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Any decent horror recommendations?

Started by holyzombiejesus, October 17, 2017, 11:25:45 AM

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BlodwynPig

The image of that parade with the balloon headed clown...the most horrifying, nightmarish section of any book I've read. And you summed up the atmosphere of those stories very well. If you want to know what gets me in the mood...it's Ligotti, House of Leaves, and the others mentioned above. Not desolation, per se, something more existential than that.

purlieu

Quote from: BlodwynPig on December 05, 2017, 12:11:32 AM
The image of that parade with the balloon headed clown...the most horrifying, nightmarish section of any book I've read.
Ugh yes, I can feel him looking at me every time I read it. Genuinely hideous, in the best way possible.

ASFTSN

Quote from: Phil_A on December 04, 2017, 10:31:18 PM
I've always found Campbell's novels a bit frustrating. He's a genius of the short form, but his full-length books invariably seem to fall apart the longer they go on.

Come to think of it, I read one with a very similar premise to this about twenty years ago. Ancient Images I think it was called? About a woman investigating a mysterious lost horror film starring Lugosi and Karloff. Great premise, but it couldn't sustain the tension and by the end I wasn't sure what it was about.

I might check this one out though, if you can promise me it doesn't have a crap ending!

His short stories are frequently absolutely masterful.  His novels, I will always pick one up and read it.  But he has some frustrating literary tics.  Namely:

a)  His novel's protagonists constantly hear and see obvious signs of the horror that stalks them, and write it off.  Surely it was just the wind that made that tarpaulin blow in such a way as to form a grinning, eerie face.  The sun must have shone an odd shade of red because he's got some grit in his eye.  It must be the smell of hos day's work at the fish shop that caused the clingy, damp smell emanating from his brother.  This gets more and more frequent as each novel progresses, until it's happening multiple times per page. Infuriatingly rote.

b)  Incidental characters and their morals.  Bad people are almost always small-minded, small-town, homophobes. conservatives and/or religious types that see the ongoing horror as something to be respected and adjusted to, or blamed on those of loose morals.  Good people are almost always those that own headshops, not shy of having another glass of wine, don't judge etc.  The fact I've mostly read his 80's novels might have a bearing on this though.   

c)  Overwrought attempted cleverness in his wordplay.  One I read recently described a man taking a piss as He got out the little he had and emptied it of the great deal for which it was the sole point of egress.  Come on Ramsey...

BUT he's great at conveying strangeness in urban settings, and he's got to be one of the most convincing horror authors I've read at setting his stories in the modern United Kingdom.  He really understands the setting and at times can use it to a breathtaking degree that really puts you there. 

And yes Phil_A, Ancient Images is the one you're thinking of and I enjoyed that a fair bit despite it suffering from a) a lot!

Best novel I've read by him:  Midnight Sun (which interestingly he doesn't like much)

Worst novel I've read by him:  The House on Nazareth Hill

Untouchable excellence:  Alone With The Horrors (short stories).

Catalogue Trousers

QuoteI might check this one out though, if you can promise me it doesn't have a crap ending!

For me, it's perhaps his best ending to a novel. The ambiguity remains to the last sentence, and dear me is it grim.

Phil_A

Quote from: ASFTSN on December 05, 2017, 11:24:38 AM
b)  Incidental characters and their morals.  Bad people are almost always small-minded, small-town, homophobes. conservatives and/or religious types that see the ongoing horror as something to be respected and adjusted to, or blamed on those of loose morals.  Good people are almost always those that own headshops, not shy of having another glass of wine, don't judge etc.  The fact I've mostly read his 80's novels might have a bearing on this though.   

I think a lot of that, particularly in the early novels and short stories, is reflective of his "difficult" relationship with his ultra-conservative Catholic mother, who sounded like a nightmare to live with even before she went insane.


Catalogue Trousers

The Hungry Moon is particularly good for those who like such strawmen. It does remain pretty good, though.

ASFTSN

Quote from: Catalogue Trousers on December 05, 2017, 11:16:05 PM
The Hungry Moon is particularly good for those who like such strawmen. It does remain pretty good, though.
That's a pretty good one, yep.  Great ending and I loved the character of the lonely shit pub comedian/postman!

Phil_A I've seen mention of this on the board elsewhere, I'm going to have to pick up that book of his essays one day to find out more.  He seems like a very well adjusted and nice chap in the interview I have listened to with him, so good that it seems like he's managed to get away from all that.

samadriel

I'm not a big horror fan, but I love Charles Stross' short story "A Colder War", a Cthulhu mythos story set in the Reagan era.
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

Phil_A

Quote from: ASFTSN on December 06, 2017, 08:03:30 AM
  That's a pretty good one, yep.  Great ending and I loved the character of the lonely shit pub comedian/postman!

Phil_A I've seen mention of this on the board elsewhere, I'm going to have to pick up that book of his essays one day to find out more.  He seems like a very well adjusted and nice chap in the interview I have listened to with him, so good that it seems like he's managed to get away from all that.

It's all told in the foreword to The Face That Must Die, a devastating read. It's amazing he turned out as normal as he did.

Clive Langham

I'd recommend the late Thomas M. Disch's tetralogy "The Businessman: A Tale of Terror", "The M.D.: A Horror Story", "The Priest: A Gothic Romance", and "The Sub: A Study in Witchcraft". Disch is better known as a Science Fiction writer (and poet) but these four are very good, well-written with plenty of sly humour.

Paaaaul

Christopher Priest's The Prestige.

You may have seen the film.
The film only really covers the middle third of the book.
Most of the book takes place decades after the events shown in the film.
The book will surprise you in numerous ways.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: ASFTSN on December 04, 2017, 09:21:11 AM
Haha, that's a great description!  Have you read The Night Land?

Oof, this is heavy going with its archaic writing style.

ASFTSN

Quote from: BlodwynPig on December 08, 2017, 02:12:15 PM
Oof, this is heavy going with its archaic writing style.

Yes - but I tend to take that as adding to its feel, like something has been lost in the translation of this account from another time.  If you can I would say stick with it and take it at a leisurely pace, once the hero leaves The Last Redoubt and gets into the eerie creatures of the Night Land itself, it's somethin' else.  I can totally understand people giving up because of the cod-archaic writing style though.  I think there's an abridged version.

QuoteAnd that day, I passed seven large fire-holes, and two that were small;
and always I came softly unto them; for there were oft living things
about the warmth. And at the sixth fire-hole, I did see that which I did
think to be a great man, that did sit to the fire, with monstrous knees
drawn upward unto his chin. And the nose was great and bent downward;
and the eyes very large, and did shine with the light from the
fire-hole, and moved, watching, always this way and that, so that the
white parts did show, now this side and now that. But it was not
properly a man.

And I went away very quiet from that place, and looked oft backward,
until that I was sure of safety; for it was a very horrid Monster, and
had that place to be for a Lair, as I did judge from the smell thereof.

Black Ship

Not really a horror per se, just kind of grim and incredible funny, but I picked up a copy of "The Boy who Kicked Pigs" by Tom Baker (yes that one). I'd highly recommend it.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: ASFTSN on December 08, 2017, 02:42:46 PM
Yes - but I tend to take that as adding to its feel, like something has been lost in the translation of this account from another time.  If you can I would say stick with it and take it at a leisurely pace, once the hero leaves The Last Redoubt and gets into the eerie creatures of the Night Land itself, it's somethin' else.  I can totally understand people giving up because of the cod-archaic writing style though.  I think there's an abridged version.

That passage has piqued my interest anew. I've only just got to the Redoubt bit.

Bennett Brauer

I think this has been recommended before, but I'll give it another mention because I think most people would automatically give it a swerve as soon as they saw the author's name.

  Written in 1940 when he was just a pulp-fiction author.

purlieu

Michelle Paver's Dark Matter is a wonderfully claustrophobic ghost story set on an expedition to well within the arctic circle.

madhair60

Quote from: bushwick on October 28, 2017, 05:15:10 PM
This is also excellent (JESUS FUCKING CHRIST I HAVE THIS AND NOW SEE IT'S GOING FOR AT LEAST £90!!!!!!)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lets-Go-Play-at-Adams/dp/0586042334

Fuck sake I want to read this. Christ

jobotic

Ugh, I don't. Now I've gone and read about the murder of Sylvia Likens and I really wish I hadn't.

There's a story in on of the Pan Horrors that disturbed me more than anything I've read but I don't want to think about it. At least it was only fiction.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: jobotic on December 18, 2017, 11:28:57 PM
Ugh, I don't. Now I've gone and read about the murder of Sylvia Likens and I really wish I hadn't.

There's a story in on of the Pan Horrors that disturbed me more than anything I've read but I don't want to think about it. At least it was only fiction.

what story is that?

bushwick

Quote from: jobotic on December 18, 2017, 11:28:57 PM
Ugh, I don't. Now I've gone and read about the murder of Sylvia Likens and I really wish I hadn't.

There's a story in on of the Pan Horrors that disturbed me more than anything I've read but I don't want to think about it. At least it was only fiction.

Are you referring to The Clinic by Alex White, by any chance? That story has left a mark on a lot of people it seems (me included). They wrote a few stories for the Pan books which are all basically the same premise, ie 'horrible thing happens to a woman' but The Clinic is very grim and shocking. A horror fiction forum I used to go on tried to identify Alex White with no success - he/she is like a pulp fiction urban myth.
A couple of other disturbing stories from that series are Kowlongo Plaything by kids author Alan Temperley and The River Bed by B Seshadri. Seshadri is another mysterious author and The River Bed is very nasty because of how believable it is.

thraxx


Not obscure, but Salem's Lot is fucking terrifying. Read it again recently and yep still shit myself. Pet Semetary isnt scary but it you've got kids you might wish you could unread it. Bleak as fuck.

jobotic

Quote from: bushwick on December 19, 2017, 01:58:13 PM
Are you referring to The Clinic by Alex White, by any chance? That story has left a mark on a lot of people it seems (me included). They wrote a few stories for the Pan books which are all basically the same premise, ie 'horrible thing happens to a woman' but The Clinic is very grim and shocking. A horror fiction forum I used to go on tried to identify Alex White with no success - he/she is like a pulp fiction urban myth.
A couple of other disturbing stories from that series are Kowlongo Plaything by kids author Alan Temperley and The River Bed by B Seshadri. Seshadri is another mysterious author and The River Bed is very nasty because of how believable it is.

That's the one. I read it about five years ago after I found the book. I remembered it disturbed me as a teenager but couldn't remember exactly was it about. I should've burned the fucker. There was a thread about Pan Horror on here a couple of years ago, started by the fella who I think turned out to be [banned troll] (I think, he's before my time).

NoSleep

My vague teenage recollections of the Pan Books is that they were mainly nasty.

madhair60

It saddens me greatly that all this great horrid stuff is out of print and fuckspensive.

Phil_A

Quote from: madhair60 on December 20, 2017, 01:23:28 PM
It saddens me greatly that all this great horrid stuff is out of print and fuckspensive.

Most of those old Pan Horror paperbacks can be picked up for a few quid each on Abebooks.

I think The Clinic was in this one:

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=19522563483&searchurl=kn%3Dpan%2Bhorror%2Bstories%2Bpan%2Bhorror%2Bstories%2B14%26sortby%3D17&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title6


Artie Fufkin

I second King's Salem's Lot. It really is a masterpiece. As is Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, and Peter Benchley's Jaws.
Now they're your classics, son.
Contemporary? If you like your old school horror, I cannot recommend Adam Nevill's The Ritual highly enough. Relentless !

jonbob

 The Last Vampire
by T.M. Wright

I first read this years ago, it's a slightly different vampire novel to a lot of the stuff from the same time (Anne Rice) so I feel it was unfairly overlooked.
It's great at creating a really excellent sense of slow creeping dread.
when I was searching for it there appears to be a series of books by another author using the same title, but I haven't read any of them any, so I have NFI what they're like or if they are connected.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/363373.The_Last_Vampire

DukeDeMondo

Short notice, but there's a whole bunch of M.R. James stuff about to start on BBC4. I suppose it'll all be on the iPlayer. The M.R. James: Ghost Writer documentary with Mark Gatiss, then Gatiss's adaptation of The Tractate Middoth (which I haven't seen and have heard nothing but bad things about, but there you go), and an adaptation of Number 13, and then later on two instalments of Ghost Stories For Christmas with Christopher Lee (The Stalls of Barchester and A Warning To The Curious), and later still a take on A View From A Hill.

For some reason the 1976 adaptation of The Signalman - or The Signal-Man - by Charles Dickens is slapped in the middle of it all, but since it is fucking wonderful and absolutely the thing to be watching on Christmas Eve, we won't complain too much about that.