From big screen to page turner: A recommendation of Halloween Fiction

Written by Ronnie Chang @snicketfence

While 2026 has been a strong year for horror films between the breakout hit of Obsession and interesting adaptive works like Exit 8 and Backrooms, the scares aren’t only to be found on the silver screen. Many horror movies trace their roots back to literature, old and new. For anyone curious on the books behind their favourite horror films, here are some titles worth looking into.

For those interested in horror outside of the Anglophone canon, Ring by Koji Suzuki might be a familiar title. The premise of a supernaturally haunted video tape made Suzuki’s novel the prime jumping off point for a slew of adaptations that would later become the Ring franchise. Its success spread far beyond its original Japanese context as it became the poster child for Japanese horror in the West. While certain aspects of the novel have aged rather poorly, between its handling of sexual assault and gender identity, the novel and its subsequent films are undeniably cult classics in the horror genre.

If one prefers their horror with a more engaged approach to gender, the longevity of Stephen King’s debut, Carrie, evidences its continued relevance in our modern day. First published in 1974, the book’s latest adaptation is an Amazon TV series that maybe misses the mark with some of the changes made by showrunner Mike Flanagan. However, there is no denying the staying power this novel has and, in an age where women’s bodily autonomy is still seen as an appropriate subject of debate, it is easy to understand why. Carrie is a story of messy feminine rage with writing that still strikes a nerve in readers over 50 years later.

Another Mike Flanagan adaptation that was more well received is his 2018 Netflix adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Jackson was a female horror writer during the mid-1900s, whose work was overlooked then for her gender and status as a housewife. She is arguably still overlooked now, having yet to rise to the notoriety of her male counterparts despite her writing being a cornerstone of 20th century feminist literature. The Haunting of Hill House was published in 1959 and, like Carrie, received many adaptations over the years before falling into Mike Flanagan’s hands—two films and two stageplays. The novel is a horror classic and arguably the most well-known of Jackson’s work.

Recent horror adaptations have not hesitated to delve deeper into the troves of horror’s literary canon, either. Robert Eggers’ 2024 film Nosferatu most obviously draws from the 1922 film of the same name, both of which credit Bram Stoker’s Dracula as their literary origin point. The next year, Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein earned a limited theatrical run, inspired by Mary Shelley’s landmark horror novel. Both films were lauded for their cinematographic skill as well as their deft balance between the original source material and contemporary critical understandings of these classic horror works. Dracula and Frankenstein are mainstays of the horror genre for good reason, as these classic books are still rich texts for the modern reader despite, or perhaps especially because of, their age.

The current horror renaissance of film owes a lot to the horror literature that inspired it. This Halloween, why not drop by the shop and check out what terrors lie not on the screen, but on the page?

Edited by Vera Chiu @verachiutheartist