Hello Veeky Forums. Pleb asking here

Hello Veeky Forums. Pleb asking here.

I'd like to read a horror book that doesn't let me sleep at night. What are some recommendations? So far i have my eyes on Dracula, The Shining and The exorcist.

I don't think any of those, especially Dracula, is going to be scary for you at all.

What are you afraid of?

True crime (especially unresolved cases) will stop you from sleeping at night a lot quicker. They are the only thing that really spooked me when reading them in bed. There is some disturbing stuff out there.

Loneliness

read weird horror
sp00kier than anything conventional horror can manage

got any good recs? All I know is In Cold Blood.

It's a bit of a cliché but I might suggest some Ligotti. Otherwise the other user makes a good point; true crime is a lot more scary than any fiction can be. If I really wanted to be scared, I'd just watch the news. Books are safe. While you're reading them, you get to become Tarzan or Robinson Crusoe, but afterwards you get to be you again.

Dracula isn't quite that kind of book, OP. The pacing is very slow and a lot of people expecting scary vampire shenanigans end up getting quite disappointed. It's a great book but don't go into reading it expecting something to keep you awake at night.

HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Ligotti, Hubert Selby Jr. are authors who would be more to your liking.

Also check out:
Audition
The Story of the Eye
The Wasp Factory
The Painted Bird
Outer Dark
Junji Ito's Gyo, Fragments of Horror, Uzumaki, Tomie, etc.

They're either horror novels or just immensely disturbing books which are probably more of what you're looking for.

There are three books about the Original Night Stalker/East Area Rapist (Hunting a Psychopath, Hot Prowl and Sudden Terror). None of them is great literature, but they're entertaining. Basically, it's about a guy who used to enter people's home at night and rape/murder them. He did it about 50 times and was never caught. Then it talks about the suspects who were considered before being dismissed for reasons, and most of them are also terrible people in their own rights. Makes you question humanity. I'm not the most knowledgeable person on this, so if anyone has better suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them. But there is depressing stuff ou there that will make you double check that you lock your doors and windows at night.

H.P. Lovecraft, friend. Weird horror/fiction is sure to unsettle you.

Jack Ketchum is also pretty good and grounded in reality.

Helter Skelter.

OP here, thanks for the recommendations everyone. Haven't been able to check this since i started the thread.

I was thinking about dracula, shining and the exorcist because i'm interested in those universes rather than thinking they would be very scary.

I'm particularly interested in the devil's conversations with karras.

Junji Ito is the only creator of written media that comes close to this. Algernon Blackwood and W. W. Jacobs are close if their work hadnt been absorbed into pop culture.

BTK killer books. And take some time to think about how he stopped killing for a decade and just lived a normal life. And how the cops only caught him with a lucky break.

and
Exorcist is trash, movie is 10x the book.

This is kinda different, but Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens by John Mack. I read it a while back and it creeped me out pretty good.
It's kinda an open-minded academic story of the author's work with people who have supposedly been abducted.
He's a Pulitzer Prize winner and a psychiatrist at Harvard, so he's not a complete nutjob.

pleb here

House of Leaves

a pretentious book with multiple storylines and characters. Initially they are all fairly interesting, but the content you'd be interested in is the Navidson Record. By the end I was skipping sections of the other storylines because I was more or less able to tell where they were going and they read like little nagging bitches that kept the good shit from progressing

I remember liking the exorcist book when I was in middle school. Haven't read Dracula. What Stephen King I have read is absolute dreck. He's probably the trashiest writer I've ever had the displeasure of being exposed to his smug, affected prose.

Child of God by McCarthy. Really only book I read that gave me chills and kept me thinking for weeks after.

>I'd like to read a horror book that doesn't let me sleep at night.

Speaking as even someone who prefers reading books to movies or TV I really think the horror genre is much more effective on film.

looks like a krokodil user

Ligotti

My diary desu

"Story of the Eye" has already been recommended, and I'd gladly second that. Bataille is terrifying. Try reading "Inner Experience". Granted it's not fiction (it's philosophy), but it'll crush your soul.

Also, try Sade and Lautreamont. Really screwed up. Kafka is also a classic, disturbing and paranoia-inducing author.

Finally, perhaps you could try reading some Aeolus Kephas. Conspiracy theory jibberjabber but it's more or less designed to make you go insane. Kephas (aka Jasun Horsley) thinks that paranoia increases our understanding of reality. Just don't take it too seriously unless you want to end up as a tinfoil hat person.

Happy hunting!