Historical Horror: 7 Horror Novels Set in Days Gone By
History is horrifying.
People died. People disappeared. Some downright strange things happened in history that have still not been explained.
Sprinkle some supernatural into the history mix, stir well, and you get a serving of historical horror.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to invent a time machine to visit or experience the past. All you need is a book, a story, and an imagination. Books like the novels in this list.
History and horror make great bedfellows, so strap in, snuggle up, and step back in time with these seven historical horror novels that bring the past to life and give you a glimpse into days gone by.
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Table of Contents
The Spirit Phone – Arthur Shattuck O'Keefe
"Someone is dead in there."
It is August 1899, and Thomas Edison proclaims his most amazing invention yet: the Spirit Phone Model SP-1. At nearly the same time, a cocksure young mage named Aleister Crowley inexplicably teleports into the home of Edison’s archrival, renowned inventor Nikola Tesla.
As insanity and suicide multiply among spirit phone users, Crowley and Tesla combine their respective skills in “magick” and technology to investigate the device’s actual origin and ultimate purpose.
Embarking upon an adventure of astral travel, demonic invocations, and high-speed airship journeys, they are soon embroiled in a desperate race to stop the spirit phone’s use by an unknown adversary to inaugurate a hell on earth from which none shall escape.
Lone Women – Victor LaValle
"There are two kinds of people in this world: those who live with shame, and those who die from it."
Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear.
The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she becomes one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it.
Except Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.
All the White Spaces – Ally Wilkes
"It felt like an age ago, a dark frustrating age, and I longed to see the Fortitude properly."
In the wake World War 1, Jonathan Morgan stows away on an Antarctic expedition, determined to find his rightful place in the world of men. Aboard the expeditionary ship of his hero, the world-famous explorer James “Australis” Randall, Jonathan may live as his true self and true gender, and have the adventures he has always been denied. But not all is smooth sailing: the war casts its long shadow over them all, and grief, guilt, and mistrust skulk among the explorers.
When disaster strikes in Antarctica’s frozen Weddell Sea, the men must take to the land and winter in a place which seems eerie and wrong; a place not marked on any of their part-drawn maps of the vast white continent. Completely isolated, Randall’s expedition has no ability to contact the outside world. And no one is coming to rescue them.
In the freezing darkness of the Polar night, where the aurora creeps across the sky, something terrible has been waiting to lure them out into its deadly landscape.
As the harsh Antarctic winter descends, this supernatural force preys on their deepest desires and deepest fears to pick them off one by one.
Lovecraft Country – Matt Ruff
"Four hours passed. He read all of The Martian Chronicles."
Chicago, 1954. When his father goes missing, 22-year-old Army veteran Atticus Turner embarks on a road trip to New England to find him, accompanied by his Uncle George, publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide, and his childhood friend, Letitia.
On their journey to the manor of Mr. Braithwhite, heir to the estate that owned one of Atticus’s ancestors, they encounter both mundane terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem straight out of the weird tales George devours.
At the manor, Atticus discovers his father in chains, held prisoner by a secret cabal which has gathered to orchestrate a ritual that centers on Atticus.
His one hope of salvation may be the seed of his own, and the whole Turner clan’s, destruction.
The Terror – Dan Simmons
"Captain Crozier comes up on deck to find his ship under attack by celestial ghosts."
The most advanced scientific enterprise ever mounted, Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition in search of the fabled North-West Passage had every expectation of triumph.
But for almost two years his ships, HMS Terror and Erebus, have been trapped in the Arctic ice. Supplies of fuel and food are running low. Scurvy, starvation and even madness begin to take their toll.
And yet the real threat isn’t from the constantly shifting, alien landscape, the flesh-numbing temperatures or being crushed by the unyielding, frozen ocean. No, the real threat is far more terrifying.
There is something out there in the frigid darkness. Something that stalks the ships and snatches men. It is a nameless thing. At once nowhere and everywhere, this terror has become the expedition’s nemesis.
The Shape of Darkness – Laura Purcell
"She will have to cut him from memory."
As the age of the photograph dawns in Victorian Bath, silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. Still recovering from a serious illness, it has never been easy making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew. But then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another.
Desperately seeking an answer to what is happening, Agnes approaches Pearl, a child spirit medium lodging in Bath with her older half-sister and her ailing father. She hopes that if Pearl can make contact with those who died, they might reveal who killed them.
But Agnes and Pearl quickly discover that instead they may have opened the door to something that they can never put back.
The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters
"With his death, Hundreds Hall withdrew even further from the world."
One postwar summer, in his home in rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall.
Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline. Its owners – mother, son, and daughter – are struggling to keep pace with a changing society.
But is the Ayres family haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life?
Published: 18 January 2023
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