The Ritual

I can’t seem to stop thinking of this topic and I can’t sleep. so here’s a few more recs;

• John Langan, the Fisherman. More river based horror than forest I suppose, but should fit the bill. Lovecraftian.
• Nick Cutter, The Troop. have not read this one myself, though I’ve seen it recommended in horror lit circles often enough. Has a reputation for including scenes of graphic and shocking violence.
• Stephen King, the Girl who Loved Tom Gordon. Have not read, but have heard great things.
• Ramsey Campbell, the Darkest Part of the Woods, another I haven’t read, but I’ve heard great things.
• Karl Edward Wagner, Sticks. Short story. I’ve only read a few stories by this author. Overall I wasn’t very impressed, but this one was a stand out. Rumored to be an inspiration for the Blair Witch Project, but if so I didn’t pick up on it at the time.
• Arthur Machen, the White People. Short story. Probably a stretch to include, but it came to mind. Occult/pagan horror that takes place, in part, in the nearby woods.

Are you set on forest horror, specifically? If we expand it to wilderness horror, I can think of a few more:

• Jeff Vandermeer, annihilation. Cosmic weirdness in the Everglades (possibly? The location was never specified that I can recall). This one seems to be love it or hate it. I personally loved it. There are sequels, but they are inessential and frankly superfluous.
• Scott smith, the Ruins. Jungle horror. A group of tourists are trapped on Mayan ruins surrounded by carnivorous plants. Haven’t read the book but I enjoy the movie.

Are you willing to expand the concept of wilderness horror even further to ice/snow horror?

• Dan Simmons, the Terror. Inspired by the real story of the HMS Terror. Trapped in the ice while in search of the fabled northwest passage. Facing starvation, mutiny, and lead poisoning, and also, there’s something out there stalking them on the ice. Have not read this, but I highly recommend the amc miniseries adaptation (the first season - there are follow up seasons that are unrelated but carry the same title. Don’t ask me why).
• HP Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness. Ive read this long enough ago now that I’m fuzzy on the details, but I think it’s safe to say it is full of unnameable horrors, gibbering madness, non Euclidean geometries, turgid prose, and appalling racism.
• John W Campbell, Who Goes There?. The basis for John Carpenter’s The Thing. (And earlier, Howard Hawks’s The Thing from Another World).

Enjoy your camping trip!

Thanks for the recs! I've read and liked The Willows, read and didn't like The Hollow Places (T Kingfisher's self insert characters are getting more annooying), and have The Ritual on hold (enjoyed the movie).

There were some others I'll probably get to eventually, but can't wait for them to come off hold before my trip, so here's a couple that I've found that are available now:

• In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt
• The Laws of the Skies by Gregoire Courtois

Algernon Blackwood’s “the Willows” comes immediately to mind. It’s about two men traveling by river and forced to camp on an island. The wilderness surrounding them is depicted as supernatural and malevolent. This one is public domain I believe.

T Kingfisher wrote a book called “the hollow places” that took inspiration from the willows and modernized it. I found this one enjoyable enough, but rather slight. Ymmv.

Adam Neville’s “the ritual” takes place in a forest. Or so I believe - I haven’t read it, but I love the movie adaptation. As I understand it though the movie took liberties with the source material and differed in key respects.

Same here with “American Psycho” movie. Glad they didn’t show it. I recall a site called doesthedogdie and it has a list of filters from substance abuse to murder, for books

I hope they leave out the unnecessary animal torture. Otherwise the book was good.

Great site, have been enjoying it before

Nice Link.

Besides 3 that own and know the authors been nice to have included that information in the list.

“Ghost Story” was a nice mention. It was a good book. The movie they made from it has an excellent cast, and though flawed, is still worth a watch. I’d love to see a recut done with some of the footage that was left behind.

I was eagerly looking forward to, then pretty disappointed by, Hendrix’s Witchcraft. No scary moments I can recall (even considering the soft horror of Hendrix books), not enough witchcraft.

I just read this, it was awesome. I didn’t know much about SCP or anything of its other online stuff beforehand.

Crypt of the Moon Spider is great (the sequel less so, imo), but I wouldn't have thought of it as psychedelic horror. I mean, I guess? Idk.

My choice would have been Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, but maybe that's too obvious a pick.

Awesome. I won't even read the synopses on those. Cheers and stay scared.

When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White

Ooo, I haven't heard of several of these. Time to look at their synopses for my TBR list. Are there any here you'd recommend I go in completely cold on if I'm intending to read them?

Mind of Winter by Laura Kasischke

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Moon of the Cristed Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy is horror adjacent

You're singing my song. 👍 👍👍

Who goes there? by John Campbell

I haven't read the newly-released revised edition (mainstream published, de-SCPed), but I did enjoy the original (still available on the SCP wiki as the parts listed in the description).

The Running Man and Thinner have been made into movies before so this isn't not new. Just the thrid of the 5.

Great stuff. By all means feel free to post it about on !lovecraft_mythos@lemmy.world i'm keeping a meta-post with all the link of the works i can find here

Did you ever see the re-edited Lovecraft set he did for Arkham House?

They found all of Lovecraft's original typescripts at Brown University, and when Joshi compared them to the Weird Tales reprints we'd all been reading for years, he found whole passages had been cut out by the magazine to make room for advertising and what not.

So in the late 80s they started re-publishing them all:

Check the first collection too, A Mountain Walked . Lot's of great stories.

Joshi really knows his Lovecraft, this should be a good selection.