20 of the best supernatural books for splendid spooking
Not since the Twilight craze of the early 2000s have we witnessed such a widespread fascination with all things supernatural and twisted.
Meyer’s bloody teen vampire romance captured the hearts and imaginations of all ages across the globe. Vampire fiction was no new feat, but the desire for a deeply brooding, undying/undead love affair in a contemporary world was deemed fascinating enough to yield both global acclaim and critical disdain.
The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long – and the vamp-ification of the early 2000s and 2010s quickly dissipated. Horrifying mysteries and spine-tingling romances featuring creatures of the night have nevertheless undergone undulating waves of popularity throughout history. From Henry James and Bram Stoker to Edgar Allen Poe, there’s yet to be an era more obsessed with the ghostly and macabre than the Victorian, perhaps until now.
Born out of increasing feelings of hopelessness, dislocation and religious uncertainty, Gothic literature shifted in the 19th century from tales of hidden princesses in sublime, crumbling towers to better encompass the metaphysical and preternatural. Unlike the first ever Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), popular serial literature such as The Turn of The Screw (1898) featured haunted mansions with untold horrors behind each hidden corridor and an endlessly spiralling staircase.
Naturally, this is where the origins of contemporary supernatural fiction lie. H.P. Lovecraft built on the Victorian fascination with the supernatural, (1926) and (1928). These tales of pure horror and mayhem gave way to Stephen King’s eye-wateringly expansive oeuvre, written mostly throughout the late 1970s and 1980s.
