by Gene Patterson

Created on: October 23, 2010   Last Updated: October 26, 2010

Scary stories.  You read them late at night.  Under your blankets, they can have you so enthralled and so frightened that a run to the bathroom seems too scary to even contemplate. 

♦  I Am Legend-  Richard Matheson

Do not judge this book by the Will Smith movie.  Though the movie was not actively, “bad”, it was not even close to as scary and powerful as the 1954 story by author Richard Matheson.  The last man on earth facing a true legion of vampires.  Really tense and scary stuff.

♦  Ghost Story - Peter Straub

Ghost Story is “the” best ghost story ever told.  Apologies to the Sixth Sense and Jacob Marley from Scrooge.  Great stories with ghost, but they just are not scary.  There may be a reason that Stephen King never did a Ghost Story.  If the best one has been done, anything else is derivative.

♦  It-  Stephen King 

It is a horror story.  It is also a story of growing up.  It also deals with coming back to your home years later, when it is no longer home.  It has all of that and the most evil clown you can imagine.  It wraps a tale of the transition from youth to adulthood into a truly incredible story.

Does it have weaknesses: Yes.  For ¾ of the book it was not only a chilling horror story but maybe one of the greatest stories ever told.  King expanded on his incredible non-horror short story, “the Body”.  Which was made into the movie, “Stand By Me”.  The characters were different, and there were more kids, but it told a very similar tale of growing up; just with a malevolent monster thrown in.  The problem came at ¾ of the way through where King did not seem to know how to end his novel well.  So he seems to have just, “winged” it.  Give it a better final ¼ and it might be one of the best BOOKS ever.  As it is, it still easily makes it for one of the best horror novels ever. 

“Oh yes Georgie, we all float, we all float down here”

♦  Carrion Comfort- Dan Simmons

Dan Simmons is a writer not enough people know.  He writes Horror Stories, Historical Fiction, Hard-Boiled Detective stories, Very interesting and original science fiction…  Did I Mention Horror.  Yes I did.  He has only written about 5 stories that could really be classified as “horror” but

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