Looking for scary books

[TodaysAGoodDay]

Hi,

In January I decided to do the '52' challenge, i.e. read 52 books in a year. I am 32 books into a wonderful year, I haven't read so much in over 10 years. However, most of the books I am reading are intricate stories, beautifully written, as recommended on several threads here on MN.

I digress. What I particularly lack is scary books, in particular psychologically scary books. The only 'scary' ones in my bookcase are 'Outpost' by Adam Baker and 'The Abominable' by Dan Simmons. So I am looking for recommendations, but with three exclusions please:
-no zombies
-no blood, guts and gore
-no vampires

Yes, I know 'Outpost' is zombies. However, no more suggestions for that particular genre please.

All other ideas welcome, thank you!

Seconding Jeremy Dyson's The Haunted Book. It starts off sort of odd, you wonder what's going on, and the stories get more and more bizarre and unsettling. I loved it.

One of the scariest I've ever read is Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Utterly brilliant.

And Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett, and The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes were both disturbing. (The latter is a little gory.)

I agree with Something Scary Rebekah, I really enjoyed that one, I may have to have a re-read.

Something Wicked rather!

I'm not scared by kiddie vampires or nuffin like that but can recommend The Collector by John Fowles if you want your mind to be messed up. That might depend if your nightmare is the whole being kidnapped-and-locked-up thing as mine is!

Second (or third) The Woman in Black as a great ghost story.

The Collector is an excellent book. Fowles is a very talented writer. It definitely disturbed me too.

Ooooh yes, The Collector is great.