Book picks similar to
Phantom by Thomas Tessier
horror
fantasy
fiction
horror-thriller
The Elementals
Michael McDowell - 1981
Two of the houses at Beldame are still used. The third house, filling with sand, is empty...except for the vicious horror which is shaping nightmares from the nothingness that hangs in the dank, fetid air.The McCrays and Savages, two fine Mobile families allied by marriage, have been coming to Beldame for years. This summer, with a terrible funeral behind them and a messy divorce coming up, even Luker McCray and little India down from New York are looking forward to being alone at Beldame.But they won't be alone. For something there, something they don't like to think about, is thinking about them...and about all the ways to make them die.
The Sentinel
Jeffrey Konvitz - 1974
The old brownstone apartment she simply had to have. The grotesque blind priest who watched down on her day and night from an upper-story window. The pair of perverted creatures who wanted her to join their circle. The mad little old man who gave her tea and sympathy. The cool, calculating, supremely rational lover who first mocked her fears.And the secret you will never be able to forget, even if you try...
Dead Sea
Tim Curran - 2007
A space between spaces. When the Mara Corday, an aged freighter, enters the Graveyard of the Atlantic, nightmares become real. The crew finds themselves trapped in a realm where time doesn't exist and unimaginable horrors dwell. Lost in a becalmed sea, in a netherworld where evil manifests itself in hideous forms, the survivors of the Mara Corday have an eternity to find a way out - if they aren't killed first by the creatures stalking them.(Description from back cover of trade paperback)
The Ceremonies
T.E.D. Klein - 1984
Moving into a former storage building on the farm of Sarr and Deborah Poroth, he expects to spend a productive summer free from essentially all distractions - he is quite wrong in this assumption. Meanwhile, in New York, the rather reserved Carol Conklin goes about trying to survive in the big city on a small income from her job at a library. She meets Jeremy in New York just before he leaves for the summer, and a connection is made which will find the couple developing a romantic relationship on somewhat strange terms. What Jeremy and Carol do not know is that this relationship is the work of a strange, little old man known as Mr. Rosebottom. Rosie is actually the Old One working to bring his master back after a very long absence, and Jeremy and Carol are the unsuspecting keys to his success
The Ninth Configuration
William Peter Blatty - 1966
A Marine Corps psychiatrist with a crisis of faith encourages his patients to enact their fantasies as part of their therapy. However, he proves himself to be more deeply disturbed than at first appears and finally sacrifices himself to save one of his patients.
Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three
Clive Barker - 1984
For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on the creator's mind. Reflecting back after 14 years, Barker writes: I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present. Reading these stories over, I feel a little of both. Some of the simple energies that made these words flow through my pen--that made the phrases felicitous and the ideas sing--have gone. I lost their maker a long time ago. These enthusiastic tales are not ashamed of visceral horror, of blood splashing freely across the page: "The Midnight Meat Train," a grisly subway tale that surprises you with one twist after another; "The Yattering and Jack," about a hilarious demon who possesses a Christmas turkey; "In the Hills, the Cities," an unusual example of an original horror premise; "Dread," a harrowing non-supernatural tale about being forced to realize your worst nightmare; "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament," about a woman who kills men with her mind. Some of the tales are more successful than others, but all are distinguished by strikingly beautiful images of evil and destruction. No horror library is complete without them. --Fiona Webster
Small World
Tabitha King - 1981
For one, she's in the White House bedroom and there is a peculiar object thrusting itself upon her.
Last Days
Adam Nevill - 2012
The cult became a worldwide phenomenon in 1975 when there was a massacre including the death of its infamous leader, Sister Katherine. Kyle's brief is to explore the paranormal myths surrounding an organization that became a testament to paranoia, murderous rage, and occult rituals. The shoot's locations take him to the cult's first temple in London, an abandoned farm in France, and a derelict copper mine in the Arizonan desert where The Temple of the Last Days met its bloody end. But when he interviews those involved in the case, those who haven't broken silence in decades, a series of uncanny events plague the shoots. Troubling out-of-body experiences, nocturnal visitations, the sudden demise of their interviewees and the discovery of ghastly artifacts in their room make Kyle question what exactly it is the cult managed to awaken – and what is its interest in him?
The Hell Candidate
Thomas Luke - 1980
"Thomas Luke" is a pen name of Graham Masterton, prolific author of such books as "The Manitou." "They said Hunter Peale didn't have a hope in hell of getting elected. They were wrong... He was a kindly, moderate man - with a less than moderate chance of winning. Then it all began to change... What power did Peale now have that brought men to their knees in abnormal pain - and made women writhe with unholy pleasure? The answer froze the spirit like a chill, rancid breath from the foul grave-stench mouth of Hell - for Peale had entered into a monstrous pact with none other than the Prince of Darkness himself..."
To Walk the Night
William Sloane - 1937
Bark Jones has gone home to visit Dr. Lister, the father of his friend Jerry, and together they hope to lay the mystery that revolves around the deaths of Jerry, and before him Jerry’s mentor astronomer Professor LeNormand. The one key to both men’s deaths is LeNormand’s, and now Jerry’s widow, Selena.
Falling Angel
William Hjortsberg - 1978
For Harry Angel, a routine missing-persons case soon turns into a fiendish nightmare of voodoo and black magic, of dizzying peril and violent death. Many people feel that Falling Angel is the greatest American supernatural horror novel of the 20th century.With a new foreword by Ridley Scott, an introduction by the late James Crumley, and a new afterword by the author and a bonus short story, plus a letter from Stephen King, the first time that the letter has ever been published in its complete form.The hardcover edition is limited to just 300 copies and is signed by William Hjortsberg. Bound in cloth with a dustjacket with the original Stanislaw Zagorski wraparound dustjacket printed against a black background with spot varnish.
The Ghost Pirates
William Hope Hodgson - 1909
. . is a powerful account of a doomed and haunted ship on its last voyage, and of the terrible sea-devils (of quasi-human aspect, and perhaps the spirits of bygone buccaneers) that besiege it and finally drag it down to an unknown fate. With its command of maritime knowledge, and its clever selection of hints and incidents suggestive of latent horrors in nature, this book at times reaches enviable peaks of power." -- H.P. Lovecraft
The Hollow Ones
Guillermo del Toro - 2020
A rookie FBI agent in dangerous, uncharted territory. An extraordinary hero for the ages.Odessa Hardwicke's life is derailed when she's forced to turn her gun on her partner, Walt Leppo, a decorated FBI agent who turns suddenly, inexplicably violent while apprehending a rampaging murderer. The shooting, justified by self-defense, shakes the young FBI agent to her core. Devastated, Odessa is placed on desk leave pending a full investigation. But what most troubles Odessa isn't the tragedy itself-it's the shadowy presence she thought she saw fleeing the deceased agent's body after his death. Questioning her future with the FBI and her sanity, Hardwicke accepts a low-level assignment to clear out the belongings of a retired agent in the New York office. What she finds there will put her on the trail of a mysterious figure named John Silence, a man of enormous means who claims to have been alive for centuries, and who is either an unhinged lunatic, or humanity's best and only defense against unspeakable evil.
The Wolfen
Whitley Strieber - 1978
The savage killing of two New York City policemen leads two detectives, a man and a woman bound together by a strange, tough passion, to hunt down the wolfen, called werewolves in former days.
Saurian
William Schoell - 1988
Something calls Tom back to the ruins of his boyhood home, to the scene of the devastation that almost destroyed him.