Favorite Horror Short Story

This is probably found in the sci-fi section of a library, but I think it carries the hallmarks of horror, and is probably the most depressing story I've ever read. Even the title is horrific! Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. If you're lazy, and if you Google hard enough you might find a copy to read online.

EDIT: Wiki info:

I remember the first short story that really truly scared me when I was a kid was Stephen King's The Bogeyman from Night Shift. Just a perfect example of the power of irrational childhood fears.

"The Jaunt" and "The Monkey", both by Stephen King, and both in the "Skeleton Crew" collection, I think. "Trucks" and "Battleground" from "Night Shift" are very good, too.

"The Call of Cthulhu", "At the Mountains of Madness", "Pickman's Model", "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", and "The Dunwich Horror" - probably in that order - by H.P. Lovecraft (reprinted numerous times & in numerous collections).

Sorry to do this to you, but there's a story I absolutely LOVED but can't recall the name of or the author. But I can tell you exactly where to find it and give you a brief synopsis w/ no spoilers. It was located in the "Mammoth Book of Frankenstein", published by Carrol & Graf Publishing Co., and it was a story about a future where clones are bred & kept totally ignorant of the world around them raised in isolation on a remote island, and kept as spare parts farms for the wealthy. Until, that is, something goes wrong. VERY creepy and moving. Sorry I can't give you more on this, but you ought to buy every "Mammoth Book of. . . " you can get your hands on anyway.

I love Clive Barker's The Body Politic. The idea of people's hands coming to life and "freeing" themselves from their masters is such a cool one.

I'm a big fan of The Body Politic as well. And sticking to Books of Blood, I also loved The Yattering and Jack.

Lovecraft's The Dreams in the Witch House is an old favorite, as well as Rats in the Walls.

I've never felt that Stephen King was particularly good at the short story form, but one has to admit that Survivor Type is an incredibly ballsy story. Incredibly sick. You'd think that anything with the words "Stephen King" on it would be dogpiled on, but no magazine would touch this one.

I'm a HUGE King fan, so I'm biased. "Suffer The Little Children" is one of his spookier short stores. "Crouch End" also scared the shit out of me as I read it on a foggy evening (the TV version they made on TNT sucked balls). "Night Surf" is not so scary but I think it's one his best written pieces, short story or otherwise.

Fire In the Galley Stove by William Outerson (I think) is pretty cool.

Harlan Ellison, "Mephisto in Onyx."

Definitely a fan of Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch House" along with Stephen King's "The Boogeyman" and "Battleground" in the Night Shift collection.

"1408" by Stephen King. I hope the film adpatation will do it justice

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe.
It's chilling how the stage is set in a Shakespeare-ian way, but once you realize the true madness of the narrator, it's too late and you're hooked.

Don't know if Ray Bradbury's "The Small Assassin" counts as horror, but it's pretty horrific. And I've always loved King's "The Mist," though maybe that's more of a novella?

Can't believe I forgot Barker! All of the Books of Blood are superb and worth reading; the aforementioned stories (Body & Yattering) are both great. I liked "In the Hills, the Cities" because it was such a bizarre concept. It definitely sticks out in my mind as a memorable story. "The Midnight Meat Train" was pretty scary, too. And of course, "The Hellbound Heart", the story "Hellraiser" was based on, is a classic.

"Oh Whistle and I'll come to you, my Lad" by MR James, found in many collections of his work. Probably the best work of the finest writer of the classical ghost story. Splendid stuff.

I'll throw in agreement on Lovecraft, Poe and Barker, too.

Koji Suzuki's The Hold, from his Dark Water anthology, is another good one.

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been," by Joyce Carol Oates.

Absolutely terrifying.

Not strictly pure horror, but...

"A Thousand Deaths" by Orson Scott Card...I must have been 14 or so when I read this in 'OMNI', it's memory still freaks me out to this day.

Though it's not really horror it is terrifying, "Guts" by Chuck Paluniuk.

I dealt with King's literary agent, negotiating the rights to "Suffer the Little Children," and I happily prepared to be a bonafide Dollar Dollar Baby. And if I do say so (not without a little arogance), my twenty-page script was tits. It was an adaptation, so I made a few changes, but they were changes that my production partners were ecstatic about. Nothing changed story-wise -- it was more in terms of how situations were rendered visually, how things that needed to be shown rather than described were brought to life, and I also amped up the idea that children are constantly touching, playing, and passing their germs. Hence the pseudo-possession/infection of evil.

However, the agent pulled the rug out from under my feet at the eleventh hour. This was in the fall of 2005, and I was informed that TNT owned the rights to ALL the stories in "Nightmares & Dreamscapes," not just the ones they already had in production. My argument was that 1) I wouldn't make any money off the film (it's a short -- the whole purpose of making shorts is to play the festivals, win some awards, and provide reason for investors to finance your dream project -- and there's NO MONEY TO BE MADE FROM THEM); 2) even if TNT did hold the rights, they surely weren't bound to turn a twenty page story into an hour episode, were they?; and 3) even if they did pull a "Graveyard Shift" and stretch that fucker to the point of being unwelcome, how was my 16mm no-budget short going to be a threat...?

Nevertheless, I was turned away, despite repeated attempts to reach a resolution.

I got as far as concept art for the monsters, and had access to an old elementary school that was long-abandoned. Sterile, carpetless, with long, dark corridors and purritanical-looking classrooms. It looked like an ancient Christian private school from the bottom-most cellars of Hell.

And now that script is collecting dust on my hard drive. It's a shame, too.

"Shut a Final Door" by Truman Capote and "The Doll" by Joyce Carol Oates. Both stories where I have no idea what the hell happens at the end, and both are incredibly unsettling despite/because of it.

Oh jesus, and how could I forget King's "Survivor Type"? Holy fucking mother of hell, what a story that is.

I was always partial to "The Telltale Heart", personally. And "Wendigo" from Algernon Blackwood. Liked "Night Surf" and "Battleground" from King, as well. But "Heart" is pretty much what I think of when I imagine a horror short story.

I like a lot of King's short stories (The Monkey freaked me right out), and while I'm not big on Lovecraft, Shadow Over Innsmouth is great.

Another short I like is The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It's from 1892, but it's freakin' creepy.

Lovecraft's stories are gooey and macabre, but I don't think anyone has captured madness in narrative horror in quite the same way as Poe did. Probably because he was genuinely crazy, I guess.

Is "Survivor Type" about the shipwrecked surgeon? Yeah, that one's pretty nasty. I dig "The Raft", too - a nice, neat primordial shocker of a tale.

Right on both scores re: King. Can't believe I forgot "The Raft".

Ellison's "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs" (from DEATHBIRD STORIES) is the bee's knees IMO; "Croatoan" (from STRANGE WINE) is also fucking fantastic.


Lovecraft wasn't exactly Mr Well-Adjusted, just crazy in a different way, I suppose.

Oh yeah, that one. That's genius. Especially because I actually remember the incident that it's based on. It was all over the news at the time.

Found It!

Just in case anyone cares, I found my copy of The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein in my attic this afternoon. I mentioned a great shoert story in it earlier in this thread, but couldn't recall the title or author. Now, because thia is such a good story that I'd like to refer all I can to it, here it is: "To Receive is Better", by Michael Marshall Smith. Hope you can find it somewhere. Enjoy!

Of course someone mentioned this first.

Although the story wasn't great (good, not great), I do love the image of man-monoliths from In the Hills, the Cities. I'd like to rip it off and make it my own some day.

From the Books of Blood, Clive Barker's "In the Hills, the Cities". Can't stand any of his other works.

The Silver Key by H. P. Lovecraft. I gots lots of Love for his Craft!

I just finished "The Undead: A Zombie Anthology" that my brother loaned me. It was chock full of great stories. Almost every one was really good. I think I especially liked the David Wellington entry, which used a few of the characters from "Monster Island". THAT was a trippy little zombie tale. Probably make it into the list of all time favorite horror short stories. Nice twist. The only flaw, if you can call it that, is that Brian Keene wrote the afterword, but didn't contribute a tale.

It's hard to choose from all the stories I've read, but a few quick recommendations based on what's in my current reading - Edith Nesbit's horror stories like the oft-anthologized Man-Sized In Marble which revolves around a legend surrounding two statues of medieval knights of ill-repute, and the not quite so anthologized The Head, wherein a talent promoter stumbles across a bitter, prematurely aged looking man who has built an incredibly detailed scale model replica of his local village, commerating the incident where the woman he loved died in a fire while her drunk husband lolled about in the gutter. Recognizing genius, the promoter arranges for the man to come to London and build a life-size version. The builder has one improvement to add, though...

the short stories of H. Russell Wakefield, his simple yet effective haunted-house story The Red Lodge, He Cometh and He Passeth By which is sort of a diffrent take on M.R. James' Casting the Runes and Lucky's Grove, about what happens when a particularly ancient tree is cut down to serve as the Christmas tree at a family's gathering at the local manor house.


Karl Edward Wagner also wrote some memorable stories, from the infamous Sticks, wherein a pulp magazine writer goes fishing in a somewhat remote part of upstate New York and stumbles across a series of very small piles of stones with crude wire-and-twig lattices atop them - following them all the way to a seemingly abandoned house in the woods that is surrounded and covered with the primitive stick-work...

.220 Swift - two men with different agendas go in search of ancient tunnels in the North Carolina hills, finally stumbingly across a passageway behind an old house, which leads into many underground chambers...

The Kind Men Like - A truly disturbing story, based around the disappearance of a 1950's model named Kirsti Lane (obviously inspired by Betty Page, who is mentioned several times in the text). Lane had started out modeling for cheesecake pinups and towards the height of her career had gotten into BSDM shoots, really kinked up stuff. Then, she vanished. Now, ten or so years later a young woman named Chelsea is trying to trace her for reasons which become apparent at the spectacular close of the story.

"People said that Kirsty could get a little rough on the submissive model when she was the dominant one", Lane's one time photographer tells her. "I know some of the girls wouldn't work with her unless they played the mistress."

H. P. Lovecraft's The Music of Eric Zahnn was always one of my favourites, from the ones that haven't been mentioned yet. There's just something magical about it, I can't really put my finger on it.

Also, I agree on 1408 and The Yattering and Jack.

One of my favorites of the "Hot Blood" series that also made it into "The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror". Good Call.

My friend, Ryan C Thomas, has stories in each of the next two of this series.

This is really difficult because I do believe that the best of the best in horror lit is in short stories, and I have quite a collection, there is no way I can call one "the best." I mean I can't even pick "the best" from within a single author in my top favorite 20 horror short story writers, let alone the best one of all. But I will randomly pick a few.

Stephen King - The Jaunt
HP Lovecraft - The Rats In The Walls
Ambrose Bierce - An Inhabitant of Carcosa
Poe - Bon Bon
Robert W Chambers - The King In Yellow
Briane Keene - The King, in: Yellow
Dean R Koontz - The Black Pumpkin
Bentley Little - The Washingtonians
Jack Ketchum - Mail Order
Edmond Hamilton - The Horror On The Asteroid
Ralph Adams Cram - In Kropsberg Keep
Bram Stoker - The Judges House
JS LeFanu - Carmilla
WW Jacobs - The Monkey's Paw
Rhoda Broughton - The Man With The Nose
JH Pearce - The Man Who Coined His Blood Into Gold
William F Nolan - The Small World Of Lewis Stillman
Brian Lumley - The Horror At Oakdeene
August Dereleth - The Drifting Snow
Robert Bloch - The Living Dead
Richard Laymon - The Maiden

There are just too many. If I had to recommend one collection it would be "The Dark Descent" which covers a wide timeframe of English horror

Word.

And I'm gonna go ahead and be obvious, but King's The Raft and The Mist have always stuck with me over the years.

another odd truism is that although there are a relatively few writers who have written great horror novels, and even fewer who have written more than one and gone on to fame as such, there are pretty much endless examples of one-hit-wonders who wrote a great short horror story and then totally fell off

But similarly, I think there are plenty of authors that churn out loads of good short stories, making "Best Of" anthologies every year. I'm always a little suspect when I see one's name on a novel, though. But for some reason, It doesn't work in reverse; I see a horror novelist's name in the credits of an anthology, and I think: "Cool." I have, however, no empirical evidence to back up my 1st supposition. I read so damn many horror short stories every year, it's hard for me to keep straight who wrote the good ones in last year's anthology, so I have never ben prompted to buy novel just because I see an anthology asuthor's name on the spine. But I tell you this; if Glenn Hirschberg ever writes a novel, I am giving it a shot.

Makes sense. There's less time investment in a short-story, so it's easier to find the gems. It's daunting to try an untested novel by an unknown.

I always remember being freaked out by Gray Matter when I was a kid. I'd love for a decent horror anthology film to do it justice.

I always check my drains twice before bed since reading Stephen King's "The Moving Finger"