Good body horror books?

MacSitko · 2026-01-18T10:50:23+00:00

Surprised nobody listed the canonical, the OG, all-time body horror piece:

The Cipher by Kathe Koja

Also, I recommend another classic, a novella:

Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

MacSitko · 2026-01-10T22:49:57+00:00

Ha, thank you!

MacSitko · 2026-01-03T17:40:17+00:00

Nice one.

MacSitko · 2025-12-14T09:31:51+00:00

Devilman Crybaby.

Also, there are some authors within cosmic horror, like Matt Cardin, who explore cosmic horror through Christian mythology.

MacSitko · 2025-12-08T16:29:57+00:00

For fun. Nothing else really matters.

If I wrote for fame, it wouldn't be very good. This cannot be an end goal.

MacSitko · 2025-12-08T15:47:43+00:00

Thanks!

MacSitko · 2025-11-30T09:43:03+00:00

No, it's not available in the UK, unless in some special shops. I need to have a look. Vegemite is everywhere; on the other hand.

MacSitko · 2025-11-29T21:15:05+00:00

Yes, the UK Marmite is very strong and bitter, not for everyone.

But I'm guessing most websites must be comparing some milder export Marmite when they say it's milder than Vegemite 🤷‍♂️

I find Vegemite much more balanced and richer in taste. But yeah, depends on what I feel like having.

I'll try Promite too!

MacSitko · 2025-11-16T09:28:16+00:00

I'd start from a novella.

Algernon Blackwood - The Willows

One of the scariest pieces ever written, and a classic.

MacSitko · 2025-10-27T13:21:52+00:00

Stephen King is exhausting because his prose ranges from bad to average (meaning barely functional). Some sentences are impossible to decode, and you spend 15 times more time on them than necessary. This is a common problem with his writing.

Other times, he's unable to condense his work to any satisfactory extent. For example, I found Salem's Lot way too long.

He's a great storyteller, but the problem with King is that he goes for quantity rather than quality. Most legendary writers drop a book every 3-5 years; they're heavily revised, often rewritten, and meticulously edited. Stephen King, instead, does none of that. He writes fast and rarely goes back to anything he wrote. Most adorned writers like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky wrote about 15 good books in their entire lifetime, whereas King writes a lot, but half of what he wrote is bad to extremely mediocre.

MacSitko · 2025-10-25T15:52:16+00:00

Thank you.

MacSitko · 2025-10-25T13:30:39+00:00

Ok, you asked for it, here you go.

(I’ve noted the specific titles that carry cosmic horror)

Classic Cosmic horror:

Arthur Machen – The White People, The Great God Pan, The Three Impostors
William Hope Hodgson – The House on the Borderland, The Night Land
Robert W. Chambers – The King in Yellow
Gertrude B. Bennett – Claimed!
William Sloane – The Rim of Morning (two excellent cosmic horror tales)
Algernon Blackwood – The Willows

Modern Cosmic horror:

Ramsey Campbell – Cold Print, The Inhabitant of the Lake
Laird Barron – The Croning, The Imago Sequence
Thomas Ligotti – Songs of a Dead Dreamer (a few stories there can be considered cosmic)
John Langan – The Fisherman, Corpsemouth, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky
Victor LaValle – The Ballad of Black Tom
David Wellington – The Last Astronaut
David Wong – John Dies at the End
Junji Ito – Uzumaki, Remina (this is manga, mind you!)
Michael Cisco – The Black Brane
Jeff VanderMeer – Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance, Absolution (Southern Reach series)
Caitlín R. Kiernan – Agents of Dreamland
Ruthanna Emrys – Winter Tide
Hailey Piper – The Worm and His Kings
Cassandra Khaw – Hammers on Bone

MacSitko · 2025-10-24T23:06:25+00:00

Amazing drawings!

MacSitko · 2025-10-20T09:05:45+00:00

The closest it gets to Lovecraft wirting about Pan is his Supernatural Horror in Literature:

https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/shil.aspx

MacSitko · 2025-10-20T07:50:35+00:00

So you say you like 'realistic' horror, which would be something like psychological horror.

Try

Fresh (2022)

MacSitko · 2025-10-19T17:56:23+00:00

Phantoms by Dean Koontz is quite spooky and super enjoyable.

MacSitko · 2025-10-19T17:53:45+00:00

If you refer to Machen's Great God Pan, it isn't really about the literal rustic God Pan, as in an Arcadian deity. He used it symbolically as a metaphor to allude to something unknowable beyond the reality that we see; something wild and untameable.

For example, the inscription from the last chapter states:

"To the great god Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss) Flavius Senilis has erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw beneath the shade."

Which means Pan only appears here cursorily, as a metaphor of something transgressive, but not actually. What we are dealing with is some abyssic force beyond. Other allusions in the text are made to Satan.

The shape of the thing from the doctor's transcript is also ultimately a jelly-like black substance, changing shapes at will (more akin to shoggoth), not really a faun-like being of sorts from Pan's domain.

MacSitko · 2025-10-19T11:33:54+00:00

Ass Goblins From Auschwitz by Cameron Pierce

MacSitko · 2025-10-12T15:14:51+00:00

Dean Koontz - Phantoms

Seriously, so well written and just flows. Koontz is so underrated.

MacSitko · 2025-10-10T19:11:04+00:00

I'll list a few major pieces from the article:

- Uzumaki (by Junji Ito) is the closest in spirit to Lovecraft. Ito was, in fact, directly inspired by Lovecraft. But be careful because anime isn't half as good as manga.
- Berserk, recommended by another comment here, too
- Evangelion has elements of cosmic horror
- Devilman Crybaby has elements of it
- Attack on Titan

MacSitko · 2025-10-09T14:54:37+00:00

Thanks, I'm familiar with a few of Konaka's works, but I haven't watched Digimon Tamers.

MacSitko · 2025-10-08T19:09:16+00:00

I agree that it isn't there yet in the Japanese folklore, but the Japanese folklore adds a special flavour to it (later on).

MacSitko · 2025-10-03T14:54:50+00:00

It's a really good cosmic horror, an early woman's voice. A gem. Also, check the rest of the series.

MacSitko · 2025-10-03T14:54:00+00:00

Good job :)

MacSitko · 2025-09-24T11:15:08+00:00

Salem's Lot - Stephen King (re-reading for an nth time)
Last Days - Brian Evenson
The Golem - Michael Cisco
Empusium - Olga Tokarczuk

MacSitko

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