I live on a rainy peninsular at the edge of Europe. In winter the beaches are bleak, battered by wild storms and overlooked by strange clifftop houses. It’s Daphne Du Maurier country, and you only have to look at the local paper to see that all sorts of things go on round here. Forget the summer when it’s all about swimming in the sea and boats and barbecues: I love it in winter, when the crowds go home and you can walk around the streets noticing that people often leave their curtains open and switch their lights on.
What’s happening in those slices of lit-up room? Anything could be going on.
Anything.
This is the season for horror. I don’t think anything is more thrilling than being safely indoors (ideally in front of a roaring fire, but under a blanket near a radiator will do) and immersing yourself in terror. Humans have always been drawn to seek out horror stories: reading, writing and watching horror is an entirely rational response to the world. By the end of a book or movie the crisis will be over in some way, and the danger will have passed: this applies, of course, to much fiction, but when the stakes are at their highest, the catharsis is all the more wonderful. As GK Chesterton wrote, ‘Fairy tales don’t tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.’ And winter horror reminds you that spring will come.
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We Hear Voices
It’s not about escaping from reality so much as heightening it and pushing it as far as it will go. It’s about taking real life things (school bullies; alcohol; fear of being alone), pushing them to the extreme, and seeing what might happen. Not only that, but here in rainy Cornwall there is absolutely nothing I love more in the winter than a horror book set in the snow.
Here are five favorites.
Dark Matter by Michelle Paver
I don’t think snowy horror gets better than Michelle Paver’s masterful fictional account of a 1937 winter in Svalbard, deep in the Arctic. This book is written in the form of diary entries from Jack, who is at a low point in London when he is invited to join an expedition to Svalbard as radio operator. He joins in spite of his misgivings, and they set off north, eventually ignoring local advice and setting up camp at remote Gruhuken on the island of Spitsbergen. As the polar winter descends and four months of absolute darkness set in, various events compel Jack’s companions to abandon the mission, leaving him entirely alone . . . or is he? The real terror of being alone in the dark, cut off by snow and ice, and with a hostile presence lurking, left me breathless. This book is terrifying. I went to Svalbard on my honeymoon last year partly because of it.
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Blood looks incredible against snow. This vampire story is set in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in the winter, and the aesthetics are amazing. Oskar is horrifically bullied at school. He makes friends with a girl who lives in the next apartment, though oddly he can only meet her outside after dark. Of course, as he finds out, there is a reason for that. This book is utterly gripping, and mixes the reality of life in a recently constructed Swedish suburb (settings include the lackluster playground, municipal swimming pool, a local Chinese restaurant) with vampiric horror in a darkly funny way, with a vivid ensemble cast. Without any spoilers, let’s just say Oskar’s bullies get their comeuppance.
The Shining by Stephen King
It’s impossible to think about winter horror and not include this. Jack, Wendy and Danny Torrance move to the remote Overlook Hotel for the winter, as caretakers, and over the course of the next few months Jack, a recovering alcoholic, spirals into murderous insanity.
For me the most tense parts of this book are the opportunities for the family to leave the Overlook before snowfall cuts them off completely. I know they are going to stay, but every time, I still hope that they might get out.
Although the hotel is nominally the malevolent force in this story, for me it all comes down to Jack Torrance as, like a Shakespearean tragic hero, he unravels from within. To quote the book: “Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.” A tour de force.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
This novella, written in 1898, is a classic ghost story whose joy (if that’s the right word) is in its claustrophobia and ambiguity. It is not a snow-bound book, but the insularity of life in the Bly Manor meant that this year’s Covid lockdowns put it straight back into my head. I love an unreliable narrator, and this book is filtered through two of of them, as a man called Douglas relates the story of an unnamed governess, who takes a job at Bly looking after two apparently angelic children on behalf of their uncle, whose only stipulation is that he must never be contacted. Miles, the little boy, arrives home from boarding school having been expelled for unknown reasons. Flora, the girl, has an ‘extraordinary charm’, but the governess becomes entirely besotted with Miles. When she starts to see the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessell, two previous employees, things begin to spiral. Are the ghosts there? Is the governess to be trusted? There are different ways of interpreting this story, and all of them are very, very creepy.
The White Road by Sarah Lotz
This opens with gut-wrenching scenes as Simon, by his own admission a loser, pays a strange man to guide him through closed caves in Wales so he can take photos, for his website, of the bodies of earlier adventurers who died down there. When Simon is the only one to make it out alive he becomes notorious and needs to do something even bigger to capitalize on his fame. Off he goes to Mount Everest, ‘the highest graveyard in the world’, lying about his climbing experience to get him to a place where he can film the corpses on the mountainside.
In a separate strand set twelve years earlier, Juliet is attempting the first unassisted solo Everest summit by a woman, when she feels she is being stalked by a ‘third man’. Juliet’s and Simon’s experiences collide on the frozen mountain where the air is thin and help is very hard to come by, and the results are very scary and very, very cold.
Evie Green is a pseudonym for a British author who has written professionally for her entire adult life. She lives by the sea in England with her husband, children, and guinea pigs, and loves writing in the very early morning, fueled by coffee.
My mom had a home on a North Carolina beach, and I spent a lot of very cold winter evenings walking empty beach with my golden retriever. Most of the houses were second homes so they were empty and dark for the season, but lights in some were like beacons of safety yet creepy, too. Snow and ice storms were just mentally wrong in a setting that’s meant for warm weather. One night, my golden who considers every human her friend fluffed up, laid her ears back, and all but dragged me back toward home. I do not want to know what she sensed.
My book recommendation is THE MONSTER MUSEUM by JL Bryan. Despite her team being away for Christmas, ghost hunter Ellie goes to the mountains of NC to stop ghosts from harming a young family who have inherited a home and a roadside attraction full of junk and, apparently, a Snake Man ghost. It’s Book 10 of an awesome dark supernatural suspense series, but it’s accessible to first readers. It not only has the paranoia of being trapped in winter with very dark things, but it’s got “A Christmas Carol” vibes.
Dan Simmons’s marvelous and scary The Terror comes to mind.
Maybe “Wuthering Heights” too… doesn’t the narrator get trapped at the house because of a snow storm?
Not a novel, but To Build A Fire is one of the most terrifying stories I know. Yukon winter, 75F below, and the protagonist falls into a stream…
Dan Simmons – The Terror, The Abominable
Ronald Malfi – Snow, The Ascent
Sean Costello – Squall
Seconding the vote for Dark Matter: it is a fantastic book.
Edith Wharton’s “Ethan Frome”- I had to read it in high school and my reaction was ‘meh’. Rereading it as an adult, I found it terrifying.
Not a novel, but The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell (1852) is one creepy ghost story. Told in flashback by a retired Nursemaid, she recounts when she was young and was hired to take care of an orphaned child at an old house in the country, with only a couple of servants and an old woman and her companion in the house for company. Soon the cold winds of winter start and the snow falls and the Nurse becomes aware that there is something else in the house…..
It’s not a book. However the Lieder ‘Wintereisse’ is about a journey in Winter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PQtpc_5QHI
Let us say….it does not end well.
Not sure if it quite fits the “horror” theme but I finally read Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik recently, and it really capture winter’s isolating and terrifying aspects, which is nicely contrasted with moments when the characters get to thaw in the warmth of friendship or family. Like in Uprooted there are a few twists to the tale that show the softer side of winter, but the descriptions of being trapped in ice or snowbound with little hope of rescue made this Southern girl glad to be indoors while she read it.
John W. Campbell, Jr.’s “Who Goes There?” could go here, I suppose. A recently discovered, longer original version was even published under the name “Frozen Hell”.
I don’t remember where it takes place during winter but being set in Antarctica even summer would feel like harsh winter to most of us, I guess. (Certainly to me!)
As someone who hates the cold, the thought of an icy winter alone is enough to make me shudder (although saying I’m experiencing horror would probably be a little exaggerated).
I have Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Antarctica” on my too-large reading pile and plan to read it one winter in the hopes that reading a novel set in Antarctica (even though it’s not supposed to be horror, I think) will make that real winter a little more bearable as it surely will be preferable to being in Antarctica!
If I believed in reincarnation I’d say I was a sun worshiper in a previous life, or an animal that goes into hibernation during winter. Or both.
What? No mention of Jasper Fforde’s Early Riser?
Glad to see a shout-out for The White Road! I think it’s an under-appreciated book. Those opening scenes in the cave system… truly some of the most subtly creepy scenes ever.
“The Terror” by Dan Simmons is one of my favorites. It definitely was your number 6, right? :)
Try H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. It’s a perpetual winter in Antarctica, where scientific expedition discovered a lost civilization under ice. They also uncovered a few more entities, they wished they hadn’t. After the thaw, all hell broke loose.
Just read a short story in Jane Yolen’s most recent anthology (book is called The Midnight Circus).
Story is about the race to reach the South Pole. Unique take on it, all the pertinent important details are same as the truth.
There is also a piece of the story Graceling by Kristin Cashore where she is climbing a snowy, cold mountain pass. It’s very well done and describes symptoms of hypothermia and frostbite quite well.
As a Canadian I have both a love and respect for the cold. And I’ll take cold over hot any day. When I’m cold I can always work to warm up. When I’m hot it’s much harder to cool down.
What about DEAD WHITE, by Alan Ryan . Great little horror novel, obviously a winter scare! A+++++
Absolutely “The Terror” by Dan Simmons, where things get worse and worse and worse until near the very end.
I’m about to start reading The Shining. A friend and I are doing a buddy read of all of King’s published fiction and posting our discussions on youtube.
So far, we’re loving it.