16 Haunting Folk Horror Books That Will Chill Your Soul

Heather, Rachel, and Antonia are heading to Almanby, a place few return from. Heather is searching for her missing boyfriend, Rachel must deliver a package that her life depends on, and Antonia just wants time with Heather. As they journey through an eerie, endless summer landscape, the shifting geography and cryptic radio voices blur the line between friend and foe.

Haunting and dreamlike, their adventure unravels a chilling mystery—one that reveals exactly why Almanby is a place no one should go.

“It’s inside every parent to want to carry their child’s terror.” After lorry driver Dougie Alport commits a deadly attack, his wife Maureen is consumed by grief—and by the secret she’s long kept from their son, Boyd. Moving north is her attempt at a fresh start, but their new home decays around them, and Boyd drifts away, finding escape at a landfill site.

There, a shocking discovery forces him to confront his mother, her past, and his own fate. Lamb is a visceral tale of memory, horror, and the ties that bind us.

When Mouse agrees to clear out her late grandmother’s house, she doesn’t expect much—until she discovers the hoarded mess and a disturbing journal left by her step-grandfather. His ramblings seem like nonsense until strange, terrifying things begin happening. Alone in the woods with only her dog, Mouse soon realizes the horrors he described are real—and they’re watching her.

As the nightmares close in, she must confront them head-on, or she may not live to escape. Because sometimes, the things that go bump in the night are real.

Iris Hollow and her sisters have always been strange. Vanishing for a month as children, they returned with no memory of where they’d been—but something changed. Their dark hair turned white, their blue eyes black. They’re impossibly beautiful, disturbingly alluring, and always hungry. Now seventeen, Iris just wants a normal life, but when her sister Grey vanishes, she and Vivi must retrace her steps.

As they delve into the supernatural, they realize their past isn’t what they thought—and the world that took them may want them back.

Silvie and her family are spending two weeks living as Iron Age Britons in the northern English wilderness, part of an anthropology course reenacting ancient life. While the students see it as coursework, Silvie’s father is obsessed, raising her on tales of early man—especially their rituals and sacrifices. As Silvie bonds with the students, she glimpses a different future for herself.

But when the group builds a ghost wall, just as the ancients did, history begins to feel dangerously real. And sacrifices must always be made.

Richard and Juliette Willoughby’s world shatters when their five-year-old son, Ewan, dies suddenly. Their home, Starve Acre, was meant to be full of life but now feels haunted. Juliette, convinced Ewan lingers, turns to the Beacons, an occult group offering hope. Richard, desperate for distraction, obsessively digs in the barren field, searching for a fabled oak tree.

But as their grief deepens, their pursuits take a dark turn, uncovering far more than they ever expected—some things should have stayed buried.

Many Indigenous cultures warn against whistling at night. In Hawaii, it’s said to summon the Hukai’po, ancient warrior spirits. In Mexico, it calls Lechuza, a witch who becomes an owl. Across traditions, one thing remains certain—whistling can invite something sinister, something that might follow you home.

This eerie collection of original stories brings to life ghosts, curses, hauntings, vengeful spirits, and dark family secrets. With an introduction by Stephen Graham Jones, these tales celebrate Indigenous survival, imagination, and the terrifying consequences of an ill-advised whistle.

During the blistering heatwave of 1976, sixteen-year-old Nif moves with her grieving family to a remote village on the Welsh borders after her sister’s accidental drowning. But isolation offers no escape. As her family unravels, Nif turns to her own form of witchcraft, gathering talismans from the scorched land. Then she meets Mally, a boy with dark secrets and rituals of his own.

Steeped in eerie folklore and psychological suspense, Water Shall Refuse Them is a haunting coming-of-age tale reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s chilling narratives.

When physicist Ruth Schwarz loses her parents in a car accident, she faces an unusual challenge: their will demands burial in their childhood home—Gross-Einland, a village that seems impossible to find.

When Ruth finally arrives, she uncovers a disturbing secret—a vast cavern beneath the town that exerts a strange influence over its people. Clues about the hole are everywhere, yet no one dares to speak of it, not even as the town teeters on collapse. As Ruth digs deeper, she realizes the key to everything lies buried in her own family’s past.

The Haddesley family has always tended the cranberry bog, bound by an ancient pact: in exchange for their patriarch’s ritual sacrifice, the bog provides a “bog-wife” to continue their lineage. But when the bog refuses to honor the bargain, the five grieving Haddesley siblings are thrown into turmoil.

Middle child Wenna wants to abandon their legacy, but her siblings resist—Eda seeks to twist the ritual, Percy tries summoning his own bog-wife, Nora fights to hold them together, and Charlie uncovers a shocking secret that upends everything they believed.

Margot and her mother have lived quietly by the forest, waiting for “strays”—lost travelers who stray too far from the road. Mama cares for them, feeding them, keeping them warm, before satisfying her insatiable appetite in a horrific way.

But when Eden, a beautiful stranger, arrives in the midst of a snowstorm, Margot is forced to confront her family’s dark secrets. As the dynamics shift, Margot must untangle her desires and make a desperate bid for freedom.

From bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones comes a chilling psychological horror novel that explores identity politics and the American Indian experience. Following four American Indian men and their families, the story delves into the haunting aftermath of a deadly event from their youth. Years later, an entity seeking revenge tracks them down, leaving them powerless as the culture and traditions they abandoned return with brutal, vengeful force.

Dennie Keeling, grappling with early-onset dementia, leads a quiet life, tending to her allotment after her husband’s death and her friend Sarah’s conviction for murder. Twelve years of peace are shattered when three strangers take over a nearby plot, and Dennie begins noticing strange occurrences—shadowy figures at night, plants blooming too soon.

When Sarah’s ghost appears, leaving cryptic warnings in Dennie’s blood, she uncovers a terrifying ancient evil. But with her memory fading, can anyone believe her before it’s too late?

These are the stories that haunt us. A cemetery full of restless spirits, a town cursed by fire, and a bridge hiding a monster waiting for a ritual’s end. A lake that brings back the drowned, twisted by death’s claws. These liminal spaces hold dark secrets, where curses and monsters refuse to fade.

Written by bestselling and critically acclaimed authors, these tales shed a chilling light on the terrifying stories we grew up with, lurking in the places we once called home.

Alejandra no longer recognizes herself. To her family, she is a wife, a mother, a daughter—but none see the darkness consuming her. In her moments of despair, a ghostly figure appears: a crying woman in a tattered white gown. As Alejandra unravels her family’s history through therapy, she discovers that her biological mother’s tragic past is tied to La Llorona, the vengeful spirit of Mexican legend.

To escape this curse, Alejandra must tap into the strength of her ancestors and confront the darkness that threatens to consume her.

High school senior Andrew Perrault escapes into the dark fairytales he writes for his best friend, Thomas Rye, the boy who grounds him. But when Thomas’s abusive parents vanish and he shows up covered in blood, Andrew grows concerned. As Thomas becomes haunted by his own creations—monstrous figures from Andrew’s stories—Andrew follows him into the forbidden forest, discovering the terrifying truth: Thomas’s drawings are coming to life and killing anyone nearby.

Now, the boys must fight the creatures, but the deeper their bond grows, the stronger the monsters become.