Horror Novels Written Like Non-Fiction?

Chasing the Horizon

Blowing in the Wind
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 8, 2006
Messages
4,288
Reaction score
561
Location
Pennsylvania
I'm looking for horror novels that are written as if they're a non-fiction accounts of real events, basically the written version of all the horror movies that pretend to be documentaries or "real" found footage or whatever. The only book I can think of off the top of my head that really does this is House of Leaves, but I figure the experts here must know of others. I have an idea for a horror novel of my own that I want to write like this and want to see how others have done it (plus I just love reading horror and need to discover some new authors anyway). Thanks in advance for the recs.
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
Have you read World War Z? The movie completely missed the point of the novel, but the novel itself was a pretty amazing fictional assembly of different documents, interviews and reports culled during a zombie apocalypse.
 

Chasing the Horizon

Blowing in the Wind
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 8, 2006
Messages
4,288
Reaction score
561
Location
Pennsylvania
Have you read World War Z? The movie completely missed the point of the novel, but the novel itself was a pretty amazing fictional assembly of different documents, interviews and reports culled during a zombie apocalypse.
No, I actually haven't. I had no idea the book was written that way, but now it sounds like something I might actually really like (I couldn't get into the movie at all, but obviously that doesn't mean anything). Thanks!

Calla Lily, I have read Dracula. No idea why it didn't come to mind, since I really enjoyed it and often use it as an example of classic epistolary style. I think my brain needs more coffee.
 
Last edited:

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
The movie had only the most superficial nods to the original novel, so it's best ignored. There wasn't even a main character in the novel, in the way that Brad Pitt was front and center in the film. I really enjoyed World War Z, and I hope you get a lot out of it, since it seems to be doing in novel form what you're interested in experimenting with, so good luck with that. I think you'll really learn a lot from that book and I'd love to hear what you think of it after you're done with it.
 

Tazlima

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 26, 2013
Messages
3,042
Reaction score
1,494
The movie had only the most superficial nods to the original novel, so it's best ignored. There wasn't even a main character in the novel, in the way that Brad Pitt was front and center in the film.

So true. I was super-excited to see how they'd handle the lack of an MC, the diverse settings, the disjointed narrative, and the more technical/tactical considerations. I was hoping for a series of vignettes connected by a slightly more in-depth depiction of the reporter character, his difficulties in obtaining these different interviews

...they gave us a generic zombie action flick that wasn't terrible in its own right (not great, but not terrible), but which I'm convinced was originally written under a different title and renamed World War Z to pull in an audience. Boo.
 

Shoeless

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2009
Messages
2,308
Reaction score
295
True. All they had to do was follow the same narrative conceit as Citizen Kane, and they could have made World War Z work and still stick closely to the book.
 

Anna Iguana

reading all the things
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 16, 2017
Messages
925
Reaction score
219
Location
US
Carrie is an epistolary novel, too.

As is Frankenstein.
 
Last edited:

Ancoelle

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 15, 2015
Messages
61
Reaction score
5
The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich. It has phone transcripts, journal entries, police records, etc. Though a caveat... I didn't particularly enjoy it because I found it to be a bit tedious, but it's a good example of how to do these things.

And I guess I would maybe recommend House of Leaves too? Because of the spiraling narrative element of a journal being written about a man's writings which are about a documentary which are about a house...
 

Jcomp

Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jan 24, 2006
Messages
5,352
Reaction score
1,422
The Last Days of Jack Sparks and The Red Tree are both presented as non-fiction found final manuscripts of the recently deceased authors (complete with forewords by the deceased's brother in the former, and editor in the latter) detailing the events that led their deaths.
 
Last edited:

Rhoda Nightingale

Vampire Junkie
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 25, 2009
Messages
4,470
Reaction score
658
The Moth Diaries is YA, but it's excellent and largely overlooked. It's basically a modern retelling of Carmilla in the style of Girl, Interrupted. Author is Rachel Klein.
 

charliewwriter

Human Person
Registered
Joined
Sep 27, 2017
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
Location
Mississippi, US
I would throw in Zodiac by Robert Graysmith. Caveat: This is actually a non-fiction book. But it's almost a creative non-fiction book. It doesn't read like a list of facts or a police procedure. The story is broken up into actual scenes, some of them completely conjecture, that are actually creepy. To me, stone me if you wish, Zodiac read more like a novel in which a reporter searches for the identiity of a serial killer, and never finds it. The fact that it is a true story and that they never caught the killer is sort of secondary, a bit of icing on top that makes it a little creepier. So I guess this may be a non-fiction book that is written like a novel.