13 Scary Books You Shouldn't Read Unless You Own A Nightlight

Rear Window fans should definitely crack the spine on this story. Casey Fletcher is an actress who is newly widowed, so she absconds to a lake house in Vermont to get a break from the press. With a stiff drink and binoculars to entertain her, she starts spying on the couple across the like: Tom and Katherine Royce. When Katherine vanishes, Casey suspects Tom is behind it.

Apollo Kagwa and his wife, Emma, are new parents, and the transition is more exhausting and anxiety-inducing than they thought it would be. Apollo is having recurring dreams about his father’s disappearance, and Emma is acting…strangely. So as not to spoil anything, let’s say she does something unexpected, and then vanishes, and Apollo must set out to find her and their baby. This story is a retelling of ye olde changeling stories, reimagining them to be all about love, parenting, and how secrets can change everything.

If you want to read one of the scariest books of all time, go ahead, pick up The Shining. King is the master of writing suspenseful thrillers, and this is one of his most infamous. In it, Jack Torrance takes a job as the off-season caretaker of a remote hotel, where he can focus on writing and spending time with his wife and child. Before long though, the hotel takes on an isolated, ominous feel, and sinister forces take hold of the family.

Irene Willard is finally pregnant after having five miscarriages. Her husband desperately wants a child, so Irene checks in to the Doctors Hall, a house set up as a hospital where a husband and wife team aim to “rectify the maternal environment.”

While there, Irene comes upon a long-forgotten garden with a powerful pull — one she and the other patients want to harness for their own purposes. The Garden is the perfect book for fans intrigued by pregnancy horror, 1940s medicine, and examinations of how women’s bodies have been controlled throughout history.

Reviewers say Nick Cutter’s work is not for the faint of heart — his writing is some of the goriest out there. This story is set on a remote island near Canada. There, a Boy Scout troop and their chaperone have set up camp for the weekend for a totally normal and wholesome weekend together. Instead, a stranger washes ashore infected with something terrible, and, well, things escalate quickly from there.

Shirley Jackson is a must-read horror author, and We Have Always Lived In The Castle might be her most beloved work. This story follows Merricat Blackwood and her strange family living on an isolated estate, one with dark secrets that could unravel everything. It’s a gothic, creepy, all-around-peculiar tale, ideal if you love a really atmospheric read.

Another classic, Rebecca has been so highly acclaimed since it was published in 1938 that it has been adapted for theater, TV, radio, and film. If you’ve escaped the plot points this long, here’s the premise: The main character meets handsome widower Maxim in Monte Carlo, and he quickly proposes. It isn’t until she arrives back at his massive estate that she begins to understand the specter of his late wife, Rebecca, is still a threat to their whirlwind romance.

It’s 1933 in the Tennessee backwoods, and 9-year-old Stella is given to her grandmother Motty to be cared for. When Stella meanders into a cavern, she meets her family’s personal god, known affectionately as Ghostdaddy. Many years later, an adult Stella returns for Motty’s funeral and to check in on Sunny, a 10-year-old girl Motty adopted. And Sunny is not what she seems. This one’s for all the southern gothic, Appalachian lore lovers out there.

Want some bite-sized scary stories to read here and there? This is a collection of short stories, but you may end up reading them cover to cover without stopping. You’ll find tales of a woman who won’t cave to her husband’s pleas to take the green ribbon from around her neck, one who recalls her sexual experiences while the world is overtaken by a plague, and more.

Frankenstein is a classic for a reason — it’s not just horror for the sake of being scary, but a story that asks huge questions about what happens when humankind plays God. The story is told in a series of letters from a ship captain to his wife after the seafarer comes across Victor Frankenstein sick and in need of help. Frankenstein recounts his creation of the monster and the monster’s subsequent murder spree to the captain, who has no idea he’ll get to see the creature in the flesh soon enough.

If you loved We Need To Talk About Kevin, this is your next read. Suzette and Alex have a precious 7-year-old daughter, Hanna. Alex thinks Hanna is perfect. Suzette wants her gone — as the victim of Hanna’s cruel little games, which have begun to escalate, her sanity is hanging on by a thread.

Nobody Owens, aka Bod, lives in a graveyard where he is being raised by ghosts. He has adventures there, sure — and he must, because if he tries to leave the graveyard, the man who already killed his whole family might finally catch up with him, too. This is the only book to ever win both a Newbery and Carnegie medal, so you know it’s good.

Noemí Taboada gets a letter from her cousin asking for someone to save her from an unknown threat, so she rushes into the Mexican countryside to help. She’s not sure what to expect, and she has never met her cousin’s new husband. Her only ally is her cousin’s son, who wants to help but seems to be hiding something. With some digging, what might she uncover about the wealthy family her loved one married into?