13 Demonic Possession Horror Book Recommendations
Good versus evil.
Demonic possession is classic horror, and it never gets old.
Mix together a touch of innocence, some lost souls, a religion, and a malevolent entity, and you have a great recipe for possession horror.
For fans of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, here are 13 possession horror books that will be sure to leave you wondering who’s really in control.
Just remember: It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in the devil. What matters is that the devil believes in you.
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Table of Contents
The Haunting of Elena Vera – Steven Pajak
Psychological possession horror
Beneath the veneer of Elena Vera’s everyday life lurks a vile darkness that is both ancient and terrifying.
Plagued by harrowing visions and an unseen force that knows her deepest fears, Elena is propelled on a desperate quest for salvation that blurs the lines between the psychological and the supernatural.
As she confronts the chilling legacy of a demonic possession that spans generations, her journey becomes a testament to the human spirit’s resilience against the encroaching darkness, defying the boundaries of faith and fear.
“There, in the corner beside the bed, a figure stood hidden, barely visible within the shadows.”
Seed – Ania Ahlborn
Psychological possession horror
With nothing but the clothes on his back – and something horrific snapping at his heels – Jack Winter fled his rural Georgia home when he was still just a boy. Watching the world he knew vanish in a trucker’s rearview mirror, he thought he was leaving an unspeakable nightmare behind forever.
Years later, the bright new future he’s built suddenly turns pitch black, as something fiendishly familiar looms dead ahead.
When Jack, his wife Aimee, and their two small children survive a violent car crash, it seems like a miracle. But Jack knows what he saw on the road that night, and it wasn’t divine intervention.
The profound evil from his past won’t let them die… at least not quickly. It’s back, and it’s hungry; ready to make Jack pay for running, to work its malignant magic on his angelic youngest daughter, and to whisper a chilling promise: I’ve always been here, and I’ll never leave.
“It was the kind of place people ran from, the kind of place that was heavy with dark secrets and strange people…”
The Haunting of Evie Meyers – Rick Wood
Exorcism horror – Book 1 of The Rogue Exorcist
Following a fatal exorcism, Mo decides he can’t take it anymore. He’s not cut out for a life of fighting demons.
He leaves his friends behind, in search of a life that doesn’t matter. He wishes to wallow in despair, and drink away his days until death finally arrives.
But the demon next door won’t let him.
Evie Meyers is a sweet, kind-natured teenage girl possessed by a volatile demon. If she is not exorcised soon, then she will end up killing both her and her mother in the most violent, destructive way imaginable.
And, unfortunately for Mo, he might be the only man who can help her.
“This is what I’m used to. Jumping from one precarious situation to the next.”
Tell No Man – TJ Tranchell
Exorcism possession horror
No crosses. No holy water. No Latin. Just white shirts and black ties…
When Maddie Smith, a single Mormon mother, receives a foreclosure notice, she begins looking for a new home. While her sons Brandon and David stay home, Maddie explores an old sandstone house in Blackhawk, Utah. The house, however, has never really been empty. There’s a painting Maddie shouldn’t have seen and something else alive in the house. Something that goes home with her.
Mormons don’t practice exorcisms like the Catholics do, but Maddie’s bishop, Blaine Griffen, and his former mission companion, Rey Montoya, saw something like this in 1973.
Forty-five years ago, they failed to save a young woman from Hell. Now, they have a second chance.
“A man in the barrio says the devil has taken his daughter.”
Anathema – Nick Roberts
Psychological possession horror
Bryan and Ellie Stockton hope they left behind their demons when they move to their idyllic new home in southern West Virginia. Above all, they want a fresh start for their young son, Derrick, who witnessed the tumultuous first years of their marriage – years that were rife with substance abuse, rage, and resentment.
Their bright hope for the future is darkened when a child disappears from their neighborhood. The couple becomes suspicious of a reclusive resident with a degenerative brain disorder.
Strange events begin to happen in their house just as Derrick tells them about a new friend who visits him at night. Their son may be acting out from the trauma he endured, or he could be the obsession of something much more sinister.
“He suddenly realized how on edge he was alone out here in the middle of the night.”
A Good and Happy Child – Justin Evans
Psychological possession horror
Thirty-year-old George Davies can’t bring himself to hold his newborn son. After months of accepting his lame excuses and strange behavior, his wife has had enough. She demands that he see a therapist, and George, desperate to save his unraveling marriage and redeem himself as a father and husband, reluctantly agrees.
As he digs into his childhood memories, he begins to recall things he hasn’t thought of in twenty years. Events, people, and strange situations come rushing back. The odd, rambling letters his father sent home before he died. The jovial mother who started dating too soon after his father’s death. A boy who appeared one night when George was lonely, then told him secrets he didn’t want to know. How no one believed this new friend was real and that he was responsible for the bad things that were happening.
Terrified by all that he has forgotten, George struggles to remember what really happened in the months following his father’s death. Were his ominous visions and erratic behavior the product of a grief-stricken child’s overactive imagination? Or were his father’s colleagues, who blamed a darker, more malevolent force, right to look to the supernatural to end George’s suffering?
Twenty years later, George still does not know. But when a mysterious murder is revealed, remembering the past becomes the only way George can protect himself, and his young family.
“…I can honestly say I had no memory of the events I describe in these pages…”
Faces of Beth – Carver Pike
Psychological possession horror
When Andrew meets Beth at the Myles-Bend State Mental Hospital, he knows she has issues. She checked herself into the place because of her problems, but he can’t help falling in love with her anyway.
He’s willing to put up with her constant mood swings and all the baggage she brings into the relationship. He’ll help raise her kids, give her siblings a place to stay, and even look after her creepy grandfather. After all, he has the space in the huge house left to him by his parents.
Marriage has its hardships, Andrew knows that, but there seems to be something else wrong with Beth. A dark entity grows inside her and he can’t help wondering if she might be possessed.
Andrew can look past all the other drama in their new life, but the thing inside her that seems to want him dead – that’s kind of a deal breaker.
“Family is family. Remember that. No matter how crazy things get. Family is family.”
You Invited It In – Sarah Jules
Psychological possession horror
Felix Eastwood is your average guy, except for the fact that he can see the spirits of the dead.
Lilith Lavelle is a fraudulent psychic, plying her trade on social media.
When Felix stumbles across an advertisement for Lilith Lavelle’s Psychic Cleansing Services, he hires her under the pretense that his family is being haunted, hoping to expose her as a scam artist.
By trying to play the hero, Felix puts his family in grave danger. In the aftermath of Lilith’s visit, Felix finds himself haunted for real by something claiming to be his dead wife; something that is out for blood.
The problem is, Felix invited it in. And it doesn’t want to leave.
“There was no light, he knew that better than anybody.”
Father of Lies – S.E. England
Psychological possession horror – Book 1 of A Darkly Disturbing Occult Horror Trilogy
Ruby is the most violently disturbed patient ever admitted to Drummersgate Asylum, high on the bleak moors of northern England.
With no improvement after two years, Dr. Jack McGowan finally decides to take a risk and hypnotises her. With terrifying consequences.
A horrific dark force is now unleashed on the entire medical team, as each in turn attempts to unlock Ruby’s shocking and sinister past.
Who is this girl? And how did she manage to survive such unimaginable evil?
Set in a desolate ex-mining village, where secrets are tightly kept and intruders hounded out, their questions soon lead to a haunted mill, the heart of darkness, and The Father of Lies.
“There. It came again. Quite distinctly this time. Three sharp taps on the window pane directly next to his right ear. ‘Let me in!’”
Exorcist Falls – Jonathan Janz
Exorcism possession horror
Chicago is gripped by terror. The Sweet Sixteen Killer is brutally murdering young women, and the authorities are baffled.
When the police are called to an affluent home in the middle of the night, they learn that a seemingly normal fourteen-year-old boy has attacked his family. The boy exhibits signs of demonic possession, and even more troublingly, he knows too much about the Sweet Sixteen killings.
Father Jason Crowder, a young priest assigned to the case, marshals his courage to save the boy and the entire city from the forces of evil.
But this is a darkness mankind has never encountered before. It craves more than blood. And it won’t rest until it possesses Father Crowder’s soul.
“We pick out differences between people and we amplify them and act like they’re lost and we know the answers, and the truth is, we’re all lost. We’ve all sinned.”
Come Closer – Sara Gran
Psychological possession horror
A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that’s replaced by obscene insults.
Amanda, a successful architect in a happy marriage, finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she’s doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.
The new voice in Amanda’s head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. A book on demon possession suggests that the figure on the shore could be the demon Naamah, known to scholars of the Kabbalah as the second wife of Adam, who stole into his dreams and tricked him into fathering her child.
Whatever the case, as the violence of her erratic behavior increases, Amanda knows that she must act to put her life right, or see it destroyed.
“That evening I was telling my husband, Ed, about the little mystery at work when we heard the tapping for the first time.”
The Demonologist – Andrew Pyper
Exorcism possession horror
Professor David Ullman is among the world’s leading authorities on demonic literature, with special expertise in Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Not that David is a believer; he sees what he teaches as a branch of the imagination and nothing more. So when the mysterious Thin Woman arrives at his office and invites him to travel to Venice and witness a “phenomenon,” he turns her down. She leaves plane tickets and an address on his desk, advising David that her employer is not often disappointed.
That evening, David’s wife announces she is leaving him. With his life suddenly in shambles, he impulsively whisks his beloved twelve-year-old daughter, Tess, off to Venice after all. The girl has recently been stricken by the same melancholy moods David knows so well, and he hopes to cheer her up and distract them both from the troubles at home.
What happens in Venice will change everything.
First, in a tiny attic room at the address provided by the Thin Woman, David sees a man restrained in a chair, muttering, clearly insane, but could he truly be possessed? Then the man speaks clearly, in the voice of David’s dead father, repeating the last words he ever spoke to his son. Words that have left scars, and a mystery, behind.
When David rushes back to the hotel, he discovers Tess perched on the roof’s edge, high above the waters of the Grand Canal. Before she falls, she manages to utter a final plea: Find me.
What follows is an unimaginable journey for David Ullman from skeptic to true believer. In a terrifying quest guided by symbols and riddles from the pages of Paradise Lost, David must track the demon that has captured his daughter and discover its name. If he fails, he will lose Tess forever.
“Last night I had the dream again. Except it’s not a dream. I know because when it comes for me, I’m still awake.”
My Best Friend’s Exorcism – Grady Hendrix
Exorcism possession horror
The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrously wrong, Gretchen begins to act…different.
She’s moody. She’s irritable. And bizarre incidents keep happening whenever she’s nearby.
Abby’s investigation leads her to some startling discoveries. By the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?
“Abby was beginning to feel like everything was too much. She was beginning to feel like nothing she did made any difference.”
Published: 8 August 2024
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