Anonymous wrote:Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn and The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright both terrified me as a child. I still get chills reading those books as an adult!
I reread The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson every October - it’s probably my favorite horror novel. I also like The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White (also published as The Spiral Staircase), and The Woman in Black by Susan James.
Ooohh - those were my childhood favorites, too! I can still remember the chills I felt at the end of Wait Til Helen Comes. My son has read all of the MDH graphic novels and loves them. I know my sensitive daughter would be sleeping on our floor for years if she read these at the age I did. I started reading Steven King in middle school and most of those were terrifying to me, too, especially when I chose to read them while babysitting at night! Then I read all of the Thomas Harris books. Red Dragon was the scariest.
As an adult, I was so disturbed by Dan Chaon’s books, especially Ill Will and Stay Awake (short stories). There’s one in there that I can barely think about. More psychological terror than supernatural.