Tag: halloween

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Spooky season book recommendations from the Rebellion team!

It’s spooky season, and spooky season means spooky books! Here’s what the Rebellion team recommends you try this Halloween…

Amy Borsuk, Editor | Bunny by Mona Awad

You wouldn’t know it from the name, or the bright pink-orange book cover, but Bunny is as fun as it is spooky. A satire of books like The Secret History and with the similar feminist attitude of Mean Girls, Bunny follows MFA student Samantha as she navigates her way through the cult-like clique of rich white women on her programme – but not before she gets sucked into it herself. What follows is an eerie tangle of actual cultist rituals including bunny sacrifices and axe-murdering, women friendships with no boundaries or individuality, and lots of drugs. Eventually Sam doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not, nor how she can escape their clutches. It’s a fun, fast, and easy read. For once I saw the twist coming, but I still enjoyed the ride!

Ben Smith, Head of Film, TV & Publishing | The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

A ghost watching from the end of the garden, an unsettling and precocious child who knows more than they should, an untrustworthy narrator. All these ingredients and more were mixed together by the most unlikely source in the nineteenth century. Penned, not by a writer of grand guignol like Edgar Alan Poe, nor an adventure writer like Robert Louis Stevenson, but by Henry James, an American Anglophile whose novels of manners featuring wealthy Americans in Europe were investigations into the consciousness of his characters. And the novella, unlike any major work he wrote before or after, was The Turn of the Screw. Distilling decades of preoccupation about how what one feels inside can be at odds with what is happening around us, James created an inexperienced governess at sea in a house of hidden histories, obsessions and malicious spirits. On first read the novel terrifies, as we feel for the governess. The second time around however, you start to worry about everything she does.

Casey Davoren, Senior Digital Marketing & Social Media Executive | Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

Bleeding Violet is about a girl named Hanna who is a little . . . crazy. Certifiably. Which makes this a unique perspective on the teenage mind. I’m still a sucker for the girl meets boy at school and something is different about him and/or where they live trope. I thought this was going to be one of those, but it wasn’t. Hanna is eccentric, like a stray flower floating through the air. She meets Wyatt who likes her, no matter her manic depression and hallucinations, and because of those hallucinations, the monsters, creatures, and creepy-crawlies of Portero, TX are nothing new. In fact, they’re exciting because they’re actually real.

Chiara Mestieri, Editorial Assistant | Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

The ultimate ‘trust no one’ novel, Rosemary’s Baby builds a chilling, claustrophobic narrative in which the mystery unravels alongside the mind of its protagonist, and the spread of horror seems inescapable; not confined to a manor house in the woods, but infiltrating every corner of the city, hiding behind every friendly face. What’s terrifying about it is not the idea of an unspeakable, supernatural evil waiting in the wings, but the fact that it is ushered in by very real people. It’s a clever dissection of society at a fractured time, and a deeply unsettling read.

David Moore, Editor | The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

The Laundry books worked their way around my friends for quite a while before I finally settled down to reading them (I actually GMed my first Laundry Files roleplaying game before I read my first Laundry book), but when I did I was hooked. Smart, funny, geeky, weird, and profoundly British (in a way that absolutely engages with our flaws as a culture), The Atrocity Archives is equal parts cosmic horror, office comedy and espionage novel. Bob is a bit of a cypher – a harried office worker/computer nerd with a fairly neutral voice – but that serves him well as a first-person narrator, allowing the wealth of brilliant supporting characters to shine through. The book cracks along at a good pace, the world’s brilliantly inventive, the story’s engaging, and this first novel especially is deeply unsettling (with content warnings especially for references to the Holocaust). Great stuff.

Gemma Sheldrake, Graphic Designer | The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

I recently just finished this brilliant folk horror about a young woman in a deeply religious society who discovers she has dark powers. She must combat the evil lure of the surrounding forest and the Holy Protocol to protect herself and stop the encroaching curses. It’s got strong vibes of The VVitch and The Handmaid’s Tale and is brimming with creeping suspense. Perfect for this season!

Jess Gofton, PR and Marketing Manager – Fiction and Non Fiction | The Hunger by Alma Katsu

Historical reimaginings can be hit-or-miss for me, especially when the true story they’re dealing with is already dark, but Katsu’s horror retelling of the Donner Party captivated me and encouraged me to learn more about the very real history. While The Hunger is nothing ground-breaking as far as horror goes—a group of people slowly turning on one another as some kind of supernatural force starts picking them off one by one is well-trodden ground—her characters are so well drawn that I spent the whole book on the edge of my seat. The audiobook narrated by Kirsten Potter is a fantastic listen as the nights draw in!

Matt Smith, Editor | The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

The Black Dahlia isn’t horror in the traditional sense but is one of the most haunting books I’ve ever read, and it was my gateway into Ellroy’s obsessional, dark crime novels. A young woman’s mutilated body is discovered dumped in 1950s Los Angeles, and it kickstarts an investigation that will consume the young cop who delves into the life of the victim, Elizabeth Short. Ellroy’s own mother was murdered when he was a kid, and found in similar circumstances, so that feeds into the driven, confessional narrative, and the tragic spirit of Beth Short stays with you long after the final page.

Michael Molcher, 2000AD Brand Manager | The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Yes, it’s the classic haunted house novel, but some would say it is also the greatest. I would be one of them. Jackson’s work isn’t just scary, it’s profoundly unsettling; it stays with you long after you’ve finished reading, because the book isn’t really about the ghosts that haunt the house, but the ghosts that haunt its temporary occupants. And, ultimately, its opening paragraph remains one of the best first pages that English literature has ever produced.

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Why Necromancy? C. S. E. Cooney on Saint Death’s Daughter

As the spookiest time of the year approaches, we asked C. S. E. Cooney to tell us why she was inspired to write about necromancy in her stunning debut, Saint Death’s Daughter…

Author Sharon Shinn once said: “We all have our things we write about. You write about death. And what comes after.” She said this just after my collection Bone Swans came out.

I admit, I got a little salty at that. I went right for a rebuttal. I was going to cite my sources, quote my texts. So I stopped and counted up all the stories in Bone Swans that were “about death and what comes after.”

Four out of five. Sharon Shinn got me.

And, of course, I’d been writing my novel Saint Death’s Daughter for longer than any of the Bone Swans stories had been around. She hadn’t even read that one, and it was about a freaking necromancer, so.

I started Saint Death’s Daughter to answer a particular “what if” question that tickled me: “What if you have a character who grows up in a family of assassins who is allergic to violence?”

The greater “what if” is genre-specific. What if we have an epic fantasy with a protagonist who cannot—physically cannot—solve her problems with violence? Epic fantasy often revels in violence as a solution. Or, if it doesn’t revel, it at least perpetuates the idea that a climactic and bloody clash between two opposing forces (pivoting on the protagonist and their choices) is unavoidable.

It was a knotty enough “what if” to keep me puzzling at it for twelve years. And in the end, I was only partly successful.

My protagonist can’t get mad and hit people. Not without consequences: she gets an “echo-wound,” a painful mirror of the hurt she inflicts, reflected upon her own person. And echo-wounds don’t just happen when Lanie hits people, either. If anyone near her commits a violent act in her presence, or talks about having done so, or threatens to do so in the future—heck, if Lanie Stones even touches an object that has recently bashed, beaned, or beheaded someone—she will have an allergic reaction to it. This can be anything from nosebleeds to projectile vomiting to losing consciousness.

She has strong motivations for peacekeeping. For her, it’s survival.

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There are many violent aspects to this book. There are indulgent passages about weaponry, gleeful footnotes about decortication via oyster shell, and the various and sundry sudden (or otherwise) deaths suffered by the infamous Stones family. But Lanie Stones herself is gentle. She’d prefer to run and hide than stay and fight. She’d prefer to wait tables and read books than solve national crises.

Also, she loves the dead. She can’t help it. If she didn’t have living friends constantly pulling her back out into the sunlight, she’d live in the catacombs and commune only with the non-living natives of her fair city. Love of the dead—and the reciprocal love that the dead give her—makes her powerful. Lanie Stones is a rare thing: a priest of Doédenna, god of Death, in a world where all priests are wizards. Her early allergy to violence was a sign of Saint Death’s favor: that Lanie was destined to be a necromancer. After all, is there any more natural an evolution of a violent reaction against violence than the overturning of death itself?

I don’t believe in life after death (except, perhaps, in the microbial and memorial senses). But I do believe in gentleness. Ultimately, I find the stabby-stabby stuff of epic fantasy, while choreographically appealing, ethically tiresome. I could use a little less problem-solving via edged weapons and uppercuts and world wars, and more creative problem solving by people whose priorities are deescalation and diplomacy, people who, when their backs are to the wall and they finally snap under the enormous, bloody, violent, terrifying forces around them, have yet enough infrastructure of a loving community in place to call them back from the brink of destruction and set them on a path of healing once again.

A fallen family of assassins, divine necromantic powers, tombs full of skeletons and the girl who can wake them: these are all ways of engaging not just with the idea of death, but what it means to be alive. When Lanie Stones finally turns around and confronts her ghosts head-on, she realizes, for the first time, that those who came before her—her cruel teachers, her vicious ancestors—were not always better or wiser or even right. She learns, to her surprise, that what she has always accepted as truth she must now unlearn.

As a writer, I found in Lanie Stones an aspirational character: someone who finds power not in surrendering to authority-sanctioned, historically-approved bloodthirsty displays of might, but in wading counter to it, standing against it, choosing another way. And that’s why, in a nutshell, necromancy. That’s why I wrote Saint Death’s Daughter.

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Announcing the first contributors of Sinophagia!

Following the success of the British Fantasy Award-nominated anthology, Sinopticon, we were delighted to announce the acquisition of Sinophagia!

This anthology of Chinese horror, edited and translated by Xueting C. Ni, will be released in 2024, and we’re thrilled to share the first of the contributors with you today…

Cai Jun
Chi Hui
Chu Xidao
Chuan Ge
Fan Zhou
Goodnight Xiaoqing
Gu Shi
Hong Niangzi
She Cong Ge
Su Min
Yimei Tangguo
Zhou Dedong
Zhou Haohui

Keep your eyes peeled for more news about the forthcoming anthology as we approach the spookiest time of the year!

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Oliver’s ‘Orrors: The Weird

Our in-house horror hound, Editor-in-Chief and all-round top chap Jonathan Oliver finishes his trawl through the finest frightening fiction out there. Check out the previous instalments (the Slasher, the Creature Feature, the Ghost Story and the Haunted House) and don’t forget, there’s 50% off all our horror eBooks over in the Rebellion Store…

The New Weird is the Old Weird. I think it was either China Mieville or M. John Harrison who coined the term New Weird, identifying a type of genre fiction that is hard to classify, taking and defying, as it does, many of genres tropes.

But while New Weird is a useful term, the weird in fiction is hardly new. (Seek out Jeff and Ann Vandermeer’s brilliant The Weird anthology for a history of the uncanny and strange in fiction, and many fine examples of such stories.) From Alice in Wonderland through the novels of Gormenghast, through to the genre bending works of China Mieville, the weird has been a force running through fiction for a long time.

Horror is an important part of the weird, and vice-versa. In fact, there is an argument to be made for horror being a tone, rather than a genre. You can find the discomfort and terror that horror provides in works that have never fallen under the label, and horror novels are frequently published merely under the banner Fiction.

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien is one of my very favourite ‘horror’ novels. It was introduced to me by an old form tutor during my A levels, who noticed that I was reading William Hope Hodgson and recommended O’Brien’s deeply strange novel as something I would enjoy. I fell in love at first read and was delighted when it turned up on my university English course a few years later.

It’s so very difficult to sum up the plot of The Third Policeman, taking in, as it does, the strange philosophies of the mysterious de Selby, a rural comedy set in Ireland, the love a man has for his bicycle, policeman who are so attached to their bicycles they become bicycles themselves, and one of the most chilling and unique visions of hell ever to appear in literature.

Needless to say, what you should do is read The Third Policeman and let it work its disturbing charms on you.

Honourable Mentions
The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison
From Blue to Black by Joel Lane
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar
The New Girl by S.L. Grey

From Solaris
The Fictional Man by Al Ewing
Osama by Lavie Tidhar
Cannobridge by Jonathan Barnes 
Dream London by Tony Ballantyne
Wakening the Crow by Stephen Gregory

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Oliver’s ‘Orrors: The Slasher

The Slasher is such a well worn trope of horror, it’s arguably become a bit tired.

Of course, you have your classics like Halloween or Psycho, but when it comes to making the serial killer truly scary there are more misses than hits in the movies these days. In novels, however, the author is able to take us much deeper within the killer’s mind, making the murders that much more insidious and disturbing. You only have to look at the works of writers such as Lauren Beukes or Michael Marshall to see how much an essential part of genre the serial killer story still is.

Down River by Stephen Gallagher has everything a good serial killer novel should – it starts off slowly, lets us spend time with the characters, subtly suggesting the terrors to come, before Gallagher pulls out all the stops in what turns into a full-throttle, bloody thriller. Gallagher demonstrates an uncanny control in manipulating the elements of the story, building the plot carefully; there is not a wasted word and the set-pieces are thrilling and horrifying.

Gallagher understands that the story of a killer must also be a story about humanity’s capacity for evil. It’s no good just having a masked killed with a mysterious, and ultimately unexplained, motive. For a killer to be truly terrifying, he or she has to reflect something that we can identify with, that we wouldn’t wish to admit is within ourselves.

Honourable Mentions
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Path of Needles by Alison Littlewood
The Face that Must Die by Ramsey Campbell
No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill
Kiss it Away by Carol Anne Davis

From Solaris and Abaddon (don’t forget there’s currently 50% off all horror titles in the Rebellion store!)
Plastic by Christopher Fowler
Ritual Crime Unit: Disturbed Earth by E.E. Richardson
The Happier Dead by Ivo Stourton
Cold Warriors: Ghost Dance by Rebecca Levene
Talus and the Frozen King by Graham Edwards

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Oliver’s ‘Orrors: The Creature Feature

Our Editor-In-Chief continues his trawl through the annals of classic horror fiction as part of our month-long Halloween celebrations (speaking of which, don’t forget there’s currently 50% of all our horror eBooks in the Rebellion store). This week: the creature feature…

Everybody loves a good monster movie, but when it comes to horror novels, a good monster is harder to pull off. Erm… so to speak. Certainly, one cannot underestimate the influence of the works of H.P. Lovecraft on monsters in fiction. You can barely move for tentacles these days. But to make monsters scary in literature is actually no mean feat.

Adam Nevill is a modern master of terror (and also a model of a modern major general)* and when it comes to ‘proper’ horror Adam cannot be beat. He brings a brutal sensibility to his books, an uncompromising vision of gruelling terror, touched with a lyrical and spiritual sensibility worthy of writers such as Robert Aickman or Arthur Machen. The Ritual is, for me, one of Adam’s best books.

Four friends go on a hiking holiday in Scandinavia, and things go from bad to worse as they stumble across a site of terrible occult power. Nevill builds the tension brilliantly and the pay-off is one of my favourite ‘big horror’ moments of recent years.

Also, there’s a terrifying scene in an attic which will stay with me forever. It’s incredibly grim and gritty stuff, though while Nevill may be riffling on modern horror movies and the trope of the terrifying cult, this vision is uniquely his.

And what have we learnt from this? Go for the beach holiday next year instead. Adventure holidays only end up in being eaten.

*May have made that up.

Honourable Mentions
The Hunger by Whitley Streiber
The Nightwalker by Thomas Tessier
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite
IT by Stephen King

From Solaris and Abaddon
Pax Britannia: Evolution Expects by Jonathan Green
Dreams of Shreds and Tatters by Amanda Downum
Dream London by Tony Ballantyne
Tomes of the Dead: I, Zombie by Al Ewing
The Night Clock by Paul Meloy

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Oliver’s ‘Orrors: The Ghost Story

Our Editor-In-Chief – and in-house horror aficionado continues his rundown of the greatest horror novels ever to have scared the pants off the good, book-reading people of the world (check out last week’s instalment).

This week, he’s looking at the ghost story, and the work of the much loved (and greatly missed) Graham Joyce…

Okay, this is sort of a cheat, as this is a ghost story where the ghosts are elusive. In much the same way that The Haunting of Hill House can be read as a haunted house story where the house isn’t actually haunted (not in the traditional sense), The Silent Land by Graham Joyce is a ghost story without the ghosts.

The thing with the ghost story is that it represents a branch of the horror genre that doesn’t necessarily have to be horrifying, or even frightening. Instead, the ghost story represents a tale of loss, a tale of yearning, a desire for the living that can not be fulfilled and, as such, it is often a more lyrical and moving sub-genre.

The much-missed Graham Joyce was a beautiful writer. His books always have depth, and an emotional core to them that draws the reader and leaves them breathless by the end. The Limits of Enchantment and The Tooth Fairy both left me in pieces.

The Silent Land is possibly the best of the later works by Joyce. In it a couple are trapped in an avalanche at a ski resort, only to find, once they have dug themselves out, that they are now in a strangely silent, eerie world. It’s a novel that oozes atmosphere, but most importantly, it’s a novel flush with human warmth. Graham Joyce’s work gets to the core of what it is to be human, with all our foibles, failings and depths, and The Silent Land represents the finest of this genre-defying author.

Honourable Mentions
The Servants by Michael Marshall Smith
Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber
Dark Matter by Michelle Paver
Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
The Three by Sarah Lotz

From Solaris – don’t forget, there’s currently 50% off all horror in the Rebellion shop!
The Faceless by Simon Bestwick
Magic edited by Jonathan Oliver
Regicide by Nicholas Royle
Loss of Seperation by Conrad Williams
Blood Kin by Steve Rasnic Tem

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Oliver’s ‘Orrors: The Haunted House

In celebration of Halloween, our most esteemed Editor-In-Chief – and in-house horror hound – Jonathan Oliver is giving you lucky people a rundown of the greatest horror novels ever to have scared the pants of the general public.

This week, he’s starting with the haunted house, and an absolute classic from Shirley Jackson…

It really is a no brainer. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is one of the definitive haunted house novels, and one of the greatest novels in American literature, period. This was a really easy choice to make as Jackson’s chilling and incisive novel has stood the test of time.

It’s a genuinely terrifying read, but on a closer examination there may not be any ghosts in the story at all. All of the tension in the novel comes from the very human inhabitants of Hill House, with Eleanor at the centre of events. Really, the horror, the building sense of dread comes from Eleanor’s inner conflicts and her personality butting up against the other (living) residents of the house. It is a story about Eleanor trying to pull away from an abusive relationship with her domineering mother, about Eleanor refusing to come to terms with her sexuality (which makes the tension between her and Theo all the more spiky), and about Eleanor using Hill House as an excuse not to face any of these realities.

The best haunted house stories happen when a haunted person (or persons in this case) meets a haunted place, and Jackson absolutely understands that the human protagonists must be at the centre of any good haunted house story. As ever, Jackson’s characters are wonderfully portrayed and the dialogue is all about what is not being said, the meaning in the breath taken before the next line.

It’s very encouraging to see Jackson coming back into vogue with the reprints of many of her titles, as she really is one of the towering greats of both the modern horror novel and American literature. Hill House is a place I will revisit over and over, drawn there by Jackson’s seductive prose, her dysfunctional characters, and the promise that whatever walks there “walks alone.”

Honourable Mentions
Audrey’s Door by Sarah Langan
The House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill
The Shining by Stephen King
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
The House on Nazareth Hill by Ramsey Campbell

From Abaddon and Solaris – don’t forget, there’s currently 50% off all horror in the Rebellion shop!
Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem
The Waking that Kills by Stephen Gregory
Tomes of the Dead: Stronghold by Paul Finch
Nyctophobia by Christopher Fowler
The Concrete Grove by Gary McMahon

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A seasonal message from Eva Darrows

Greetings ghouls! Earlier this week we were lucky enough to be over at our friends Fangirlish for the cover reveal of our next book THE AWESOME by Eva Darrows, and what a cover it is.

But just one dose of Eva hasn’t been enough and to prove her AWESOME credentials we’ve set her a special Halloween challenge to pick her favorite ghost…

Tis the season for ghosts, goblins, and ghoulies, and in the Halloween spirit, I’m going to talk about my favorite of the aforementioned trio: ghosts.

I love them, enough that my debut novel MARY: THE SUMMONING (released under my OTHER name Hillary Monahan) tackles the Americanized version of the Bloody Mary ghost.

I’ve always been afraid of spirits and likely always will be. Think about it—a werewolf you can kill with a silver bullet. A vampire, a stake and a beheading. A zombie’s brains splatter nicely with a gun. But a ghost? What do you do? Pants him? Mock him? Throw stuff through him? STEAL HIS LUNCH MONEY?
Answer: Hope really hard you find the thing tying the ghost to this plane and burn it. That’s . . . about it. And if that doesn’t work? Well. Sorry.

So without further ado, here is a list of Eva’s favorite ghosts from popular media.

5) The School Bus Children, TRICK ‘R TREAT

I have a love of all things creepy and funny. As such, Trick ‘R Treat is RIGHT up my alley. Campy, lots of good scares plus some legitimately funny moments? Yes, please. The best part of the movie is undoubtedly the sack boy, Sam, but as the viewer is never told what Sam is (though I’d venture a guess that he’s the spirit of Halloween), the School Bus Children come in a close second.

A special needs bus crashes into a ravine on Halloween, the poor, costumed children all drowning to death. But all is not as it seems. Some say the driver of the bus was drunk. Others say he was paid to drive the children into the water. All the viewer knows is that going near that ravine on Halloween night is a terrible idea. When the local kids convince Rhonda, an outcast, to go trick or treating with them and visit the tragic site, we get to meet the school bus children years after their demise.
It’s not pretty.

4) Kakayo, THE GRUDGE

Kakayo falls in love with another man. For her betrayal, her husband murders her, the family cat, and their son Toshio. Kakayo rises from her death as an onryo, or vengeful spirit. Anyone who enters the house where she died is cursed to see her and—eventually—die.

There are a few things that make Kakayo so spectacularly creepy. The first is her appearance. Typical Japanese ghost with the white skin and the long black hair, Kakayo is often seen covered in blood. Sometimes it’s hers, sometimes it’s not, it’s cool. She’s fashionable in her blood-splattered frock. She also tends to crawl across the floor, pulling her lower half and twitching all the while. That’s less cool, but okay, I’m with you Kakayo.

Then there is the noise she makes. The clicky, growling death rattle that will almost always get the hair prickling on the back of my neck and make me weep for my mommy.

Here. Have a nightmare or forty.

3) The Woman in Black, THE WOMAN IN BLACK

THE WOMAN IN BLACK is a novel from the early eighties written by Susan Hill. Gothic, moody, and wonderfully eerie, it’s been turned into a movie not once but twice, the most recent version starring Harry Potter. I mean the dude that plays Harry Potter but who will always be known as Harry Potter so whatever.
A woman, Jennet, gives birth to an illegitimate child back when such things were big no-nos. Her sister adopts the boy and raises him as her own, insisting Jennet never reveal to Nathaniel his parentage. Jennet agrees and moves into her sister’s house, relegated to Nathaniel’s aunt instead of his mother. There’s a terrible carriage accident in the marshes surrounding the house and Jennet watches helplessly as Nathaniel drowns. After Jennet’s death, her ghost will only appear when a child is about to die. Sometimes, she makes a child dies. Jennet’s not great people.

While I haven’t seen the eighties version of the movie, I will say the 2012 version was splendidly scary with just enough jump scares and oppressive ambiance to keep me enthralled. Jennet is as terrible in the book as she is in the film, and well-earns her place on this list.

2) Tate, American Horror Story

Tate, American Horror Story
The first season of American Horror Story remains my favorite and that’s all because of Tate. The viewer knows early on that Tate Langdon is dead. Tate Langdon knows Tate Langdon is dead. The people living in Tate’s house? Clueless. Ben Harmon is even seeing Tate as a therapy patient after Tate’s living mother hires him on. Violet Harmon makes out with Tate because apparently that’s a thing people do with ghosts when they’re bored.
While Tate can be charming (especially in Violet’s company) and somewhat tragic, he’s also manipulative and damaged. He vacillates wildly between sweet and psychotic. He’s responsible for at least a few of the deaths that have occurred in the Harmon house, and when he’s angered, proves utterly ruthless. Conniving, angry, broken, and lonely, Tate is so divinely flesh out and terrifying, I can’t help but put him on my list.

1) Sadako/Samara, THE RING

There is one ghost that, no matter how many times I see her on film or the page, will send me flying through the roof. Here she is. I’ve listed both Sadako and Samara because the Japanese and American versions of Koji Suzuki’s ghost terrify me in equal measure. White dress, black hair, and hands hanging limply from the wrists, she is one mean spirit. You can’t stop her. Just when you think you’ve won, you haven’t, the cycle of the ring never ends.

I saw the American film before I saw the Japanese film. The book came later. Samara terrified me because she was one of the few monsters that was mean JUST BECAUSE and it was done well enough I actually bought into it. There’s no rhyme or reason for her atrocities beyond she was born bad. Horses kill themselves, the girl is able to project terrible visions onto X-Ray paper, she drives her mother mad with her twisted version of love.

If you explore RING backstory beyond the American film, the character is more fully fleshed out. The Japanese prequel (Ring 0) gives you a tragic backstory that, frankly, diminishes Samara’s scares instead of enhances it, in my opinion. Still. I love this ghost. I will likely carry her with me through my horror career. She is the stuff of my nightmares.

Find out more about THE AWESOME or sea more from Eva by hitting the navigation tags at the top of this post!