10 terrifying horror books you've never read

Being scared is a lot of harmless fun

Read if you dare.
(Image credit: iStock.)

As long as I can remember I have enjoyed stories that frighten me. As a child, on rainy early autumn afternoons in our crumbling Victorian farmhouse surrounded on three sides by corn as far as anyone could see, I would open the old Childcraft Encyclopedia to the only volume that interested me, "Myths and Legends," and read about ogres and witches.

Millions of people could tell similar stories, and just as many will listen on, baffled by our addiction to being frightened. Why do we do it? Like Eve Tushnet, I have never come up with a "grand theory of horror," but I would observe that these stories serve to remind ludicrous moderns that we are creatures of spirit as well as matter, that there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in what passes for our philosophy, that the past will never leave us till the last trumps blow.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.