Top 5 Scary Stories
As a Christian it’s in my DNA to feel guilty for writing liking horror stories. But I like them anyway. The good ones at least. The bad ones are gratuitous with violence and cheap scares just like bad actions movies have gratuitous gunfights and bad romantic comedies have gratuitous cutesy dialogue in cafes.
However, frightening stories written thoughtfully can shed a light on what happens when we certain kinds of darkness enters our lives. And I think these stories can let us process destruction and darkness close enough so we can understand it but far enough so it doesn’t reach actual havoc in our lives.
More on this later. For now my top 5 Scary Stories:
5) The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson’s story is a masterpiece of culture, tradition, and what happens when we unquestioningly follow a belief. It’s got a twist worthy of M Night’s early work and it’s been controversial and debated ever since publication. A masterpiece.
4) A Simple Plan by Scott Smith
This is the one book on my list that would be classified as a Thriller more than a horror. It maybe more of a morality tale than thriller or horror, but whatever, we’re getting to caught up in labels. The point is this is the simple story of a few men who find 4 million dollars and think they have plan to keep it without getting caught. Before long this story pits brother against brother and shows just how dark humanity can come when greed and the love of mammon takes over.
3) Pet Semetary by Stephen King
This is famously the one book that Stephen King thought he’d crossed the line with. It was too scary. He couldn’t publish it. The story goes it took some heavy prodding by his wife and his publisher for him to turn it in. After reading it I can see why he felt it was too disturbing to turn in. It’s got some dark moments, but mostly it is a story about the greatest fear any of us have…losing a small child. This is the story of a family who lose their little boy named Gage and the consequences that come when a father tires to cheat and side step grief. There are no short cuts to grief and King’s novel illustrates this in the most chilling way.
2) The Lord Of The Flies by William Golding
Are human beings inherently good or evil? Of course this is much too complicated a question for a simple answer, but still it’s worth asking. If you strip away all society what will we become?
Golding has an answer to this question and it’s not pretty. Sure, the characters in this novel are only children, but I don’t think Golding would say that excuses their behavior. These are boys from boarding school. They know better. But give them a conch, some pigs, an island, and a few spears and what you get is one of the most terrifying looks into humanity ever written.
1) It by Stephen King
Yes, this book has a killer clown—easily the most fearsome killer clown in all of literature—and this by itself would make this book frightening. But set this 1,000 page tour de force apart is the way is centered around childhood and what it means to grow up. The novel is about the fears we face as a child and the way we forget them as we grow older.
But even though we forget there are still things to be afraid of. Darkness is still out there and we can try to ignore it if we like but that doesn’t make it any less real. And for the characters in this book to ultimately save their hometown and themselves they must look at the world as they did as children one last time and face the evil that they’ve long since forgotten.
This is King’s masterpiece, in my opinion, and it paints another world in the same way Tolkien would. But the scary thing is King’s Derry doesn’t seem to far from the types of places we grew up.
