Are you looking for something scary to read or watch this Spooktober? Adult Services Librarian Kristen compiled a list of books and movies that compliment each other's plot and/or themes. Some of these are sure to scare your socks off, so readers/viewers beware!

If you're a fan of haunted houses…

Read:

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager
Library Collection: Print / Large Print
OverDrive/Libby: eBook / Audiobook
Bells that ring themselves. Record players that turn on an play music to empty rooms. Ghosts that can climb out of wardrobes… Maggie Holt doesn't believe in these things, even though they are the details of the story that made her family famous. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved to Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent twenty days there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a horror memoir, House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with the malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity – and skepticism. Maggie has lived her life in the shadow of her father's book, so when she inherits Baneberry Hall after his death, she returns to renovate the house to prepare it for sale. However, her homecoming is anything but warm.

Watch:

The Old Dark House (1932)
Kanopy
hoopla
Frankenstein director James Whale turned J.B. Priestley's novel “Benighted” into this nerve-jangling tale that became the template for all spooky-house chillers to come. Stranded travelers stumble upon a strange old house, and find themselves at the mercy of a highly eccentric and potentially dangerous family.

This atmospheric thriller features an unforgettable role for Boris Karloff, as the hulking, disfigured butler Morgan.

If you're a fan of exorcisms…

Read:

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
Library Collection: Print
OverDrive/Libby: Audiobook
A heartwarming story of friendship and demonic possession. The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since the 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—and 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?

Watch:

The Exorcist (1973)
Library Collection
Blair portrays a 12 year-old girl whose body is possessed by the devil. Jason Miller portrays the priest who confronts the devil in her body and in himself.

If you're a fan of the darker, Brothers Grimm versions of fairy tales…

Read:

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Library Collection: Print
Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber—which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves—she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.

Watch:

The Company of Wolves
Library Collection
Kanopy
Warning: If you're a fan of werewolf movies, you know the transformations can be quite gruesome–and this one might be the most gory you'll see.
Rosaleen is a teenager, living in a country house in England with her family in the present days, and having a nightmare with wolves and werewolves in the Middle Ages. In her dream, her boring sister is dead, she lives with her father and her mother, but she spends lots of time with her lovely grandmother. Granny tells her many stories of werewolf and gives her the following advice: “Never stray from the path in the woods, never eat a windfall apple, and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet.” One day, Rosaleen, while going to visit her grandmother, meets a handsome man and bets who would arrive first at her granny's house. Soon she finds who he is.

If you're a fan of feasting on brains…

Read:

Zone One by Colson Whitehead
Library Collection: Print
OverDrive/Libby: eBook / Audiobook
A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. After the worst of the plague is over, armed forces stationed in Chinatown’s Fort Wonton have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street—aka Zone One. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the three-person civilian sweeper units tasked with clearing lower Manhattan of the remaining feral zombies. Zone One unfolds over three surreal days in which Spitz is occupied with the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD), and the impossible task of coming to terms with a fallen world. And then things start to go terribly wrong…

Watch:

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Library Collection
Kanopy
A disparate group of individuals takes refuge in an abandoned house when corpses begin to leave the graveyard in search of fresh human bodies to devour. The pragmatic Ben (Duane Jones) does his best to control the situation, but when the reanimated bodies surround the house, the other survivors begin to panic.

As any semblance of order within the group begins to dissipate, the zombies start to find ways inside – and one by one, the living humans become the prey of the deceased ones in horror legend George A. Romeros' first film.

If you're a fan of cursed boarding schools…

Read:

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James
Library Collection: Print / Large Print
OverDrive/Libby: eBook
Vermont, 1950. There's a place for the girls whom no one wants—the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the ones too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall, and local legend says the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their friendship blossoming—until one of them mysteriously disappears….
Vermont, 2014. Twenty years ago, journalist Fiona Sheridan's elder sister's body was found in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. And although her sister's boyfriend was tried and convicted of the murder, Fiona can't stop revisiting the events, unable to shake the feeling that something was never right about the case.

Watch:

The Blackcoat's Daughter (2017)
Library Collection
Kanopy
Two girls must fight a mysterious evil force at a deserted prep school in this terrifying horror film starring Emma Roberts and Lucy Boynton. Directed by Osgood Perkins, with music by Elvis Perkins – two sons of Anthony Perkins (Psycho).