This Indigenous horror story literally gave me a nightmare, but it might not be why you think. Yes, it has vampires, but the true monsters in it are those who slaughtered around 200 Blackfeet in the early 1900s. The story of the Blackfeet gets told to a Lutheran pastor in 1912 through a series of confessions by a man named Good Stab, who seems to have had a supernaturally long life. He also has a curious appetite and strange reflexes…and revenge on his mind.

This story of a human meat processing factory in a world where animal meat is no longer viable pushes the limits of some readers’ stomachs with its level of brutality and violence.

While some find the story beautiful, nausea and all, others find it too disgusting to tolerate. — Addison Rizer

Set more than 100 years ago in this world, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, and the Ku Klux Klan plans to bring Hell on Earth. Demons may wear hoods, but they can also be killed. This is where Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters come into play. They must send the Klan’s demons back to Hell before they can take over the country and the world. —Lyndsie Manusos

This creepy gothic horror story is a classic for a reason. Shirley Jackson is the master of making the domestic world feel unsettling. The four characters — Dr. Montague, Eleanor, Theodora, and Luke — stay in Hill House to try to find evidence of a haunting, but the house soon affects them in ways they weren’t prepared for, leading to an unforgettable conclusion. — Danika Ellis

Danika also has an essay,”Gothic Novels About the Horror of Compulsory Heterosexuality,” in which they discuss Jackson’s classic.

This super freaky-deaky mystery/horror mashup follows Cora, who has been desensitized to bloody travesties because she saw her sister get pushed in front of a train by a man who was never caught, whose last words were “bat eater.” Now, Cora is surrounded by other people’s gore as a crime scene cleaner, and drifting away from the people who care about her. If she’s not careful, she could fall victim to the culprit behind the unexplained killings of East Asian women in Chinatown—or the slack-jawed shadow posted up near her door frame.