First Horror Novel That You Ever Read?

Often the first experience of anything sets the tone for what follows. What was your very first horror novel?

My own memory is not extremely exact, but I know that even before I read Dracula and Frankenstein, I found an old copy of "The Werewolf of Paris," (1933) by Guy Endore. Sadism, incest, mutilation, blood drinking and dreams of becoming a wolf; the contents shocked my young mind and haunted my own dreams. The final Lovecraftian report of what was eventually found in the protagonist's grave was a shocker.

I note my unreliable memory, since I also first read Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" around this same period. While this is more strictly a Gothic tragedy-romance, (since mutilated by Disney as bad as any Inquisitor), for me at this time in my life, the horrific story of the grotesque hunchback who was abused and tortured, himself a living ghost haunting the shadowy cathedral, was in effect a horror novel that provided many nightmares.

Now looking back, I can see that these works helped create a colored lens through which I have since viewed many other works, including Ligotti's.

Other readers' first horror novels?

The first horror book I read was an anthology, Narraciones Extraordinarias by Edgar Allan Poe, but my first novel was Roadwork by Stephen King, published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. It is not actually a horror novel, but it is a pretty good book.

I think I was 8 when my mom got me Stephen King's Skeleton Crew. I had read "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," which had pictures scarier than anything written in that series. This was my first "grown-up" book, not just first "grown-up" horror book. Think "The Mist" counts as first novella. First novel was "The Shining." Still think that's King's best work. Know he gets a lot of crap but he introduced me to horror and so will always thank him for that.

Loved the Goosebumps books as a small child, and I'm fairly sure this was my first novel. A strict summer camp of counsellors who worship a squid monster. I can see how this set the tone for my adult appreciation of Aickman's The Hospice, Shirley Jackson's The Summer People, Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth, etc...

My first horror novel was probably My Teacher Is An Alien, but the first horror I read was an anthology: Alfred Hitchcock's Haunted Houseful. I inherited my father's childhood copy when I was five or six. I was particularly enthralled by the endpaper illustration:

First horror novel - Robert Bloch's Psycho.
When I was 14 I bought a collection of Robert Bloch stories and was hooked. He was the gateway drug that lead to the strong stuff - i.e. At the Mountains of Madness.

Novelwise I am in the Dracula camp too. Was around 12 or 13 when I first read it.

Like James, I got an early literary introduction to Horror via R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series, I must have read at least 20 of those slim books and loved every one of them, though the clear favorite was A Day at Horrorland. As I had a taste for all thing horrifying and scary growing up, it didn’t take me long before I scared myself half to death by watching Kubrick’s The Shining on tv one night, and then soon after getting my hands on the book, which was my first “adult” horror novel, I must have been about 12 or 13 when I read that.

One of the first horror stories I remember actually reading (as opposed to hearing somebody else tell or read from a book) was a nasty little number called "The Demon of Detroit" in one of those spooky collections of ghost/horror stories (many of them reputedly "true") for younger readers available in my school library. I think this was one of several stories recommended to me at the time for their alleged nightmare-inducing powers.



The Demon of Detroit | Scary Story | Scary Website

The Demon of Detroit is a true scary story about the Cole Adams House in Detroit, Michigan which was said to be haunted by a horrible thing of unspeakable terror.

It all started in the early 1960s, when Mr. and Mrs. Adams moved into the house in Detroit, Michigan. They had 5 small children and a pet dog.

Almost as soon as they moved in, the family seemed to sense that there was something wrong with the back bedroom. All of the children avoided it and even the dog refused to go inside.

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L’étranger, by Albert Camus

Patrick G.P said:

Like James, I got an early literary introduction to Horror via R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series, I must have read at least 20 of those slim books and loved every one of them, though the clear favorite was A Day at Horrorland. As I had a taste for all thing horrifying and scary growing up, it didn’t take me long before I scared myself half to death by watching Kubrick’s The Shining on tv one night, and then soon after getting my hands on the book, which was my first “adult” horror novel, I must have been about 12 or 13 when I read that.

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NO PINCHING!!

This was also one of the earliest horror "novels" that I read (and certainly my favorite). If the first wasn't Horrorland, it was, at any rate, a Goosebumps book (more likely, Werewolf of Fever Swamp, Piano Lessons Can Be Murder, or Night of the Living Dummy, as a quick browse through wikipedia reveals they were all published before Horrorland).

Also, as others have mentioned, my first taste of horror, albeit not in novel-form, was the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series.

The first adult horror novel that I read was Stephen King's "IT", which I was given second-hand by an older kid in school. I still have that battered book, with its re-taped cover, curled pages, and assorted burn marks...

Ibrahim said:

L’étranger, by Albert Camus

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It is just as they've always said. Horror is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

Especially when it has been forced onto a jagged wooden splinter sticking out of a broken doorway.

The only horror I had read prior to reading my first horror novel were some short stories by Poe when I was in elementary school. My first horror novel was The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I loved the b&w movies with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce when I was a kid, so I was familiar with the story. I read it when I was in the eighth grade and I loved it. Very atmospheric. It doesn't automatically spring to mind when people think of a 'horror story' but since it was showcased in the BBC production Nightmare: The Birth of Horror with Christopher Frayling, and also selected for the book Horror: Another 100 Best Books edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, I'll go along.


The first Sherlock Holmes short story I read was in high school. It was "The Speckled Band." I was hooked after that. I read the entire canon.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJEoHy7R9IQ

Wells - Stevenson

Either The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells or Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
When I was 10, I was given a set of paperback novels, each in a solid prime color, each textured to resemble faux leather.
I reread those two frequently, and can't recall the others in the set.
They are still in the shelves of my boyhood home, now my brother's house.

The title escapes me, but it was an Alfred Hitchcock collection of ghost stories from my elementary school library way back in the 1970s.

Although an incomplete work, my first horror novel read was Poe's The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

- Since I read literally hundreds of kids' horror books in elementary school, I've had some trouble trying to pin down my first; technically, my original exposure to horror fiction were the stories and poems of Poe the summer before I started first grade (I recall my teacher being rather startled when I told her my favorite story then was "The Raven"), while the first actual novel would probably have been RL Stine's Stay Out of the Basement, read later on that same year. Like others here, I was very much a Goosebumps kid, which were just then starting to come out, religiously buying a new one every month through fifth grade. Another book I read around the same time, although not a novel, was perhaps even more influential in the long term: JB Stamper's collection More Tales for the Midnight Hour; compared to the Goosebumps books, Stamper's stories were noticeably darker in tone and played for keeps - the kids didn't always get away in the end. I can still remember the otherworldly thrill I always got reading the conclusion of my favorite tale, about a young insect collector who captured a mystically protected moth and was subsequently chased into the woods by the rest of them: "They would never find the place, deep within the swamp, where the moths had put Toby, pinned against a tree, in their human collection." Looking back, my lifelong love of the Weird in all forms probably began right there.

- Also, the first adult horror novels (and first adult novels in general) that I tackled would have been Frankenstein and Dracula, circa age 10/11.

Dracula was my second horror novel, and then Lovecraft. Strangely enough, I was never drawn to Frankenstein and I have never read it.

Either Cry of the Cat - by R.L Stine or The Vampires Assistant - by Darren Shan. Ideas and images from both still haunt my mind at times.

I read my first horror novel in my twenties.It was Insomnia by Stephen King.I really didn´t like it...