9 Apartment Building / Boarding House Horror Books to Dwell on
Things to watch out for when looking for accommodation:
- Cheap rentals and creepy owners
- Monsters in the basement and voices in the dark
- Haunted tenants and abandoned apartments
- Inexplicable shadows and impossible images
- Ghosts and killers
- Dark secrets and equally dark histories
- Buildings that seem to be alive
In the following 9 horror stories based in boarding houses or apartment buildings, people just like you and me thought they had a grip on reality, but reality didn’t have a grip on them.
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Table of Contents
No One Gets Out Alive – Adam Nevill
Psychological supernatural boarding house horror
When Stephanie moves to a notoriously cheap neighborhood of Birmingham, she’s just happy to find an affordable room for rent that’s large enough not to deserve her previous room’s nickname, “the cell”.
The eccentric landlord seems nice and welcoming enough, the ceilings are high, and all the other tenants are also girls. Things aren’t great, but they’re stable. Or at least that’s what she tells herself when she impulsively hands over enough money to cover the first month’s rent and decides to give it a go.
But soon after she becomes uneasy about her rash decision. She hears things in the night. Feels them. Things…or people…who aren’t there in the light. Who couldn’t be there, because her door is locked every night, and the key is still in place in the morning.
Concern soon turns to terror when the voices she hears and presence she feels each night become hostile. It’s clear that something very bad has happened in this house. And something even worse is happening now. Stephanie has to find a way out, before whatever’s going on in the house finds her first.
“Because no radio or television or heartbroken tenant could possibly account for the scratching that began beneath her bed.”
The Shaft – David J. Schow
Psychological cosmic boarding house horror
Cruz, a low-level drug runner, finds himself exiled from sunny Miami to frigid Chicago.
He holes up in a decrepit rooming-house, the Kenilworth Arms, in the dead of winter. There he meets Jonathan, a yuppie struggling to get over a failed romance, and Jamaica, a prostitute on the payroll of the drug kingpin Bauhaus.
When Cruz and Jamaica are forced to drop two kilos of cocaine down a ventilation shaft in the rooming-house to escape a police raid, strange things begin to happen.
Amid the inexplicable terrors of a building that seems weirdly animate and of some loathsome monstrosity lurking in the bottom of the ventilation shaft, the pursuit of Cruz, Jonathan, and Jamaica by Bauhaus and his minions seems by turns insignificant and chillingly immediate.
“Kenilworth’s single-wide elevator is rocky, claustrophobic, unsafe.”
13 Storeys – Jonathan Sims
Psychological supernatural apartment building horror
A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers, even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building.
None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Whether privileged or deprived, they share only one thing in common: they’ve all experienced a shocking disturbance within the building’s walls.
By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened.
His death has remained one of the biggest unsolved mysteries, until now.
But are you ready for their stories?
“For some reason, the idea of stepping into that lift, slowly riding down those eight floors next to them, filled Violet with horror.”
Also see: Book Review: Thirteen Storeys (2020)
77 Shadow Street – Dean Koontz
Psychological supernatural apartment building horror
Welcome to the Pendleton.
Built as a tycoon’s dream home in the 1880s and converted to luxury condominiums not quite a century later, the Gilded Age palace at the summit of Shadow Hill is a sanctuary for its fortunate residents. Scant traces remain of the episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder – and whispers of things far worse – that have scarred its grandeur almost from the beginning.
But now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths.
With each passing hour a terrifying certainty grows: Whatever drove the Pendleton’s past occupants to their unspeakable fates is at work again.
And as nightmare visions become real, as a deadly tide begins to engulf them, the people at 77 Shadow Street will find the key to humanity’s future, if they can survive to use it.
“In his peripheral vision, he saw something loom in the open doorway.”
The Graveyard Apartment – Mariko Koike
Psychological supernatural apartment building horror
A young married couple harbor a dark secret as they and their daughter move into a new apartment building built next to a graveyard.
As strange and terrifying occurrences begin to pile up, people in the building start to move out one by one, until the young family is left alone with someone – or something – lurking in the basement.
“When they got up that first morning, the little white finch was dead.”
The Dark Side of the Room – Tyler Jones
Psychological apartment building horror
For years, Betsy Lupino has lived alone in a rundown apartment.
Alone except for the growing wall of darkness that slowly devours her thoughts and memories.
When a mysterious stranger moves into the building, Betsy fears the worst: that all of the dark inside her head has escaped into the real world.
“Betsy Lupino saw the new resident before the others, and the first thing she noticed was how funny the man walked.”
The Complex – Brian Keene
Psychological survival apartment building horror
There was no warning. No chance to escape. They came suddenly. Naked. Bloodthirsty. Sadistic. They descended upon the Pine Village Apartment Complex, relentlessly torturing and killing anyone they could find.
Fearing for their lives, the residents of the complex must band together. A young trans woman, a suicidal middle-aged writer, a lonely Vietnam vet, a newlywed couple, an elderly widow, a single mother and her son, two on-the-run criminals and the serial killer known as The Exit.
Eleven strangers. The only thing they have in common is the unstoppable horde that wants to kill them. If they are to make it through the night, they must fight back.
“Outside, somebody screams. Sound is a constant factor at the Pine Village Apartment Complex.”
Lock Every Door – Riley Sager
Psychological apartment building horror
No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.
As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story, until the next day, when Ingrid disappears.
Searching for the truth about Ingrid’s disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew’s sordid past and into the secrets kept within its walls. What she discovers pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building’s hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent.
“Light slices the darkness, jerking me awake.”
The Apartment – S.L. Grey
Psychological apartment building horror
Mark and Steph have a relatively happy family with their young daughter in sunny Cape Town until one day when armed men in balaclavas break in to their home.
Left traumatized but physically unharmed, Mark and Steph are unable to return to normal and live in constant fear. When a friend suggests a restorative vacation abroad via a popular house swapping website, it sounds like the perfect plan.
They find a genial, artistic couple with a charming apartment in Paris who would love to come to Cape Town. Mark and Steph can’t resist the idyllic, light-strewn pictures, and the promise of a romantic getaway. But once they arrive in Paris, they quickly realize that nothing is as advertised.
When their perfect holiday takes a violent turn, the cracks in their marriage grow ever wider and dark secrets from Mark’s past begin to emerge.
“When the screaming starts, I’m up and halfway across the room before I even register what it is I’m hearing.”
Published: 7 March 2024
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