.
Needful Things is a fantastic novel full of mayhem, but still serves as a great example of Stephen King’s typical, small town horror.
The Institute is another newer Stephen King book. It was the winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for best Horror.
Stephen King’s always at his best when he writes novels about children. He’s a master at showing the curiosity, insecurities and optimism of childhood.
After twelve-year-old Elli’s parents are murdered, he’s taken from his home and awakes at a creepy institute. There, he meets other children who, similar to him, have psychic abilities.
When he discovers the staff are extracting the children’s powers via a brutal procedure before discarding their bodies, he hatches a plan to escape. Yet, no one ever managed to, and all who tried were brutally punished.
The Institute is a fantastic novel, and amongst the best Stephen King books of recent years. If you’re a fan of It, I’m sure you’ll enjoy The Institute.
The only problem I had with the novel were the many pop culture references. They felt quite forced and made it seem as if Stephen King was trying to show he was still up to date with the younger generations.
Still, it’s only a minor problem, and The Institute is a great read all around.
Christine is one of Stephen King’s earliest novels, but it’s far from his worst. No, it’s amongst the best Stephen King books, but is often overlooked because of its premise.
How could something as simple as a car be terrifying? If you read Christine, you’re sure to find out.
Arnie Cunningham is a nerdy high school outcast and the victim of bullying. When he comes upon a beat-up 1958 Plymouth Fury, he promptly buys it and becomes obsessed with restoring it.
Before long, Arnie’s life does a complete turnaround. Unbeknownst to him, however, the car’s possessed by evil and Arnie soon becomes its pawn.
Christine is essentially the story of a victim turned villain. Yet, there’s a lot more to this book. It’s a critique of bullying, masculine self-image, car culture and discusses the anxiety of young man. These themes make Christine as relevant today as it was at the time of its publication.
Overall, Christine is a fantastic early work by Stephen King, one I highly recommend to any fan of his work.
Skeleton Crew is my favorite amongst all of Stephen King’s short story collections. It simply has it all. If you’re interested in learning more about Stephen King’s shorter works, I urge you to check out my list of the best Stephen King short stories.
The very first story in the book is actually a novella, and one of King’s absolute best, The Mist.
The stories I loved the most were Mrs. Todd’s shortcut and The Jaunt, two of the more fantastical entries in this collection.
Yet, the true horror stories, including The Monkey, The Raft and especially Gramma, are all great reads. While there are some weaker stories, they are easily brushed aside by the rest.
Like Night Shift, Skeleton Crew is one of Stephen King’s earlier short story collections. While the stories might not be as refined or well-written as his later ones, the stories feel rougher, stronger and thus creepier.
What makes it stand apart from Night Shift, however, is that it includes a variety of more fantastical stories.
Skeleton Crew is a delight for any fan of Stephen King’s work and I regard it as one of the best Stephen King books of all time.
11/22/63 differs greatly from other Stephen King novels on this list, in that it’s based on a real event. Instead of another horror novel, Stephen King took a step back and wrote an action-packed historical fiction time-travel novel. With over 1000 pages, however, it’s also one of the longest books on this list.
The book centers on a single question: what would you do if you could go back in time and change history?
Jake Epping, a divorced high school English teacher, finds himself in exactly that position. For his friend, Al reveals to him that his diner has a secret portal that leads to one day in 1958. Al wants to do nothing less than to stop the assassination of JFK and enlists Jake to help.
Thus, Jake travels back in time and takes on the 1958 life of George Amberson. Taking on a teaching job in a small town near Dallas, he prepares for the big day five years from then.
Over the course of the novel, Jake tests the rules of time travel. Interestingly enough, should Jake return to the present, he will witness the changes he’s made. If he steps through the portal again, however, everything resets. As Jake experiments with the past, things turn out worse and worse. Yet, he keeps going back, believing that ‘this time,’ he’ll get it right.
Stephen King toyed with the idea for 11/22/53 for four decades before actually writing the novel. It’s a chilling and immersive time travel thriller, one that explores a fascinating ‘what-if’ scenario. Yet, it also showcases our fear of looking back and our thoughts of ‘what might have been, if…?’
11/22/63 is by many considered amongst the best Stephen King books in a long time.
While the premise might appear simple, Stephen King makes the book incredibly engaging and hard to put down. A must-read for any fan of his work.
Everyone’s heard about Stephen King’s Carrie. It’s Stephen King’s debut novel, first major success and one of his most popular novels of all time. Ever since its publication, it’s remained a fan favorite.
Carrie is a novel that mixes the real-life horrors of growing up with supernatural ones. Everyone’s heard of Stephen King’s misunderstood and isolated high school girl. Carrie suffers not only from bullying and ostracism but also from bad parenting, abuse and religious devotion.
Carrie White is a character that’s insanely recognizable because almost everyone went to school with someone just like her. She’s mousy, scruffy looking, wears weird, second-hand clothes and gets picked on by her classmates. Where Carrie differs, however, is that she’s got telekinetic powers.
When her bullying intensifies and goes out of hand during prom night, her revenge and newly discovered powers lead to a massacre.
While Carrie’s a victim turned villain, one’s hard pressed not to feel empathy for her.
The major theme of the novel remains as relevant today as back when it was first published. It’s essentially a powerful anti-bullying testament.
While the book can be clunky in terms of style, its narrative is finely woven, making at a fantastic read.
Carrie is rightfully regarded as a modern day horror classic and is, without a doubt, amongst the best Stephen King books.
Salem’s Lot was Stephen King’s second novel and cemented his place as a master of horror. It’s another modern day Stephen King classic and a true horror novel.
It’s a book that aged incredibly well and many fans regard it as one of the best Stephen King books of all time.
The premise is simple. What would happen if vampires moved to a small, modern town in Main? Salem’s Lot is essentially a reimagining of the old gothic vampire tale.
We get to know a man named Ben Mears who returns to his home of Jerusalem’s Lot. He’s not only looking for inspiration for his book, but also wants to rid himself of his old, personal demons.
When two young boys set out into the woods and only one of them returns alive, he realizes that something sinister is going on. As it turns out, the residents of the small town are being turned into vampires by an ancient evil. It’s up to Mears and his friends to stop it.
Salem’s Lot is a novel typical for King, for it perfectly encapsulates the small town horror he’s so famous for.
The biggest problem with Salem’s Lot are its characters, who are all rather stereotypical. Another problem is that parts of the book, especially the beginning, can drag on a little.
Yet, overall, Salem’s Lot is a fantastic read, especially for fans of vampire novels.
Annie Wilkes might be one of Stephen King’s most terrifying characters.
When author Paul Sheldon gets into a car accident, he’s rescued by Nurse Annie. She takes care of his wounds, and nurses him back to health. As it turns out, however, Annie’s a fan of Paul’s work, but not just any fan. She’s obsessed with his work and declares herself his number one fan.
Not all is well, however, and Annie reveals she didn’t like Paul killing off his main character, Misery, and wants him to make things right.
For this reason, she holds him hostage and doesn’t shy away from terrible ways to get what she wants. Annie turns out to be utterly deranged and delusional and soon a story of torture and psychological manipulation begins.
Misery is probably amongst the most twisted books Stephen King has ever written and features one of the most iconic and greatest female villains of all time.
What makes Misery special is that it’s a novel completely grounded in reality. There’s nothing supernatural going on, yet it serves so much more terrifying than many of his other works.
A word of warning, Misery is a gory and gruesome story. It is, however, also one of Stephen King’s most captivating.
Misery is a true horror novel, one entirely grounded in reality and amongst the best Stephen King books of all time.
Pet Sematary is one of Stephen King’s most popular and iconic novels. It’s another one of Stephen King’s classical horror novels and by many regarded as one of the best Stephen King books.
It is, however, also one of his darkest and scariest.
The plot revolves around Dr. Louis Creed, who moves with his family from Boston to a small town in Main. He soon stumbles upon a mysterious burial ground in the woods behind his house.
When the family’s cat dies on the highway outside their home, they discover that this burial ground has the power to bring it back to life.
Tragedy strikes when his son, too, is overrun. Yet, Creed doesn’t come to terms with the loss. Instead, he buries his son at the same burial ground. The results, however, prove much more horrible than he could’ve imagined. After all, sometimes dead is better.
Pet Sematary is a fantastic novel. It’s a slow burn horror novel that takes time to get going. Instead of gore or action, Stephen King focuses on setting the mood and building up the atmosphere, the feeling that something’s entirely wrong. Until he reveals the genuine horror.
Pet Sematary, however, is a hopeless book. Even Stephen King himself admitted so. It’s full of grief and sadness. It’s probably the one book by Stephen King that will haunt you the most.
Yet, this is also the book’s strength, and what makes it one of the best Stephen King books of all time.
The Green Mile is by many considered a masterpiece. It’s less a horror novel and much more a drama.
The story follows death row supervisor Paul Edgecomb at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. There he interacts with inmate John Coffey.
Coffey’s been placed on death row for the supposed rape and murder of two girls. Yet, it’s never been proven he actually committed the crime. Coffey’s a strange man. He’s quiet, timid and has the mind of a child. Even more interesting, however, he’s a special gift.
The Green Mile is a tearjerker. It’s a story full of sadism, injustice and racial bigotry. Yet, it’s also a beautifully sad story that showcases moments of true human goodness.
Originally published in six serialized installments, the novel’s now available in a single volume.
The Green Mile is one of the most powerful novels Stephen King ever wrote, and it will make you contemplate the meaning of life long after you’ve finished it.
The Shining is one of the greatest haunted house novels ever written and spawned one of the greatest horror movies of all time. It also proved to be Stephen King’s first bestsellers.
The Shining is known for many of Stephen King’s most iconic moments. Who could forget the ominous Overlook Hotel, the bathing woman in Room 217, the two twin girls Danny sees in the hallways and the word redrum.
While the Shining is a haunted house novel, it’s more than that and details a man’s descent into madness.
This man is Jack Torrance, a writer. When he and his family get the chance to stay in the beautiful Overlook Hotel during winter, he takes it. It seems like the perfect place to work on his novel.
Yet, there are strange things going on at the hotel, and his five-year-old son Danny is the first to witness them. This is thanks to Danny’s supernatural gift, the so-called ‘shining.’ For the Overlook hotel has a dark past and is haunted by evil spirits.
Before long, these sinister powers, and the isolation in a desolate place, have an effect on Jack. He slowly grows more and more deranged.
The Shining proved so popular that Stephen King eventually wrote a sequel which follows Danny as an adult called Doctor Sleep.
Yet, The Shining stands perfectly well on its own as an amazing work of horror literature. It remains amongst the best Stephen King books, by many regarded as his best.
The Shining is Stephen King at his peak and if you’ve never read a Stephen King book before, you might very well start with one of his absolute best.
The Dark Tower series is Stephen King’s magnum opus. It’s a sprawling epic fantasy series that’s a mixture of spaghetti western Arthurian legend brought together with a tolkienesque flavor.
The story follows Roland Deschain, a gunslinger, who’s on a quest to find the Dark Tower. It’s a legendary building at the center of all universes. Over the course of the book, Roland gathers a group of allies that are as odd as they are interesting, meets a multitude of adversaries and other terrifying entities.
For this list, however, I want to include my favorite book of the Dark Tower series, Wizard and Glass.
While the other books in the series detail Roland’s quest, book four largely focuses on Roland’s past and teenage years. It’s here we finally get to know more about his old friends Alain and Cuthbert, and his doomed love with Susan Delgado.
Wizard and Glass is a fantastic novel, and seen by many as the best entry in the series.
While the Dark Tower is a masterpiece, people new to Stephen King might want to start somewhere else. The reason is simple: The Dark Tower is a massive, seven book epic comprising over 4000 pages.
The biggest criticism I have of the series, are the final three books. While the first four are intricately constructed, full of mystery, references and metaphors, the final three seem rushed, and a little to on the nose.
Even if the quality dips a little after Wizard and Glass, the series is very much worth reading and I still regard The Dark Tower series amongst the best Stephen King books.
Almost anyone has heard of the demonic clown Pennywise, and the small town of Derry, Main, he terrorizes. It is one of Stephen King’s most popular novels. Yet, it’s another door stopper comprising well over 1000 pages.
The story of It is told in two parallel narratives.
In the first, we get to know the small town of Derry, Main and its inhabitants. Amongst them is a group of childhood friends who coin themselves the Losers Club. Their troubles are many. They are outcasts and get bullied.
When Bill’s younger brother George gets murdered, strange things happen. Soon enough, the members of the Losers Club are haunted by a shapeshifting monster which takes on the form of a demonic clown and preys on each character’s individual fears.
From then on, the kids have to fend for their survival.
The second narrative is set thirty years later. It has returned and the Losers Club has to reassemble and fight the terrible, monstrous Pennywise once more.
What makes it such an outstanding novel is the portrayal of children. We can see they are outcasts, witness them being bullied, but also their childish innocence. It makes us, as readers, reminisce about our own childhood and the problems we faced during those early years.
Another character I want to highlight is Henry Bowers, who’s every kid’s worst nightmare and serves as a fantastic secondary antagonist.
The greatest part about the book, however, is Pennywise, the terrible demonic clown who proves to be one of Stephen King’s most iconic and terrifying creations.
While the novel has some controversial parts, it’s still a fantastically scary novel and amongst Stephen King’s absolute best.
When it was first released, it became a cultural phenomenon and many people see it as the best Stephen King book out there and one of the greatest horror novels ever written.
It is King at his absolute best and rightfully deserves one of the top spots on this list of the best Stephen King books.
Many regard The Stand as Stephen King’s greatest novel. It’s a door stopper of a post-apocalyptic novel, but one of the absolute best ever written.
It tells a story as old as time, that of the battle between good and evil.
When a patient infected with a hyper-contagious strain of super flu escapes a testing facility, ninety-nine percent of the world’s population is wiped out.
Normal society collapses, survivors struggle and warring factions emerge.
One of these factions is led by Randall Flagg, the Dark Man, who takes advantage of the chaos and wants nothing more than destruction. The other is led by Mother Abigail, who urges for peace.
The novel follows various survivors as they set out to find their place in this new world. Incidentally, they are all driven to either Randall Flagg or Mother Abigail.
The Stand features a fantastic cast of characters. There’s Larry Underwood, Randall Flagg, ‘Nice Guy’ Harold Lauder, and last, but not least, Donald Elbert, the Trashcan Man.
While the novel’s major focus is on the battle of good versus evil, it features a variety of other themes: survival, religion and, ultimately, morality.
While the Stand can drag on a little in places, it’s a fantastically written novel. It showcases humanity’s struggle for survival, the decay of morality, but also hope.
At far over 1000 pages, the book’s almost never boring, always engaging, the characters are great and the writing is flawless.
All of this makes The Stand, even decades after it was first published, the greatest Stephen King book ever written.
Dean Koontz is an American writer and a master at his work. You will see so for yourself, if you check out the best Dean Koontz books.
Most people would consider his work to be part of the thriller genre, but he often blends in elements of science-fiction, horror, mystery, satire and fantasy.
For this reason, his books range from suspenseful thrillers, alluring mysteries to fast-paced science-fiction. We encounter malevolent AI, ghosts, villains who can stop time and even Lovecraftian entities.
All this makes his novels much more than they seem at first glance.
In his long career, Dean Koontz has written over 100 novels. Because of this, he’s amongst the most popular American writers today and has sold over 500 million copies worldwide.
His works have been translated into 38 different languages, he’s got fourteen number one hits on the New York hardcover bestseller list and many of his books have been made into movies. Those include, The Watchers, Demon Seed and, of course, Phantoms.
With over 100 novels, it’s hard to decide where to start with Dean Koontz and frankly overwhelming. Some of his books are better, others are worse. That’s why I put together a list of the best Dean Koontz books.
Night Chills is as book as typical as a Dean Koontz book can be. It centers on evil, unknown entities, who wreak havoc amongst the innocent.
Paul Annendale and his two children, Rya and Mark, arrive at Black Water, Main for their annual camping trip. They have soon to realize, however, that the small town harbors a deep secret.
It’s the night chills who’ve taken hold of the residents. They’ve driven them mad and to commit heinous acts against friends and neighbors, including rape and murder.
It soon becomes clear to Paul and his children that they have no choice but to fight.
When they eventually uncover the source and learn the truth of the night chills, they realize they have to take down the man behind the curtain.
Night Chills is a book of intense thrills, full of suspense and clearly one of the best Dean Koontz books out there.
In this one of the best Dean Koontz novels, we meet a man named Frank Pollard. He’s utterly exhausted, but too afraid to go to sleep.
It’s not nightmares, he fears. Instead, he’s afraid he’ll wake up in a ‘bad place,’ often with blood on his palms. That’s exactly what happened when he woke up the last time, in a motel, his hands covered in blood and with no memory of getting there.
Even worse, over the next days, whenever he awakes, he discovers terrifying objects in his pockets.
When he gets worried about these memory interruptions and has multiple run-ins with mysterious assailants, he hires a husband-and-wife security team, Bobby and Julie Dakota. They are tasked with protecting him and to solve the mystery of what’s going on.
Yet, it soon becomes clear that Frank’s in much more danger than originally thought. Whenever he travels, he’s not just going to a different place, he’s going to other realms and leaves our world behind.
Even the Dakotas have to realize they can’t fight the fate Frank is destined to.
When he was three years old, his unusually beautiful eyes were removed to save him from cancer.
On the same day, a thousand miles away, an evil man learns that Barty is his mortal enemy and he must kill him should their paths ever cross.
Barty might be unable to see, but he’s incredibly smart. His mother Agnes teaches him an important lesson: everything in life happens for a reason and affects those of others, often in unknown ways.
A decade later, when Barty miraculously regains his sight, he has to realize the world wasn’t what it seemed. Even worse, he remains completely unaware of the man who’s out to kill him.
Yet, there’s someone else. A girl born from brutal rape who’s destined to link Barty and the mysterious man who stalks him.
From the Corner of his Eye is a multi-POV novel with three separate stories combined into a journey about courage, faith and human bonds.
While not a horror novel and not full of suspense like the other best Dean Koontz books, From the Corner of his Eye proved to be a sentimental favorite amongst his fans.
It’s definitely a must read if you enjoyed his other books.
Many fans agree that Dean Koontz is doing his best work right now with the Jane Hawk series. They are clearly amongst the best Dean Koontz books out there.
Starting with the Silent Corner, this series proved massively popular. The book follows FBI agent Jane Hawk.
After her husband’s suicide, he’s devastated and searches for answers. He was a man who was happy and had everything go live for.
When she investigates, however, she soon discovers that her husband wasn’t the only victim. He was merely one in a long stride of suicides of otherwise happy and accomplished people.
Before long, Jane discovers a dark conspiracy involving advanced mind-controlling nanotechnology. The culprit behind it is the scientist Berthold Shenneck, who soon sets his sight on Jane herself. This soon makes her the most-wanted fugitive in America.
Jane Hawk proves to be amongst Dean Koontz’s most complex characters. She’s relentless, resourceful, but also vulnerable.
The Silent Corner, as well as the other books in this series, are filled with a perfect combination of great ideas and thrilling action. This makes them a worthy addition to any list of the best Dean Koontz books.
They are a fantastic mixture of science-fiction and mystery, but also bring a variety of other themes into play. They are outstanding, gripping and suspenseful page turners.
Comprising five books all together, the series is definitely worth reading.
The Husband is a novel about one man’s commitment to his wife. It’s a haunting journey about adventure, sacrifice and redemption.
We got to know Mitch Rafferty. His wife, Holy, is kidnapped, and he’s told she’ll be killed unless he hands over $2 million in cash. Without telling anyone, of course.
Mitch, however, isn’t a rich man. No, he’s a modestly paid landscaper. Yet, the kidnappers are relentless and even force Mitch to watch a murder to make it clear to him they mean business.
Worse yet, his house has been set up to make it look like he killed his wife.
Mitch now has to find a way to save his wife by whatever means necessary, even if he has to risk his life to hurt others.
Through a series of increasingly nefarious events and elaborate ploys, Mitch thinks he’s figured out what’s going on. Yet, things are never so simple, and when he gets betrayed, things take a turn for the worst.
The Husband is an absolute masterclass in suspense. Yet, what’s most impressive about it is how Dean Koontz can take such a basic premise and weave it into such a complex story.
Like many other of the best Dean Koontz books, The Husband comes with carefully constructed characters and intricate plotlines.
This is a book that proves once more that Dean Koontz deserves his reputation as a master of the thriller and horror genre.
It’s a novel that explores the relationship between humans and technology and follows the life of Susan Harris, a wealthy divorcee.
She’s known as a recluse and lives in a mansion surrounded only by automated systems controlled by her computer.
Susan feels safe in her home, but that changes when her system is breached from outside by an insidious artificial intelligence known as Proteus.
From then on, Proteus is consumed by learning more about her and what it means to be human.
Even worse, Susan’s now stuck and imprisoned in her own home.
Proteus wants only one thing, to experience life as a human being. His solution is to impregnate Susan with his biologically engineered spawn and then inhabit the offspring with his own consciousness. A battle of wits between Susan and the AI begins.
Demon Seed is a twisted love story that’s both disturbing and imaginative. It’s creepy and smart and was the first book of its kind back in its days.
Even if the technology can appear somewhat dated, it’s still a fantastic read, one of the best Dean Koontz books and a great introduction to his work.
Midnight is another one of Dean Koontz’s most famous novels.
The residents of Moonlight Cove, a sleepy beach town in California, are changing. Some are losing touch with their emotions and become emotionless zombies, other surrender to their wildest urges and turn into killing beasts.
Only a few remain unchanged, and fewer still aren’t murdered in the dead of the night. Four survivors have to bend together, figure out what’s going on, and confront the darkest realms of human nature.
They must uncover the town’s dark past and the town’s most disturbed residents to find the cause of the infection.
What makes things even harder is that the local police try to cover it all up.
Midnight is another Multi-POV novel, featuring the points of view of four unique characters. These four stories slowly converge into a central narrative.
All these character’s views add into a suspenseful story about government conspiracies, science-fiction monsters, horror and even love. One could say the book’s central theme is whether humanity would still exist without emotions.
The book has its problems, of course. Its depiction of good versus evil can be stereotypical, it can be unbelievable, and some characters can appear one-dimensional. Yet, these problems are made up for by Dean Koontz’s incredibly fast-paced writing and descriptive style.
Midnight is a masterpiece of terror and fear and amongst the best Dean Koontz books ever written.
Lightning stands out on this list of the best Dean Koontz books for being a mixture of science-fiction and humor. Yet, it remains amongst Dean Koontz’s most read books.
What makes it so good is its innovative premise and the truly impressive world-building.
Lightning centers on two characters. One is Laura Shane. When she was born, a strange storm reigned, one people would remember for many years. The other is Stefan, a man who appears and saves Laura from a fatal delivery.
Laura is now in her thirties, but is still influenced by the events that took place during her birth. One day, another bolt of lightning appears and, with it, Stefan returns to save Laure from tragedy once more. From then on, Stefan is always there to rescue her from dangerous situations.
In time, Laura wonders who the stranger is and what his motifs are. Is he her guardian angel, or does he hide a more sinister secret?
Yet, this is Dean Koontz novel, and the truth is beyond Laura’s and the reader’s wildest imagination. This is not all, however, the book explores other even more interesting ideas and concepts.
Lightning is a fantastic and suspenseful mystery novel with well-developed characters, and, of course, Dean Koontz’s usual science-fiction and fantasy elements.
Most of all, however, it’s a beautiful and sensitive story about love. It’s massively popular and one of the best Dean Koontz books.
Dragon Tears is a book filled to the brim with action and, without a doubt, one of the best Dean Koontz books out there.
It centers on Special Project police officer Harry Lyon and his partner Connie Gulliver.
One day, Harry has to shoot a man at a diner. After this event, Harry’s life changes forever and gets chaotic when he meets a homeless man who gives him a strange warning.
“Tick-tock, tick-tock. You’ll be dead in sixteen hours. Dead by dawn, Dead by dawn, Dead by dawn…”
Harry is spooked and soon discovers a secret that puts his life and those around him in danger. Yet, can he save everyone before time runs out?
Before long, this secret sends Harry and Connie on a hunt to discover the cause behind the heightened violence in their small California town.
Dragon Tears is another extremely suspenseful novel and comes with a cast of fantastic and unique characters. Fans loved the sympathetic characters, the many twists and turns and Dean Koontz’s usual fast pace.
Dragon Tears is a great novel all around and while I regard it as one of the best Dean Koontz books, anyone should check it out.
With a title like this, you can already tell what you’re in for. Intensity is an intense tale and a gripping novel about a struggle between our protagonist and a vicious serial killer.
This protagonist is Chyna Shepherd from Napa Valley. Chyna has overcome countless hardship and has preserved. After her deranged mother treated her like trash, she was forced to build a shell of self-sufficiency.
These skills proved to help her when a sociopathic murder breaks into her close friend’s home and kills everyone.
That man’s name is Edgler Foreman Vess, who describes himself as a ‘homicidal adventurer.’ He lives without fear, remorse or limits, and only for intensity.
At first Chyna’s aim is only to survive, but things soon change. She learns Edgler has imprisoned a young girl in his home and before long she sets out to stop him and save the girl.
What sets intensity apart from other, similar novels is the deep dive into the character’s psyche. You know not only what makes our protagonist tick, but also the killer. You’ll understand what brought them together that night, their motifs and their different worldviews. Each different theme in this novel is well-developed. Be it Chyna’s hope and morals or Edgler’s nihilistic sadism.
Especially Chyna stands out as one of Dean Koontz’s greatest protagonists and comes with a fantastic character arc.
Despite this focus on the character’s inner workings, the pace never slows down and comes with some fantastic action scenes and mental warfare.
This is a novel that will make you sweat. If you love cat-and-mouse thrillers, you will love Intensity. It’s clearly amongst the best Dean Koontz books.
Watchers is yet another thriller rich in science-fiction elements. It’s not only one of the best Dean Koontz books, but it’s the one that launched his status as a best-selling writer.
The story follows Travis Cornell, a Delta Force operative with depression who’s trying to find purpose in his life.
When he finds a golden retriever near his home, he names the dog Einstein because he shows unusual intelligence for a dog. The two of them soon bond and become best friends.
When he goes on a trip with his dog, the dog refuses to go deeper into the woods. While he’s frustrated at first, he soon realizes that his dog’s trying to protective him from a terrible evil. It’s the horrific entity called Outside that’s out there and soon begins hunting him down.
Both Einstein and Outsider were both genetically engineered at a government lab. While Einstein’s men’s best friend, the Outsider is a vicious abomination, hell-bent on killing the dog and anyone who gets in his way.
Soon enough, there’s more trouble, for Outsider isn’t the only danger. Travis finds himself on the run from federal agents, as well as a professional assassin hired to kill everyone who knows about the project that created Einstein and the Outsider.
Watchers is basically Dean Koontz’s love letter to dog being man’s best friend.
Dean Koontz himself describes this novel as his most terrifying, dramatic and moving. It’s a novel that blends the bond between a man and his dog, science-fiction and horror, into a fantastic read. If you want to read one of the best Dean Koontz books, you really should check out Watchers.
Odd Thomas is a supernatural mystery thriller and the first in Dean Koontz’s bestselling series by the same name. It’s by many thought of as one of the best Dean Koontz books out there, or even his best.
The first book in the series introduces us to the 20-year-old ‘Odd Thomas,’ a short-order cook. He emerged from a pretty rough childhood, but hasn’t lost his good nature. At first glance, he might appear normal, but there’s something truly ‘odd’ about him. He can communicate with the dead, also recognize daemon-like bodachs who surround those fated for death.
Thomas uses his abilities for good and tries his best to bring justice to the ghosts who seek his help.
One day, however, he finds himself confronted with forces that threaten everything he knows and loves. A figure called the ‘Fungus Man’ shows up at his diner, surrounded by more bodachs than he’s ever seen before.
As he pries deeper into these forces, he understands that his abilities might be no match for them.
Even worse, he realizes his girlfriend’s life is at stake and he sets out to stop them.
While it’s a paranormal fiction novel about the battle between good and evil, it contains its fair share of amusing elements. For example, a cast of famous ghosts who keep Odd Thomas company, including Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.
Odd Thomas is an excellent book and worthy of its position on this list of the best Dean Koontz books. It’s a mixture of suspense, humor and heart that comes together in Dean Koontz’s unique way.
Phantoms is probably the best of Dean Koontz’s many books. Even Stephen King regards it as one of his favorite novels.
The story surrounds two sisters, Jenny and Lisa Paige who return to their hometown. At first, they find everything quiet and the town abandoned. Soon they find out that not only their family, but everyone else in town is dead or missing.
All that remains are a few bloated corpses that appear to suffer from some sort of disease and are warm to the touch.
They get in contact with a neighboring town’s police and even a biological team is sent to learn more about the tragedy.
It soon becomes clear, however, that their death can’t be explained by an outbreak and more sinister forces are at play.
It’s only when they come upon the research of one Timothy Fylte that it becomes clear what’s really at play. They learn of an ancient creature that’s at fault for destroying the town.
This enemy, slumbering underground, consumes every living thing in its path and can absorb the consciousness of its victims. This allows the creature to create ‘phantoms’ which take on the form and behavior of those it consumed.
What makes this book stand out is the terrible horror at play, which was heavily inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Yet, the resolution to this book is much smarter than you think, and the concept behind it is fantastic.
Phantoms is, without a doubt, amongst the best Dean Koontz books of all time. It’s a fantastic, thrilling book and worth reading for anyone, not only fans of Dean Koontz.
Stephen King is a master of horror and one of the most popular and most successful horror writers of all time. Over the course of his long career, he’s written over sixty novels and two hundred short stories.
I’ve been a fan of Stephen King ever since I was a teenager and read the first four entries of his Dark Tower series. Yet, over the years, I never fully explored his work and only read some of his more popular novels, like the Dark Half or The Stand.
Stephen King
Since I’m a horror writer myself, I recently decided to read more horror literature myself. After I devoured the works of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King seemed like a logical next step.
Over the past months, I read every single Stephen short story collection. While I enjoyed most of his short stories and each one of his collections, I found some of them more impressive and worthwhile than others.
That’s the reason I created this short list. It’s not only to rank but to also share my thoughts on each Stephen King short story collection out there.
If you are, however, more interested in a more detailed list of short stories, I urge you to check out the list of my favorite Stephen King short stories. It’s a list of the stories I consider best as well as my individual thoughts on them.
But now, let us continue on with my ranking of the six Stephen King short story collections.
Just After Sunset is not a bad collection, but it’s the weakest one of the six Stephen King short story collections out there.
It differed from what I was looking for. I was looking for horror and Just After Sunset, felt different and more literary. I recognize that it’s a more ambitious collection and I appreciate Stephen King’s efforts. It’s just that I didn’t care too much for most of the stores in Just After Sunset.
It starts off great with Willa, a beautiful, melancholic little tale about love and life’s fragility, followed by the suspense-filled novella Gingerbread Girl.
There are other stories that I enjoyed, especially Stationary Bike and N., one of Stephen King’s greatest novella of all time. I absolutely loved this one and the eerie, uneasy and Lovecraftian atmosphere so prevalent in the work.
It also brings us one of the weirdest stories Stephen King ever wrote with The Cat from Hell. Even now, I’m still divided on what to think about it. I’m not sure if I love it or hate it, but I guess that says something about the story.
Overall, Just After Sunset is not a bad collection of short stories. Apart from N. and Willa, however, nothing truly stood out to me.
After reading all six Stephen King short story collections, I encountered many memorable short stories. The ones in Just After Sunset, however, aren’t part of it and are, for the most part, forgettable.
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, published in 2015, is the most recent Stephen King short story collection on this list.
While I enjoyed this collection, many of the short stories suffer from similar problems the ones in Just After Sunset do.
Stephen King’s writing is stronger and much more mature in this collection. Yet, I have to admit that I miss the pulpy horror and the weirdness of his earlier collections.
While some stories, such as The Dune, Obits and Drunken Firework stand out, many others didn’t.
I felt the strongest entries in this collection were the two novellas, Ur and Morality. Especially Morality was an incredibly powerful piece with its nuanced discussion of morality, guilt and sin.
As for short stories, The Dune was a delightfully short tale, while Obits was a lengthier tale about deadly obituaries. I was most surprised by the humorous Drunken Fireworks, which featured a firework arms race on the Fourth of July.
The Bazaar of Broken Dreams isn’t as horror centric as his earlier collections, but features a wider variet of stories. It’s a collection about life, death, morality, guilt and regret.
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams is not a bad collection, and it might be his most polished one, but it’s also not the best collection for those readers who are looking for a true bone-chilling experience.
To Reads: The Dune, Morality, Ur, Obits, Drunken Fireworks
I enjoyed Everything’s Eventual a great deal, but it’s still a middle-of-the-road Stephen King short story collection.
Some entries in this collection are fantastic, yet there’s also a fair share of stories I didn’t care too greatly about or that didn’t stand out to me.
There are some truly terrifying and suspenseful stories in Everything’s Eventual. The fantastic Autopsy Room Four and the terrifying 1408 come to mind. Yet, it felt lacking when compared to other Stephen King short story collections.
Once more I most appreciated the two novellas in this collection, the titular Everything’s Eventual and Riding the Bullet. They are both fantastical, but once more, they differ from what I expected from Stephen King.
Overall, I really enjoyed Everything’s Eventual, but it felt lighter and less scary than the other Stephen King short story collections.
Don’t get me wrong, Everything’s Eventual is a good collection, just not as good as the following three.
To Reads: Autopsy Room Four, Everything’s Eventual, That Feeling You Can Only Say What It Is In French, 1408, Riding the Bullet
Nightmares and Dreamscapes is an odd collection and probably the oddest amongst all Stephen King short story collections.
I don’t think all the stories in Nightmares and Dreamscapes are great. Yet, it features some of my favorite stories of his.
It starts of fantastic with another one of Stephen King’s novellas, Dolan’s Cadillac. It’s the story about a man taking revenge on a crime boss, but also serves as an homage to Edgar Allan Poe.
Stories such as Sneakers and Dedication don’t seem to get a lot of love. Yet I came to enjoy those two a lot, and I’d wholeheartedly recommend them.
Other great stories include Suffer the Little Children, My Pretty Pony and The Ten O’clock People. My favorites, however, were the Lovecraft inspired Crouch End and The Moving Finger.
One thing I was surprised about was Stephen King’s decision to include Head Down. It’s a nonfictional essay about the Bangor West Little League baseball team. I’m not one for baseball and neither know a lot about the game or the rules, yet Stephen King’s writing made it a very enjoyable experience.
Overall, Nightmares and Dreamscapes was odd. It had its share of silly stories such as Chattery Teeth, but all in all it was a great read and none of the stories were terrible or forgettable.
Another thing I came to enjoy a lot was the switch of format and tone. Nightmares and Dreamscapes is truly the broadest of all the Stephen King short story collections, including a variety of genres, formats and narrative choices.
To Reads: Dolan’s Cadillac, Suffer the Little Children, The Moving Finger, My Pretty Pony, The Ten O’clock People, Crouch End
Night Shift is Stephen King’s very first collection of short stories. It was exactly what I was looking for when I think of a Stephen King short story collection.
It’s a fantastic collection of all out and pulpy horror.
Sure, Night Shift might not be as refined and lack the finesse of his later work, but I still loved many of the stories in this collection.
However, it features not only horror stories. There are the deeply emotional stories The Last Rung on the Ladder and The Woman in the Room.
Yet, it’s also full of goofy and weird stories that I really didn’t care for. Trucks, Battleground or The Mangler are examples of those.
Night shift has also one of the strongest starts with the great Jerusalem’s Lot and Graveyard Shift, two of the best stories in the entire collection.
What follows, however, are the weaker entries of the collection, the stories who are sillier and almost nonsensical.
Overall, The Ledge, Quitters Inc. or Children of the Corn more than make up for the weaker entries. They elevate Night Shift to one of the best Stephen King short story collections out there.
The main reason I didn’t rank Night Shift as number one is first the sillier stories in this collection, and second, that Skeleton Crew is a stronger collection overall.
To Reads: Jerusalem’s Lot, Graveyard Shift, I Am the Doorway, Gray Matter, Strawberry Spring, The Ledge, Quitters Inc., Children of the Corn, The Last Rung on the Ladder, The Woman in the Room
Skeleton Crew was the very first Stephen King short story collection I read, but one that should prove my favorite.
This one really has it all. It includes a plethora of true horror stories, but also several more interesting and fantastical entries.
We are already off for a fantastic start, with Stephen King’s the Mist. It’s one of his most popular and famous novellas, about a town engulfed by an otherworldly mist and the creatures that come with it.
The stories that stood out to me the most were Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut and The Jaunt, incidentally two of the more fantastical entries in this collection.
However, many of the true horror stories were also fantastic. The Monkey, The Raft, The Reaper’s Image and the suspenseful Gramma are all great reads.
Yet Skeleton Crew also has its share of weirder stories. Survivor Type is one of Stephen King’s most disturbing stories, and his story Nona is nothing short of a trip down into insanity.
The one story that surprised me the most, however, was The Reach. It’s the most heartfelt and beautiful of all of Stephen King’s short stories.
There might be one or two stories I didn’t care too much about, but those are easily brushed aside by the many strong entries. Skeleton Crew, like Night Shift, is not as refined or well-written as some later Stephen King short story collections. The stories felt stronger, more rough and creepy, and made me far more uneasy than some of his more recent ones.
Skeleton Crew is as full of horror as Night Shift. Yet, it doesn’t shy away from experimenting and including different stories like Everything’s Eventual and Nightmares and Dreamscapes. It never feels too broad though, and is mostly a pure horror collection. One with no silly, over-the-top stories like the ones we found in Night Shift.
Skeleton Crew was the very first and, in my opinion, also the best of the six Stephen King short story collections out there. I think it’s one of the greatest entry points into the world of Stephen King.
To Reads: The Mist, Cain Rose Up, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, The Jaunt, The Raft, The Reaper’s Image, Nona, Survivor Type, Gramma, The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, The Reach
Stephen King is one of the most successful fiction writers of all time. Over the course of his career, he’s written over sixty novels and over two hundred short stories. While he’s most famous for his novels, many Stephen King short stories are also fantastic works of fiction.
Stephen King
Stephen King was a name I’d heard long before I ever read any of his works. Even in the 90s in Germany, his popularity was enormous, even among those who’d read none of his books. I guess this was because of the many movie adaptions of his works.
The very first book I ever read by Stephen King was The Gunslinger. I still remember how impressed and fascinated I was by it. It differed from anything I’d read before. I was a young teenager, and until then most of what I’d read comprised folktales, fables, fairy tales or books I had to read for school.
Stephen King’s The Gunslinger was full of bloody action, cursing and set in a world so strange and vast it blew my mind. After The Gunslinger, I devoured the rest of his Dark Tower series, comprising four books at the time. I loved it.
Over the years, though, I only read a few more of Stephen King’s novels. I read his entire The Dark Tower series, The Stand, The Dark Half and the Bachman novels Thinner and The Long Walk.
As a horror writer, I recently decided to read more horror literature. Last year, I read all the works of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. After that, I checked out the works of Stephen King.
Since I’m mostly a writer of short stories, I started off with his short story collections. Over the last couple of months, I read all six of them and it was a very enjoyable experience. There’s a reason Stephen King is as popular and as well-liked as he is.
After I finished his most recent collection, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, I put together a list of my favorite Stephen King short stories.
Something worth noting, though, is that Stephen King is a much more prolific writer than I’d thought. I’d expected his collections to comprise horror and suspense literature, but found quite a few stories that were different. While I enjoyed almost all of his stories, what I was looking for was tales of horror and suspense. Yet, some Stephen King short stories differ from what I’d expected, and I felt somewhat disenchanted with them.
This list won’t include any of Stephen King’s novellas though, for those I created yet another list which you can find here.
But now, on with the list of my favorite Stephen King short stories.
Cain Rose up is a story that you’d probably not see published in this day and age because of its controversial subject. It’s one of shorter Stephen King short stories on this list about a university student Curt Garrish.
We follow Curt as he walks back to his room, interacts with some of his fellow students before he shoots people with a sniper rifle from his dormitory room.
It’s a story that’s unsettling and disturbing. The most disturbing aspect of the story was how normal Curt’s interaction with other people was, and that none of them suspected a thing.
Sure, Curt’s mind was disturbed as we saw from his thoughts, but he could put on a facade, pretending to be just another student. I’m not sure if King had this specific idea in mind, but I felt the story showed strongly how normal psychopaths like Curt Garrish can act in public.
Another interesting part of the story were the things the narrator sees and his images and that he thought it didn’t matter if he killed people. It was truly chilling.
Cain Rose Up might be an earlier effort of Stephen King’s but it’s still a disturbing story, more so because of how believable it is.
Stephen King wrote he likes his stories to be grisly, but this one might have gone a bit too far, even for him.
I have to agree with him, but that’s also a reason Survivor Type stands out so much. It’s more gruesome and absurd than almost any of the other Stephen King short stories I’ve read.
The story is written as the diary of a surgeon, Richard Pinzetti. He was aboard a cruise ship, attempting to smuggle a sizeable amount of heroin when the ship sunk. He escaped via lifeboat and finds himself on a tiny island with limited supplies and no food.
The diary reveals Pinzetti thinks of himself as a survivor. Determined to hold out until rescue arrives, he goes to horrifying lengths to survive. Desperate for food, he eats insects, kelp and seagulls. After breaking his ankle and a subsequent infection, he self-amputates it. Yet, he doesn’t waste it. This, however, is barely the beginning.
What made this story so much more interesting was the detailed backstory Stephen King created for his protagonist. It’s for this reason everything else works out so well and makes sense, at least in a way.
The diary format, too, works incredibly well as it showcases the narrator’s descent into madness brought forth by drug abuse, blood loss and starvation.
Truly one of the most disturbing Stephen King short stories out there, one that made me quite uncomfortable. Yet, it’s interesting, if only to show how far King can go.
King suggests that hell is not “other people”, as French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, but repetition and enduring the same pain repeatedly without end.
That’s what this story is about. A woman named Carol is on her second honeymoon, yet as she and her husband drive along the road, she gets this strange feeling. It’s a feeling, she knows, that you can only say what it is in French. She knows the place they’ll pass by, the things she sees, and eventually, it all ends with the same outcome.
It’s never explicitly stated what happened to Carol and her husband, but we get enough information to figure it out.
What I enjoyed the most about this tale was the brief hints and the strange feeling you get throughout the story. We all know the feeling of a déjà vu and how unsettling it can be. The idea of not having it once, though, but constantly, is really unsettling to me.
It’s downright creepy and I have to agree with Stephen King. His version of hell is one that’s truly terrifying. Yet, this is a different type of horror, one that we’re not used to from usual Stephen King short stories. It’s one that’s entirely existential.
Willa is an odd little tale, but one that I enjoyed a lot. It’s different from the truly terrifying and gut-wrenching Stephen King short stories I became so used to. Instead, Willa is a nice, almost cozy little tale.
It’s about a man who finds himself at a train station with a few other passengers. He’s unable to find his fiancée Willa and sets out to find her at a nearby town. The others warn him that the train will arrive any minute and it takes a three-mile hike to get to the town. Even worse, it’s through deserted terrain inhabited by wolfs. He ignores their advice and heads out anyway, having a close encounter with a wolf.
Eventually, he finds Willa at a club, sitting alone in a corner booth. He tries to convince her to come back with him, but as the two of them talk, he realizes something he’s known all along.
Willa is a nice little tale, one that’s almost a romance story if not for the haunting ending. I don’t know what made me feel so strong for this tale. Maybe it’s because it’s not just a tale about love, but one about life’s fragility.
As I said, this tale differs from the usual Stephen King short stories, but it’s a good one and well worth the read.
The Reaper’s Image is a story about an antique collector, Jonson Spangler. He visits a museum to buy a legendary Delver’s Mirror. The museum’s curator, Mr. Carlin, recounts the mirror’s infamous history and that anyone who looked into it mysteriously disappeared.
Supposedly the Grim Reaper appears in the mirror, standing close to those who look into it. Spangler, of course, doesn’t believe any of the rumors and looks into the mirror himself.
The Reaper’s Image is as typical as Stephen King short stories can be, but it’s by no means a bad one. It has all the hallmarks of a great horror story. What I liked the most, however, was the history of the mirror and how it sets the mood for the rest of the story and hints at what’s coming.
While it’s not the most original or groundbreaking one among the many Stephen King short stories, it’s well worth the read for how unsettling it is.
What I really enjoy about most Stephen King short stories is that they are not happening in a vacuum. Stephen King always puts together a nice, alive setting before he slowly introduces the horror.
Sneakers is the story of a recording studio executive named John Tell. One day, he notices a pair of dirty old sneakers in a stall in a restroom at work. At first he assumes the shoes belong to an employee or a delivery person. However, when he visits the bathroom again, the sneakers are always there, haven’t moved and are surrounded by dead flies and other bugs. It dawns on him that there might be a body in the restroom, or something even worse.
What made this story so great wasn’t just the unsettling imagery of the sneakers surrounded by dead flies and bugs. It was the framework narrative at the recording study. The minor details and intricacies about recording and editing Stephen King mentions made the story just a tad it more interesting.
Stephen King once mentioned that people are naturally interested in the work and the jobs of others, and I have to agree that it’s true. While the mystery of the sneakers lured me in, the events at the recording studio also fascinated me.
The Dune is an interesting and gripping little tale. Stephen King mentioned The Dune features one of the favorite endings he ever wrote, and I have to agree. What makes this tale so good and the reason it stands out so much is the ending.
The Dune is the story of a retired Judge named Harvey Beecher, who has a lifelong obsession with a mysterious dune on a small Florida island. As a child he ventured there for the first time, looking for buried treasure, only to find the name of a person he knows written in the sand. Before long, he discovers that any person who’s name he discovers written in the dune’s sand will die within a month.
He confides this story in his lawyer Anthony Wayland, who he visits to help him with his last will.
The Dune was one of the shorter Stephen King short stories I read, but it was one I enjoyed immensely. I have to agree with King though, what makes this story is clearly the ending.
Stephen King once planned to write a Richard Bachman novel about a group of hitmen. Eventually he grew disenchanted with the project and scrapped it. Yet, one part survived, a flashback in which the protagonist, as a child, talks to his grandfather.
In this story an elderly man, whose death is approaching, gives his grandson a pocket watch. After he gives it to him, he talks to him about time.
He tells him that when you grow up, time moves faster and faster, slipping away if you don’t hold on to it tightly. He ends by telling him that time is a pretty pony with a wicket heart.
My Pretty Pony is a fantastic one among the many Stephen King short stories. Both characters, the old man and his grandson, feel alive and realistic. Yet, what makes this story so great is the topic matter. It’s something that many of us realize. As we grow older, time moves faster.
It’s a melancholic topic, one to muse on and one that hits a little too close to home.
Strawberry Spring is one of the most visual unsettling Stephen King short stories out there.
The unnamed narrator reads the words ‘Springheel Jack’ in the newspaper and recounts his memories from eight years back.
At the time he attended New Sharon College. On the 16 of March 1968, the strawberry spring arrived. It brought thick fog covering the campus at night and also Springheel Jack, a serial killer.
The narrator describes the dark mood it cast over town, the various victims of the killer, the rumors spread about them, and the toll it took on the entire community. Even worse, he states, no suspect was ever found, and the case remains unsolved.
Now, eight years later, a new strawberry spring arrives and so does Springheel Jack. Another victim was just discovered at New Sharon College.
It’s a very creepy and visual unsettling story. As the thick fog envelops the small town, fear and trauma envelope its inhabitants. It’s one of the darker and more melancholic Stephen King short stories, but it still packs a punch. It’s well worth the read, not only for its eerie and somber atmosphere but also for its great ending.
Dedication differs from other, more typical Stephen King short stories. It’s less a horror story, but a weird genre mix.
Now, full disclosure here, this story gets mentioned quite a lot because of a certain… deed, the protagonist commits. It’s frankly said, disgusting.
While this scene made me shudder, the rest of the story was incredibly well written and deeply interesting to me. Who knows, maybe it’s because I’m a writer myself, so stories about writers are inherently interesting to me.
Dedication is the story of a black maid named Martha Rosewell. One day she arrives at work, showing her friend and colleague Darcy Sagamore that her son’s first novel has arrived.
At the end of their shift, the two woman meet up to have a few drinks and Martha reveals the truth about the dedication in her son’s novel.
While Dedication is not a horror story, it’s still one of the darker Stephen King short stories. It involves a violent husband, a gifted, yet hateful and racist write, and black magic. Yet, Stephen King molded all of those elements together into an interesting mixture and a great story, apart from one little detail.
What’s interesting to note is that Stephen King wrote this story to explore the idea gifted and famous people can be utterly horrible in real life.
Dedication is honestly one of the weirder Stephen King short stories, yet somehow I came to enjoy it and hold it dear.
The Raft is one of the more simple and straightforward Stephen King short stories. Yet, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
A group of college students go to a lake and swim towards a wooden raft. One of them, Randy, notices a mysterious black substance floating on the lake’s surface and that it chases the last of them as she makes her way to the raft.
Soon after, one of them, Rachel, states that the strange substance’s surface sparkles in various beautiful colors and leans forward to touch it. When she does, she’s pulled into the water and torn apart by the substance.
From here on out, the story continues as the remaining three deliberate what to do and how to escape from the raft and the mysterious creature.
As I said, it’s a rather typical monster story, but Stephen King can still make it more interesting in various ways. There’s the setting, the titular raft. There’s something about confined spaces that makes things so much more interesting.
Even though this is one of Stephen King’s earlier works, he’s still able to populate it with interesting characters and make us feel for them. During the first half, we learn much about their relationship and its superficial nature. This makes the dynamic between the characters much more interesting and makes us feel for them once the horror hits.
While The Raft is a simple story, I all around enjoyed it. Stephen King’s at its best in this. It’s gory, it’s violent, and it’s scary.
Autopsy Room Four is one of the most suspenseful Stephen King short stories of all time. The premise is downright terrifying, and it makes for some delightfully unsettling reading.
It’s about a man who wakes up in an autopsy room and is paralyzed after an incident during a golf game. While he’s conscious, his body appears to be entirely lifeless.
Soon enough, the medical person present prepares for an autopsy to learn what caused his supposed death. All the while, the narrator tries to get their attention via the smallest minute signals.
What makes this story is the palatable tension, the idea of just lying there while people talk about which part of yours to cut open first. And Stephen King renders it in acute and minute detail.
Autopsy Room Four was one of the tensest readings I ever had, and the sheer idea of being in this situation made me shudder. My only problem with the story was the rather humorous ending, but I guess there are different ways to relief tension. And I might say it was rather unexpected.
Stephen King has written his share of science-fiction short stories. While I enjoyed him switching to different genres and topical matters, I wasn’t too big a fan of most of them.
I Am the Doorway stood out to me though.
It’s the story of a crippled former astronaut, Arthur. After being exposed to some sort of extraterrestrial mutagen during a space mission to Venus, he notices strange changes to his body.
It’s tiny eyeballs push from his fingertips, allowing an alien species to see into our world. Yet, as the story continues, we learn that it’s not all they can do.
I Am the Doorway is one of the stranger and more surreal Stephen King short stories. I’m a big fan of body horror, and the idea of alien eyeballs sprouting from your own body is utterly unsettling and revolting to me. And as so often, Stephen King describes them in intricate detail, making things so much worse.
Overall, I Am the Doorway is one of Stephen King’s stranger stories, but one that lured me in with a scenario both fascinating and terrifying.
Good old Quitters, Inc. a story I first got to know from the anthology movie Cat’s Eye.
Quitters, Inc. is the story of Richard Morrison. One day he meets an old friend at the airport. His friend used to be a heavy smoker, but has now given up on the habit and enjoys a better life. Before he leaves, though, he hands Richard a business card for Quitters, Inc. a company who helps people to give up smoking for good.
Unhappy with his life, he eventually pays them a visit and learns of the unorthodox methods the company carries out to get its clients to stop smoking.
Quitters, Inc. brings forth one of the most interesting and bizarre concepts. Of course such a company would never work in real life, but the story itself works damn well. It’s such a strange concept, one that grows more terrifying as the story continues.
The story resonates with me especially. As a former smoker, I know how hard it is to give up the habit and how easy it is to slip back into it.
Quitters, Inc. is one of my favorite Stephen King short stories and one that I enjoyed immensely.
1408 is one of the most popular Stephen King short stories of all time and for a good reason.
The story begins with Mike Enslin’s arrival at the Dolphin Hotel in New York City. He’s a writer of books about haunted places. His books are very successful, but Enslin himself is not a believer in the paranormal. For his newest book, he plans to spend a night in the hotel’s most infamous rooms, 1408.
As he learns from the hotel’s manager, Olin, there have been 42 deaths and 12 suicides in the room over the last 68 years.
Olin tries his best to convince Enslin to give up on his idea, but he eventually agrees to lead him to the room.
From here on out, the story takes up steam, as Enslin himself comes to experience the horror of 1408.
What made this story so great, as the slow build-up and Olin’s tale of the incidents related to the room. It not only unnerves Enslin, but us readers as well and prepares us for what to come.
What happens in the room itself is pure nightmare fuel and Stephen King describes it in great detail, using stunning imagery. The horror that happens in 1408 is utterly surreal.
I think it’s one of Stephen King’s best pure horror short stories. The only problem I have is that the time Enslin spends in the room is rather short, barely taken up half the story.
What an interesting and strange story The 10 O’clock People is.
Our protagonist, Pearson, is an office worker in Boston who tried to give up smoking before and cut down on his habit.
During his 10 o’clock smoke break, he witnesses a strange bat-like creature on his way into the office building. A young black man, Duke, keeps him from screaming and calms him down. He explains that if he doesn’t want to die, he’s got to act normal and go about his day as usual.
The two of them meet up after work and Duke explains to him it’s the unique chemical imbalance caused by nicotine withdrawals that allows them to perceive the creatures as what they really are.
Duke is quick to invite Pearson to a meeting of his group and Pearson gets along, to learn more about the strange bat-creatures.
I really enjoyed this story of monsters lurking amongst us and disguising themselves amid society. It’s a premise that’s always interesting and The O’clock People delivers.
Children of the Corn is another one of the most popular Stephen King short stories. It’s another story I knew about because of its movie adaption. While I enjoyed the movie for what it was, I was impressed by how good the original story was.
The story follows a couple, Burt and Vicky, as they are on their way to California for a vacation hoping to save their failing marriage.
While driving through rural Nebraska, they accidentally run over a young boy. They soon discover that the boy’s throat was slit and he must’ve tumbled into the road as he was dying. They decide to report the incident to the police and make their way to the nearest town, a small, isolated community called Gatlin.
When they arrive, they find the town deserted. The only building that’s still maintained is the church. While Vicky stays in the car, Burt explores it and finds hints of a strange cult. Soon after, the two of them encounter the titular children.
What made this story so interesting was in large parts because of the characters. Stephen King is always great when writing realistic characters and his portrayal of Burt and Vicky’s failing marriage, and the tension between the two is incredibly well done.
Yet, it’s the rich setting that makes the story. Stephen King provides us with beautiful descriptions of an abandoned town, religious subtext, crazy pagan children, endless cornfields and the terror lurking within.
Children of the Corn is without a doubt one of the best Stephen King short stories out there.
Gray Matter is another one of the earlier Stephen King short stories.
The story is told from the perspective of an older man who sits together with his friends at a convenience store during a heavy snowstorm.
Soon a young boy, the son of a local man named Richie Grenadine, arrives. They all know the boy because his father sent him to the store frequently to buy his beer.
Henry, the store owner, takes the terrified boy aside and speaks to him privately. Eventually, Henry, the narrator and a few of the other man, decide to bring the beer to Richie themselves. On the way, Henry tells them the terrifying story the boy told him.
Gray Matter is typical among the many Stephen King short stories out there and does exactly what it’s supposed to do, terrify us and gross us out.
What made this story so great was the creeping horror, the disgusting imagery and the body horror. It’s a fantastic, unique story that I truly enjoyed.
Here we have another different one among the many Stephen King short stories. The Woman in the Room is less a horror story and more a heart-wrenching tragedy.
It’s the story of a man who’s burdened by deep remorse and pain because of his suffering and terminally ill mother. The story details the last time he visits her at the hospital.
The Woman in the Room might not be a horror story, but seeing our loved ones wither away and die is horrible. It’s a poignant read, a tale rooted in the real world and horribly realistic and relatable. While it’s essentially a simple story, the intimate way it’s told, the details and the description make it so good.
What truly stuck to me was the description of the narrator getting drunk throughout the day before he made his way to the hospital. It’s a fantastically sad tale with one of Stephen King’s strongest finals.
We all have to say goodbye to our loved one’s one day, and this story tackles it in the most heart wrenching of ways.
Another one dark and tragic one among the many Stephen King short stories, but one that’s fantastically told.
The story regards a man named Larry, who discovers that his sister has committed suicide. He recounts how the two of them often played in the family barn when they were children. They’d climb on top of a very tall ladder and leap into a huge haystack. However, the ladder was old and unsafe. Finally, on the last turn, the ladder breaks and his sister is left clinging to the last rung.
This intense scene, though, is only part of the story and Stephen King ties it together with the rest of the story, showing the impact the incident had on both Larry and his sister.
The Last Rung on the Ladder is a deeply and stunningly emotional tale. What made it so great was the tie-in between past and present. everything about this raw and emotional tale is great, but the final is truly devastating.
The Ledge is another early Stephen King short story. Similarly to Quitters, Inc. I first came to know it from the anthology movie Cat’s Eye.
Our protagonist is a man named Stan Norris, who’s currently held at the penthouse of Cressner, a wealthy crime boss. Cressner intends to get revenge on Norris because he had an affair with Cressner’s wife.
Instead of killing him, though, Cressner proposes a wager. If Norris can circumnavigate the small ledge surrounding the building in which the penthouse is located, he can have both Cressner’s wife and $20,000.
Should Norris refuse, he’ll be framed with heroin possession and never see his lover again. With no other option, Norris accepts the wager and makes his way outside.
As someone who’s afraid of heights myself, The Ledge disturbed me immensely. I was anxious throughout the entire story, and it didn’t help that Stephen King painted such an impressive picture of the small ledge and the view down onto the street. It was an incredible, never-wrecking read, but one that came to a very satisfying conclusion.
The Ledge is one of the best Stephen King short stories in his collection Night Shift and stands out because the horror is entirely realistic.
Graveyard Shift is one of my favorite Stephen King short stories. It’s such a dark, visual tale of horror it’s amazing.
It’s the story of a young man named Hall who’s been working at a textile mill in Main. Warwick, his foreman, recruits him and others to clean the basement of the mill. It’s been abandoned for decades, and over the years it’s gotten infested by rats.
As the men make their descent, they notice how severe the rat infestation is. Eventually they discover its source, a sub-basement which Hall and Warwick descend to investigate.
There’s something about cleaning an old, abandoned basement in the middle of the night. Adding in a rodent infestation only serves to make things worse.
Yet, King isn’t satisfied with just this and he makes the story much worse and much more nightmarish.
I truly loved this story. Once more, Stephen King, as so often, makes his characters realistic and interesting.
The best part about this story, however, is the visuals. The dark decrepit tunnels and rooms of the mill’s basement and later the sub-basement are rendered in intricate detail, as are the rodents who infest it.
Graveyard shift is a true treat for any horror fan out there.
There are horror stories that only allow us a glimpse at the true horror or only a small part of it. The Moving Finger is one such story.
It’s the story of a man named Howard Milta. One day when he goes to the bathroom, he finds a human finger poking out from the bathroom sink.
At first he denies the finger’s existence, but when he returns to the bathroom, the finger’s still there. Eventually more and more of it pushes from the sink and even attacks him.
Finding a finger pushing out from the drain in the sink is already creepy and surreal enough, but the image of the finger growing and extending makes it so much worse. Yet, as I mentioned above, there’s a deeper horror about this story, a finger can’t exist on itself and is always part of something…
It’s one of the more outlandish Stephen King short stories out there, but a great one.
Crouch End is one of the Stephen King short stories inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. As a Lovecraft fan, I absolutely loved this story.
The story starts off with two police constables in London, Ted Vetter and Robert Farnhame who work at a small station in the London suburb of Crouch End.
The two of them discuss the case of Doris Freeman, an American woman who reported the disappearance of her husband and spoke of monsters and other supernatural occurrences.
Doris relates how she and her husband got lost in Crouch End while searching for the home of a potential employer. As they wandered the neighborhood, it becomes strangely deserted and alien, and things get weirder and weirder.
I really love the idea of places in which the dark of the universe can slip through easier than in others, and where the influence of otherworldly entities is stronger.
What made this story was the warping of Crouch End and the descriptions of the outlandish place it became, as well as the strange things going on there.
Crouch End is a fantastically creepy story that works so well because it’s not only about being lost at an unknown place, but a place that’s truly alien and surreal.
There’s a fair share of wholesome or sad Stephen King short stories, and The Reach might very well be the best among them.
It’s the story of Stella Flanders, one of the oldest residents of Goat Island. She’s never crossed the reach, the water separating the island from the mainland. She states she never had a reason to go.
Stella has visions of the dead people of the island and realizes her time to go is approaching. Dressed in her warmest clothes, she finally makes her way across the frozen reach towards the mainland.
The Reach is a story that’s both sad and beautiful. It’s a tale rip with emotions and one that made me tear up at the end.
I highly recommend people to read The Reach. While it might differ from Stephen King’s usual work, it’s fantastic.
As I mentioned before, I’m a big fan of H. P. Lovecraft, and Jerusalem’s Lot is the closest Stephen King ever came to writing a true Lovecraft story.
It’s an epistolary short story written as a series of letters and diary entries by a man known as Charles Boone and his man servant Calvin McCann.
The story details what happens after Charles and his manservant arrive at Chapelwaite, the ancestral home of Charle’s dead cousin. Many of the people in the nearby town consider them mad for taking residence in the mansion because it has a history of strange events, disappearances and mysterious noises.
Eventually they discover an old map of a deserted village called Jerusalem’s Lot. Thus starts their exploration of the decrepit village, and the two soon discover how the Boon family line is related to it.
While the format and style of the story might not be for everyone, I enjoyed it. The plot of this story was close to what one’s used to from Lovecraft’s works. It’s a slow, deliberate uncovering of an old family mystery and its relation to otherworldly, lovecraftian powers.
As a Lovecraft fan, I absolutely loved this story. The writing, the atmosphere and the archaic vocabulary make it feel more akin to Lovecraft’s work than the other Stephen King short stories.
One of the best, if not the best story from Stephen King’s collection Night Shift, albeit I’m biased here.
Gramma might be the most suspenseful short story Stephen King has ever written. While there are other Stephen King short stories ripe with tension, there’s something about Gramma, about the intimacy and the narrative voice that made it stand out to me.
The story details what happens one day when an eleven-year-old-boy named George Bruckner has to watch over his grandmother. His mother has to leave because George’s thirteen-year-old brother has broken his leg playing baseball and she has to drive to the city that’s an hour away.
The rest of the story details not only what happens that day but also events George witnessed earlier in his life regarding his grandmother.
Before long, George hears strange noises from his grandmother’s room and eventually realizes that she’s died, but this is only the beginning.
What made this story so enjoyable was the narrative voice. The entire story is told from the perspective of a young boy who’s clearly freaked out about what’s going on. Stephen King nailed the voice and the thoughts of a young boy perfectly. It makes you wonder if Stephen King ever was in a similar situation, left alone with an invalid relative as a young boy.
The story is also fantastically well written. It’s told in a way that never releases the tension, and instead, the suspense just keeps growing and growing.
Gramma is definitely one of my favorite and one of the best Stephen King short stories of all time. I absolutely loved it.
I stated before that many of the Stephen King short stories in the genre of science-fiction were hit or miss for me. The Jaunt was definitely a hit. I think it’s one of the absolute greatest short stories he’s ever written.
The story is set in the future in which a form of instantaneous teleportation called ‘The Jaunt’ was developed, allowing humanity to colonize the solar system.
The story begins with Mark Oates and his family at one of the jaunt terminals in New York City. While the family waits for their turn to be jaunted, Mark relates them the history of how Victor Carune, an eccentric scientist, discovered the Jaunt.
What I really enjoyed about this story was the pseudo-history about the Jaunt and its creator, Victor Carune. I don’t know why, but I really enjoy these pieces of pseudo-history in fiction and Stephen King tells it masterfully. Yet, there’s more to this tale. The Jaunt is not merely a fictional history lesson, as we soon learn when Mark reveals the biggest problem about the Jaunt.
It’s an absolutely fantastic story, masterfully told and containing a concept that’s both fascinating and utterly terrifying.
I can’t recommend The Jaunt highly enough. It’s clearly one of the best Stephen King short stories of all time.
Mrs. Todd’s shortcut is my favorite Stephen King short story of all time.
The narrator, David, meets his elderly friend Homer. The two of them talk about Mr. Todd’s new wife and how she differs from his former wife, who vanished years ago.
Homer relates his experiences with the former Mrs. Todd and her habit of finding shortcuts. At first things are normal enough, as she explains her different routs, their length and the time she saves following them. Soon enough, though, the tale gets stranger as Homer realizes her shortcuts shouldn’t be possible.
The entire concept of the story is incredibly unique and told in such an interesting way, I couldn’t stop reading.
I think anyone who’s used to driving certain distances frequently has tried to find a shortcut before. Mrs. Todd’s habit, however, borders on an obsession, but it’s what makes the story so interesting. The meticulous way she explains things to Homer, the minute detail Stephen King goes to in describing her routes. It’s simply fascinating. Even before any of the weird elements were introduced, I was drawn in by this story and wanted to learn more about Mrs. Todd’s various shortcuts.
I don’t know what it was, but I was absolutely blown away by this story and the idea behind it. There’s something about this among the many other Stephen King short stories that made it stand out to me so much.
Even though it was one of the first of Stephen King’s short stories I read, I think back to how good it was constantly. That’s the reason I think that Mrs. Todd’s shortcut is the best of the over two-hundred Stephen King short stories out there.
Yet Lovecraft was a name I learned of relatively late.
I grew up with the works of Stephen King, having read the Dark Tower and some of his other works as a teenager. There were many other horror writers I knew via pop-culture references or from friends and family, like Edgar Allan Poe, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Bram Stoker, or Anne Rice.
Somehow, though, Lovecraft was a name I never heard of during that time. I guess he might not have been too popular in my native country of Germany.
I even watched many of the movies that were based on or inspired by his works, oblivious to the stories themselves.
It was during my time at university, in the mid-2000s, that I first heard his name. At the time, I frequently listened to audiobooks. One I came upon was about Lovecraft and featured an abridged version of the Call of Cthulhu. I remember little about it anymore, and for a few more years, Lovecraft should stay nothing but a random name to me.
It was only when I started to write horror and read the works of other fellow writers that Lovecraft’s influence and popularity became clear to me.
The moment I read up on horror literature, Lovecraft was a name that came up frequently. Even more so was the sub-genre of Lovecraftian Horror which you could seem to avoid. It wasn’t long before I was intrigued and drawn to it.
At first, I thought Lovecraftian Horror was merely a genre about eldritch abominations and indescribable horrors who preyed on mankind. Only when I started to read his works did I learned just how vast his themes truly were.
However, I’d only read two of his stories. One was Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, the other was Dagon.
When I finally decided to do a deep-dive into his works, I was in for quite a surprise, a big one, and I loved everything about Lovecraft’s work.
Lovecraft’s Work
Lovecraft is most famous for creating Cthulhu and the Cthulhu Mythos. He’s the father of the Necronomicon, a big that’s appeared in countless movies, games, and other media. Other creations include Nyarlathotep, The Deep Ones, The Elder Things, The Mad Arab, The Old Ones, and The Elder Gods.
He has, however, written many more stories, many of those only vaguely or not related to the Cthulhu Mythos at all.
Lovecraft’s body can be divided into three phases. The first phase was his macabre or horror phase, mostly inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The second phase, the so-called Dream phase or his Dream Cycle, which were inspired by the writings of Lord Dunsany. And lastly, the works he’s most famous for, his cosmic horror tales related to the Cthulhu Mythos.
I’m personally not a fan of his Dream Cycle work. Many of them don’t seem like actual stories to me. Instead, they feel more akin to exercises in world-building and imagery. Even his longest Dream Cycle work, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath seemed, at least to me, lackluster, strange and at times ridiculous. It was a colorful, creative, and weird story, but also one that was confusing and, most of all, bland. It was filled with beautiful imagery, but it felt less serious and a lot less refined than the works preceding and succeeding it.
I was most impressed with his last works. His blend of horror and science-fiction, two genres he fused into a weird whole that can only be described as Lovecraftian Horror. It’s a combination of supernatural terror inter-mixed with concepts of visionary science-fiction.
Lovecraft’s work is full of strange, beautiful ideas, weird images, and creativity much vaster than almost any other horror writer’s.
Before Lovecraft, horror consisted mostly of Poe-esque stories, ghost tales, and vampire novels.
Lovecraft expanded the scope of horror by shifting its focus from the more psychological horror of Poe, from the gothic horror to something grander. He’s nothing short of a horror fiction genius, one I might say was far ahead of his time. In a way, he’s the successor to Edgar Allan Poe and as influential as him in the entirety of the horror genre.
Stephen King once said that “[he was] the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.” Few refute that claim.
Lovecraft’s work, especially his later stories related to the Cthulhu Mythos, are terrifying on a different level, a level that hadn’t been seen before. They go far beyond the scope of horror at the time. These stories didn’t just feature creatures stalking mankind or revengeful ghosts. They didn’t merely feature ghastly incidents. No, there was something so broad, so different to them.
It’s called cosmic horror.
Cosmic Horror
Best Lovecraft Stories – Azathoth – Illustrated by Dominique Signoret
To bring forth this new sort of cosmic terror, Lovecraft included ancient civilizations, extraterrestrials, eldritch horror, occult lore far older than mankind itself, and even the entirety of the universe.
In many stories, the true horror isn’t the creatures his narrators encounter, but them having to face the triviality of not only their own existence but that of all of mankind. It’s the realization that there are creatures and entities out there, so old, so powerful and intelligent, that we, as humans, don’t even matter to them.
This bleak and unforgiving view is central to Lovecraft’s final and most famous phase.
Man is entirely insignificant, and he once stated:
“There are animals in the cosmos significantly more intelligent and effective than humankind.”
This fits well with another general theme of his work, one that has become central in cosmic horror as well. It’s the fear of the unknown. Lovecraft famously said:
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest fear is fear of the unknown.”
It’s the idea that something unnamable, unspeakable, or indescribable is out there, something whose mere existence and knowledge might drive us insane.
That’s why Lovecraft so often writers about Elder Gods, entities far more hideous and different to anything we know or could even imagine.
And this, as well as his cosmic horror themes, is why so many of his characters succumb to insanity and give into madness.
Lovecraft’s Writing Style
Yet, Lovecraft’s writing can be dense, his style verbose, flowery, and at times even pompous and pretentious. It’s a style that’s rather antiquarian and even during his lifetime many people came to call it ‘old-fashioned.’
This use of language, however, helps to solidify his style. It helps to create an atmosphere that made his stories work so well. It helps to give them a pseudo-scientific feeling.
Even more so because his narrators are seldom normal, everyday people. They are often scholars, men of science, professors, or doctors whose thirst for knowledge drives them to discover a terrible truth.
Yet, his style might ultimately have been counterproductive and might have been the reason his work was unpopular with audiences.
We don’t know, however. His unpopularity might be attributed to the outlandishness of his ideas, his archaic style, or his personality, considering he was his own, harshest critic.
As influential as Lovecraft would one day become, he earned little from his writing and stayed, ultimately, almost completely unknown during his time.
In case you want to know more about Lovecraft’s life, I urge you to check out the Writers Mythos and their episode on Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
A List of the Best Lovecraft Stories
Best Lovecraft Stories – Cthulhu – Illustrated by Benoît-Stella
I said it before, Lovecraft’s work and style might take some getting used to. It took me a while as well. When I was used to it, however, I grew to passionately love his work.
That’s why I put together a list of the best Lovecraft stories.
I’m going to put up links to the electronic text for any of the stories featured at The H. P. Lovecraft Archive so you can read them at your leisure as you make your way through the list.
A word of warning though, there are spoilers ahead, since I want to discuss each of his stories in-depth.
But now, let’s get on with the list of the best Lovecraft stories:
We are starting this list with one of the best Lovecraft stories with one of his shorter works, his story Cool Air.
The narrator begins the story by stating that a ‘draught of cool air’ is the most detestable thing to him in the world.
It’s only after this that he details the reason for his fear.
Back in 1923, the narrator lived in a house in New York City. When he investigates a chemical leak from the floor above, he learns that the man living above him is a strange and reclusive physician.
When the narrator suffers from a heart attack, he climbs the stairs and meets Dr. Munzo. The doctor saves his life and from then on the two of them often meet for long talks. During those, the narrator learns that Dr. Munzo is obsessed with defying death by all means possible.
There’s one peculiarity about the man’s apartment. He constantly keeps it cooled down via a complicated refrigeration system.
As the story continues, the doctor’s health deteriorates. He becomes more eccentric, upgrading his cooling system in various ways until parts of his apartment reach sub-freezing temperatures.
When the system breaks, the doctor’s panic-stricken and begs the narrator to help him keep his body cold. Unable to repair the machine, the doctor stays in a tube of ice, but soon the narrator can’t get hold of enough of it.
He eventually finds a mechanic to carry out the repairs, but at that point, it’s already too late. As they enter the apartment they find the rapidly decomposing remains of Dr. Munzo and a letter addressed to the narrator.
From this letter, he learns that Dr. Munzo died 18 years ago and was able to postpone death by various methods of refrigeration.
I personally loved this short little tale because of the outlandish idea at its center and the disturbing ending.
The setting was also well done. There’s always something about strange, old apartment buildings that adds to the atmosphere in a horror story. The doctor’s apartment too, which is constantly cooled, is weirdly interesting. One can already tell there’s something amiss here, even before the doctor’s onset of panic when the refrigeration system breaks.
And of course, there’s the ending and its revelation which is an absolute gruesome treat. What’s interesting here is that the story, while not directly inspired by it, is very similar to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. Both stories concern the postponement of death and end with the rapid decomposition of a body.
To me, Cool air, as short as it is, is the best of Lovecraft’s New York short stories and the only one I truly enjoyed.
If you’re a fan of Lovecraft’s pure horror stories not related to the Cthulhu Mythos, give this one a try, it’s great.
Best Lovecraft Stories – Dagon – Illustrated by Mario Zuccarello
Dagon is a short, maddening tale. It was one of Lovecraft’s very first stories and is incidentally one of the best introductions to his writing style. It features many elements that should come to dominate his later body of work.
Dagon recounts the experiences of a now heavily morphine-addicted sailor.
An attack of a German sea-raider sinks a cargo ship. The narrator, a survivor of the attack, drifts through the Pacific Ocean for three days before he winds up on a putrid island. He speculates it was lifted from the ocean floor because of volcanic activities.
He ventures out and reaches a mound at the edge of an immeasurable canon. As he descends it, he finds a white stone monolith, engraved with various unfamiliar hieroglyphs all depicting aquatic creatures.
While he studies it, a giant creature emerges from the depths of the ocean to pray at the monolith.
The narrator flees the island in terror and eventually finds his way back into society. No one believes his story, and there’s no hint of volcanic activity or islands lifted from the ocean floor.
The narrator is haunted by visions of the creature he saw and terribly afraid for the future of mankind. He believes there will come a day when those creatures rise from the depth to drag mankind down into the seas and when all land will sink back to the ocean floor.
The story ends with him lamenting running out of morphine and that he can’t go on without it. Just then, he hears the noise of what he assumes to be an immense, slippery body throwing itself against the door. After he catches a glimpse of a terrible hand, he decides to throw himself from the window.
Even in one of his first stories, we can already see Lovecraft’s interest in ancient history and old civilizations. The titular name Dagon is a reference to a Philistine fertility deity.
While the story has no direct ties to the Cthulhu Mythos and was written much earlier, it’s still Lovecraft’s first story to feature its elements. Interestingly enough, Dagon is referenced again in his story The Shadow over Innsmouth, albeit only in name.
If you’re looking for a great introduction to Lovecraft’s overall style and many of the elements that made his story so popular than Dagon is perfect. It might be one of his earliest tales, but it’s clearly one of the best Lovecraft stories. One could do much worse for a first story.
Pickman’s Model is another one of Lovecraft’s pure horror stories with no relation to the Cthulhu Mythos. It’s one of his last such stories before he fully ventured into his famous blend of horror and science-fiction and focused on his Mythos-related stories.
Pickman’s Model is a story regarding the titular artist Richard Upton Pickman. His works are brilliant, but they are so graphical and horrible that he’s shunned by fellow artists.
Eventually Pickman vanishes and the narrator, one of his friends, details what he found during a visit at Pickman’s home and a tour of his personal gallery.
Pickman presents him many of his works before he takes the narrator before a giant painting of an unearthly, vaguely canine, humanoid figure chewing on a human victim.
As Pickman rushes from the room with a gun, the narrator finds a small, rolled-up piece of paper attached to the painting. He hears multiple shots, but Pickman, upon returning, states that it was merely rats he shot at.
It’s only after the narrator left the artist’s home that he realizes he took the small piece of paper with him. As he unrolls it, he finds it to be a photograph. Not of the painting’s background, but the terrible creature depicted in it.
And thus, it becomes clear that Pickman’s inspiration, his model, was a creature that truly exists.
Pickman’s model is another fantastic Lovecraft story, albeit a simpler one when compared to most of his later tales. However, it’s yet again a prime example of Lovecraft’s theme of forbidden knowledge. The narrator states at the beginning of the tale he has an aversion to taking the subway. Only at the end do we find out why. It’s because the narrator now knows about the ghastly creatures that exist below the surface.
What I especially liked is the fact that Pickman vanished. It implies, while not stated directly, that the man must’ve found a dire end while trying to find more motifs for his art. One might also wonder if Pickman truly shot rats or if he was protecting himself from something different.
I also very much like the description of the painting and I can’t help but think of Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son.
Pickman’s Model is a tale that I rarely see mentioned among his more popular tales. It’s for this reason I included it in this list of the best Lovecraft stories and I urge any fan of Lovecraft to read it.
With over 50.000 words, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is Lovecraft’s longest work and his only novel. Lovecraft originally wrote it as a short story, but he realized he’d more to say and wanted to explore the theme of New England’s witch-haunted dark more.
The titular character of Charles Dexter Ward is a young man from a prominent Rhode Island family who’s disappeared from a mental asylum. He’d been admitted after he showed inexplicable, psychological changes.
For the most part, the novel details the investigation by the Wards’ family doctor, Marinus Bicknell Willet, in an attempt to figure out what caused Charles’ sudden changes.
Willet learns that the young man was obsessed with his ill-reputed ancestor, Joseph Curwen. The doctor slowly unravels the truth behind the legends surrounding Curwen. The man was supposedly an alchemist but turned out to be a necromancer.
During a raid on Curwen’s farm, strange discoveries were made, not-quite-human figures were shot, and all present vowed to never talk about what they saw.
During his investigation, Willet learns that Charles resurrected his ancestor via the use of magical formulae. After this Curwen murdered Charles, took his place, and resumed his activities.
Because of a striking resemblance to Charles, he could fool strangers, but not his family, who noticed the aforementioned psychological changes.
While Curwen’s locked up, Willet’s investigation lead him to a bungalow in a small village. It was purchased by Curwen and turns out to be the location of his old home.
During his journey through the catacombs, he sees deformed monsters and uncovers the plan of Curwen and his fellow necromancers. While there, he accidentally resurrects an enemy of Curwen’s faints and awakens in the bungalow. The entrance to the catacombs seems to be sealed as if they never existed. From a note left to him in Latin, he learns how to kill Curwen.
Willet eventually confronts the man, kills him, and later learns that Curwen’s co-conspirators met similar brutal deaths.
While The Case of Charles Dexter Ward doesn’t seem to get a lot of love among fans of H. P. Lovecraft, I enjoyed the novel. It’s, however, somewhat different from Lovecraft’s usual work. It leans more towards occultism and alchemy, forbidden arts, and necromancy.
What’s most interesting is the resurrection of people via natural salts. It’s a concept that was first proposed by French doctor and alchemist Borellus.
The most enjoyable aspect of the novel was the way it was told. While the novel is named after Charles Dexter Ward, it’s the story of Doctor Marinus Willet and his investigations, slowly putting together what happened to the young man.
While the novel isn’t part of the Cthulhu Mythos, it still includes some of its elements. Curwen is in possession of the Necronomicon, there are hints of strange cult activities, and it includes the first-ever mention of the entity Yog-Sothoth.
Yet Lovecraft wasn’t pleased with the novel and regarded it below his personal standards. As we know, the man himself was his harshest critic. However, over the years many critics and scholars came to like the novel, some regarding it as one of his finest works.
As I said before, I enjoyed the novel. It can, at times, be a bit slow and feel a bit too long, but it wasn’t something that bothered me a great deal. However, it might be a hurdle for some other readers.
If you want to experience Lovecraft’s longest work and only novel, don’t be discouraged. It’s worthwhile of getting into and one of the best Lovecraft stories.
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family was the very first and one of the best Lovecraft stories I ever read, and I absolutely loved it. Its placement here in the list is both because of appreciation for it as a story, but also for nostalgic reasons.
Still, the story holds an important place in my heart. It introduced me to Lovecraft, his style, and the twists that are often revealed at the end of his stories.
The story starts with a description of the ancestry of the titular character of Arthur Jermyn. He relates that his family has a peculiar physical appearance which first showed in the children of his great-great-great-grandfather, Sir Wade Jermyn.
The man was an explorer of the Congo region. His books about a strange civilization of white apes made him a laughingstock among peers. His wife was a reclusive Portuguese woman who he brought home from one of his many travels. He fathered a son before he was eventually confined to an asylum.
After this, the story continues to detail the life of the members of the Jermyn family line. Each member has their own peculiarities, and many of them are driven to the same regions Sir Wade explored.
After his father’s untimely death, it was Arthur who inherited the family’s possessions and moved to Jermyn House. Arthur is described as the strangest of Sir Wade’s descendants, having a very unusual appearance.
However, Arthur became a scholar, eventually visiting the Congo himself where he learns about the city of white apes, but also its destruction. However, he also learns of the stuffed body of their white goddess, which had supposedly gone missing.
When he returns to a trading post, a Belgian agent offers to obtain and ship the body to him. After several months, the body eventually arrives.
Arthur investigates the mummy only to rush from the room screaming before he commits suicide.
Lovecraft then, in the last part of the tale, reveals the contents of the goddess’ coffin. The ape goddess had a golden locket around her neck. On it were the Jermyn arms and it was of striking resemblance to Arthur Jermyn.
It’s thus revealed that Sir Wade’s supposed Portuguese wife was none other than the ape goddess. All his descendants were products of their union.
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family is at its core a story about tainted ancestry, unearthing knowledge that might better be left undiscovered, and the terror it brings. It’s one of Lovecraft’s major themes that is featured in many of his later stories, for example, in The Shadow over Innsmouth.
After reading many of Lovecraft’s other works, especially his later great texts, one can tell that this is one of his earlier efforts. Still, it’s a great story, especially because of its slow steady progression, the execution of the final reveal, and the many hints throughout the story pointing towards it.
It was this structure that made me enjoy the tale the most. There’s something interesting about following the peculiarities of each of Arthur’s ancestors as more and more details are revealed. One can almost tell that there’s something strange and uncanny about Sir Wade, his Portuguese wife, as well as the rest of the family.
What really impressed me about this tale was how well the final revelation at the end was handled. It revealed not only that Sir Wade’s wife was actually one of the apes, the ape goddess, but that also Sir Wade must’ve been the White God the apes worshipped.
I still remember the day when I first finished reading this tale. I sat there, amazed at how well the ending was executed, and how many hints throughout the story had pointed towards it. To get there, though, one has to read through the chronology of the Jermyn family. It was something I personally enjoyed, but that might not be for everyone, and some people might find it a dense and dry read.
Still, it’s a great tale and well worth the addition in this list of the best Lovecraft stories.
The Outsider is early Lovecraft at his absolute best. The story is another great introduction to Lovecraft’s style, but is also reminiscent of Poe’s. It is definitely one of the best Lovecraft stories of all time.
We can see Lovecraft’s descriptive and verbose style as we follow the narrator through a world of vine-encumbered trees, but the castle that’s infinitely old and infinitely horrible makes us think of Poe and his gothic imagery.
The Outsider details the miserable and lonely life of an individual that’s all by himself. His memory of others is vague, and he can’t recall anything about himself.
He lives in a dark decaying castle, amid an endless forest of high trees that block out the sun. He’s never left his home, and the only knowledge he has of the outside world is from the antique books that line the walls of his castle.
Eventually, determined to free himself, he climbs a ruined staircase to the castle’s highest tower. Once there, he finds a trapdoor in the ceiling.
Upon pushing it open he doesn’t find himself at a great height, but in a churchyard, in what he assumes to be another world. The narrator’s overjoyed for he can finally behold what he’s only read about so far.
As he wanders the countryside, he comes upon another castle, which he finds maddeningly familiar. At the castle, many people have gathered in revelry.
Longing for human contact he makes his way inside. The people suddenly become terrified, scream, and flee from the room. As he stands alone, he’s terrified of what must be near him and what scared everyone else. He crosses the room in search before he detects a presence approaching him.
It’s a terrible creature, one that has the ghoulish shades of decay upon itself, an abhorrent travesty of the human shape.
In shock, he loses his balance and touches the creature. Horrified, he runs and plans to return to his castle only to find the trap door long gone. He realizes then that he’ll forever be an outsider.
And in the last line, Lovecraft reveals the terrible truth, for when the narrator touched the creature, all he felt was the ‘cold and unyielding surface of polished glass.’
Undoubtedly one of Lovecraft’s finest works. It’s a beautiful and poetically melancholic story rip with the gothic themes so common in the works of his literary predecessor Edgar Allan Poe.
More so than in Poe’s stories, though, there’s an overall sadness to the main character, one that’s depressing, making The Outsider a beautifully sad tale.
One might wonder what the narrator’s strange, original world with its dark decaying castle and towering trees is. To me, it always felt like it describes the narrator’s afterlife, and the books that line the castle walls are the memories of his earthly life. When he eventually escapes, he finds himself in a graveyard as if he’s reawakened not from a different world, but the grave.
The Outside is a pretty unique story in Lovecraft’s body of work, for the narrator isn’t a scholar or man of science who discovers a terrible secret about reality itself. Instead, it’s a very personal story, and the narrator is nothing but a lonely figure longing for contact with others.
The Outsider is without a doubt one of Lovecraft’s finest works that presents is with beautiful gothic imagery and a feeling of almost palpable loneliness. It’s a fine addition to this list of the best Lovecraft stories.
Best Lovecraft Stories – The Music of Erich Zann – Andrew Brosnatch
The Music of Erich Zann is one of Lovecraft’s earliest examples of cosmic horror and one of the best Lovecraft stories. What’s especially interesting is that the story bears no connection to the Cthulhu Mythos. Instead, it’s a simpler, more intimate story.
The story features a university student who moves into a cheap apartment, in an old building. It’s located in a street in Paris named the Rue d’Auseil bordered by a giant wall.
Few people live at the place. One is the titular character of Erich Zann, an elderly German violinist. The man lives on the buildings top floor where the only window that allows a look above the giant wall is located. At night, the man can be heard playing strange melodies on his instrument.
Before long, the narrator, intrigued by the old man’s music, approaches him and asks if he can listen to his music. When he hums a specific tune, Zann urges him to move to a lower apartment, so he won’t hear his music anymore. He promises him, however, to invite him to listen to his other music.
Zann returns to his antisocial behavior and refuses to let the narrator listen. After this, the young man’s curiosity drives him to listen to Zann’s music in secret.
One night he hears the old man scream and when he barges into his apartment, Zann wants to explain everything and starts writing. Soon a distant sound is heard, and Zann continues playing his music frantically.
The music he’s now playing is horrible, and the student realizes it’s keeping something away. The sounds from outside grow louder, the window shatters and an unnatural wind blows Zann’s pages away.
At this moment the narrator’s finally able to see outside. Beyond the wall, he only finds a terrible black void, an infinite abyss of chaos.
The wind soon blows out the candles, leaving Zann and the narrator in absolute darkness. As he moves, he feels chilling things brushing against him. When he tries to bring Zann to follow him from the room, he discovers the old man’s dead, yet his body’s still playing the violin.
The narrator runs from Zann’s apartment, the building, and eventually from not only the neighborhood but also the Rue d’Asueil.
Writing about the incident now, the narrator could never find the street again. It does not appear in any maps and no one but him has ever heard about it.
Lovecraft considered The Music of Erich Zann one of his best stories. He wasn’t alone in this assessment though, because it was one of the few stories that found appreciation during his lifetime and which was frequently anthologized.
It’s another, shorter story, but one rip with a heavy atmosphere. The mysterious street, the apartment building, and the old German violinist with his strange music set a great tone for the terrible final.
It’s yet another one of Lovecraft’s stories in which a character is confronted and witnesses something far beyond his understanding.
Even more interesting, the narrator appears to be the only person to know about the Rue d’Asueil. It begs to wonder what place he was at.
The Music of Erich Zann is also a story I enjoyed a lot for a personal reason. It features of music as a major plot element similar to novel New Haven.
It’s an interesting and fantastically done tale and without a doubt one of the best Lovecraft stories.
We enter the top ten with another one of Lovecraft’s earlier works of pure horror. It’s also one of the best Lovecraft stories.
Our nameless narrator is a reporter who makes his way to Tempest Mountain after various reports cite the attack of an unidentified creature.
It all started during a huge thunderstorm. An entire village was destroyed and all of its inhabitants have since gone missing.
During his investigation, the narrator learns about the Martense Mansion, a century-old Dutch home, now long abandoned.
The narrator eventually visits the old mansion and brings along two of his friends. When another thunderstorm hits they are forced to stay the night at the mansion. While the place is entirely deserted, they still take precautions in case they are attacked. Eventually, they fall asleep. Upon awakening, the narrator realizes his companions are gone, but not before seeing a grotesque shadow.
The story continues as the narrator investigates the murders that have taken place as well as the sightings of the creature with a fellow reporter.
Before long he learns more about the Martense family, their isolated nature, including inter-marriage and their eventual disappearance.
Before long, as he investigates the mansion, he learns of the true, disturbing nature of the Lurking Fear and what became of the Martense family.
There’s much to be discovered in this story, and Lovecraft lures us into wrong directions multiple times before he gives us a fantastically done revelation.
The Lurking Fear is a story that comprises four installments, each detailing the narrator’s continued investigation and the slow revelation of the ghastly mystery of Tempest Mountain and the Martense Mansion.
It’s a story that’s very reminiscent of American Gothic and thematically, and stylistically similar to another one of his great, early horror stories, The Rats in the Walls.
The story’s setting adds a lot to the Gothic feeling it gives off, not only for the old, decrepit mansion.
There’s the isolated setting, but also the prevalent thunderstorms that hang as heavy over Tempest Mountain as the mystery the story contains.
While the Lurking Fear might be one of Lovecraft’s earlier works, it’s still one of his best pure horror stories. There are no Elder Gods here, no creatures from Cthulhu Mythos, instead, the horror is entirely man-made.
The Lurking Fear is one of my favorites and clearly one of the best Lovecraft stories.
Best Lovecraft Stories – The Dreams in the Witch House – Illustrated by Jens Heimdahl
The Dreams in the Witch House is one of Lovecraft’s later tales. With this story, we’re finally ready to jump into Lovecraft’s later, most famous body of work and the Cthulhu Mythos. It’s these works that are generally regarded as the best Lovecraft stories.
And what a jump it is. The Dreams in the Witch House is one of Lovecraft’s strangest, most weird stories. It can best be described as witches traveling to alternate planes of existence using the power of geometry and mathematics.
It’s exactly for this reason that the story stands out. The story is more in-depth with its use of science and mathematics than any of his other stories.
Our narrator, Walter Gilman, is a student of mathematics and folklore at Miskatonic University.
He rents the attic of a house in Arkham that’s rumored to be cursed and known as the ‘Witch House’. A woman named Keziah Mason once lived there, an accused witch who mysteriously disappeared from a jail cell in Salem in 1693.
Gilman soon learns that many of the occupants of the attic have died prematurely. Even stranger, he notices that the dimensions of the attic differ from those of normal geometry.
He theorizes that this structure could allow one to travel from one plane of existence to another. Gilman soon experiences bizarre dreams in which he floats through an otherworldly space of strange geometry, color, and sounds and notices various entities.
At other nights, he’s haunted by visions of the witch Keziah and her rat-bodied familiar, Brown Jenkins. However, he soon doubts that those are just visions.
In yet another dream, Gilman visits the city of the Elder Things and brings back evidence of actually having been there.
Eventually, his dreams escalate, as he signs the Book of Azathot under the command of Keziah, her familiar, and an unknown entity known as The Black Man. Gilman is then forced to be an accomplice in the kidnapping of an infant. Upon waking, he uncovers mud on his feet and soon learns of the news of an infant going missing.
On Walpurgis Night he dreams that the witch wants to sacrifice the infant in a bizarre ritual. He strangles the witch, but Brown Jenkins can complete the ritual by biting through the infant’s wrist.
He eventually details the entire story to a fellow boarder in the home. The man doesn’t believe the tale at first, but then bears witness to Brown Jenkins eating his way through Gilman’s chest.
Eventually, the house is abandoned and later razed. During this task, the workers find not only the skeleton of Keziah and Brown Jenkins but also her books on dark magic and, hidden between the walls, a space filled with the bones of children.
The Dreams in the Witch House is an interesting story, especially for its inclusion of science, mathematics, and geometry. Lovecraft was supposedly inspired by attending a lecture of Willem de Sitter, a Dutch mathematician, physician, and astronomer who talked about gaining a deeper understanding of the universe by a combination of geometry and the curvature of space.
While many of his later works can be categorized as a blend of science-fiction and horror, The Dreams in the Witch House still stands out as rather unique.
There’s of course many of Lovecraft’s usual elements of cosmic horror to be found in this tale. We see other races, including Elder Things, Nyarlathotep, and even Azathot.
Yet, all is not well with this story. While I loved the imagery, the ideas, and the grand cosmic landscapes conveyed, the plot itself was a little too weird to me. It seemed almost hackneyed and strangely convoluted because it includes so many different elements.
Still, it’s a good, strange story, especially because of its ideas and its imagery. Even if the plot might not be its strongest point, it’s still worth a read.
Best Lovecraft Stories – The Shadow Over Innsmouth – Illustrated by Taeyeon Kim
The Shadow over Innsmouth is a fundamental work of the Cthulhu Mythos, introducing us to one of his most iconic creations, the Deep Ones, a race of intelligent ocean-dwelling creatures.
The narrator of this story is an unnamed student on a tour through New England. Eventually, he decides to visit the small town of Innsmouth.
While he waits for the bus, he talks to the people in the neighboring town of Newburyport. Everyone there talks about Innsmouth only in superstitious tones.
Innsmouth turns out to be a mostly deserted fishing town, populated by people who walk with a distinctive, shambling gait, have strange narrow heads, flat noses, and bulging, stary eyes.
The only normal person seems to be a grocery clerk from nearby Arkham who hands him a map of the town and tells him about a local man named Zadok Allen. The man’s an alcoholic, and if the narrator gets him drunk enough, he might reveal a few things about Innsmouth. He also gets warned not to venture too deep into town. Outsiders aren’t welcome and have occasionally disappeared.
Upon meeting with Zadok, he learns that an Innsmouth merchant named Obed Marsh discovered a race of fishlike humanoids known as the Deep Ones. Obed established a cult, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, which offered them human sacrifices in exchange for wealth.
When Obed and his followers were arrested, the Deep Ones attacked the town and killed half the population. The survivors had no other option but to follow Obed’s practices and were forced to breed with the Deep Ones. The resulting offspring look like humans in their early life but eventually transform into Deep Ones themselves.
These ocean-dwellers also have plans to capture the surface world and use Shoggoths to shape it to their liking.
At the end of their talk, Zadok sees strange waves approaching and urges the narrator to leave town immediately. He’s unnerved by all this, but ultimately dismisses the story.
When the bus has trouble, the narrator has no other choice but to spend the night in the Gilman House, a musty hotel in town.
While attempting to sleep, he hears noises at his door, as if someone’s trying to force himself in. He escapes via the window and through the streets while a town-wide hunt for him occurs. At times he’s even forced to mimic the peculiar walk of the locals as he makes his way past several search parties.
Eventually, he makes his way towards railroad tracks. There he bears witness to a procession of Deep Ones whose appearance is enough to make him pass out in terror. He awakes unharmed and finally escapes the town.
Years later, after lots of research, he discovers that he’s a descendant of Obed Marsh himself and is now starting to change into a Deep One himself. He accepts his fate and is prepared to join the Deep Ones in their city.
The Shadow over Innsmouth holds a very special place in Lovecraft’s body of work. It’s the only one of his stories that contains scenes of genuine suspense and even action. The entire scene at the hotel and the subsequent flight of the narrator are uncommon for Lovecraft, but very well done.
Usually, the best Lovecraft stories focus on slow, deliberate investigations of mental surprises and slipping sanity.
That’s why The Shadow over Innsmouth is a rare gem. Lovecraft, however, wasn’t fond of the story and rejected it, calling it hackneyed and regarding it as one of his worst efforts. In my opinion, he succeeded very well in the tale itself, and in conveying action and suspense.
It’s not only these scenes that make the story work. It’s the general idea of a person alone in a mysterious, degenerative community that is inherently fascinating and lends itself perfectly to the horror genre. Yet, Lovecraft makes things even worse, by rendering his inhabitants not just backward or degenerate but by making them barely human creatures.
What helps to bring forth this atmosphere is Lovecraft’s descriptions of the gloomy, crumbling town of Innsmouth as well as the descriptions of his ghastly inhabitants. It’s this gloomy atmosphere that lures you in, and we know from the moment the narrator sets foot into Innsmouth that it’s far from a normal town.
Innsmouth also features another one of Lovecraft’s major obsessions, the theme of tainted ancestry and corrupted blood. It’s a theme that we also encountered in his stories Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family and Rats in the Walls. It’s interesting to note the narrator’s end especially which might describe Lovecraft’s own latent fears. Both his parents were admitted to and eventually died at mental institutions.
Another theme we see at work is that of man’s messing with powers and creatures far beyond their understanding. In his greed, Obed Marsh communed with the Deep Ones which ultimately have dire consequences for all of Innsmouth.
The Shadow over Innsmouth was also the only one of Lovecraft’s stories to be published in book form during his lifetime. However, the book was riddled with typographical errors, only a few hundred copies were printed and even less sold, making it a failure.
Yet, nowadays, The Shadow over Innsmouth is one of Lovecraft’s most popular and well-regarded stories.
The only problem I personally have with the tale is its ending. It feels too much of a coincidence for coincidence’s sake and Lovecraft’s attempt at bringing the narration full circle. The narrator was a man who accidentally, and out of curiosity, stumbled into the small town of Innsmouth. Yet, in the end, it’s revealed that he himself is a descendant of Obed Marsh and will eventually turn into a Deep One himself. It’s a bit of a stretch, one that’s a bit too long for me.
Apart from that, it’s a fantastic and unique tale.
Best Lovecraft Stories – The Call of Cthulhu – Illustrated by Sofyan Syarief
And so we finally come to the Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft’s most popular piece of work and, without a doubt, one of the best Lovecraft stories of all time.
Robert E. Howard described it as a masterpiece, while French novelist Michel Houellebecq described it as the first of Lovecraft’s great texts. Many other writers hold it in high regard.
Yet, The Call of Cthulhu is not only popular, but it served as the basis for the entire Cthulhu Mythos, which makes the story even more popular and influential.
That’s the reason it’s another perfect introduction for anyone new to Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Mythos, or cosmic horror in general.
The Call of Cthulhu is written differently from most of Lovecraft’s other stories. It features a more fragmented way of storytelling. It ties together various incidents by a narrative framework which allows the horror to slowly creep in before the story comes to inclusion that includes even its narrator.
The narrator, Francis Wayland Thurston, details what he found in the notes of his great uncle, a prominent professor at Brown University in Providence who recently died.
As outlined before, the story details the various notes, each containing incidents related to some sort of entity.
The first chapter regards a bas-relief sculpture of a strange entity that simultaneously contains the picture of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings. The sculpture was created by a student who based it on a dream of great Cyclopean cities of titanic blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horrors.
It’s here that Cthulhu and the dead city of R’lyeh are first mentioned.
As the story continues we learn that there are strange cults who worship the same creature and who own similar sculptures.
It’s here that we encounter two of Lovecraft’s most famous quotes:
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn” (“In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”)
“That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”
In the last chapter of the story, we learn of a sailor who eventually arrives at nothing less than R’lyeh, raised from the depth of the sea, and who encounters Cthulhu himself.
The narrator tries to meet up with the sailor regarding his experiences, only to learn that the man was murdered. It’s at this point that the narrator realizes that he’s in danger too, for he knows too much, and the cult still lives.
Best Lovecraft Stories – The Call of Cthulhu – Illustrated by Sofyan Syarief
The Call of Cthulhu is another fantastic story, written uniquely. It contains all the hallmarks of a typical Lovecraft and Cthulhu Mythos story: strange influences, non-Euclidean geometry, elder beings, and of course, people driven to insanity. What’s interesting though is that while Cthulhu, the immense Old One, slumbering within the non-Euclidian walls of the dead city of R’lyeh, is Lovecraft’s most famous creation, the being never appears in any other stories. It’s only mentioned by name, here and there.
While I enjoyed the story tremendously, I still have my problems with it.
Many people hail The Call of Cthulhu as Lovecraft’s best work. Yet, I can’t help to put it lower on the list. The reason is that the protagonist feels too removed from the story and the general action. This makes the story almost feel like an essay of strange incidents.
It’s this non-traditional structure that combines a traditional narrative with journals of various witnesses that make the story work in one way but doesn’t in another.
In essence, The Call of Cthulhu is a story within a story within a story.
It’s an intriguing and interesting tale. Each incident adds a little more to the general puzzle until we’re greeted with an appearance of Cthulhu himself. However, other stories by Lovecraft have a more finished feel to them and a tighter narrative, making them, at least to me personally, more satisfying.
This doesn’t mean it’s a bad story, by no means. It’s after all one of Lovecraft’s great texts and deservedly mentioned as one of his best by fans. I just feel there are other stories more worthy of praise while The Call of Cthulhu can be a bit overrated.
Still, I’d recommend the story to anyone interested in Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Mythos, and cosmic horror.
Best Lovecraft Stories – The Rats in the Walls – Nyarlathotep – Dominique Signoret
The Rats in the Walls is another one of Lovecraft’s pure horror tales and one of his earlier horror stories. Yet, it’s not only the best of those early horror tales, it’s also one of his best Lovecraft stories of all times.
The Rats in the Walls is the story of an old American, Delapore. After the death of his son in WWI, the man returns to his ancestral estate in England.
The home was abandoned when his only surviving ancestor fled the place. Delapore restores the estate, but after moving in, he’s frequently haunted by the sounds of rats behind the walls.
It’s not only the rats that trouble him. He’s also plagued by ghastly dreams, featuring a devilish swineherd and his disfigured livestock who are eventually eaten by a flood of rats.
Eventually, Delapore and a friend of his son named Norrys uncover a secret tunnel below the altar in the building’s basement.
With a group of explorers they descend and find a giant grotto. The buildings there reaching from ancient times until the time when his ancestor fled the building.
Human bones are everywhere, some even in cages. They realize they’ve found the dwelling of a cannibalistic underground society that raised human cattle.
And this is where Delapor’s dreams stem from. After his ancestor fled, the rest of the human cattle were left behind to be devoured by the rats inhabiting the cesspits of the city.
In one of those, Delapore finds a skeleton among the rest wearing a ring with his family badge on it. This proves that the cannibalistic society was no other than his own family.
Upon this revelation, Delapore snaps, attacks Norrys, and begins eating him. All the while, he rambles on in a mixture of Middle English, Latin, and Gaelic before his voice devolves into a cacophony of animalistic grunts.
Delapore’s eventually subdued by the rest of the explorers and placed in a mental institution. In there, he desperately pledges his innocence, stating that it was ‘the rats, the rats in the walls’ who ate Norrys.
And in this cell, Delapore continues to be plagued by the sounds of rats in the walls.
While the plot, with its old family mansion and the strange sounds behind the walls, it’s the ending that will surprise and even haunt you. It’s one of the best climaxes Lovecraft ever wrote, only topped by that of The Whisperer in Darkness and The Shadow Out of Time.
Delapore’s madness and his insane ramblings might almost suggest that he’s devolving, changing back to the way of his ancestors, committing the same deed, and speaking the same way.
The Rats in the Walls might be one of Lovecraft’s most depraved stories, especially for the narrator Delapore. There’s not only the knowledge of his tainted ancestry, but also the deed he committed. And in the end, he’s left in an asylum where he’s constantly tormented by the sounds of the rats.
An interesting tidbit is the idea that the story might be a nod to Lovecraft’s literary icon Edgar Allan Poe and his story The Tell-Tale Heart. Both narrators are haunted by sounds, and are, ultimately, driven mad by them.
The Rats in the Walls is a true masterpiece of horror literature. It’s the best of Lovecraft’s earlier horror stories, and one that will stay on your mind for quite a while after reading it.
Best Lovecraft Stories – The Dunwhich Horror – Illustrated by László Báti
The Dunwich Horror is one of the best Lovecraft stories and one worthy to open the top five with.
The story begins by describing the strange circumstances of the birth of the deformed son of an albino mother called Lavinia Whateley and an unknown father.
This child, called Wilbur, matures at an abnormal rate. He begins to read and write at an age far younger than other children and reaches adulthood within a decade.
The locals shun the family while animals fear Wilbur and despise his odor. Wilbur’s grandfather, on the other hand, is rumored to be a sorcerer who teaches him rituals and witchcraft.
The townspeople soon notice another peculiarity about the family. Wilbur’s grandfather buys more and more cattle, but the size of his herd never increases. Even worse, more and more cattle seem to disappear or are covered in terrible wounds.
It soon dawns on the townspeople that Wilbur and his grandfather house a strange, unseen presence in their home, one who requires the two to frequently modify their home.
Eventually, Wilbur’s mother disappears, his grandfather dies, and the strange entity seems to occupy the entire house.
Wilbur visits the library of Miskatonic University, requesting to rent their copy of the Necronomicon, so he can complete his rituals.
When he’s denied by the librarian, Doctor Henry Armitage, he breaks into the library at night but is attacked and eventually killed by a guard dog. When Doctor Armitage and two of his colleagues, Professor Warren Rice and Francis Morgan arrive, Wilbur’s corpse melts before their eyes.
After Wilbur’s death, no one’s left to care for the entity in the farmhouse. It eventually breaks free and rampages across Dunwich. The entity seems to be an invisible monster and in the course of the next several days, two families and several policemen are killed by it.
Eventually, Armitage, Rice, and Morgan learn what the entity might be and how to fight it. They use a magic powder to render the creature visible before destroying it with a spell.
Before being destroyed the creature babbles in an alien tongue before it screams for Yog-Sothoth, its father to help him. It’s then revealed what the creature truly is, Wilbur’s twin brother, though it took more after his father.
Best Lovecraft Stories – Yog-Sothoth – dominique Signoret
The Dunwich Horror is a story that was written a few years after The Shadow over Innsmouth. Yet, it follows a similar thematic, namely that of human-monster offspring.
It’s not only this thematic but its many reoccurring elements, Arkham, Miskatonic University, the Necronomicon, and the entity Yog-Sothoth, make it a core story of the Cthulhu Mythos.
The Dunwich Horror is a story written in Lovecraft’s usual delightful style. It lends itself perfectly to the first half of the story. It’s here that Lovecraft focuses on Wilbur, his deformities, the old farmhouse, and everything that’s going on in his over-descriptive and flowery vocabulary.
What’s so great about this story is the slow and deliberate development. The first half of the story is dedicated solely to Wilbur and his family. It might be one of Lovecraft’s most effective, drawn-out works of horror.
After his introduction, and for the first half of the story, one’s inclined to think that Wilbur’s the protagonist of the tale. Only when he suddenly dies are the real protagonists revealed. It’s also the same time that the Dunwich Horror finally breaks free.
One thing that makes the story stand out among Lovecraft’s body of work is that it ends in a far more optimistic tone than his other stories. It’s only in the Dunwich horror that mankind wins over the dark entities they are confronted with. Wilbur, the terrible half-breed is unceremoniously killed by a guard dog. The titular Dunwich Horror, a spawn of Yog-Sothoth itself, is destroyed by men of science-
The Dunwich Horror is a fantastic story, one that stands out in various ways and that’s clearly one of Lovecraft’s most celebrated works and one of the best Lovecraft stories of all time.
Best Lovecraft Stories – The Colour Out of Space – Illustrated by Ludvik Skopalik
The Colour Out of Space is Lovecraft’s most original story and features his most original creation. It was also Lovecraft’s personal favorite among his body of work.
The story has frequently adapted, most recently as a movie by the same name starring Nicolas Cage.
The Colour Out of Space was also the first of his later, most popular blends of science-fiction and horror.
Lovecraft’s motif when creating the story sprang from his dissatisfaction with how aliens from outer space were portrayed in fiction at the time. What he wanted was to create an entity that’s truly alien and doesn’t resemble a human being or any other earthly creature.
The Colour Out of Space is told by an unnamed narrator. He wants to uncover the secret behind a place known as the blasted heath.
When he gets no information from any of the townspeople, he seeks out a supposedly crazy man named Ammi Pierce. From this man, the narrator learns what happened to a farmer named Nahum Gardner and his family who used to live on the cursed property.
It all started when a meteorite crashed on Gardner’s land in June 1882. The meteorite puzzled scientists who weren’t able to discern its origin. As it shrinks, it leaves behind globules of color which are only referred to by analogy since their color itself is outside the visible spectrum.
In the following season, Gardner’s crops grow unnaturally large and abundant but are discovered to be inedible. Gardner becomes convinced that the meteorite poisoned his soil.
The infection soon spreads to the surrounding vegetation and animals altering them in unusual ways.
When Gardner’s wife goes insane, he slowly isolates himself from the rest of the farming community, only corresponding with Ammi Pierce who becomes his only contact to the outside world.
At this point, the vegetation outside Gardner’s home erodes into gray dust and the water becomes tainted. Soon after the livestock turns gray as well and dies, their meat becoming inedible.
One of Gardner’s sons first goes mad and dies. Another one, Merwin vanishes after being sent to retrieve water from the well.
After two weeks without contact, Ammi Pierce makes his way to the farm and learns of the terrible horror that happened there.
Zenas, Gardner’s lost son has disappeared. In the house, he stumbles upon Gardner’s wife who’s been infected by the color. He puts her out of his misery and upon fleeing the house he stumbles upon Gardner who succumbs to the influence of the color.
Pierce later returns to the farmstead with others, including a doctor to identify Nahum’s remains. As they investigate, they discover the skeletons of both Merwin and Zenas at the bottom of the well.
As they reflect on their discovery, a light shines from the bottom of the well. Before they can react, the color emerges from it and spreads over everything in the vicinity.
As they flee, they bear witness to the color finally vanishing into the sky. It’s Pierce alone who turns back. He notices that a small portion of the color fails to follow the rest and sinks back to the well.
Thus Pierce knows that part of the alien entity is still on Earth, which disturbs him deeply. In the time following the Gardner family’s demise, all neighboring families abandon the area.
The Colour out of Space is always included among Lovecraft’s most popular and in lists of the best Lovecraft stories.
Interestingly enough, the story was in part inspired by the construction of the Scituate Reservoir in Rhode Island. Large parts of the town of Scituate were flooded, forcing most its residents to dislocate. One can easily see the similarity, namely numerous people being forced to leave their homes. Only in Lovecraft’s stories, it’s not because of a flood, but because of an alien entity.
There’s an overwhelming, dark atmosphere that hangs over The Colour Out of Space from beginning to end. It gives the reader a sense of dread that only worsens as the story continues.
There’s a slow lurking horror that starts to spread when the color influences everything around Gardner’s farm. This feeling is emphasized by the tragic story of the family. There’s a feeling of helplessness, of despair that lasts until their eventual doom at the end of the tale.
The Color Out of Space is undoubtedly one of Lovecraft’s finest pieces of work, especially because of the entity, the titular color. We know nothing about it, we can’t fathom or even see it and we’ll never know if it was even conscious.
It’s a fantastic story that I highly recommend to any fans of Lovecraft and that serves as a study on how to create a truly alien entity.
Best Lovecraft Stories – The Whisperer in Darkness – Mi-Go – Illustrated by Khannea SunTzu
The Whisperer in Darkness is one of my absolute favorite Lovecraft stories, one I regard as one of the best Lovecraft stories of all time.
Incidentally, it’s also one of the most important stories in his body of work. It introduces us to the Mi-Go, an extraterrestrial species of fungoid creatures and thus broadening the scope of his narrative.
While the Cthulhu Mythos might not be at the center point of the story, it still contains many of its elements and is without a doubt a masterpiece of cosmic horror.
The Whisperer in Darkness is the story of a man named Albert N. Wilmarth, who’s an instructor at Miskatonic University in Arkham.
The story begins with newspaper reports of strange things floating in the rivers after a flood in Vermont. Soon a conspiracy spreads, surrounding what’s supposedly sightings of extraterrestrial creatures.
Wilmarth remains skeptical, siding with those who blame the stories on old legends about monsters living in the hills. This changes when he receives letters from a man maned Henry Wentworth Akeley, living in an isolated farmhouse. Akeley claims he can prove the existence of the creatures.
The two continue to exchange letters. Akeley details accounts of an extraterrestrial race in communication with human agents worshipping Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep.
These human agents soon begin to intercept Akeley’s messages, harass him before the situation escalates and gunfire’s exchanged. Akeley reports having killed one of the extraterrestrial beings and describes their disgusting nature.
Soon after, Akeley seems to reconsider. In a new letter, he explains to Wilmarth that he’s met with the beings and learned they are peaceful. They even taught him many things, far beyond our imagination. He urges Wilmarth to visit him and bring along all the letters and photographic evidence he received.
Wilmarth’s unnerved, but eventually consents.
When he arrives he finds Akeley immobilized and in a sickly condition, sitting in a chair in darkness and whispering to him in a low voice.
Akeley tells him about the extraterrestrial race and the wonders they revealed to him. He also explains that they can surgically remove the human brain and place it in a canister. This will not only allow them to live forever but to also withstand the rigors of space travel.
Akeley himself has agreed to undertake such a journey and points to a canister bearing his name. Another one of the brains talks about the positive aspects of the journey and urges Wilmarth to join them on a trip to Yuggoth. It’s the beings outpost in our solar system, revealed to be Pluto.
The entire conversation gives Wilmarth a growing feeling of unease, especially from Akeley’s strange buzzing whispers.
During the night, Akeley’s awoken by a disturbing conversation between several bizarre voices. When he goes downstairs, he finds Akeley gone. All he finds is his robe, hiding a most terrifying discovery that sends him running from the house in terror.
It was the face and hands of Akeley.
The Whisperer in Darkness has all a great Lovecraft story needs. We’re not only introduced to the extraterrestrial Mi-Go. We also get vast information about Lovecraft’s terrible universe and the many beings out there.
“I found myself faced by names and terms that I had heard elsewhere in the most hideous of connections—Yuggoth, Great Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth, R’lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Hastur, Yian, Leng, the Lake of Hali, Bethmoora, the Yellow Sign, L’mur-Kathulos, Bran, and the Magnum Innominandum…”
What made this story so great to me was not only the revelation. It also showed us just how broad the scope of Lovecraft’s body of work truly is. There are not only ghastly entities hiding on earth or at the bottom of the ocean. No, this story widens the scope of his work to the entirety of the cosmos.
The Whisperer in Darkness describes extraterrestrial beings that come to visit us and regard man as nothing more than another small, insignificant part of the greater cosmos.
I absolutely loved the plot of this tale. We follow it along from Wilmarth’s early skepticism, Akeley’s letters, Wilmarth’s growing beliefs until we enter the final, terrible revelation near the end.
All of those parts make The Whisperer in Darkness an absolute masterpiece of speculative fiction and cosmic horror. It’s a story I’ll urge any fan of Lovecraft, cosmic horror, or general science-fiction-horror to read.
Best Lovecraft Stories – At the Mountains of Madness – Elder Thing – Tom Ardans
At the Mountains of Madness is Lovecraft’s Magnum opus, his most popular work after The Call of Cthulhu and without a doubt one of the best Lovecraft stories of all time.
It is another blend of science-fiction and horror that encompasses everything that makes Lovecraft so special. It’s no understatement to say it stands at the top of his entire body of work.
At the Mountains of Madness details the events that took place during an Antarctic expedition led by Dr. William Dryer of Miskatonic University.
The expedition starts off promising and the scientists discover various fossils. One of them is a strange trigonal imprint which leads Professor Lake and a part of the investigation to further investigate. Lake and his team make their way northward.
Lake and his group discover not only a giant mountain ranger higher than any other on Earth but also fourteen prehistoric lifeforms. These lifeforms are unidentifiable as either plants or animals. Six of them are damaged while eight appear to be preserved in pristine condition.
When Lake dissects one of the specimens, he realizes they bear a striking resemblance to creatures mentioned in the Necronomicon, the so-called Elder Things.
Soon after the main expedition loses contact with Lake’s group. When they stumble upon the camp, they find it destroyed. Most of the man and dogs have been slaughtered.
Near the camp, they discover six-shaped mounds, each containing one of the specimens. All the specimens in prime condition appear to have vanished and the remains of a man and a dog appear to have been dissected.
Dryer and a graduate student named Danforth, fly a plane across the mountains and discover a vast city of alien architecture. When they explore it they stumble upon hieroglyphic murals.
From there they learn that the Elder Things came to Earth shortly after the Moon was created. They built their vast city with the help of so-called Shoggoths. These are biological entities, created by the Elder Things to perform any task and assume any shape.
They continue exploring and learn that the Elder Things were in conflict with the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu and the Mi-Go. They also find hints of an unnamed evil lurking within an even larger mountain ranger beyond the city.
Their culture eventually degraded when the Shoggoths gained independence. The last of the murals become haphazard and primitive, explaining that the Elder Things eventually fled to a vast subterranean ocean.
Dyer eventually realizes that the Elder Things missing from the camp must’ve come back to life, slaughtered Lake’s group before they returned to the city.
They discover traces of the Elder Things, follow them, and are led to the entrance of a tunnel that seems to lead to the subterranean regions depicted in the murals.
There they are confronted by a black, bubbling mass which they identify as a Shoggoth. They barely escape with their lives.
As they fly back, Danforth looks back and sees something far beyond the city that destroys his sanity, implied to be the unspoken evil mentioned in the murals.
Dyer concludes that the Elder Things were merely survivors of a bygone era. They only slaughtered Lake’s group out of fear, self-defense, or scientific curiosity.
He ends the tale by warning anyone who thinks about exploring Antarctica to stay clear of the place.
Best Lovecraft Stories – At the Mountains of Madness – Shoggoth – Tatsuya Nottsuo
At the center of At the Mountains of Madness is a feeling of vivid dread. We are shown just how small and meaningless our place truly is. Not only in the grander scale of things, but even here, on our very own planet. He conveys this feeling by rendering vivid descriptions of icy wastes, dark artifacts, and the remnants of a lost civilization that existed long before the dawn of man.
It’s another story that’s foundational to the Cthulhu Mythos. It shows us the ancient, alien history of Earth and introduces us not only to the Elder Things and the Shoggoth but also mentions a number of Great Old Ones.
If one’s familiar with the works of Edgar Allan Poe and his novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Plym of Nantucket, one can find many similarities between both works. In a way, At the Mountains of Madness is an homage to Poe’s work. They both feature an Antarctic expedition and Lovecraft cites Poe’s novel twice. He even borrows the cry ‘Tekel-li’ from Poe’s work.
Lovecraft chose Antarctica as a setting not only as an homage to Poe. Even during his lifetime, there was very little known about the continent. That’s why it was the ideal spot for fictional geography and alien ruins.
At the Mountains of Madness is a fantastic, well-written tale. It comes in Lovecraft’s usual descriptive style and presents to us not only an alien landscape but also disturbingly alien creatures.
One can also see Lovecraft’s general development as a writer. In earlier stories, creatures and entities were often described as beyond explaining, or too terrifying and alien to comprehend. In At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft could finally present us with a clear vision of his creatures, both the Elder Things and the Shoggoths.
It’s truly one of the best Lovecraft stories, a masterpiece, and one of the greatest classics of cosmic horror and the Cthulhu Mythos.
Best Lovecraft Stories – The Shadow Out of Time – Illustrated by Vishchun
And so we finally come to The Shadow Out of Time, my favorite tale by H. P. Lovecraft.
It’s yet another blend of science-fiction and horror, but in scope, it’s by far his most epic and ambitious work.
The Shadow Out of Time introduces us to another unique creation of Lovecraft, the Great Race of Yith. They are an extraterrestrial species able to travel through time and space by switching bodies with hosts from a chosen place in time and space.
The story is told from the perspective of Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, an American professor of political economy at Miskatonic University.
One day he suffers an attack during one of his lectures which renders him unconscious. When he finally comes to himself, five years have passed. He learns that he wasn’t in a coma, but was a changed person and had supposedly gone mad.
After he comes back to himself, his sleep is haunted by strange dreams of another world and vast, alien cities. In this city, he’s led about by strange creatures and experiences their way of life.
At first, he regards those episodes as nothing but a by-product of his temporary insanity. However, he soon comes to a different conclusion.
While he’s at first relieved to learn of other cases of similar temporary insanity, he gets worried when he learns that the experiences of others are almost identical to his.
The narrator’s dreams become more and more vivid and he becomes obsessed with archeology and ancient manuscripts. Yet, he still lacks proof for what he thinks might have happened to him.
Eventually, he leads an expedition to the Great Desert in Australia. There the ruins of a vast, ancient civilization are unearthed and within he finds proof that his dreams are indeed real.
For five years he swapped bodies with a member of the Great Race of Yith. What he finds in the ancient, million-year-old ruins are none other than his very own writings, in the English language, and written by his own hand.
I absolutely love The Shadow Out of Time, and two things make this story very special.
First, it’s the way the story is written. The Shadow Out of Time is not a simple, straightforward story. It’s written in an investigative, backward fashion as the narrator tries to uncover what happened in the past five years of his life.
And slowly, via dreams, research, and tales from acquaintances as well as family, he uncovers what truly happened.
Second, it’s the sheer scope of the narrative. It features not only people from various points in history, including ancient Romans, monks, and future wizards but also non-human entities such as Elder Things.
There’s no other story in Lovecraft’s body of work that better outlines the shallowness and pointlessness of humanity in the face of greater cosmic powers. It’s without a doubt Lovecraft’s most grandiose, most-awe-inspiring, and imaginative story. The Shadow Out of Time is Lovecraft’s purest vision of what cosmic horror is all about.
It contains nothing short of the history of the planet Earth from the eyes of both humans, but also those of a space-and-time traveling civilization that’s around way longer than we will ever be. Humanity on the other end is nothing but a footnote in the history of our very own planet. In the universe’s history, we’re unlikely to be remembered by anyone.
What’s even more interesting is the depiction of the Great Race of Yith. The Yithian’s aren’t presented antagonistically. They are benevolent to their visitors, letting them explore their vast library city and learn whatever they wish to learn.
Their entire reason for doing what they do is not to harm, but to learn. Their goal is to study all forms of civilization throughout space-and-time.
The Shadow out of time is an absolute masterpiece with a scope that’s mind-blowing. It’s not only showing us that other races inhabit Earth, an idea Lovecraft already explored in At the Mountains of Madness. No, he goes far beyond it and presents to us a race who’s able to travel not only through space but also time.
It shows us not just how vast Lovecraft’s universe is, but also how vast his imagination and creativity was.
If you want to witness Lovecraft at his grandest, at his most ambitious, I urge you to read The Shadow Out of Time. It’s a fantastic, well-written story that’s mind-blowing, both in scope and in creativity. A fantastic fit for the top spot of this list of the best Lovecraft stories.
As a horror writer, I’ve always been reading, yet most of what I read were works of classical literature. Recently I started to read the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was a writer whose stories I was well familiar with. Yet, it was mostly because of pop-culture references and from the influence he had on other writers and horror literature in general.
That’s why I spent the last months reading almost all of his works.
There are few writers as influential as Edgar Allan Poe on the horror genre and the American literary tradition in general. It’s not wrong to say he was a pioneer in many ways. He didn’t just set new standards; he changed the entire course of literature.
Edgar Allan Poe is hailed as the father of the modern detective story, the psychological horror genre, but he was also highly influential in such genres as science-fiction and adventure.
The list of writers Edgar Allan Poe influenced is long and extensive, including Charles Baudelaire, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herman Melville, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. P. Lovecraft, and even Sigmund Freud.
It’s no understatement to say that the literary world we know today might be very different without him.
Want to know more about Edgar Allan Poe and his life? Check out the Writers Mythos and their episode on Edgar Allan Poe.
Reading the works of Edgar Allan Poe differed from what I expected. I’d imagined him to be a writer of ghost stories and of creepy tales in which people are stalked by dark things and terrible creatures.
Instead, I was treated to tales of unreliable narrators, characters who are mentally ill and suffer from various ailments, fears, and addictions.
There were seldom any ghastly creatures. Instead, I was treated to tales of gripping psychological horror, of sick minds, and the terrible deeds they committed.
When I first started to read Edgar Allan Poe’s works, I needed some time to get used to them. As a non-native speaker, his often verbose and poetic style was tough to get into. His writing is often very imaginative, relying more on mood and atmosphere. He’s painting detailed pictures, not only of what his characters see, but what they feel and experience.
Once I got used to it though, there was something special about Edgar Allan Poe’s style. Reading his stories out loud made me recognize the mastery he held over the craft. There’s rhythm to his work, there’s power, suspense, and emotion, something you can truly feel and hear when you read his works out loud or listen to them.
While I mostly enjoyed Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, I couldn’t help but feel that I was reading poetry at times. It proves, at least to me, that Poe was first and foremost a poet, even in prose.
This also relates to his general style. Edgar Allan Poe’s writings aren’t so much vessels for storytelling or plot, they are all about atmosphere, about apprehension turning to terror, and doing so in as few words as possible.
This shows in one of his most fundamental rules of writing, his theory of ‘totality.’ Every element and every word in a short story must contribute to the feeling you want to instill in your readers. It’s an idea that you can see brought to life when reading his stories, and it’s one that I might do well to keep in mind regarding my writing.
While Edgar Allan Poe wrote many different stories, experimented with various different genres, for this list I wanted to focus mostly on his horror stories.
I’m going to discuss why I enjoyed these stories, their plots, their elements, and Edgar Allan Poe’s style. While I’d like not to give away too much about each story, it’s almost impossible. So, if you don’t want to be spoiled, I suggest reading each story before you venture into my discussion. For that, I’ve included a link to the electronic text at the start of each discussion.
So here are my favorite twenty short stories by Edgar Allan Poe:
Edgar Allan Poe – King Pest – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
I’m starting this list with one of Edgar Allan Poe’s comedies, albeit a dark one. I wasn’t too fond of Poe’s comedic writing and his satires, but King Pest stood out for various reasons.
It’s a story set in plague-ridden London, featuring a plethora of extraordinary characters. The first are two seamen. One is a giant, gangly, and almost emaciated man called Legs, the other a short, sturdy man named Hugh Tarpaulin.
At the outset of the story, our two heroes are getting drunk at a tavern and flee without paying.
As they are running from the tavern’s owner, they make their way to the plague quarters. Those are shut off and entry is punishable by death. The two of them, in their desperation and drunk stupor, disregard the rule and make their way to the home of a mortician.
Inside, a strange crowd has gathered. Every one of these characters is disturbingly unique, almost comically weird, and disgusting. It’s at this point, with the entrance into the plague quarters and the introduction of this group, that an eerie atmosphere settles upon the story.
The group is sitting together below a skeleton hanging from the ceiling and tasting the mortician’s wine from skulls.
Legs and Hugh Tarpaulin, however, aren’t afraid and join the group who promptly introduce themselves as the King Pest and his court.
One might think our main characters are too drunk or dumb to realize what’s going on around them. The story toys with this idea, almost making us believe that something terrible is going to happen as the circumstances grow stranger and stranger.
But then Edgar Allan Poe changes the rules, reverses the build-up. He changes the terror-stricken atmosphere to one of humor, as our two extraordinary protagonists thwart the court without a problem and get away.
What makes this story so great is not only this reversal but also the vivid descriptions. None of the characters in this tale are normal. The King Pest and his court are a collection of comically overdrawn freaks, twisted beings, and figures in shrouds. Even our protagonists are far from normal. They, too, are of a strange nature.
While I enjoyed the reversal of the build-up, I still didn’t enjoy the humor employed in this tale all too much. I’d have preferred it if Edgar Allan Poe would have gone the normal route and made this one a true horror tale.
Still, it’s worth the read for the descriptions and the imagery alone.
Edgar Allan Poe – Ligeia – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
Here we have the first of many of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories featuring the death of a beautiful woman, one of his prime themes. It’s what he described as the most poetic theme in the world.
The story starts with our narrator describing his lover Ligeia. She’s a passionate and intellectual woman, one of uncanny beauty. Yet, there’s a certain strangeness to her. Even more interesting though, the narrator can’t seem to recall anything else about her, neither her past nor even her family name.
The two of them get married and Ligeia impresses the narrator with her knowledge of various topics. From the sciences, over classical languages to metaphysics, she even teaches him about certain forbidden types of knowledge.
Eventually, Ligeia grows ill and dies. Our grief-stricken narrator retreats to an old abbey in England, becomes addicted to opium, and eventually remarries Lady Rowena.
Before long, however, she too grows ill, suffering from anxiety and fevers before she dies.
Grief-stricken, the narrator sits vigil at her bedside. It is then that Lady Rowena’s body shows signs of reawakening. At first, the narrator doesn’t believe it, but when he awakes in the morning a shrouded figure stands up from the bed, walks to the center of the room, and reveals herself not the Lady Rowena, but Ligeia.
Yet, all might not be as it seems in this tale. Our narrator is an opium addict and unreliable. It makes us wonder if what happens is true or, by chance, nothing but his opium- and grief-filled hallucinations.
Even more interesting is Ligeia’s introduction. Her talk about the soul moving from one body to the next, existing without it and her obscure background, makes us wonder who she truly is.
As so often, Edgar Allan Poe’s writing is ambiguous, making us guess and wonder, but not revealing the mystery.
All of this is supported by his style. Ligeia is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s more poetic and obscure stories, filled with countless references to obscure and strange works of literature. At times, the writing is getting verbose, even pompous.
Yet, Ligeia is an interesting story, one that makes us guess and wonder, not just about the story but also Edgar Allan Poe’s style.
Edgar Allan Poe – MS. Found in a Bottle – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
MS. Found in a Bottle is more a maritime adventure tale than a true horror story. Yet, there’s enough weirdness here to showcase Edgar Allan Poe’s grim and ghastly style and his imagination.
Our narrator’s a passenger in a cargo ship which capsizes. Only he and an old Swede survive and have to endure in the bitter cold of the sea. Eventually, a gigantic black galleon collides with the wreck and only the narrator manages to get on board.
This ship, however, is much stranger than at first thought. The maps he finds are outdated, the timber the ship is made of seems to have grown or expanded over time, and the elderly crew of the ship doesn’t seem to be able to see him.
The narrator procures writing materials from the captain’s cabin to detail his experiences. He eventually casts those overboard in a bottle just before the ship reaches Antarctica, gets caught in a giant whirlpool, and sinks into the sea.
It’s an interesting tale, clearly a predecessor of those of H. P. Lovecraft.
What made this tale work so well was first the emotions conveyed by the narrator. One can almost feel the desperation, his urge to just give up, and his astonishment upon seeing the gigantic black vessel approach.
The tale also features some amazing visuals and a great atmosphere. The strange black ship and his ancient crew are described in intricate detail, yet we never learn who they are or how they’ve been sailing for so long. One could even think of it as a ghost ship or one frozen in time.
The ending of the tale is the one thing I didn’t enjoy. As it’s related to an idea that was thought scientifically plausible during Edgar Allan Poe’s time, yet I can’t help but find ridiculous. Namely, the theory of the Hollow Earth and that the whirlpool, in the end, leads to it.
Some scholars believe the tale to be a satire of the typical sea tales so popular during Edgar Allan Poe’s times.
Still, it’s an enjoyable tale and even if it’s not one of Edgar Allan Poe’s horror tales, one would be hard-pressed to call it anything else than weird fiction.
Edgar Allan Poe – Hop-Frog – Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
Hop-Frog is the story of an outcast, the titular character of Hop-Frog. He’s a dwarf and the jester at the court of a king, a king who’s fond of practical jokes. That’s also where Hop-Frog got his name from. He’s crippled and because of his deformities, he can’t walk normally.
One day, the king forces Hop-Frog, who can’t stand alcohol, to down multiple goblets. When Hop Frog’s friend and fellow dwarf Trippetta tries to intervene the king pushes her to the ground and throws his goblet of wine in her face.
It’s at this moment that a ghastly sound is heard, a strange grinding which is thought to come from outside yet has a different source.
The story continues when the king asks Hop-Frog for advice about an upcoming masquerade. The king and his ministers plan on scaring the guests and Hop-Frog comes up with an idea. He suggests they all dress up as orangutans, chained together, pretending to be wild beasts.
Unbeknownst to the king, this idea is part of his and Trippetta’s plan to finally get revenge and get rid of their abusers. On the night of the masquerade, their plan’s set into motion. It’s there that we’re also revealed to the source of the strange grinding sounds.
The act of revenge is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s more gruesome murders.
Hope Frog is not Edgar Allan Poe’s only story that features revenge. It’s a motif that also comes up in The Cask of Amontillado, but Hop-Frog is different in many ways. The murderer, Hop-Frog, is sympathetic and the tale even ends with him getting away. Something unique in Edgar Allan Poe’s works.
The telling of the story is also different. While most of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories related to murder or other ghastly incidents are told in first person, Hope Frog is narrated by a third-person narrator, one who seems to have got no relation to the incidents taking place in the tale.
Yet, not all is well in Hop-Frog. One might wonder how the king and his ministers are so easily tricked and follow along with Hop-Frogs’ plan without the sliver of a doubt.
There are even some more interesting facts about Hop-Frog. Some suggest that the story is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s more personal ones. The relationship between Hop-Frog and the king might be a mirror to that of Edgar Allan Poe and his foster father. It makes even more sense when one hears that Edgar Allan Poe, similar to Hop-Frog, couldn’t handle alcohol well. Another idea suggests that Hop-Frog is a tale of literary revenge in which Edgar Allan Poe tricks and murders the eight members of a particular literary circle.
Overall, Hop-Frog is an enjoyable little horror tale, and one of his most conventional. Yet, at least in my opinion, it pales compared to some of his other works.
One of Edgar Allan Poe’s shortest pieces and also a strange one.
It’s not so much a story as a brief glimpse of an incident happening.
It’s set in ancient Greece at a time that a plague’s at large. A group of men have gathered to hold a feast at the deathbed of a friend who succumbed to the plague.
Soon enough, the narrator and his friends notice a shadow resting upon the doorway. The narrator then demands, with downcast eyes, what brings it there.
It then answers, speaking to them in the voices of their departed friends.
Shadow – A Parable is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s more open stories. We might wonder who or what that shadow exactly is, or what brings it there.
One suggestion, a grim one, is that it’s the shadow of death, hanging and looming above those present, talking to them about their demise. It fits in well with the setting of the plague.
Shadow – A Parable is an interesting and short little tale, yet it’s one that I enjoyed a lot.
Edgar Allan Poe – Morella- Illustrated by Harry Clarke
Here we have another one of Edgar Allan Poe’s true horror stories and another one that features the death of a beautiful woman.
It’s another weird story, one that feels more like a fever dream than a story. The beginning talks about the theory of identity by German philosophers Fichte and Schelling.
The narrator marries a woman named Morella. She’s a very intelligent and very intellectual woman and spends a lot of time focusing on the theories outlined at the beginning of the tale.
While studying, Morella’s health eventually deteriorates. She dies in childbirth, leaving, as she called it, the narrator with a pledge of her affection, a daughter.
The child grows up and resembles her mother closely, and before long the narrator fears this uncanny resemblance.
Eventually, the narrator takes her to be baptized to release the evil he thinks took hold of his daughter. It’s there that the narrator’s overtaken by the strangest of feelings and when asked the name of his daughter he names her Morella. At this the daughter calls out ‘I am here’ before she dies.
Yet things aren’t over. The tale continues with the narrator bringing his daughter’s body to the tomb where he buried Morella. Yet as he opens the tomb, he finds no hint of his late wife.
I absolutely loved this tale, and it was one of the earlier stories by Edgar Allan Poe that actually unsettled me, namely by its ending.
What makes it work so well is the introduction and the weird concepts Morella obsesses over. It’s another tale, akin to Metzengerstein, Ligeia, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which Edgar Allan Poe starts by explaining and outlining theories, hinting at what’s to come. In Morella, it’s the topic of identity and if it can exist outside the human body.
The genuine horror and the true weirdness of the tale come with the fantastic revelation at the end. Yet, typically for Edgar Allan Poe, we don’t get an explanation. The mood is driven to the top, pushed to a ghastly climax, and we’re left with only the ominous feeling that something’s very wrong.
Edgar Allan Poe – Metzengerstein – Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
Metzengerstein was the very first of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories that ever got published. Incidentally, it was also his very first tale I ever read.
It uses many of the gothic tropes famous at the time, even exaggerates them. We’ve got feuding noble houses, old, decrepit castles, and a setting, isolated from the rest of the world.
Because of this, it’s still debated if Metzengerstein was Edgar Allan Poe’s honest attempt at writing gothic fiction or if it’s a satire of an all too common trend in fiction at the time.
Metzengerstein tells the story of the noble families Metzengerstein and Berlifitzing who’ve been rivals for so long, no one knows how far it dates back.
Before we get into the story, however, Edgar Allan Poe explains a concept central to the events in this tale. It’s the idea that the soul of man can move on to different living things at the moment of their death.
After his parent’s untimely death, young Frederick becomes head of the family and inherits their vast fortune.
The young Frederick is a cruel and sadistic man, committing various atrocities. One day, while he’s meditating in his chambers, his eyes wander to a specific tapestry. It depicts an unnatural colored horse, belonging to a man from Berlifitzing who’s seen being murdered by a man from Metzengerstein in the background. The young Frederick is unnerved by this and eventually leaves the room, only for a strange sight to occur. As he steps outside, his shadow falls exactly on the spot of the murder depicted in the tapestry.
It’s at this time that he learns of the demise of William Von Berlifitzing. His stables were set on fire and the old man tried rescuing his priced horses. It’s of course implied that Frederick was behind it.
It’s soon after that a particular horse appears at the castle, one caught by Frederick’s servants. The horse wears the initials of Berlifitzing, yet no one, not even the man’s servants, can recall a thing about the animal. Frederick, however, takes possession of the horse.
It’s this horse that changes the young baron, making him retreat from society at large, and eventually brings his demise.
I enjoyed this tale, and it was a fine introduction to Edgar Allan Poe’s writing style. It introduces us to a lot of themes important in many of Edgar Allan Poe’s works. People of extreme wealth, gloomy, decrepit buildings, seclusion and teeth. It also showcases that Poe’s tales often include instances of symbolism, here especially in the tapestry scene. A scene which was fantastically done and made implications about what was to come in the tale.
It’s an interesting and short tale, one that already shows us Edgar Allen Poe’s mastery of his craft. One could do much worse as an introduction to Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories.
One of Edgar Allan Poe’s shortest horror stories, yet a good one. It’s yet another tale that features the death of a beautiful woman. As so often, though, Edgar Allan Poe’s able to fit much more in so short a tale.
The Oval Portrait is a story within a story. The narrator of the tale spends the night at an abandoned mansion and comes upon the beautiful portrait of a young woman. In a book he found, he reads up on the history of the portrait.
The book describes the tragic story of a young woman who married an eccentric painter, a man who cared more for his art than anything else. Eventually, he asks his wife to sit for him. Being an obedient wife, she does as he says and never complains, even when her health fades.
Even from this brief description, one can see the end of the tale coming. Yet, back in Edgar Allan Poe’s day and age, stories and twists like this weren’t common, and the tale proved to shock and horrify audiences.
The Oval Portrait doesn’t waste any words before it comes to its shocking conclusion. It’s one that explores the relationship between art and life and which was eventually fully explored by Oscar Wilde in its novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The story, like many others written by Edgar Allan Poe, explores the consequences of addiction and obsession. With the Oval Portrait, it’s an obsession with perfection and creating perfect art.
Edgar Allan Poe – Silence – A Parable – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
Another brief work by Edgar Allan Poe, one that almost seems more like a poem than a story.
The strongest point in this brief little tale is without a doubt the atmosphere. Yet, there’s more hidden between enchanted landscapes, apparitions, and demons.
Silence – A Parable is very open to interpretation.
Is it an allegory for man’s destructive nature? Is it talking about how solitude, being left alone with our thoughts, can drive us into a state of confusion or even insanity? Or is it Edgar Allan Poe himself who talks to his demonic muses?
It’s these various interpretations one can find for this brief work that makes it so interesting to me. However, Edgar Allan Poe’s true intentions with this tale might never be known.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Premature Burial- Illustrated by Harry Clarke
The Premature Burial is a tale that discusses one of Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite themes, that of being buried alive.
The narrator of this tale suffers from catalepsy, a condition that renders him into a death-like trance. It’s this condition that leads to his fear of being buried alive and his obsession with similar cases.
The story beings more like an essay, in which the narrator recounts various cases of people being buried alive. Some escaped their fate, others didn’t.
Only after this does the narrator recount his own experiences. Over time, his condition worsens as his fear becomes a crippling phobia. He does everything he can to escape his fate. He makes his friends promise him they won’t bury him prematurely, refusing to leave his home and even building a tomb with all sorts of precautions.
However, things take a turn for the worst and our narrator awakens in a confined, dark space with wood surrounding him and the knowledge that his worst fear has become reality.
There’s a deep routed, suffocating anxiety at the heart of this tale. Edgar Allan Poe plays this out in glorious detail in the second half of the story before it comes to a rather unexpected conclusion.
The Premature Burial is an examination of neurosis brought forth by obsessing over an irrational fear. This again shows that Edgar Allan Poe often focuses on narrators that are mentally unsound, in this case, a man suffering from crippling anxiety.
I really enjoyed this little tale and the various incidents discussed in the beginning. The fear of premature burials, while ridiculous to most of us now, was common in Edgar Allan Poe’s time.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Murders in the Rue Morgue – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
The Murders in the Rue Morgue is often celebrated as the first modern detective story, introducing us to C. Auguste Dupin, the first modern detective. It’s undeniable that Dupin and the stories he’s featured inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
While it’s not a horror story, I still included The Murders in the Rue Morgue in this list. It not only features a gruesome and brutal murder, but it’s also a masterfully crafted tale.
The story begins not with the plot directly. As in other tales, Edgar Allan Poe starts by discussing the nature and practice of analytical reasoning. He does this by giving us various examples, including games such as chess and cards.
After this, he describes how our nameless narrator first met Dupin.
We get to know Dupin’s reasoning skills when he deduces the narrator’s thoughts simply from his interaction with the environment, his behavior, and his facial expressions.
It’s only then that the two of them stumble upon a grisly murder case that happened in an apartment in the Rue Morgue. A mother and daughter were brutally murdered in their home.
The murder represents a perfect puzzle, one that shocks and perplexes the investigators trying to solve it.
It’s then up to Dupin and his reasoning skills to solve the case. He explains what he learned from the scene of the murder and outlines its bizarre and surprising nature and brings the story to an almost comical conclusion.
What I enjoyed most was the deliberate construction of the narrative. In this story Edgar Allan Poe takes time, exploring first the theme of analytical reasoning, then introducing Dupin, showcasing his abilities before we’re introduced to the murder and its eventual unraveling.
I loved how Edgar Allan Poe slowly, but steadily walked us through the details of the crime scene. He even hints at things we don’t understand yet, until, at one specific point, it dawns on the narrator and us readers that there’s something very extraordinary about the case.
The story is also written differently from some of Edgar Allan Poe’s other stories. The Murders in the Rue Morgue is written in a non-verbose, and non-poetic style that lends itself to easier reading and focuses more on rational analytics than atmosphere and imagination.
While there are earlier stories that featured similar concepts or mysteries, The Murders in the Rue Morgue was the first one that focused on analysis and logical reasoning. It also established many tropes other writers later employed, such as Arthur Conan Doyle. One example is the narrator not being the detective, but his close friend, the other being the bumbling idiocy of the police who need the detective to help them out.
A splendid story, one that I’d recommend to not only fans of Edgar Allan Poe, but anyone interesting in early detective fiction.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Black Cat – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
The Black Cat presents us with Edgar Allan Poe’s most self-loathing narrator. He’s a violent drunk who commits acts of senseless and abhorrent violence when drunk. One might wonder if this is a projection of Edgar Allan Poe himself and his view of the abhorrent addiction he suffered from.
Yet, it doesn’t seem to be so much autobiographic, but a projection of Edgar Allan Poe’s worst fears. Namely losing himself to the bottle, just like the narrator in The Black Cat did.
The Black Cat is in essence a tale of a murderer who carefully concealed his crimes only to reveal them by his feelings of guilt. Once more, the narrator is unreliable, suffering from alcoholism.
From an early age, our narrator loved animals and owned many pets. He was especially fond of a cat named Pluto. For years his friendship with the cat lasted until the narrator succumbed to the bottle. In a violent stupor, he one night gored out one of the cat’s eyes.
At first, the narrator regrets his cruelty but is soon overtaken by his violent urges, and in another drunk fury, he ties a noose around the cat’s neck and hangs it. What’s interesting is the image Edgar Allan Poe here employs. The narrator has tears streaming down his face as he commits the deed, knowing how wrong it is, yet can’t seem to refrain from it.
At the same time, the narrator’s home catches fire and burns to the ground. In the ruins, the narrator finds a single wall still intact, the image of a giant cat with a rope around its neck imprinted on it.
The image disturbs him, but he eventually finds an explanation for it.
Before long the narrator finds another cat, almost identical to Pluto, and takes it home with himself. The only difference being a white spot on the cat’s chest. Soon he begins to fear and loath the animal because it reminds him of his guilt.
When the cat’s white spot resembles that of a gallows he grows more terrified of it. One day the narrator and his wife make their way into the cellar of their home. The cat trips him and he topples down the stairs.
In another drunk rage, he grabs the cat and tries to kill it, but is stopped by his wife. Driven mad by this, he kills her on the spot.
He decides to conceal the body within a protrusion in the wall and walls up the body. When the police show up, they find nothing and the narrator goes free. At the same time, however, he notices that the cat has vanished.
Before long the police check on him again, yet they once more find nothing. The narrator, in a state of confidence, proclaims of the sturdiness of the building and even taps against the wall behind which his wife’s body is hidden.
It is then that an inhuman shriek fills the room and when the police tear down the wall, they find not only his wife’s rotting body but also, to the utter horror of the narrator, the cat sitting on top of it.
As so often in Edgar Allan Poe’s tales, one might be inclined to think of certain things happening due to supernatural influences. Yet Edgar Allan Poe’s narrator is an alcoholic of questionable sanity. The image of the cat on the wall, the cat’s white spot changing, and many other things can all be explained by the narrator’s state of mind and his guilt. Instead of any supernatural influences, the prime devil in this tale is alcohol, which Poe described as a disease and a fiend that destroys one’s personality.
This is also the first of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales discussing his idea of the perverse, where he writes that it’s an ‘unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself — to offer violence to its own nature.’ Namely, our self-destructive urges, our inclination to do what will ultimately bring us harm. Here, the narrator’s beating against the wall behind which the body of his wife was hidden.
I enjoyed The Black Cat a lot. The mental descent of the narrator and its disturbing, catastrophic climax especially fascinated me.
The writing in this tale and the images employed are fantastic, and once more Edgar Allan Poe shows his mastery over the English language.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Pit and the Pendulum- Illustrated by Harry Clarke
The Pit and the Pendulum is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most popular stories. It details the tortures endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition.
Even someone who’s never read Edgar Allan Poe, and even those who barely know his name, will know of this tale, or at least of the titular Pendulum and the torture method related to it.
The narrator of this tale was brought before the Spanish Inquisition and condemned to death. Why is never known and I might argue, is not important at all.
At first, the narrator finds himself in a dark room. In its center looms a pit that the narrator only avoids when he trips and falls on its edge. Surviving the pit, he soon finds himself in a different state.
He’s bound to a wooden frame with a razor-sharp pendulum slowly descending upon him. Once more he’s barely able to escape, by smearing his bindings with the remains of his food and attracting the rats in the room.
At this point the walls are heated and slowly moved inward, to eventually drive him into the pit in the room’s center. Once more he barely avoids death when he’s rescued from the room as the French Army captures the city.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Pit and the Pendulum – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
The Pit and the Pendulum is a fantastic study of the effects of terror on the narrator. What makes this work so much is the realism of the story and Edgar Allan Poe’s focus on sensual inputs, or, in some cases, their absence. The narrator stumbles blindly through darkness, he smells the rats, he feels the heat of the walls and he hears the hiss of the pendulum above him.
The story is a prime example of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘totality’ theory. In this story’s case, every word is used for one purpose alone, to convey terror. Edgar Allan Poe doesn’t focus so much on what’s happening, but what the narrator experiences and his sensations. This adds much more terror to the tale and makes it much more unsettling.
It’s a well-executed and beautifully crafted tale, one that’s deservedly regarded as one of Edgar Allan Poe’s best.
The only problem I have is the tale’s ending in which the narrator is rescued at the last second by an almost random event. Yet, one can’t argue that if the narrator would’ve died, he couldn’t have written the story.
Edgar Allan Poe – William Wilson – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
This horror tale by Edgar Allan Poe focuses on the idea of doppelgangers.
The narrative beings by outlining a young boy’s days at a school in England. He’s known as William Wilson and details that there’s another boy by the same name at the school, one who resembles him closely and even shares his birth date.
One night, the narrator wanting to play a trick on his namesake sneaks upon his quarters but discovers in shock that his namesake’s face exactly resembles his own. The narrator flees the school in terror and later learns that the other William Wilson left the school the same day.
The narrator then talks about how his character grew worse during his days at Eton and Oxford and how he became, as he calls it, a scoundrel.
At the latter he tries to cheat another student out of his money during a game of cards. His plan is thwarted, however, by the appearance of his double.
From then on, many of his ploys are thwarted similarly by his haunting doppelganger.
The story eventually culminates with the narrator confronting his doppelganger during a Carnival in Rome. He duels his double and eventually stabs him multiple times.
It’s then that he perceives that at the spot where his double stood is only a mirror in which he sees his own image, pale and covered in blood.
His double then whispers one last line: ‘In me didst though exist – and in my death, see… how utterly thou hast murdered thyself.’
As so often Edgar Allan Poe leaves us with an ambiguous ending. What does the doppelganger mean when he’s proclaiming the narrator has killed himself? The most plausible explanation is that the doppelganger represented the narrator’s conscience, who kept him from committing his evil deeds. Now that he’s murdered it, he’s doomed himself. He’s killed his better half.
What’s interesting about William Wilson is that Edgar Allan Poe twists the idea of the doppelganger. Normally, they are dark twins, representing death and bringing evil. In William Wilson, however, it’s the narrator who’s evil and his doppelganger’s only there to stop his evil deeds.
While the ending might seem clichéd to us now, one has to remember that it was one of the first stories of its kind. People back in the day found the revelation shocking because it hadn’t been seen before.
It’s a great and fantastic tale, a slow-moving one, that’s more rational than supernatural, less verbose and poetic, following logic as the narrator tries to unravel the mystery behind his doppelganger.
William Wilson is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s best tales and one that I enjoyed immensely.
Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
One of the first tales by Edgar Allan Poe I read, and also the first one I was truly impressed with. It was also the first of his tales that showed me how horrific his stories can be.
Berenice is another story that features the demise of a beautiful woman but includes others of Edgar Allan Poe’s most common themes, for example, that of premature burial.
The narrator is an ill young man who suffers from many maladies, but his most serious one is a form of mental excitement. During these times his attention will focus intently on a certain object before he entire loses himself in his imagination and daydreams.
The narrator marries a beautiful young woman named Berenice.
One day, during one of his bouts of excitement, he focuses on Berenice’s teeth, can’t seem to forget about them, and becomes obsessed with them.
It’s soon after that Berenice dies and is buried.
The narrator remembers nothing after the time of the burial and only comes to himself at midnight, wondering what happened. Right away he notices a small wooden box he’s never seen before and which unsettles him greatly.
It is then that a servant enters the room and tells him that Berenice’s grave has been desecrated and a shrouded figure has been found, one that’s still alive.
At this moment the narrator notices that his clothes are covered in mud and a spade is standing in his room.
Yet, that’s not the true horror of the tale. When the narrator accidentally drops the little box, thirty-two pearly white things are revealed, Berenice’s teeth.
It’s a fantastic and utterly disturbing tale. At the time of its writing, Berenice was considered horrifying because of its excessive violence.
What makes the entire story even worse, it’s revealed that Berenice was buried alive and might very well have been conscious while the narrator removed her teeth.
Berenice is a tale that’s part fascinating for its imagery and the revelation and part repulsive for its obsession and the ghastly deed the narrator committed.
Yet, it is a fantastic, well-told tale that leaves us with nothing short of terror. Terror for what happened to Berenice and terror for the narrator who learned what he’d done because of his condition.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
Here we have another interesting story by Edgar Allan Poe.
Once again, Edgar Allan Poe tried to trick his audience. He’d done so before with other tales, namely with his Balloon-Hoax and with The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfall.
Yet, this tale doesn’t feature any spectacular expeditions or travels. No, this one is about the examination of death.
The story recounts what happens when a hypnotist puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of his death. While we might laugh at such an outlandish idea today, calling it absurd or surreal, during its time people believed it was real. The hoax was only discovered when Edgar Allan Poe himself was forced to admit that the story was nothing but a fabrication.
The story is written as a doctor’s report and walks the fine line between science-fiction and sensational horror.
The story presents the case of a man named Ernest Valdemar. Our nameless narrator is interested in hypnotism and states that no one ever attempted to hypnotize a person at the point of death. He wants to attempt such an experiment to report the effect it will have.
Valdemar, who’s suffering from tuberculosis and knows he’s dying soon, agrees.
On the evening of his supposed death, the narrator visits Valdemar and hypnotizes him. This is where the story gets strange, as Valdemar first reports that he’s dying and later that he’s now dead.
The narrator leaves Valdemar in his hypnotized state for months, checking on him daily. During this time Valdemar is without pulse, heartbeat, or breathing and his skin is cold and pale.
We’re here treated to one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most detailed descriptions as he describes the countenance of the dead body in minute detail.
The narrator once more asks Valdemar questions, whose voice seems to reach him reluctantly and from far away.
Eventually, Valdemar demands to be woken up and when the narrator does so, the body decays instantly, almost evaporates into a ‘nearly liquid mass of loathsome – of detestable putrescence.’
This story might be one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most vivid and gory. He’s describing the various details of the dead boy, even adding yellowish ichor leaking from the eyes. The worst, however, is the last line, when the body decays instantly.
There’s of course more to this tale. Namely, that messing with death, even for the sake of science, will have dire results. First for Valdemar, who wants to be awoken, or put to rest, and second for all those present to witness the effect the experiment has on his body.
What’s interesting here is to see that while Edgar Allan Poe describes the death of a woman as almost romantic, the death of a man is brutal, sensational, and disturbing.
I really enjoyed the pseudo-scientific outset, the medical background and the idea behind the experiment. It makes it without a doubt one of the earlier examples of science-fiction.
Another little tidbit I found interesting is that it was also one of Lovecraft’s favorite, who even used a similar theme in his tale Cool Air in which a man tries to cheat death as well and which ends similarly.
Truly one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most outlandish and most interesting tales, one that I enjoyed immensely.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Fall of the House of Usher – Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
The Fall of the House of Usher is another of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous tales, and it supposedly was Lovecraft’s favorite.
The narrator is called to visit his old childhood friend Roderick Usher at his home. When the narrator arrives, he already feels apprehensive and notices a thin crack extending from the roof of the mansion down to its front.
Roderick is sick and asks his friend for help. His only living relative is his twin sister Madeline, who suffers from catalepsy.
Eventually, Madeline dies and Roderick has her entombed in the family tomb, where she’s supposed to rest for two weeks before she’s supposedly buried.
Over the course of the next week, Roderick as well as the narrator grows increasingly agitated for no apparent reason. It’s during this time that Roderick shares with the narrator certain theories about the sentience of inanimate objects and his idea that the house itself might be alive.
Then, one night, during a storm, Roderick, in a state of terror, visits the narrator’s bedroom, which is situated above the family tomb.
Strange things appear to happen outside, and the narrator tries to calm his friend by reading to him from a comical novel.
As he reads the tale, they can hear strange noises and sounds in the mansion which mirrors those detailed in the tale.
It all culminates when a loud shriek is heard and Roderick goes into a state of hysterics believing it’s his sister, still alive. Eventually, the door to the room is blown open and Madeline enters. She crashes onto her terrified brother and both hit the floor as corpses, Roderick having died from his terror.
The narrator flees the home in a state of terror and when he looks back, he watches as the House of Usher splits apart at the same crack he noticed during his arrival and the fragments sink into the lake surrounding it.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Fall of the House of Usher – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
The Fall of the House of Usher combines supernatural suspense with the frailty of the human mind. There are, however, more themes at work here, so many symbols and allegories, it’s hard to believe that Edgar Allan Poe could convey it all in a single story. That’s the reason The Fall of the House of Usher is often called a gothic novel in miniature.
There’s of course the theme of premature burial. Yet there are other themes to this highly symbolic tale.
The two twins Madeline and Roderick might describe a split personality, two sides of the same person. The House might not be a house, but might be an allegory of a declining family that’s about to end with its last two members. It might also represent the unconscious mind of Roderick’s or the family’s mental state that’s already declining as the narrator arrives, eventually splits apart before it’s utterly destroyed.
All those ideas come to the forefront and can be equally attributed to the story. It’s these many different ways to see the story that makes it so fascinating.
However, it’s not only the symbolism in the tale that makes it so great. There’s Edgar Allan Poe’s fabulous and imaginative prose, the atmosphere he conveys as well as the different styles he employs.
There’s a poetic interlude in which Roderick Usher sings ‘The Haunted Palace’, a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe, and there’s of course the fantastic story which the narrator reads to his friend. All of those elements help to set the obscure and ominous atmosphere the tale carries until its end.
The Fall of the House of Usher is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest stories, masterfully written and one in which he again employs his ‘totality’ rule. Every detail and every scene in this story is relevant to the horror it conveys. One can especially see it in the opening passage of the story.
The beginning of The Fall of the House of Usher is one of the greatest openings in literature. Every image conveyed, every word used, is dedicated to invoking dread and suspense and to show us the ghastly, decrepit building that is the House of Usher.
There’s a sense of dreariness as the narrator approaches the family mansion, one that we as the reader can feel as well. It all sets the stage for what’s to come.
The Fall of the House of Usher is an amazing tale and a fabulous example of gothic literature as well as literary symbolism. Truly a great tale and deservedly one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most popular stories of all time.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Cask of Amontillado – Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
The Cask of Amontillado is generally regarded as Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest story and one of the greatest pieces of short fiction of all time.
There’s no other story by Edgar Allan Poe that combines so many of his themes in so little space. We’ve got humor, irony, horror, and one of his most common themes, that of live burial. Yet, the story doesn’t waste a single word. There’s no trailing on, no unnecessary lines. It’s a tale that’s concisely crafted.
The Cask of Amontillado is set in an unnamed Italian city during a carnival in which a man takes revenge on a friend who wronged him. Similar to his story, the Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat, the story is told from the perspective of the murderer.
The story starts with Montresor, who tells an unspecified person about the revenge he took on his fellow nobleman, Fortunado.
Montresor lures him to his home by telling him he obtained some rare, vintage Amontillado. He proposes to get confirmation about the wine’s quality, by consulting a fellow friend, Luchesi. It’s a ploy since he knows that Fortunado won’t be able to resist demonstrating his knowledge of wine.
And so the two of them make their way to Montresor’s home and descend into the wine cellar in the palazzo’s catacombs.
On their way he keeps offering wine to an already drunk Fortunado, to keep him intoxicated. Montresor suggests multiple times that Fortunado should go back because he’s suffering from a bad cough. Fortunado, of course, states that a little cough won’t kill him.
During their trip through the catacombs, Edgar Allan Poe uses various instances of symbolism to outline the relationship between Montresor and Fortunado. The insistence of Fortunado that Montresor can’t be of the masons hints at their difference in standing. The family crest is another symbol, ripe with interpretations regarding the murder to be committed and its reason and meaning.
Eventually, the two make it to a niche in the wall in which Montresor says the Amontillado is kept. The moment Fortunado steps inside, Montresor chains him to the wall. Fortunado is still very much too drunk to realize what’s going on and offers no resistance.
Only when Montresor begins walling him off does the man sober up and understand what’s going on. He starts screaming for help, but his cries are mocked by those of Montresor, knowing fair well, no one will hear them. Then Fortunado laughs, pretending, or hoping, it’s all a joke. Once Montresor finishes up the last row of bricks, however, he realizes it’s all over.
“For the love of God, Montresor.”
And Montresor replies: “Yes, for the love of God.”
Then, before he sets the last brick, he throws Fortunado a torch, waits for an answer, but only gets to hear the bells of Fortunado’s costume.
In the last line of the tale, Montresor reveals that Fortunado’s body is still there, even fifty years later, and ends the story with the line ‘In pace requiescat!’, meaning ‘May he rest in peace.’
Edgar Allan Poe – The Cask of Amontillado – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
The Cask of Amontillado is yet another example of Edgar Allan Poe’s totality rule. Everything in this tale is of importance, everything reveals something. The setting, the names, the inclusion of costly wine, all make the story not only more exotic but also add to its atmosphere.
What I find most interesting about The Cask of Amontillado is that the motif of the murder isn’t known and is never brought up. Montresor only mentions that Fortunado committed a ‘thousand injuries’ and apparently insulted the man. There are hints in the story, but none suffice to give us a clear picture. Even when Montresor walls him off, he never discloses his reason. It might indicate that Montresor himself is unsure about the reason or only vaguely has one.
Yet, this is typical for Edgar Allan Poe. He isn’t interested in a plot, he’s interested in a situation, an incident, and atmosphere. Similar to the Pit and Pendulum, we don’t need to know why something is happening to see it happening.
As mentioned before the story’s ripe in symbolism.
The fact that Montresor walls Fortunado of within his family tomb might be worth mentioning. Is it just the best place for the murder or is there a more personal motif?
Montresor’s family crest also gives wide room for interpretation. It’s a family crest, showing a golden foot stumping on a snake, biting the heel.
At first glance, it might suggest that Montresor’s stomping down on the snake who wronged him, Fortunado. Yet, while the snake is being stomped on, it still brings harm to the foot, perhaps suggesting that Fortunado’s destruction will bring harm to Montresor. Namely the guilt of a murder that Montresor can’t forget even fifty years later and even shares with someone.
One might go even further and interpreting it entirely differently. The snake might be Montresor, who’s crushed by Fortunado’s higher standing or crushed by the guilt of murder. As one can see, there are multiple ways of interpreting, showing the importance of even this minor detail.
The Cask of Amontillado is also a story that’s often discussed for its composition. It defies general story construction. Most stories comprise a beginning a middle and an end. Yet in the Cask of Amontillado everything that leads to the ending, the murder, is entirely missing. Almost as if Edgar Allan Poe’s saying that nothing but the murder matters.
It’s a powerful story, without a doubt another one of Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest tales, maybe even his greatest. It stands out for its imagery, its vocabulary, and its many instances of symbolism.
The Cask of Amontillado is a masterpiece, one I’d recommend to anyone. It’s a short, but very worthy read, not only for fans of Edgar Allan Poe.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Masque of the Red Death – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
I absolutely loved this tale and was surprised by how good it was.
At its heart The Masque of the Red Death might be an allegory about death, standing up against it, and the inevitability of such a deed. Yet, there’s more to this tale, for example, the social criticism.
While the titular illness, the Red Death, spreads in the country, Prince Prospero and his court hide behind the walls of an old castle. There they give into their lavish lifestyle, disregarding the suffering of the common folk.
Prospero holds a masquerade ball one night to entertain his guest in seven colored rooms. Each of the rooms is decorated in a specific color. The last room is decorated in black and illuminated by a scarlet light, filling the room with ‘a deep blood color’.
At midnight the guests and Prospero notice a figure in a dark, blood-splattered robe. The figure resembles the corpse of a person who died because of the Red Death. Prospero demands to know the identity of the guest. When he calls out for his court to seize the guest, everyone’s afraid to approach the figure and the guest passes through all six chambers. It’s in the last chamber where the prince confronts him with a drawn dagger. When the figure turns to face him, the prince dies almost instantly. The enraged court rushes in the last room and removes the mask of the figure, but find, to their horror, that no one’s beneath. The costume was empty and all the guests contract and die to the Red Death.
The Mask of the Red Death features fantastic gothic imagery. There’s the old castle with its high impenetrable walls, its weird constricting hallways, the different colored rooms, the masque ball and at last, the stranger dressed up as the Red Death itself. Especially the description of the last, dark, and the red room is fantastic.
The reason I enjoyed this tale so much tough, was not only the setting but Edgar Allan Poe’s writing. He’s clearly at his best here.
The Masque of the Red Death almost lends itself to the poetic, reminding you more of a play than a story. It’s this fantastic, poetic writing that brings forth the stunning imagery of the chambers and the symbolism hidden behind them.
And here we’re at the core of the tale, the symbolism. There are many interpretations of the different colored rooms. Some suggest they represent different personality types, yet others suggest they represent the different stages of life as defined by Shakespeare in his Seven Ages of Man.
It might, however, also be an allegory of life itself, naturally ending with death and man’s futile attempt to escape from it and even standing up to it.
Yet, blood, which is emphasized in the tale, especially with the Red Death and the last room, also represents life.
It’s this general room for interpretation that makes this tale so interesting and a topic of vast discussion among scholars.
The Masque of the Red Death is an absolutely fantastic tale, both for its writing and its content. It also features one of the most stunning closing lines in literature:
“And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
What a fantastic tale. If you want to read Edgar Allan Poe at his absolute best and most poetic, read The Mask of the Red Death.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Tell-Tale Heart – Illustrated by Harry Clarke
The Tell-Tale Heart is my personal favorite story by Edgar Allan Poe and another one of his most famous tales.
It’s much shorter than Edgar Allan Poe’s other tales, but there’s no need for it to be any longer.
The story’s told as so often, by an unreliable narrator, recounting a murder he committed. Who that person is, we never learn. The narrator’s goal in telling his tale is to prove that he’s not insane.
What’s interesting is that we learn little about the characters. Neither about the narrator nor the old man. We don’t even get to know their names, which is typical for Edgar Allan Poe. Similar to some of his other tales we need not know anymore to see the murder that’s taking place.
It’s apparent right from the get-go that the narrator suffers from a mental illness and an over-acuteness of the senses. He’s haunted by the old man’s pale, blue, vulture-like eye and distresses over it so much that he plans to murder the old man. Even worse, he mentions that the old man never did him any wrong, more so, he even liked the old man.
The narrator then describes in the smallest details how he went about committing the murder and explains that his minute attention to detail is the reason that he’s without a doubt sane.
He watches the old man for seven days before one night, he makes a sound and his lantern shines directly on the now open, evil eye of the old man.
Hearing the old man’s heartbeat loud from terror the narrator decides to strike and kills the old man. He then dismembers the body and conceals it below the floorboards.
A neighbor who heard the old man’s singular scream alerts the police. When they arrive, the narrator claims the scream was his own, caused by a nightmare and that the old man’s away in the country.
Confident he won’t be found out, he urges the police to take some rest. His pleasant and easy-going demeanor gives them no reason to suspect him, but soon enough the narrator hears a strange sound that grows progressively louder.
Eventually, he concludes that it’s the old man’s heart still beating from below the floorboard. The sound increases, but the police don’t seem to notice. Terrified of the violent heart and thinking the police have to hear it too, he eventually confesses the murder.
The Tell-Tale Heart is a story that pushes a character’s obsession over the top, driving the irrational obsession with the old man’s eye and later heartbeat to the extreme.
It’s clear that the narrator’s guilt is catching up to him at the end of the story, but one might still wonder what causes the sound. The easiest explanation is that it’s his imagination or even his own heart he hears in his chest. It might, however, also be the deathwatch beetles in the walls that are mentioned earlier in the tale.
While The Tell-Tale Heart is a tale of a macabre and gruesome murder, one could say that the true horror is the insistence of the narrator that he’s sane. It’s interesting how his exactness, his attention to detail, prove his paranoia, and his monomania with committing the perfect crime. It’s enough to show that the man’s indeed insane.
If one looks at The Tell-Tale Heart from a different perspective one might even say it’s a take on a ghost story, without employing a ghost. It’s not supernatural influences, but the narrator’s guilt, his psychological state that haunts him, and eventually drives him to confess the deed he committed.
What made this story so fantastic to me, was the eccentricity of the narrator, the suspense with which he tells the tale. I actually sat down and read the tale out loud, which made it so much better than just reading it. The Tell-Tale Heart is a dramatic tale, one filled with suspense, full of minute details, of slow deliberation and a sick mind.
The Tell-Tale Heart is in my opinion one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most perfect stories.
While his other stories like The Cask of Amontillado or The Fall of the House Usher bring more to the table, and might at times be better crafted, I still prefer The Tell-Tale Heart. It’s the suspenseful way it’s written and the sheer insanity of the narrator that makes it so good.
Truly a fantastic tale and one of the greatest studies of a sick mind in literature. Read it!
As a horror writer, it’s only natural for me to read the works of other horror writers. It’s not only that though, I’m also a huge fan of anything that’s disturbing, scary or downright weird. That’s why I put together a list of the best horror books I’ve read.
Over the years, I came to enjoy the works of many horror writers. I’m especially fond of the weird fiction of such writers as H. P. Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti, the convention breaking works of Mark. Z. Danielewski or the graphical horrors conjured by Japanese mangaka Junji Ito.
This list, however, doesn’t just focus on their works. Horror is a vast genre, and there are many books out there.
I consider all the books on this list amongst the best horror books ever written and recommend them to any fan of horror literature.
H.P. Lovecraft – The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft
Let’s start this list with my favorite horror writers of all time, H. P. Lovecraft. This collection includes every single story Lovecraft has written in his life, and this alone makes it one of the best horror books of all time.
Lovecraft is one of the most influential horror writers of all time and the father of cosmic horror.
Ever since I first discovered Lovecraft, I’ve been a huge fan of his body of work and the genre of cosmic horror.
Lovecraft’s body of work consists of three major phases. The first are stories akin to his literary predecessors and major influences such as Lord Dunsany and Edgar Allan Poe. These stories can be best described as short scares or twisted tales and are all around enjoyable.
The second phase comprises his Dream Cycle writings. Most of them are merely brief glimpses into a dream world instead of fleshed out stories. The longest of these works ‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’ is one of Lovecraft’s most colorful and creative works, but also one of his most confusing and ultimately his blandest.
My favorites amongst Lovecraft’s works are his latest tales, his cosmic horror works related to the Cthulhu Mythos. These stories aren’t merely about creatures stalking mankind or revengeful ghosts. No, they featured a sort of terror and fear that was entirely new at the time.
It’s here that Lovecraft’s mastery of the horror shines as he presents us with all-powerful cosmic entities, alien races and Earth’s disturbing prehuman history.
If you want to learn more about Lovecraft’s stories in detail, I urge you to check out my article about the best Lovecraft stories.
One thing that has to be said about Lovecraft is that his writing style is not for everyone. His prose is flowery, at times pretentious and old-fashioned. It takes some time to get used to, but it’s worthwhile.
Lovecraft, like almost no other writer, has influenced and changed the horror genre. That’s the reason I consider The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft essential reading for any horror fan and one of the best horror books of all time.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is a horror book that almost everyone talked about when it was first released. It’s by many considered one of the best horror books of the early 21th century and I can’t help but agree.
The book is so popular because of how weird it is. It’s not only the plot or the idea behind it, but the entire structure and even the unconventional formatting of the book.
House of Leaves is set up as a non-fiction book written by an old man named Zampanó. The topic of this non-fiction narrative is the so-called Navidson Record, a fake documentary.
The Navidson Record details the events that took place in a house that was bigger on the inside than the outside.
Accompanying this already weird narrative are the notes of a man named Johnny Truant who found Zampanó’s manuscript. Over the course of the book, Johnny’s notes become more and more confusing.
I think it’s this structure that sets House of Leaves apart, and it would already be enough to make it one of the best horror books of all time.
Yet, what makes this book even more interesting is the unconventional formatting. The longer the book goes on and the weirder things get the stranger the formatting becomes. At times you’ll find only a few words on a page, on other occasions, the text can be upside down or mirrored. It’s an incredible experience and one that adds so much to the already uncanny effect of the book.
I loved House of Leaves. Reading this book was an experience like no other. It’s a book I can’t recommend enough to anyone interested in horror. It’s a hallmark of modern, unconventional horror and clearly one of the best horror books out there.
Edgar Allan Poe – The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
If there’s one writer more influential on the horror genre than H. P. Lovecraft and more influential on literature in general, it’s Edgar Allan Poe. He’s hailed as the father of the modern detective story, the psychological horror, but was also highly influential on such genres as science-fiction and adventure.
It’s no understatement to say that horror literature wouldn’t be the same without Edgar Allan Poe.
When I first read Poe, I thought he’d be a writer of ghost stories and gothic horrors. Instead, his tales were of unreliable narrators and mentally ill characters suffering from fears, phobias and addictions.
Poe seldom features ghastly creatures. Instead, he gives us tales of gripping psychological horror, of sick minds and the terrible deeds they commit.
Edgar Allan Poe is an amazing writer. The Tell Tale Heart and the Masque of Red Death are amongst my all-time favorite horror stories and would make an excellent addition to this list of the best horror books all on their own. It’s not simply the plot though, it’s Poe’s writing, his style. Poe is a master of the craft and his works are filled with rhythm, power, suspense and emotions.
The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe edited by Benjamin F. Fisher is one of the best, most complete collections of his work out there. It contains Poe’s most famous poems, but also a wide variety of his stories. There’s horror classics such as The Fall of House Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum, but it also includes his tales of early science-fiction, adventure and his detective fiction. Even more, it also includes Poe’s novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
Even today, many of Poe’s psychological stories still hold up and I wholeheartedly recommend his works to any horror fans. If you’re interested to learn more about Poe’s stories, I urge you to check out my article on the most terrifying tales by Edgar Allan Poe.
I urge you to read the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and I consider this collection one of the best horror books of all time.
Robert W. Chambers – The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories
The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories by Robert W. Chambers was one of the first attempts to write stories about a nameless, unimaginable horror.
It’s one of the first books of its kind and should inspire other writers such as H. P. Lovecraft.
The book is a short story collection featuring the titular, ominous entity, the so-called King in Yellow. While the later stories in this collection aren’t horror stories, I still recommend it to anyone interested in weird fiction and the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
While the book is short, it’s an interesting and enjoyable read. The stories featuring or related to the King in Yellow were fantastic. I wholeheartedly recommend this books to fans of early weird fiction and think it’s amongst the best horror books of all times.
The Three Imposters by Arthur Machen is another example of early horror, similar to that of H. P. Lovecraft. It’s no coincidence that writer’s such as H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King consider Machen one of their prime inspiration. He’s a master of the early weird tale and has written some of the best horror books out there.
Many of the tales in this collection can be considered early examples of weird fiction and cosmic horror. While they aren’t as pompous as the works of H. P. Lovecraft, for example, they still hold up extremely well on their own.
The Three Imposters is a fantastic little collection of weird tales and in my opinion well worth reading for any fan of horror and weird fiction.
While the book might be a quick read, I still consider it one of Machen’s best books and one of the best horror books of all time.
Wayne Barlowe is a name I will always remember. I first got to know him because of his stunning and beautiful depictions of hell. You can find most of his art on his personal website. To say they are amazing would be an understatement.
It was years later that I learned that Wayne Barlowe had written a novel set in this vision of hell.
The book stood out to me because of the astounding world building and the sheer creativity that went into it. The depiction of the demons, their appearance, their conduct and how they wage war is fantastically done.
What I also love was Barlowe’s depiction of hell as a pseudo-organic, volcanic wasteland and its various natural inhabitants.
The story of the book revolves around Sargatanas, one of the major demons of hell. He comes to despise his current existence in hell and rebels against Hell’s ruler, Beelzebub, to that he’s worthy of going back to Heaven.
The book kept me engaged till the end, and I think it stands up as one of the best horror books I read in recent years. This, however, isn’t so much because of the characters or the story, but because of the phenomenal world building.
If you’re a fan of such works as Milton’s Paradise Lost or Dante’s Divine Comedy, I urge you to give the works of Wayne Barlow a try.
Japanese mangaka Junji Ito is one of my favorite horror artists and writers of all time. The first of his works I read was Tomie, more than a decade ago. This, however, was enough to make me fall in love with his gruesome and weird blend of horror.
If you want to learn more about Junji Ito and his work, I urge you to check out my list of the best Junji Ito stories.
Uzumaki is the most popular of his many works and also one of his best.
It centers on the small, coastal town of Kurouzo-Cho, which is infested by spirals. Spiral shapes appear all over town, things take on the form of spirals, and soon enough the townsfolk grow obsessed with them. This obsession has always dire results as people are distorted, warped and changed into grotesque spiral-like shapes.
What makes Uzumaki stand out amongst a plethora of other horror works is the lack of any feasible antagonist. There’s no monster to fight, no killer to run from. No, there’s only the spiral, a concept that lingers of the town of Kurouzo-Cho as an omnipresent curse.
Junji Ito brings all this forth with his horrifying art, and in Uzumaki he’s at his absolute best. His simple black-and-white style and his precise craftsmanship bring forth the twisted cosmic horror of Uzumaki in all of its glorious detail.
Uzumaki is at the pinnacle of Japanese horror manga and Japanese horror. It’s without a doubt a hallmark in horror and one of the best horror books out there. If you’re a fan of gruesome, twisted and weird horror, I urge you to read Uzumaki.
I recently read all of Stephen King’s short story collections. While enjoyed all of them, I think Skeleton Crew is by far the best out of his six collections.
If you’re interested in learning more about King’s short story collections, you can check out my ranking of them here. Should you be interested in learning more about my thoughts on individual stories, you can check out my list of the best Stephen King short stories.
Skeleton Crew is a short story collection that has it all. It includes a fantastic array of horror stories, but also several more fantastic entries of King’s vast body of work.
The collection starts off with one of King’s most popular novellas, The Mist. However, the stories that follow are all great in their own right. The Monkey, The Raft and especially the suspenseful Gramma are all fantastic horror stories.
There’s however more to this collection. With Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut and The Jaunt, it features two of King’s more fantastical stories, but both are amongst his best work.
While there are some stories in this collection I didn’t care too much about, they were easily brushed aside by the many great entries.
Skeleton Crew is full of horror, but it’s never too broad like some of King’s other collections. It’s the best of King’s short story collections, a great entry point to King’s work and one of the best horror books of all time.
