The Greatest Fright Fiction of All Time! The Cyber-Horror Elite Takes on Literature

Usually, when I do these "Cyber-Horror Elite" polls (it's self-deprecating sarcasm, people, relax), controversy seems to ensue once the final tally is released to the public. But this time, the controversy began during the actual voting process itself...

After gathering together the opinions of the best and brightest of the horror blogging world time and again to weigh in on horror films, it was suggested to me by my co-conspirator RayRay to direct the attention toward horror literature. This is something I had been unsure of doing in our sadly non-literary age, but I sure am glad I did.

My approach was simple: Reach out to the finest horror bloggers/writers on the web and ask them to list their personal top 10 list of horror-lit. The results would then be totaled using my patented point system, and boiled down to a master list of the best of the best.

Problem is, what do we consider for inclusion? I had decided early on that, in order to get the strongest results and not water them down, I would combine novels, short stories and poetry (and anything in between), rather than do three separate lists. I knew it might be difficult, in comparison to my movie lists, to get a significant number of results as it was, and I wanted to get the best possible responses. Call me a philistine, but I chose to combine all genres of style into one literary endeavor.

Not everyone agreed, feeling that short stories, novels and poetry (poetry??) all deserved their own lists. Ideally, I might agree. But realistically, I knew there are very few who'd be able to provide a strong list for each, particularly poetry. Plus, I wanted to optimize reader interest by condensing all three into one. In the end, I'm glad I did, and I'm very proud of this particular list.

And so, I hope you folks get a kick out of the end results--THE HORROR LITERATURE TOP 30:

1. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
3. "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
4. Salem’s Lot by Stephen King (1975)
5. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft (1931)
6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stephenson (1886)
7. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
8. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (1962)
9. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (1971)
10. "The Dunwich Horror" by H.P. Lovecraft (1928)
11. It by Stephen King (1986)
12. The Shining by Stephen King (1977)
13. "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe (1849)
14. "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)
15. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (1954)
16. Ghost Story by Peter Straub (1979)
17. Books of Blood by Clive Barker (1984-85)
18. "The Monkey’s Paw" by W.W. Jacobs (1902)
19. "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe (1846)
20. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898)
21. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)
22. Pet Sematary by Stephen King (1983)
23. "The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft (1927)
24. The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker (1986)
25. Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. (1938)
26. "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft (1928)
27. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe (1841)
28. Psycho by Robert Bloch (1959)
29. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
30. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)

As in the past, my system involves awarding 10 points for every #1 ranking, 9 points for #2, etc. That said, it should be pointed out that Stoker's Dracula was far and away the most dominant vote-getter of them all. It was included on nearly everyone's list, and almost always extremely high. Nothing else came close, not even Shelley's Frankenstein or Poe's "The Raven", which were by far the strongest of the rest of the bunch. Seems those are the three almost everyone could agree on...

Break-down by literary genre:
15 novels
8 short stories
5 novellas
1 poem
1 anthology

Authors who appear more than once:
Edgar Allan Poe - 5 entries
H.P. Lovecraft - 4 entries
Stephen King - 4 entries
Clive Barker - 2 entries
(these four writers make up a total of half the entries on the list)

Chronological breakdown:
18th century: 1
19th century: 11
20th century: 18
1900s: 1
1910s: 0
1920s: 3
1930s: 2
1940s: 0
1950s: 3
1960s: 1
1970s: 4
1980s: 4
1990s: 0
21st century: 0

Highest ranking 20th century work: Salem's Lot
Oldest ranked work: The Castle of Otranto
Most recent ranked works: The Hellbound Heart & It
(Nothing from the past 22 years received enough votes to make it, and nothing from the past 34 years made it into the top 10)

A few other noteworthy vote-getters:

• "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson (1948)
• "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats (1920)
• World War Z by Max Brooks (2006)
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft (1927)
• Crash by J.G. Ballard (1973)
• Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons (1990)
• Hell House by Richard Matheson (1971)
• Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice (1976)

Finally, time to give credit to those brave souls who took part in the ranking this time around. Profound thanks to all of them:

Maitland MacDonagh, film professor, critic & writer for NY Times & TV Guide
Kim Paffenroth, author of the Stoker-winning Gospel of the Living Dead
John Kenneth Muir, horror critic (Booklist Editor's Choice)
Iloz Zoc of Zombos' Closet of Horror, founder of LoTT-D
Pierre Fournier of Frankensteinia, Canadian Comic Book Creator Hall of Famer
Jeff Allard of Dinner with Max Jenke and Shock Till You Drop
Monster Scholar of Monster Land
Matthew House of Paracinema and Chuck Norris Ate My Baby
The Lightning Bug of The Lightning Bug's Lair
RayRay, Vault of Horror contributing writer
Unkle Lancifer of Kindertrauma
Christine Hadden of Fascination with Fear
Jon of Evil on Two Legs
Ryne Barber of The Moon Is a Dead World
The Divemistress of TheAvod
Ms. Harker of Musings Across a Continuum
Bill Courtney of The Uranium Cafe
Pax Romano of Billy Loves Stu
Mike McBeardo of McBeardo's Midnight Movies
And yours truly, of course.

There you have it. Digest. Discuss. Debate. Distribute.