10 best psychological horror novels

10 best psychological horror novels.

Psychological horror is a subgenre that is born from the horror story itself. How can we define it? Basically when the plot of the story revolves around the fears and emotional instability of its protagonists as a way of creating tension.

The main purpose of psychological horror is not to produce fear in the reader, but rather discomfort, uneasiness, by exposing them to the emotional and psychic vulnerabilities of its protagonists; in other words: those dark, unfathomable regions of the human mind, which Carl Jung identified with the archetype of the shadow.

In this way, psychological terror is based on the subject’s own and collective conflicts. These are not stories about monsters, but about human beings who flirt with the monstrous that lives in us.

Let’s review the 10 best psychological horror novels.

1- Lord of the Flies, William Golding

William Golding reverses the paradigm of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, who lived without the presence of adults in a world governed by fun and companionship.

Here the opposite happens: a group of children are isolated on an island, alone and without adults around. Very soon things turn sinister. These perfectly educated children retreat towards a type of barbaric civilization, where the strongest rules and all kinds of abominable rites are performed, including human sacrifice.

In my opinion, Lord of the Flies is undoubtedly the best psychological horror novel of all time, although there are some allegorical nuances that slightly diminish it. Unmissable reading.

2- The Picture of Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde)

Oscar Wilde asks us in The Picture of Dorian Gray what could happen if we did not feel guilt, or rather, if the feeling of guilt that comes from our actions could be confined in some other place external to our psyche, in this case, a portrait with amazing properties.

Naturally, that portrait would be a rather perverse, obscene, cruel piece; while we would walk through the world free of guilt, which would make us truly dangerous subjects.

All of this happens, and more, in this extraordinary novel of psychological horror.

3- The Silence of the Lambs (The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris)

Something of that happens in The Silence of the Lambs: a psychopath who feels no guilt or remorse for his atrocious acts of cannibalism, and an FBI agent who still reproaches herself for not having done something to save at least one lamb from the slaughterhouse during his childhood.

The free impulses of one, or unleashed, rather, and the repressed fears of the other come together in a great novel of psychological horror.

4- The Haunting of Hill House (The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson)

What at first glance seems like a simple story of paranormal phenomena is transformed here into a true monument to psychological terror.

It is not this haunted house that is truly scary, where poltergeist-type events and phenomena of paranormal activity occur, but the disturbing possibility that these same episodes come from the unbalanced psyche of its inhabitants.

5- The Shining (The Shining, Stephen King)

Leave an alcoholic in a context where he can metabolize his demons and you will have one of the great psychological horror novels of all time.

Perfect, Stephen King doesn’t just stop at that, but includes the presence of unspeakable entities within the walls of the Overlook Hotel; However, the true horror does not arise from there, but from the homicidal impulses of his protagonist.

The paranormal, at least here, only serves as a trigger for true, strictly psychological horror.

6- The sinister island (Shutter Island, Dennis Lehane)

One of the most interesting psychological horror novels of recent times.

Here, a researcher arrives at an island that functions as a psychiatric residence for criminals and individuals truly dangerous to society, only to discover that he himself is part of a shocking treatment.

Interesting tribute to the Gothic novel, and especially to Edgar Allan Poe’s idea of ​​a psychiatric hospital run by lunatics.

7- American Psycho (American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis)

What can be said about a psychopath who commits all kinds of crimes?

Surely he deserves prison for life; However, here things are a little more complex.

This psychopath only commits murders in his imagination, constantly and with a terrifying degree of cruelty and thoroughness, although he never translates them into reality.

If thoughts are facts of the mind, then here we are looking at one of the most horrifying minds in modern literature.

8- The Collector (The Collector, John Fowles)

Any butterfly collector is undoubtedly suspected of harboring an atrocious imaginary life.

Such is the case of Frederick Clegg, a quiet, contemplative man who loves collecting butterflies but also stalks a beautiful art student, Miranda Grey, from the shadows.

With it you execute the same strategy as when hunting butterflies: wait, capture and collect.

9- Flowers in the Attic (Flowers in the Attic, VC Andrews)

Psychological horror in its purest form.

Here, four brothers are isolated from the world inside a cold, damp and bleak attic.

What happens there is too horrifying to describe out of context.

Suffice it to say that this is a great psychological horror novel.

10- The Turn of the Screw (The Turn of the Screw, Henry James)

Extraordinary ghost novel, but where ghosts are really scarce and, instead, are replaced by amorphous and dark presences product of the psyche of a very impressionable nanny.

In this case, it is not children who have nightmares after hearing a scary story, but adults who unleash their childhood fears by listening to children and their strange theories about what happens after death.

More horror anthologies. I The dark side of psychology.

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