Yeah, I couldn't compile a list like this and not include them but I'm not recommending them for adults except maybe for nostalgia.
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I'm sure the years won't have treated them kindly but when I was a bairn the goosebumps books used to scare the absolute ****e out of me
.
Voting Reform UK 2029: Make Britain Great Again

Slashdot just roasted the hell out of him.
“There are no atheists in foxholes, eh?”-Keith Jennings from the Omen.

VHS is Dr. Jekyll. Bongo is his failed invention.
My password is password.

This is a very astute observation
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Al Burqa/Bongo/Trebbor is Mr. Hyde.
My password is password.

Laird Barron and Stephen Graham Jones
Along with Mariana Enríquez, they comprise my holy trinity of modern horror writers. Jones is, at heart, a Beat writer who watched too many scary movies as a kid (and is also, along with Tommy Orange, one of America's preeminent indigenous storytellers). Barron is the more enlightened heir to Lovecraft. And Enríquez uses the guise of horror fiction to examine the brutal realities of recent Argentinean history.
I've heard many great things about Langan and Danielewski, but have not yet read them.
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If you're diving into horror, skip the surface-level shriek-fests and go for the stuff that lingers like guilt in a priest's confessional. The Fisherman by John Langan is a must — not just for the creeping dread, but for the way it weaves grief into Lovecraftian mythology like some eldritch therapy session.
For something more cerebral (and I mean that both metaphorically and viscerally), House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski will scramble your neurons and make you question whether the hallway behind you just got… longer. It's not for the faint of brain — which, ironically, rules out some folks here who treat Goosebumps like graduate literature.
Toss in some Laird Barron if you like your horror tangled in cosmic nihilism and tough-guy noir — perfect for those who think brooding aloud makes them deep. (It doesn’t, buddy. It just makes you sound like a haunted toolbox.)
Also, if you want horror that bites and winks, My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones skewers slasher tropes with both affection and a steak knife.
Anyway, read widely. Horror isn’t just about what goes bump in the night — sometimes, it’s the guy in the thread who bumps his keyboard trying to sound profound and ends up reviewing his own shadow.
“There are no atheists in foxholes, eh?”-Keith Jennings from the Omen.

I haven't read that one, but it is on my list (along with another of his I found at the thrift store recently).
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Thomas Tryon: The Other, 1971
Never read that one (I have seen the film) but I have read Tryon's Harvest Home, an excellent Gothic horror novel that was made into a miniseries starring Bette Davis and Rosanna Arquette.

Oh yes! The White People. How did I forget that one? I actually first read it and a section from
The King in Yellow
in the same anthology (which prompted me to seek out the entire book):
The full table of contents includes:
Edgar Allan Poe, "MS. Found in a Bottle"
Bram Stoker, "The Squaw"
Ambrose Bierce, "Moxon's Master"
Ambrose Bierce, "The Damned Thing"
Ambrose Bierce, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa"
R. W. Chambers, "The Repairer of Reputations"
M. P. Shiel, "The House of Sounds"
Arthur Machen, "The White People"
Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows"
Henry James, "The Jolly Corner"
Walter de la Mare, "Seaton's Aunt"
H. P. Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space"
It's really not a bad anthology at all for someone who wants to dip their toes into this era of horror storytelling. (Bierce is really excellent as well.)
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I prefer the older stuff. The King in Yellow is my favorite on your list. The White People by Arthur Machen, not on the list, is also a classic.

Check out
So Thirsty
by Rachel Harrison, who I included another book from on the list. Wonderful addiction metaphor. Her books exist in this sort of weird middle-ground between horror and rom-com, which was jarring the first time I read her. But she's a good enough writer to somehow pull it off.
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I reread it recently, and it's still good. I've also picked up on it being a metaphor for addiction, which I don't think I noticed as a teen.

Honestly, I haven't read Barker since I was a teenager and included that one because it's sort of iconic. It's entirely possible that a 14-year-old isn't the best judge of literature and that it's worse than I remember. (By the same token, R. L. Stine was included purely for nostalgia, although he was quite likely an early influence on some of the writers in the final section.)
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I read The Hellbound Heart recently. I did not like it. I thought it was poorly written. I like the idea of the Cenobites but they weren't a big part of the story. The rest of the characters were bores.

I disagree with that.
King has written several of the best horror novels I've read. Though he hasn't written anything I've liked since the publication of It.
If I made a list of the top twenty horror novels I would certainly include Carrie, 'Salem's Lot and The Shining and maybe even Christine.

on that note…
My password is password.

Stephen King is the primary reason why anyone listed after him has a career and those listed immediately before him are still in print. Oh, and the reason I began reading horror at age 12. Discussing horror literature without him is like discussing the history of the NBA without Michael Jordan. There were a number of his lesser efforts which didn't make the cut.
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Including Stephen King erodes the credibility of your entire list

i gotta tag
@Corwin
tho, he loves that ****.
i'm
for real this time
the sound of your racing heart

Yeah, Lovecraftian horror is great. Laird Barron, who I mentioned a few times in the list is a modern master of the form and Stephen King's
Revival
is definitely Lovecraftian as well. I also forgot Victor LaValle's novella
The Ballad of Black Tom
. It's a retelling of Lovecraft's very racist "The Horror at Red Rock" and it's excellent.
(Also, nobody should view this list as a comprehensive guide to any of the authors mentioned. My favorite King book isn't even on it… Because it's not horror )
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yeah, not a fan of original Lovecraft myself, but i tend to like Lovecraftian horror films.
really, gotta ****ing go now thoooo!! goddamnit
the sound of your racing heart

Same. I was already through the 19th century before I realized I haven't done **** all day lmao That's why the
Weird Tales
era is so skimpy. I'll try to elaborate on that more tomorrow as well. Short version is that Lovecraft was extreme problematic, couldn't write dialogue to save his life and yet was super influential within the genre.
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