The 13 Best Horror Stories of All Time

A great introduction to REAL horror, the plodding atmospheric stories -- creeping psychological/supernatural fears like the Yellow Wallpaper, the Great God Pan and Call of Cthulu as opposed to the vampires, zombies and serial killers that drown the current genre output.

I read this book in honor of Halloween. Not a big fiction reader I thought it was time to delve into the realm of terror for a little aversion from my typical non-fiction fare. This collection of 13 kind of scary stories came from an earlier era mostly in the 1800's. You will find some well known authors among them such as Poe, Well, and Stevenson. I was disappointed in the majority of them as they could get somewhat boring with the heavy style associated with the classic era of writers. However there are some gems here, my favorites being Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp", Well's "The Country of the Blind," excellent, and the closer Shirley Jackson's. "The Lottery."

I honestly don't have much to say about this book. I did enjoy it, but what can you really say about a collection of stories? There were the classic tales like "The Tell Tale Heart" and "The Monkey's Paw". There were also some new stories I had never read before. I especially enjoyed "Green Tea". I wouldn't call these tales especially "horrifying", but it was a decent collection nonetheless.