Top Ten Tuesday- Halloween Edition

Here are my top ten Halloween scary books for

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10.  Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho, Glamorama, and Lunar Park:  I thought I should only include Ellis once, and he is usually more gross than scary.  However, if I ever saw someone dressed up like Patrick Bateman for Halloween, I'd sure be scared.  I think the creepiest of the three books is Lunar Park (also my favorite), which has a mystery-type plot where Ellis is being stalked by his own creepsville characters.
9. William Diehl, Primal Fear and Thomas Harris, Red Dragon: I don't read many thrillers, so I put the two that I have read and enjoyed together.  I read these both when I had mono and walking pneumonia in high school.  I also enjoy the movie versions of both.
8. Mark Danielewski, House of Leaves:  I had heard that this book was so scary I would have to hide it in the freezer like Rachel does with The Shining on Friends.  I wasn't that scared, but the concept is definitely sketchy.  The house referenced in the title keeps getting bigger, but only on the inside, so behind closet doors and such there are vast open spaces where, potentially, there are monsters.  I would compare the mood of the novel to The Blair Witch Project.
7. Matthew Lewis, The Monk :  Awesome.  If you haven't read many Gothic novels, start with Radcliffe and then when you read this, you will understand why people like Gothic novels so much.  Radcliffe = scenery; Lewis=crazy melodrama.
6. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown or My Kinsman Major Molineaux or Rappaccini's Daughter : I'll pay some homage to my blog's namesake here.  Major Molineax is a real creeper. These are all short stories and some of Hawthorne's finest.
5. Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects:  This is a good psychological thriller.  It is dark.  Very dark.
4. Neil Gaiman, The Sandman:  This is my favorite scary novel of the graphic variety.
3. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish and the Birth of the Prison:  The first few chapters of this are full of some seriously Gothic stuff. Read it and be glad that it is relatively unlikely that you will be publicly tortured in your lifetime. 
2.  Roald Dahl, The Witches : On a lighter note...
1. Edgar Allen Poe, Fall of the House of Usher: And from the man that invented the detective story, one of the creepiest families of all time, and my favorite Halloween creepy story.  Many of Poe's other stories are excellent as well, but this is my personal fav.

I really enjoyed this list.  I got to say creepy a lot.