“What are the best Haunted House & Ghost books?” We looked at 225 of the top books, aggregating and ranking them so we could answer that very question!

Last year, in the run-up to Halloween, we looked at the Scariest Books Of All-Time. This year we decided to look at individual genres that make up the horror genera.

The top 42 books, all appearing on 2 or more, “Best Ghost/Haunting” book lists, are ranked below by how many times they appear. The books include images, descriptions, and links. The remaining 175+ books, as well as the lists we used, are in alphabetical order on the bottom of the page.

For more Best Horror and Scary Book lists, see below!

• The Best Books About Or Featuring An Alien Invasion
• The Best Ever Vampire Books
• The Best Zombie Books Of All-Time
• The Best Gothic Horror Books Of All-Time
• The Best Slasher Horror Books
• The Best YA Horror Books
• The Best Psychological Thriller Books Of All-Time
• The Best Books About Or Featuring Witches (Check back on 10/23/17)

Happy Scrolling!

Top 42 Books About Ghosts & Haunted Houses Books

42 .) A Warning to the Curious by M. R. James

Lists It Appears On:

• Publishers Weekly
• Best Book Lists

The story of Paxton, an antiquarian and archaeologist who holidays in “Seaburgh” and inadvertently stumbles across one of the lost crowns of Anglia, which legendarily protect the country from invasion.

Purchase / Learn More

41 .) A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons

Lists It Appears On:

• Syfy
• Horror Novel Reviews

A once-respected college professor and novelist, Dale Stewart has sabotaged his career and his marriage — and now darkness is closing in on him. In the last hours of Halloween he has returned to the dying town of Elm Haven, his boyhood home, where he hopes to find peace in isolation. But moving into a long-deserted farmhouse on the far outskirts of town — the one-time residence of a strange and brilliant friend who lost his young life in a grisly “accident” back in the terrible summer of 1960 — is only the latest in his long succession of recent mistakes. Because Dale is not alone here. He has been followed to this house of shadows by private demons who are now twisting his reality into horrifying new forms. And a thick, blanketing early snow is starting to fall ..

Purchase / Learn More

40 .) American Ghost by Hannah Nordhaus

Lists It Appears On:

• EW
• Buzzfeed

“La Posada—“place of rest”—was once a grand Santa Fe mansion. It belonged to Abraham and Julia Staab, who emigrated from Germany in the mid-nineteenth century. After they died, the house became a hotel. And in the 1970s, the hotel acquired a resident ghost—a sad, dark-eyed woman in a long gown. Strange things began to happen there: vases moved, glasses flew, blankets were ripped from beds. Julia Staab died in 1896—but her ghost, they say, lives on.

In American Ghost, Julia’s great-great-granddaughter, Hannah Nordhaus, traces her ancestor’s transfiguration from nineteenth-century Jewish bride to modern phantom. Family diaries, photographs, and newspaper clippings take her on a riveting journey through three hundred years of German history and the American immigrant experience. With the help of historians, genealogists, family members, and ghost hunters, she weaves a masterful, moving story of fin-de-siècle Europe and pioneer life, villains and visionaries, medicine and spiritualism, imagination and truth, exploring how lives become legends, and what those legends tell us about who we are.”

Purchase / Learn More

39 .) Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker

Lists It Appears On:

• Syfy
• Horror Novel Reviews

From The Books of Blood to Hellraiser to Imajica, Abarat, and Mister B. Gone, Clive Barker’s extraordinary vision knows no bounds. With Coldheart Canyon, the New York Times bestselling master of dark fantasy who has been called “a cross between Stephen King and Gabriel Garcia Marquez” (Boston Herald) thrills readers with a “Hollywood ghost story” as audacious and chilling as anything he (or anyone else) has ever written. USA Today calls it, “Endlessly entertaining…wickedly enjoyable,” and fans everywhere will agree—a tense and winding trip down into the hellish depths of Coldheart Canyon is well worth making.

Purchase / Learn More

38 .) Ghosts Caught on Film: Photographs of the Paranormal by Melvyn Willan and Donald West

Lists It Appears On:

• Buzzfeed
• Bustle

“Ghosts Caught on Film” presents an extraordinary collection of strange and unexplained photographs that offer the exciting possibility of ghosts and paranormal activity captured on film. It covers every aspect of the paranormal, from early photographs of psychics, mediums and ghostly happenings, to celebrated recent photos and the most interesting examples of the unexplained, as collected in the archive of the Society for Psychical Research. Each picture is accompanied by a description of its circumstances and the steps taken by researchers to establish that there is no ‘normal’ explanation for the phenomena. The incredible photographs will stimulate the interest of everyone who sees them. Whether you are a sceptic or a believer, you can’t help but be drawn into the mystery.

Purchase / Learn More

37 .) Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Goodreads

“Julia and Valentina Poole are twenty-year-old sisters with an intense attachment to each other. One morning the mailman delivers a thick envelope to their house in the suburbs of Chicago. Their English aunt Elspeth Noblin has died of cancer and left them her London apartment. There are two conditions for this inheritance: that they live in the flat for a year before they sell it and that their parents not enter it. Julia and Valentina are twins. So were the girls’ aunt Elspeth and their mother, Edie.

The girls move to Elspeth’s flat, which borders the vast Highgate Cemetery, where Christina Rossetti, George Eliot, Stella Gibbons, and other luminaries are buried. Julia and Valentina become involved with their living neighbors: Martin, a composer of crossword puzzles who suffers from crippling OCD, and Robert, Elspeth’s elusive lover, a scholar of the cemetery. They also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including—perhaps—their aunt.”

Purchase / Learn More

36 .) House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Lists It Appears On:

• The Lineup
• Haunted Rooms

“Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth — musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies — the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.”

Purchase / Learn More

35 .) Joyland by Stephen King

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Cleveland

Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.

Purchase / Learn More

34 .) Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories by Roald Dahl

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• WeirdWood

Who better to investigate the literary spirit world than that supreme connoisseur of the unexpected, Roald Dahl? Of the many permutations of the macabre or bizarre, Dahl was always especially fascinated by the classic ghost story. As he realtes in the erudite introduction to this volume, he read some 749 supernatural tales at the British Museum Library before selecting the 14 that comprise this anthology.

Purchase / Learn More

33 .) Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz

Lists It Appears On:

• The Lineup
• Goodreads

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a timeless collection of chillingly scary tales and legends, in which folklorist Alvin Schwartz offers up some of the most alarming tales of horror, dark revenge, and supernatural events of all time.

Purchase / Learn More

32 .) Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

Lists It Appears On:

• Bustle
• Buzzfeed

“What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that’s that―the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?” In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.

Purchase / Learn More

31 .) The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Interesting Literature

The Canterville Ghost By Oscar Wilde. “The Canterville Ghost” is a short story by Oscar Wilde, widely adapted for the screen and stage. It was the first of Wilde’s stories to be published, appearing in two parts in The Court and Society Review, 23 February and 2 March 1887. The story is about a family who moves to a castle haunted by the ghost of a dead nobleman, who killed his wife and was starved to death by his wife’s brothers.

Purchase / Learn More

30 .) The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

Lists It Appears On:

• The Lineup
• Horror Novel Reviews

This volume gathers together fourteen of Edgar Allan Poe’s richest and most influential tales, including: “The Pit and the Pendulum,” his reimagining of Inquisition tortures; “The Tell-Tale Heart,” an exploration of a murderer’s madness, which Stephen King called “the best tale of inside evil ever written”; “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe’s tour de force about a family doomed by a grim bloodline curse; and his pioneering detective stories, “The Purloined Letter” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” featuring a rational investigator with a poetic soul.

Purchase / Learn More

29 .) The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Goodreads

“Yangsze Choo’s stunning debut, The Ghost Bride, is a startlingly original novel infused with Chinese folklore, romantic intrigue, and unexpected supernatural twists.

Li Lan, the daughter of a respectable Chinese family in colonial Malaysia, hopes for a favorable marriage, but her father has lost his fortune, and she has few suitors. Instead, the wealthy Lim family urges her to become a “ghost bride” for their son, who has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Rarely practiced, a traditional ghost marriage is used to placate a restless spirit. Such a union would guarantee Li Lan a home for the rest of her days, but at what price?

Night after night, Li Lan is drawn into the shadowy parallel world of the Chinese afterlife, where she must uncover the Lim family’s darkest secrets—and the truth about her own family.”

Purchase / Learn More

28 .) The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• Intdependent

One might not expect a woman of Edith Wharton’s literary stature to be a believer of ghost stories, much less be frightened by them, but as she admits in her postscript to this spine-tingling collection, “…till I was twenty-seven or -eight, I could not sleep in the room with a book containing a ghost story.” Once her fear was overcome, however, she took to writing tales of the supernatural for publication in the magazines of the day. These eleven finely wrought pieces showcase her mastery of the traditional New England ghost story and her fascination with spirits, hauntings, and other supernatural phenomena.

Purchase / Learn More

27 .) The Myrtles Plantation: The True Story of America’s Most Haunted House by Frances Kermeen

Lists It Appears On:

• Bustle
• Buzzfeed

Broken clocks tick…beds rise in the air…paintings fly across the room…locked doors fling open…crystal chandeliers shake…heavy footsteps and eerie piano music sound in the dead of night-and that’s just for starters. Welcome to the Myrtles Long recognized as America’s most haunted house both by parapsychologists and the media, The Myrtles is a twenty-eight-room Louisiana bed-and-breakfast once owned by Frances Kermeen. In this spine-tingling chronicle, Frances tells the story of how she was drawn to this former plantation mansion, its bone-chilling history, and the incredible encounters of the ghostly kind she had that forever changed her beliefs about the supernatural-and just may change yours. Along with the sometimes terrifying, sometimes benevolent hauntings, her years at The Myrtles also brought death threats from the Ku Klux Klan, the tragic loss of friends, a catastrophic betrayal, and other personal challenges. They would all converge with the paranormal phenomena around her into one cataclysmic event…

Purchase / Learn More

26 .) The Seance by John Harwood

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Goodreads

A haunting tale of apparitions, a cursed manor house, and two generations of women determined to discover the truth, by the author of The Ghost Writer Sell the Hall unseen; burn it to the ground and plow the earth with salt, if you will; but never live there . . .” Constance Langton grows up in a household marked by death, her father distant, her mother in perpetual mourning for Constance’s sister, the child she lost.Desperate to coax her mother back to health, Constance takes her to a séance: perhaps she will find comfort from beyond the grave. But the meeting has tragic consequences. Constance is left alone, her only legacy a mysterious bequest that will blight her life.

Purchase / Learn More

25 .) The Secret of Crickley Hall by James Herbert

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Syfy

“Would you stay in a haunted house for more than one night?

Would you live in a place where ghostly things keep happening? Where a cellar door you know you locked the night before is always open the following morning? Where hushed whimpering is heard? Where white shadows steal through the darkness? Where the presence of evil is all around you?

Would you? Should you?

The Caleighs did, but they had their reasons. They should have known better though. As the terror mounts, they begin to regret their decision. As the horror rises, they realize their very lives are at risk….and so is their sanity. For the secret of Crickley Hall is beyond all nightmares.”

Purchase / Learn More

24 .) The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

Lists It Appears On:

• FluentU
• Cleveland

“The Tell-Tale Heart” is a story by Edgar Allan Poe . It is told by an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of his sanity, while describing a murder he committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy “vulture-eye”, as the narrator calls it. The murder is carefully calculated, and the murderer hides the body by dismembering it and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately the narrator’s guilt manifests itself in the form of the sound—possibly hallucinatory—of the old man’s heart still beating under the floorboards.

Purchase / Learn More

23 .) The Uninvited by Steven A. LaChance

Lists It Appears On:

• EW
• Bustle

“In this true and terrifying firsthand account, Steven LaChance reveals how he and his three children were driven from their Union, Missouri, home by demonic attackers.

LaChance chronicles how the house’s relentless supernatural predators infest those around them. He consults paranormal investigators, psychics, and priests, but the demonic attacks―screams, growls, putrid odors, invisible shoves, bites, and other physical violations―only grow worse. The entities clearly demonstrate their wrath and power: killing family pets, sexually assaulting individuals, even causing two people to be institutionalized.

The demons’ next target is the current homeowner, Helen. When the entities take possession and urge Helen toward murder and madness, LaChance must engage in a hair-raising battle for her soul.”

Purchase / Learn More

22 .) The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman

Lists It Appears On:

• Syfy
• Sarah Waters

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman – is a much celebrated and classic tale by one of the worlds most loved authors. This work is considered an important early work in feminist literature and one which explored issues about women’s health, both physical and mental. It is an important and influential work, and a great addition to any book collection.

Purchase / Learn More

21 .) This House is Haunted by John Boyne

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Goodreads

Written in Dickensian prose, This House Is Haunted is a striking homage to the classic nineteenth-century ghost story. Set in Norfolk in 1867, Eliza Caine responds to an ad for a governess position at Gaudlin Hall. When she arrives at the hall, shaken by an unsettling disturbance that occurred during her travels, she is greeted by the two children now in her care, Isabella and Eustace. There is no adult present to represent her mysterious employer, and the children offer no explanation. Later that night in her room, another terrifying experience further reinforces the sense that something is very wrong.

Purchase / Learn More

20 .) Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn

Lists It Appears On:

• Goodreads
• WeirdWood

“Twelve-year-old Molly and her ten-year-old brother, Michael, have never liked their seven-year-old stepsister, Heather. Ever since their parents got married, she’s made Molly and Michael’s life miserable. Now their parents have moved them all to the country to live in a house that used to be a church, with a cemetery in the backyard. If that’s not bad enough, Heather starts talking to a ghost named Helen and warning Molly and Michael that Helen is coming for them. Molly feels certain Heather is in some kind of danger, but every time she tries to help, Heather twists things around to get her into trouble. It seems as if things can’t get any worse.

But they do—when Helen comes.”

Purchase / Learn More

19 .) Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Best Book Lists
• Goodreads

“Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father’s mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he’s never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

Yet she spares Cas’s life.”

Purchase / Learn More

18 .) Bag of Bones by Stephen King

Lists It Appears On:

• Isle Of Halloween
• Best Book Lists
• Goodreads

Four years after the sudden death of his wife, forty-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is still grieving. Unable to write, and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the western Maine summerhouse he calls Sara Laughs, Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway. There, he finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, whose vindictive purpose is to take his three-year-old granddaughter, Kyra, away from her widowed young mother, Mattie. As Mike is drawn into Mattie and Kyra’s struggle, as he falls in love with both of them, he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What are the forces that have been unleashed here — and what do they want of Mike Noonan?

Purchase / Learn More

17 .) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Lists It Appears On:

• FluentU
• Best Book Lists
• Goodreads

First penned in 1820, Washington Irving’s humorous, yet haunting, narrative tells of a local schoolmaster whose lonely trot home turns into a night of fright when he is met on the road by the Headless Horseman. Adapted here for younger readers and accompanied by rich acrylics, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow endures as the finest of American ghost stories.

Purchase / Learn More

16 .) The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs

Lists It Appears On:

• Sarah Waters
• FluentU
• Publishers Weekly

The Monkey’s Paw and Other Tales of Mystery and the Macabre, Compiled by Gary Hoppenstand, brings together a unique collection of W.W. Jacobs’s horror stories never before collected. There are eighteen stories altogether in this collection of the macabre and supernatural. Jacobs’s own boyhood memories of South Devon Wharf lend an authenticity to the many stories with nautical backgrounds or that feature seamen as protagonists.

Purchase / Learn More

15 .) The Small Hand by Susan Hill

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Dead Good
• Goodreads

“Late one summer evening, antiquarian bookseller Adam Snow is returning from a client visit when he takes a wrong turn. He stumbles across a derelict Edwardian house, and compelled by curiosity, approaches the door. Standing before the entrance, he feels the unmistakable sensation of a small cold hand creeping into his own, ‘as if a child had taken hold of it’.

At first he is merely puzzled by the odd incident but then begins to suffer attacks of fear and panic, and is visited by nightmares. He is determined to learn more ‘about the house and its once-magnificent, now overgrown garden but when he does so, he receives further, increasingly sinister, visits from the small hand.”

Purchase / Learn More

14 .) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Lists It Appears On:

• Publishers Weekly
• Best Book Lists
• Goodreads
• Horror Novel Reviews

A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843. A Christmas Carol tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an old miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.

Purchase / Learn More

13 .) Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Isle Of Halloween
• Goodreads
• Haunted Rooms

“Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre: a cookbook for cannibals . . . a used hangman’s noose . . . a snuff film. An aging death-metal rock god, his taste for the unnatural is as widely known to his legions of fans as the notorious excesses of his youth. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, an item for sale on the Internet, a thing so terribly strange, Jude can’t help but reach for his wallet.

I will “”sell”” my stepfather’s ghost to the highest bidder. . . .
For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man’s suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. He isn’t afraid. He has spent a lifetime coping with ghosts—of an abusive father, of the lovers he callously abandoned, of the bandmates he betrayed. What’s one more?”

Purchase / Learn More

12 .) The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Lists It Appears On:

• WeirdWood
• FluentU
• Best Book Lists
• Goodreads

“Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place—he’s the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians’ time as well as their ghostly teachings—such as the ability to Fade so mere mortals cannot see him.

Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead?”

Purchase / Learn More

11 .) Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Dead Good
• Goodreads
• Intdependent
• Haunted Rooms

January 1937. 28-year-old Jack is poor, lonely and desperate to change his life. So when he’s offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. After they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year, Gruhuken, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave.

Purchase / Learn More

10 .) The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Dead Good
• Goodreads
• Cleveland
• Intdependent

“World War I robbed England and France of an entire generation of friends, lovers and futures. In Freddie Watson’s case, the battlefields took his beloved brother and, at times, his peace of mind. In the winter of 1928, still seeking some kind of resolution, Freddie is travelling through the beautiful but forbidding French Pyrenees. During a snowstorm, his car spins off the mountain road. Freezing and dazed, he stumbles through the woods, emerging in a tiny village, where he finds an inn to wait out the blizzard. There he meets Fabrissa, a lovely young woman also mourning a lost generation. Over the course of one night, Fabrissa and Freddie share their stories. By the time dawn breaks, Freddie will have unearthed a tragic mystery that goes back through the centuries, and discovered his own role in the life of this old remote town.

By turns thrilling, poignant, and haunting, this is a story of two lives touched by war and transformed by courage.”

Purchase / Learn More

9 .) Ghost Story by Peter Straub

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Publishers Weekly
• Goodreads
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Cleveland
• Haunted Rooms

“What was the worst thing you’ve ever done?

In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories—some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives.

But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury the past forever…”

Purchase / Learn More

8 .) Hell House by Richard Matheson

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Isle Of Halloween
• Syfy
• Goodreads
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Haunted Rooms

“Rolf Rudolph Deutsch is going die. But when Deutsch, a wealthy magazine and newpaper publisher, starts thinking seriously about his impending death, he offers to pay a physicist and two mediums, one physical and one mental, $100,000 each to establish the facts of life after death.

Dr. Lionel Barrett, the physicist, accompanied by the mediums, travel to the Belasco House in Maine, which has been abandoned and sealed since 1949 after a decade of drug addiction, alcoholism, and debauchery. For one night, Barrett and his colleagues investigate the Belasco House and learn exactly why the townfolks refer to it as the Hell House.”

Purchase / Learn More

7 .) The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• EW
• Syfy
• Bustle
• Buzzfeed
• Horror Novel Reviews

The classic and terrifying story of one of the most famous supernatural events–the infamous possessed house on Long Island from which the Lutz family fled in 1975.

Purchase / Learn More

6 .) The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Lists It Appears On:

• Dead Good
• Best Horror Novels
• Syfy
• Goodreads
• Cleveland
• Intdependent

One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners—mother, son, and daughter—are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their own. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become intimately entwined with his.

Purchase / Learn More

5 .) Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Book Lists
• Dead Good
• Telegraph
• Best Horror Novels
• Goodreads
• Intdependent
• Goodreads

The powerful sense of evil—darkness, creepy hairy presences, cloaks, hoods, talons, and tentacles—pervades these classic ghost stories by M.R. James. A Cambridge scholar himself, James explored what happens when academics dabble in things they don’t understand and unleash forces of which they know nothing.

Purchase / Learn More

4 .) The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Lists It Appears On:

• Best Horror Novels
• Dead Good
• FluentU
• Publishers Weekly
• Goodreads
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Haunted Rooms
• Sarah Waters

The framework of this spine tingler is unusual: a lawyer hires an actor to tutor him in recounting to family and friends a story that has long troubled him concerning events that transpired when he attended the funeral of an elderly recluse. There he caught sight of the woman in black, the mere mention of whom terrifies the locals, for she is a specter who haunts the neighborhood where her illegitimate child was accidentally killed. Anyone who sees her dies! The lawyer has invited some friends to watch as he and the actor recreate the events of that dark and stormy night. A classic of the genre.

Purchase / Learn More

3 .) The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Lists It Appears On:

• Isle Of Halloween
• Syfy
• FluentU
• Publishers Weekly
• Goodreads
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Cleveland
• Sarah Waters
• Best Horror Novels
• The Lineup

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

Purchase / Learn More

2 .) The Shining by Stephen King

Lists It Appears On:

• Isle Of Halloween
• Syfy
• Dead Good
• FluentU
• Publishers Weekly
• Goodreads
• Horror Novel Reviews
• Haunted Rooms
• Best Horror Novels
• The Lineup

Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.

Purchase / Learn More

1 .) The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Lists It Appears On:

• Syfy
• Publishers Weekly
• Tor
• Best Book Lists
• Goodreads
• Interesting Literature
• Cleveland
• Intdependent
• Haunted Rooms
• Best Horror Novels
• The Lineup
• Sarah Waters

The Turn of the Screw tells the story of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans. Unsettled by a sense of intense evil in the house, she soon becomes obsessed with the idea that something malevolent is stalking the children in her care.

Purchase / Learn More

The 175+ Additional Ghost Books

24 Best Haunted House Book Sources/Lists