the turn of the screw

>>7834627
Don't know why but I could never get all the way through that.

OP you can try Edge of Running Water by William Sloane.
Haven't finished it yet, but always heard good things.
I think it's totally OOP but you can find an ebook somewhere.

What about shorter stories and novellas?
Are you into Lovecraft?
I never really "got" it until one night when I was home alone a little over decade ago now (so I was younger, with an imagination that hadn't yet been ground down by daily life) I found a site that had some Lovecraft stories on it.

I read The Color Out of Space and have never forgotten it, nor the experience.
Not to say that the story itself is so totally horrifying (it is, if you view it through the modern context of radiation poisoning etc.), but right at that moment, that creepy night, it hit all the right spots.

Lovecraft is somewhat less formulaic than you'd think despite the tropes and cliches he introduced.

There's also the Haunter in the Dark.

Thing is OP, if you want a book that will elicit this response in yourself
>genuinely get under my skin, maybe cause me to look over my shoulder

Then you have to go about the right way of doing it.

You can't for example plonk yourself down on a park bench during a sunny day with the hustle and bustle of happy people doing whatever it is they do going on about you.

Horror fiction needs the right mood and atmosphere. It NEEDS it in order to be effective.
I can't think of any other genre that is so dependent upon the environment and mindset of the reader.

Alone. At night. No other sources of noise but your own breathing and the turning of the page, night rain excepted.

That's it.

Any other way and you're doing yourself a disservice.

The Exorcist and Legion by Blatty.

I don't care if you've seen the films. If read properly as mentioned here >>7834808

then they'll do.

>>7834814
Alright last ones and I stop samefagging:

Hell House by Richard Matheson
and my favourite:

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

The latter is GOAT.

Bump for spooky genre fiction
Or non fiction if anyone has any horrifying other lit.

>>7832882

Though he sometime gets some shit on here, some of Ligotti's stories have gotten under my skin. He has a good knack for creating an atmosphere of uncanniness. Off of the top of my head there are a couple of stories in 'Teatro Grottesco' that were quite effective. I think they were called 'In a Foreign Town, In a Foreign Land' and 'The Bungalow House'. The whole collection is worth a read, though he does create that very Lovecraft-esque fatigue when read in large quantities at once.

Currently reading the Penguin edition of 'Songs of a Dead Dreamer' and 'Grimscribe', and I'm enjoying it as nighttime reading.

The Song of Kali by Dan Simmons is a fantastic horror book, His descriptions of Calcutta still get me. Its fucking great.