Horror web novels with public chapters on NovelCult.
Mary Shelley (then Godwin) and Percy Bysshe Shelley were visiting their friend Lord Byron in Geneva one rainy summer. With the weather against them, they decided to spend their time writing ghost stories for each other. Frankenstein is Mary Shelley’s submission to their contest, later published anonymously in 1818.
Mary Shelley · Horror · 30 ch
Dracula is one of the most famous horror novels, responsible not just for introducing the eponymous Count Dracula, but for laying the foundations for many of the common tropes we see in modern horror fiction. Count Dracula isn’t the first vampire to have graced the pages of Western literature—that honor belongs to Lord Ruthven in “ The Vampire,” a short story by John William Polidori —but Dracula is the vampire on which the modern vampire trope is based. Dracula wasn’t as famous in its day as it is today; readers of the time seemed to enjoy it as nothing more than a good story, and Stoker died nearly penniless.
Bram Stoker · Horror · 29 ch
The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published as a serial in Lippencott’s Monthly Magazine, and the publishers thought it would so offend readers that they removed nearly 500 words without Wilde’s approval. Wilde soon expanded it and republished it as a novel, including a short preface justifying his art. Even though his contemporaries considered it so offensive that some argued for his prosecution, Dorian Gray today survives as a classic philosophical novel that explores themes of aestheticism and double lives.
Oscar Wilde · Horror · 21 ch
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the classic novella of split personality. Stevenson wrote it in just a few days while sick and bedridden, and famously burned the first draft after his wife suggested it should be written as an allegory and not as a story. He re-wrote it in three to six days, and after a few weeks of editing and revision he published what would become one of his most famous and best-selling works.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Horror · 10 ch
One of the most famous ghost stories in literature, The Turn of the Screw earned its place in the annals of influential English novellas not for its qualities as a gothic ghost story, but rather for the many complex and subtle ways the reader can come to opposing conclusions as to tale’s very nature. Are the ghosts the governess sees real, or are they figments of her quiet insanity? The Turn of the Screw was originally published as a serial, and later went through many revisions by James himself.
Henry James · Horror · 25 ch
The King in Yellow is a fascinating, almost two-faced work. The first half consists of five legendary weird tales, loosely tied together by a fictional play—the eponymous King in Yellow —that drives those who read it mad. Celebrated by authors like H.
Robert W. Chambers · Horror · 11 ch
Aubrey, a young gentleman moving in London society of the early 1800s, meets the mysterious Lord Ruthven, recently arrived to London, at a party. Aubrey finds himself intrigued by the cold and expressionless Ruthven, and soon finds himself agreeing to travel with him on a trip across the continent. As their trip progresses, Aubrey is shocked at Ruthven’s sadistic and degenerate behavior, and can’t help but note how anyone who Ruthven meets ends up debauched and ruined.
John William Polidori · Horror · 3 ch
Lewis claimed to have written The Monk in just ten weeks, when he was twenty-one years of age. He published the first edition anonymously, sensing that the controversial and then-pornographic nature of the novel would stun society. And so it did—the book was so sensational, so salacious, and so scandalous, that after he put his full name (and title, as a member of Parliament) on the second edition, his reputation hardly recovered for the rest of his life.
M. G. Lewis · Horror · 19 ch
Charles Dexter Ward is the heir of a wealthy family from Providence, Rhode Island, whose family wealth allows him to dedicate himself to scholarly pursuits. As a young man, he starts to research antiquarianism and architecture. During his genealogical research, he comes across the name of Joseph Curwen, a man who lived in the early 18th century and to whom Ward discovers he is related.
H. P. Lovecraft · Horror · 6 ch
The House on the Borderland is unique in several ways. The narrative itself is a double-frame narrative: the editor of the volume is presenting a manuscript he found under mysterious circumstances, describing the account of two fishermen who themselves discovered a hand-written account of the cosmic haunting of a recluse’s remote home. Additionally, the novel is one of the earliest examples of the departure of horror fiction from the Gothic style of supernatural, psychological hauntings, to more realist, science-fiction/cosmic horror themes.
William Hope Hodgson · Horror · 31 ch
The Mysteries of Udolpho is Ann Radcliffe’s fourth novel, first published in four volumes in 1794. It’s a typical gothic novel: set in a large castle which experiences supposedly supernatural events, a cruel and cunning villain is opposed by a young, virtuous heroine, who experiences great terror in the hands of her adversary. Emily St. Aubert, the novel’s protagonist, loses her parents and is placed in the care of her aunt, who unwittingly puts her in great danger.
Ann Radcliffe · Horror · 57 ch
The Castle of Otranto is considered to be the first “Gothic” novel—that is, containing a combination of tropes, like hidden passages, haunted paintings, mysterious sounds, skeletal ghosts, ancestral curses, and unexplained deaths, that essentially invented the genre later made famous by authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, or Henry James. Walpole made a point of creating a novel that blends supernatural elements with more realistic depictions of characters and events. The plot centers around Manfred, the lord of Otranto Castle, who has just witnessed the death of his son under mysterious circumstances, just as his son was about to be married.
Horace Walpole · Horror · 8 ch
A lonely young woman in a Styrian castle befriends a beautiful stranger who arrives after a carriage accident nearby. A slow, dreamlike tale of fascination that turns toward dread.
J. Sheridan Le Fanu · Horror · 17 ch
Two idlers in London are sauntering in the streets when they pick up a coin dropped by a fleeing man. They keep meeting three persons, each time in a different disguise, who recount lurid tales. They seem to be looking for a spectacled man who regrets working with them, and has run away with a valuable coin … This novel is a Gothic horror classic, and takes the form of an episodic novel, with each chapter containing a story recounted by one of the three impostors.
Arthur Machen · Horror · 11 ch
The Beetle was published in 1897, the same year as Dracula —and outsold it six to one that year. Like Dracula, the novel is steeped in the evil mysteries of an ancient horror: in this case, a mysterious ancient Egyptian creature bent on revenge. The story is told through the sequential points of view of a group of middle-class Victorians who find themselves enmeshed in the creature’s plot.
Richard Marsh · Horror · 52 ch
Wieland, the first novel by Charles Brockden Brown, is set in the years following the French and Indian War on the Pennsylvania frontier. Clara Wieland recounts the experiences of her close-knit family on their secluded estate near Philadelphia, where, in the shadow of their father’s strange and unexplained death, they attempt to build a life shaped equally by religious devotion and Enlightenment rationalism. Their domestic tranquility begins to unravel when members of the household have unsettling encounters with disembodied voices.
Charles Brockden Brown · Horror · 28 ch
New to this genre? Creating Great Horror & Dark Stories explains what defines it, what readers expect, and where to start.