Fans of The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Haunting Of Hill House will be glad to hear that there is no shortage of haunted house books out there.
Here are some that really get the hairs on the back of your neck standing up!
The Shining by Stephen King: A Haunted Hotel.
A classic horror novel and if you’ve seen the Kubrik adaptation, you’ll find that this book is completely different in many ways. While Jack Torrence is still very much a struggling writer hoping to bang a few words out whilst living in a secluded hotel throughout the winter, the book is more about a man driven mad by an evil building.
The Spider by Hanna Delaney. Gothic Horror meets Historical Police Procedural.
This is another haunted house book that asks the reader the question: is it the house, or is it just the characters’ decaying sanity? The story is set in a Victorian town house at the height of Liverpool’s industrial success, but Liverpool has always been associated with hauntings and paranormal phenomena, so it can happen in the middle of a busy city, too.
John Bryant has returned to his family in Liverpool after finding his fortune in the goldfields of Australia. He moves his family into number 5 Percy Street. Anxious to start a new life, Frances Bryant finds herself in the clutches of a malevolent presence within the house, unable to escape it.
When paranormal investigator Daniel Muldoon is called to investigate the case, he soon discovers the haunting of number five is just the beginning of the horror that will unfold.
Lives hang in the balance, for some it is already too late. Muldoon must compete in a race against time to save those who remain caught in a spider’s web.
The Turn Of the Screw by Henry James. A haunting or psychological decay?
This book receives mixed reviews from readers on sites like Goodreads, as it’s not full of overt scares; The Turn Of The Screw is more of a slow, eerie undercurrent of unsettling creepiness. Is the governess really onto something, or is she imagining the whole thing? This is classic Gothic horror/psychological horror which is better known for how it gets under your skin than explicit gore or jump scares.
The Whistling by Rebecca Netley. Isolation, ghosts and mystery.
Set in the isolated Scottish islands in the 1880s, this story tells the tale of a governess who takes a position on one fictional Scottish island. The former governess is gone, and one of the children died in her care. This is a creepy, cold and eerie ghost story told from the governess’s perspective.
The Woman In Black. A timeless ghost story. Utterly chilling.
This is my favourite ghost story of all time because it is so very sinister. When you get to the end you will need to just sit and stare at a wall for a while.
The September House by Carissa Orlando. The walls bleed.
When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street – for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price – they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Every September, the walls drip blood.
Incidents Around The House by Josh Malerman.
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddy and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: ‘Can I go inside your heart?’ When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the question over and over, Bela understands that unless she says yes, her family will soon pay. Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe, but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is about to unravel.
Have you read any of these? Let me know which of these haunted house horror books you’re adding to your TBR!
Hanna Delaney is an author from Liverpool UK. She writes speculative thrillers and mysteries. Her debut novel, Oceanus, is a science fiction thriller re-imagining Shakespeare’s The Tempest. She is also the author of the Muldoon Gothic thriller series set in Victorian Liverpool and several short story collections including The Shade In The Sands And Other Stories, a collection of Gothic stories themed around Victorian and Edwardian Egyptomania.
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