[Note from Frolic: We’re so excited to welcome author Laura Marks to the site today. She’s sharing the ten horror tales that scarred her for life. Take it away, Laura!]
Back when I was working as a staff writer on the TV version of The Exorcist, a religious friend of my mother’s asked her, “But aren’t you worried about Laura doing that job?” Meaning, “Aren’t you afraid that if she spends all of her time writing about demons—which are very real, BTW—one of them will decide to hitch a ride?”
For the record, no demons stopped by my Echo Park sublet that summer. I am not, to my knowledge, possessed. Yet a great horror story does confer a kind of possession on the reader. A foul, disturbing image or an existential question too dreadful to contemplate can get in your head and live there rent-free for years.
I won’t claim that this highly personal list contains the “best” or “scariest” horror literature ever. But these are the stories that hooked themselves into my head and have never let go. Like the literary version of an earworm… if an earworm could lay a thousand eggs.