10 Christmas Horror Novels Wrapped in Yuletide Fear
Do you hear what I hear?
Yeah, it might not be what you were hoping to hear.
Christmas is horrifying enough but even more so when a horror writer gets hold of it.
The following ten Christmas horror novels have enough Christmas fear to make you sleep with one eye – and both ears – open over the festive season.
Just in case.
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Table of Contents
1. Return of the Living Elves (2022)
By Brian Asman
Return of the Living Elves is a zombie comedy Christmas horror story.
When Christmas supply warehouse manager Jimmy tries to help new employee Tommy find a last-minute gift for his girlfriend, they accidentally unleash a long-forgotten and very seasonal genetic experiment with a taste for human flesh.
As elf-zombie hybrids take over the small town of Pine Canyon, California, Jimmy fights to survive alongside Tommy’s girlfriend, a Christpunk named Landfill, and a mysterious, PTSD-stricken soldier.
"The kid didn't look like much, but then again Jimmy Ricci'd seen enough in his nigh-thirty years working the nightshift at Whosgotta Christmas Supply Warehouse to know appearances could be deceiving. Then AGAIN again, he'd never had a new recruit show up for work in goddamn CLOWN PAINT before."
2. Snowball (2019)
By Andre Gonzalez
Snowball is a fantasy Christmas horror story.
The holidays are a time for magic, cheer, and making memories.
Brandon and Erin begin a new family tradition by introducing the elf on a shelf to their young children. When Erin brings home their newly purchased elf, little do they know the horror that awaits.
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, incidents occur around the house, some innocent, some sinister. As the days become less jolly, Brandon suspects an evil spirit is haunting their home. Questioning his own sanity, he recognizes a pair of crazy, gray plastic eyes always watching.
"The Armstrong family, though young, had a tradition of decorating the house for Christmas on the first Saturday of December. Little did they know the terror waiting on the other side of the holiday season of 2019."
3. NOS4A2 (2013)
By Joe Hill
NOS4A2 is a supernatural Christmas horror story.
Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.
Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.”
Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son.
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"Nurse Thornton dropped into the long-term-care ward a little before eight with a hot bag of blood for Charlie Manx."
4. Krampus: The Yule Lord (2015)
By Brom
Krampus: The Yule Lord is a dark fantasy Christmas horror story.
One Christmas Eve in a small hollow in Boone County, West Virginia, struggling songwriter Jesse Walker witnesses a strange spectacle: seven devilish figures chasing a man in a red suit toward a sleigh and eight reindeer. When the reindeer leap skyward, taking the sleigh, devil men, and Santa into the clouds, screams follow. Moments later, a large sack plummets back to earth, a magical sack that thrusts the down-on-his-luck singer into the clutches of the terrifying Yule Lord, Krampus. But the lines between good and evil become blurred as Jesse’s new master reveals many dark secrets about the cherry-cheeked Santa Claus, including how half a millennium ago the jolly old saint imprisoned Krampus and usurped his magic.
Now Santa’s time is running short, for the Yule Lord is determined to have his retribution and reclaim Yuletide. If Jesse can survive this ancient feud, he might have the chance to redeem himself in his family’s eyes, to save his own broken dreams, and to help bring the magic of Yule to the impoverished folk of Boone County.
"Santa Claus... How vile your name upon my tongue. Like acid, hard to utter without spitting. Yet I find myself capable of speaking little else. It has become my malediction, my profane mantra. Santa Claus ... Santa Claus ... Santa Claus."
5. You Better Watch Out (2021)
By Matt Forgit
You Better Watch Out is a comedy Christmas horror story.
Someone evil is dreaming of a red Christmas.
Mary Classen is the successful CEO of a booming tinsel company in the quiet town of Tinselvania, Maine. Perpetually single and surrounded by quirky friends and townspeople, her world is flipped upside down when Bright Harmon, a rising star in the competitive world of tinsel-selling, arrives from a New York City Christmas conglomerate to discuss a potential partnership.
Meanwhile, the town of Tinselvania is under attack by a bloodthirsty, maniacal serial killer dressed as a reindeer. Why are they here? What do they want? Can Mary and Bright balance a blossoming romance and stop a deranged murderer before it’s too late?
"A motionless figure, partially obscured by the darkness outside but illuminated by the snow and moonlight. Dressed in a fuzzy, dark brown, one-piece costume with a white belly. A stiff, smooth reindeer mask over his or her face and head that completely covered any identifying features."
6. Snow (2021)
By Ronald Malfi
Snow is a supernatural Christmas horror story.
The blizzard begins on Christmas Eve, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Todd Curry doesn’t need another reason to disappoint his son, so he joins three other people in renting the last four-wheel drive available and they set out into the blinding snow.
Two hours into the treacherous trip, Todd swerves to avoid a man in the middle of the highway. The stranger claims his daughter is lost somewhere in the snow. Though his odd demeanor and ripped clothes make Todd and his group uneasy, they agree to take the man to the nearest town, if the now-damaged car can make it.
What awaits them at the next exit, however, is nothing they could have imagined. Around an empty town square, fires burn, cars are abandoned, storefronts are smashed. And there is no one to be seen.
But soon the shadows lurking on the edges of their vision will step into the light, and Todd and his fellow travelers will find themselves facing a sharp-scythed evil shaped from the snow, tearing its way into human form and taking the neighborhood by storm.
“Wiping strands of sweat-slicked hair from her face, Shawna Dupree crouched below the counter inside the deserted Pack-N-Go. Too frightened to sit up and peer over the countertop, she managed to survey the store in the reflection of the tortoiseshell antitheft mirror above her head. The blood on her hands was starting to freeze to the rifle’s cold steel.”
7. Secret Santa (2020)
By Andrew Shaffer
Secret Santa is a comedy Christmas horror story.
Out of work for months, Lussi Meyer is desperate to work anywhere in publishing. Prestigious Blackwood-Patterson isn’t the perfect fit, but a bizarre set of circumstances leads to her hire and a firm mandate: Lussi must find the next horror superstar to compete with Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Peter Straub. It’s the ’80s, after all, and horror is the hottest genre.
As soon as she arrives, Lussi finds herself the target of her co-workers’ mean-spirited pranks. The hazing reaches its peak during the company’s annual Secret Santa gift exchange, when Lussi receives a demonic-looking object that she recognizes but doesn’t understand. Suddenly, her co-workers begin falling victim to a series of horrific accidents akin to a George Romero movie, and Lussi suspects that her gift is involved.
With the help of her former author, the flamboyant Fabien Nightingale, Lussi must track down her anonymous Secret Santa and figure out the true meaning of the cursed object in her possession before it destroys the company and her soul.
"Lussi walked up to the front door of the Blackwood Building on Avenue A. Although she'd heard the publisher's East Village Headquarters was unusual, she wasn't prepared for it to be this unusual."
8. Santa Took Them (2015)
By William Malmborg
Santa Took Them is a thriller Christmas horror story.
Christmas Eve 2005. Eight-year-old Michelle Harper is the only survivor of a horrific massacre that has left her four siblings decapitated, and her mother slowly dying. The words Santa Took Them are written in blood on the bedroom wall.
Ten years later, having been released from a psychiatric hospital for children, Michelle disappears. Her uncle and his girlfriend are found hacked to death with a knife before being decapitated. The words Santa Took Them are once again written in blood on the wall.
No one in Holly Brook has forgotten the horror that unfolded on Christmas Eve all those years ago, and now, as a terrifying blizzard descends upon the small isolated town, and teens begin disappearing one by one, it looks as if that gruesome night was only the beginning.
"The snow was gentle, but persistent, and had slickened the roads to the point where Marty McKenzie had to focus on his driving more so than on what Chris and Paul were saying, his knuckles turning white as he kept the SUV from skidding."
9. Saint Nicholas (2013)
By Brian James
Saint Nicholas is a fantasy Christmas horror story.
If you thought you knew Saint Nicholas, you thought wrong.
The origin of one of history’s most iconic figures is not a fairy tale. It is not a story for children, to be told by the fire on a cold night. It is a story of pain and fear, of death and rebirth. But most of all, it is a story from a nightmare.
Nicholas was a farmer before the war, when he lost everything he ever loved. Now, riddled with the emotional consequences of his own actions, and the remorse of a father who failed his child, he exists from drink to drink, making his way through life in a small village in Prussia. Every day, he regrets his life and wishes for a death he cannot accept.
Until death came for him.
Mythical creatures spring forth from legend, and Nicholas is thrust into the middle of a nightmare of death and destruction as he battles the legendary Draugar, and struggles with his most dangerous enemy: himself.
"Some said that shapes moved in the night. That the forests were alive with death. That the creatures of myth and fable stalked the night, made ravenous by the blood and the fear that seized the land."
10. The Visitor (2020)
By Sergio Gomez
The Visitor is a science fiction Christmas horror story novella.
On Christmas, during one of the worst snowstorms Indiana has ever seen, five strangers are forced to take shelter inside of a roadside diner. As the night progresses, the snowfall shows no signs of relenting, ice begins to build up on the roads, and the temperature seems to be dropping by the hour.
But the worst has nothing to do with the weather, and everything to do with the sixth visitor coming to the diner.
The jolliest time of the year quickly turns bloody as the diners find themselves fighting for their lives. This Christmas won’t just be white. It’ll be red, too.
"The buzz around town for the last week was that it was going to be the worst storm Indiana had seen in centuries - somewhere between six to eight inches of snow was expected. But they said that about all of them when the news cycle was slow, so Sal hadn't bought it. Not until now that he was watching the wind whip snowflakes the size of dimes around outside."
Published: 20 December 2022
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