There is nothing better than a good ghost story.
It might be tempting to pop in one of your scarier movies when you want to get into the Halloween spirit, but there are plenty of novels sure to keep you up for just as many nights.
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Just be careful if you read these titles in a public place. You might mistake the woman who just wants your extra chair as your book's monster. And no one wants to go viral as "shrieking girl in Starbucks."
What if you were the thing your neighbors whispered about, the dark shadow that everyone felt but no one acknowledged? The Replacements takes place in a town where every once in a while, a baby will be taken and replaced by a not-quite-right double that dies soon after the switch is made. The entire story is told from the perspective of one of the replacements that has mysteriously lived into his teens.
Pick up this novel written by Stephen King's oldest son before the movie comes out, and you can only picture Daniel Radcliffe as the newly horned, deeply troubled protagonist Ig. It's proof that the scariest creatures in fiction are not ghosts or vampires, they are characters so twisted by grief and rage they've become unrecognizable.
When people talk about what kind of superpowers they'd like to have, the most common are typically flight, invisibility and mind reading. Mara Dyer has the power of her fear and her anger, and it's not until she walks into a room of live-caged bugs and walks out of a room of dead ones that she understands just how powerful she is.
Readers today are never at a loss for new zombie books, and any story about society crumbling under the weight of the brain-eating undead is bound to be terrifying. What makes Handling the Undead particularly spine-tingling is the window of hope for the characters that their undead loved ones might mean them no harm.
The best thrillers tap into a specific (and realistic) fear. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown opens in the aftermath of a typical party. But when the young heroine wakes up, instead of finding drunk people, she's surrounded by dead people. And it only gets creepier from there.
What's truly creepy about this Shirley Jackson classic are all the unanswered questions left with the reader. At the end of most thrillers, you at least know what to be irrationally afraid of. With this novel, you won't know if you should be wary of the haunted house on the corner or the mysterious woman who lives next-door.
Cas has been killing ghosts for as long as he could handle his late father's ghost-slashing knife. It's a lonely life, but one that he fully accepted until coming face to face with Anna, the murderous ghost of a dead teen who wants to leave but can't. Anna doesn't want to kill but must, and she terrifies Cas -- not because of her black eyes or blood-soaked dress, but because she makes him hesitate.
This is the original Paranormal Activity, and definitely not a book to pick up before you move to a new house, or come anywhere near one. It can also provide a fun after-dinner game: How many terrifying noises, smells, or sounds does it take for you to move out?
This novel has the makings of any great horror flick: an abandoned orphanage, haunting children (Because the first rule of effective horror trailer-making is to include a small child's eerie rendition of nursery rhymes.), and a horrible tragedy. If you doubt your ability to fill in the creepy pieces with your own imagination, the included spooky vintage photographs are guaranteed to haunt your dreams.
Image: Flickr, Maguis & David