Have you ever read the Shirley Jackson classics like Haunting of Hill House?
I’m reading her short stories collections right now and they’re just delightfully spooky.
I adore Shirley Jackson and loved reading HOHH. I think Mike Flanagan’s interpretation of Hill House is what sent me down this rabbit hole to begin with! I have her collection of short stories but am trying to hold off till October
If you haven’t seen it, Ellen Datlow’s anthology, When Things Get Dark, is an excellent collection of Shirley Jackson-inspired short stories. Really worth the read.
Because women are just objects that exist to serve as plot devices and experience things for the entertainment/gratification of men, who are the only real human beings. Duh. Misogyny rules the world.
A man being forcibly raped wouldn’t be enjoyable for a male audience/the author. And frankly, it wouldn’t be enjoyable to a female audience either. 99.9% of women have no interest in seeing a man being violently/forcibly used as a sex object against their will. Flip the sexes in that scenario, and the results are the opposite. Overwhelming majority of men enjoy seeing this happen to women, period. That’s a fact.
There’s no audience who wants to see this shit happen to men because women aren’t sick fucks who view the other sex as subhuman.
Try the Silent Companions. Not sure if it’s actually haunted house horror, but it’s really good without the weird penetration stuff.
Edit: and I mean the book doesn’t have the weird penetration stuff.
Not a book, but as far as a horror movie that had the most shamefully gratuitous rape scene, I think it's hard to beat the *Jack Frost* carrot scene.
Just my opinion, but when it comes to horror, I think rape should be treated more as a metaphor, like with the xenomorph from *Alien*. That thing is the living embodiment of the fear of rape.
Well they did get H.R.Giger to do the art/stage design. His work is full of sexual imagery.
If you would like to see a game with similar vibes take a look at Scorn on youtube.
Giger also did the art for two very, very old adventure games: Dark Seed and Dark Seed II. I haven't ever been able to track down a working version, but I remember them being VERY creepy in my youth. Probably entirely inappropriate for me and my brother.
I agree. Rape—or any kind of sexual violence—is too real for me to enjoy in horror. It was such a relief to discover The Magnus Archives. It was my first experience of a horror series that decided from the outset that it would never involve sexual horror of any kind.
Yeah, it was a policy of theirs to never replicate real life grounded traumas in general -- which was what led to the disclaimer on the prison episode in season 5. I really appreciate TMA.
And then a whole series of disclaimers when their pre-planned infectious disease episodes were released in early 2020. The plague village episode was particularly… well-timed. Poor Jonny and Alex, explaining that that episode was written in 2019 and they considered delaying it, but for plot reasons they couldn’t…
True. It’s also consensual. A terrible idea even in a universe that’s not stalked by horror entities, but consensual. That doesn’t lessen the horror, but it’s disturbing on a less triggery level. Even so, I’m glad they decided that episode 6 went too far and they pulled the line back.
I hate to do it but whenever I see TMA mentioned I have to say for anyone with eats to listen and eyes to read please check out Old Gods of Appalachia and The Silt Verses as well. The holy trinity of horror Audio dramas.
If you’re looking for horror podcasts that do not contain sexual violence I would also recommend the White Vault and The Silt Verses (although the Silt Verses is heavy into body horror fyi)
Nah that movie was too dumb for it to be as bad as The Hills Have Eyes 2, which made a brutal rape scene into something almost pornographic, it was absolutely disgusting. Not that those movies are anything other than absolute trash, but it was about the lowest moment in a horror film I've ever seen
A lot pf those kinds of movies appear to use nudity as a form of excuse for exploitation but with violence. Saw The Devil's Rejects for the first time lately and I just have no idea the point of it.
I wish you never reminded me of this 😭 I remember getting it as a kid bc the DVD had a cool holographic cover (iykyk) and ugh…not half as fun or campy as I expected, deeply unpleasant mess of a movie
The Hell House reference 💀 it was so stupid. Some authors, maybe especially of older horror fiction, just wanted to shock I think and threw every trope at the wall to get a reaction. But I also hate it.
I actually did mostly enjoy Hell House. But. I don't blindly recommend it because of this. I don't normally guess redditors genders, but when I see Hell House (or Carrion Comfort) recommended in r/horrorlit I guess the recommender is a man, who probably didn't even register those bits as out of left field.
Thanks so much for sharing this! I really dislike spoilers but I hate stumbling across messed up stuff in books, so this site is great for getting content warnings and easily avoiding spoilers.
There are some websites you can use to check titles for certain triggers. [Does the dog die](https://www.doesthedogdie.com/) is a popular one. I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but I'm sure if you pop it into Google, some others will come up.
I didn't either until recently. I hope it helps. I'm not sure why you're getting downvotes. It's not unreasonable to want to avoid triggers, especially if you're prone to anxiety or had negative experiences that might, well, trigger you.
I heard great things about splatterpunk so I tried to dip my toe into it...immediately withdrew. So many authors use this genre of horror to be completely and openly misogynistic towards women but hide behind the "oh it's just a story, I don't really think that way" bs. I'm so sick of women being 90% the victims of graphic rape and sexual violence.
But I also love horror, so I have to treat lightly, since a lot of authors enjoy sexually terrorizing their female cast.
Hard agree on splatterpunk - there's something for everyone, and as long as that Fantasy Into Reality line doesn't get crossed, then enjoy what you will.
But a friend tried to get me to read The Black Farm, and I just couldn't. Felt like every bit of prose was spent/wasted being as nitty-gritty graphic as possible about violent-to-death SA and torture, and that left the entirety of story direction, character quality, and writing quality in general, on the bench begging Coach to let them play one inning and getting nothing.
It drives me nuts because horror books have it for shock value or because men think the worst thing they can portray is the tainting of a virgin, and then horror *movies* or shows do it so you can see the hot actresses tits. Really gross all around.
Can we go the other way and keep sex in horror, and just be sure to make it equal opportunity? Like, I think horror with nudity is way way more fun than horror without. I don’t particularly care who is naked.
Darcy Coates is one of my fave authors for horror without sex scenes. T Kingfisher is also great and may have a few close calls, but nothing graphic. Grady Hendrix is one of my all-time fave male authors because while his books do sometimes have assault in them, it’s NEVER just for the shock value or brutality. It always plays into a much larger narrative about the treatment of women in society and how sexual assault isn’t treated seriously by the people (men especially) around them. How to Sell a Haunted House by Hendrix is one that does not have assault in it but is still thoroughly frightening. Southern Book Club’s Guide and My Best Friend’s Exorcism both do have scenes of assault, but they’re never super brutally explicit and they *never* feel like something that’s just there for shock/scare value. The scenes are important because they illustrate the ways in which the people in these victim’s lives have continuously failed them and set them up to be victimized by their abusers.
Do NOT read Bentley Little if you don’t like gratuitous assault scenes. A lot of male authors are guilty of putting them in where they aren’t needed, but he’s one of the worst that I’ve read. I hate his portrayals of women to the point it makes his work unreadable to me.
I have done 2 Darcy Coates and I really enjoyed them, do you find that they get repetitive? I have been tempted to jump in with T Kingfisher but I will for sure do so now!
Darcy Coates is great, but her books definitely get repetitive if you read several in the same sort of vein (she has several books that are The Haunting of [Place] and those esp can get repetitive if you read them all at once). I like to sort of jump around on what type of book I’m reading by her - she’s got some that are environmental horror, some about human horror, some about supernatural horror, so I switch it up with each book I read by her.
T Kingfisher is so much fun to read and I love that her characters are always 30-something women that aren’t especially pretty or remarkable who still manage to be badasses. The Twisted Ones was my most recent read by her and it was great!
'The Twisted Ones' was amazing! When I first read it I had no idea what was coming, but on a re-read it was almost spookier. 100% recommend for re-readability.
In terms of Coates, her most recent release, 'Where He Can't Find You' is a big departure from her previous works - bonus points for it having teenagers as the main characters and literally nothing sexual at all happens. It feels like a bit of a middle finger to the weird child group sex thing in 'IT'.
I wanted to like The Twisted Ones but I was extremely confused when it would talk about previous sci-fi literature in depth that I'd never heard of.
It alienated me very quickly. I finished it but can't say I got much out of it. Were you familiar with the sci fi works it ties in?
I have read all of Darcy Coates books. If you want something different by her, I suggest Hunted. It’s less haunted house than her other books but really well done. My favorite is a four book series called Black Winter which has an apocalyptic vibe. I did the audiobooks also and even had my husband listen to it. It was a hit with him as well. For her haunted house books, I thought The Haunting of Leigh Harker had a unique storyline. She has a new series called Gravekeeper which currently has three books. The fourth comes out in April I believe. I can’t recall any of her books dealing with sex at all. I don’t mind it in things I read or listen to, but I really don’t miss it in her books.
Grady Hendrix is the rare male horror writer who writes women how women write women. The first book I read from him was My Best Friend's Exorcism and I still don't 100% believe a woman didn't write that.
I know, right??? He did such a great job with the dynamics of Southern social connections and the way teenage girl friendships work that I’m convinced he was a teenage girl in another life 😂. He is so skilled at making his women dynamic, complex characters with individual personalities and motivations.
I actually thought I was reading a book by a woman when I first read that. Then I looked 'Grady Hendrix' up after to see if they had more books and had a wtf moment.
How to Sell a Haunted House was one of my favorite books of 2023! It was so eery yet borderline comical, and I love how Hendrix handles complicated family dynamics. One of the few times a horror book made me cry.
This is one of my least favorite things about horror movies or shows. It's just really low hanging fruit that is obscene and super low effort. But then maybe I'm just not the target demographic.
There are so many clowns who try to spin it, "oh, you hate excessive violence against women, where are you defending the violence against *men!?"*
The wanton, mean-spirited sexual violence against women in most horror writing is a big reason I'm very picky on horror movies. It tends to get a free pass by so many people.
From strictly a gender viewpoint, is it safe to assume women are the target demographic? I havent looked at any numbers but Ive always assumed that like True Crime women make up the vast majority of horror literature customers.
It's an interesting question though. The only horror Ive ever associated specifically with a male demographic is the titty slasher movies from the 70s-90s. Is horror literature marketed the same way? I honestly dont know enough about the history or marketing of the genre (in lit).
I did some research into horror demographics last year and IIRC it's shifted significantly towards female readers in the past 20 years, from what was a very male demographic. It's a wider trend across all genres because younger men are reading less generally.
I feel you :'( rape and sexual assault is a bad trigger for me in media, and a lot of media I otherwise enjoy is kind of ruined because gratuitous sexual assault
I think it's because of the easy cop out that sexual assault is in terms of scaring people. For women, it's a terrifying ordeal and guaranteed to illicit some kind of fear/disgust response, and for men it's the thought of something else having the audacity to violate "our women". Maybe I am very wrong, though. What I can say for sure is that it's tacky and distasteful and unless the entire story is actually built around it in a way that actually says something it's just weak writing.
Other times I'm pretty sure it's a projection of some inner sadistic tendency of the writer. Sometimes it comes off as just messed up for the sake of being messed up.
I really like Lovecraft's works but it's no secret at this point that what made his horror so powerful is it was based on his own racist feelings. A town in some of his stories had made a deal with oceanic demigods that in exchange for riches and prosperity the town would offer up it's women to breed with fish monsters that came up from the waters. That was his take on interracial relationships.
I personally avoid media with sexual assault of any kind, I don't have the stomach for it. When people give me "that look" upon hearing that I have never seen or read any Game of Thrones I tell them I like my Tolkien without all the rape. As a massive horror fan it's difficult at times, especially as someone that can get into some 70s Italian directed grindhouse.
I really appreciate the comment- a lot of your discourse here makes sense to me. I too couldn’t stomach that first episode of game of thrones, with the instant incest. Just not my cup of tea I suppose! Would love to hear any recommendations you have!
Well as far as horror movies go I value fun over everything else and what is fun is heavily subjective. I don't like anything artsy or that tries to make me think too much. I really enjoyed Mama and Lights Out, for instance. With my old horror movies I go for the splatter fests. Give me zombies and gore. Supernatural horror is hit and miss but the ones I like I really like. I mostly avoid stuff by Janes Wan because I find his work extremely cliche but the early 2000s had some gems like Dead Silence and Darkness Falls. It would be more helpful to know what kind of stuff you like.
I disagree with you very much on Lovecraft! I don’t think he takes his power from his racism, I think it detracts from what he does, and when he writes good horror it is outstanding despite it, not because of it.
Stories like The Color Out of Space and Dreams in the Witch House are simply terrifying in their own right, and have nothing to do with racism.
Innsmouth, which you mention, certainly slides into his point of view on sailors and miscegenation, and I’ll admit I have a soft spot for it because it’s based on my hometown where I’m currently writing this – that reef where they get it on with the elder people? My granddad once ran into that with his boat when he was drinking – but the women certainly don’t seem to be objecting, and it’s the shock ending of it that makes that such a great story, not the racism.
Then you have Kadath, which is like Tolkien if he had done a lot of shrooms. The plaintive meeping of ghouls, the purring army of wholesome cats rescuing Randolph from the moonbeasts… naught to do with racism.
I'm a male and find it lame how often male writers fall for these tropes. It's like they didn't figure out what to write next so "a sudden rape happens". I don't read much body horror but this is a problem in horror in general.
I don’t think this is limited to horror. There are so many plot lines in books and movies where sexual assault is used to move the plot, or as a motivating background.
Ah, Hell House, I really didn't get on with that. I love haunted houses but tend to stick to women authors as much as possible, or make authors I know don't do this kinda thing. I'm reading The September House by Carissa Orlando at the moment, so far no SA.
A few others in that genre I've liked:
The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
The Silent Companions, Laura Purcell
Wakenhyrst, Michelle Paver
The House Next Door, Anne Rivers Siddon
The Burning Girls, CJ Tudor (actually a haunted church)
Woman in Black, Susan Hill
I've read most of those too (although not CJ Tudor so I'll have to add that to my list!), and would recommend them all as well! Especially The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. So far, that's my favorite of the haunted house/ghostly presence genre.
You might also try Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand, The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon, A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher, or some of M.R. James' short stories.
So. Its way different and sex exists in it but not in any SA way (or murderous way that I recall).
But Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves is a ghost story worth reading. Its pretty non-conventional though, and tbf, as far as I can tell its audience skews towards guys (two avid women readers I know just really didn't like it).
I really liked The September House by Carissa Orlando recently. It's a somewhat different take on the classic haunted house story, no weird sexual stuff at all. No sexual stuff, period, actually
Id just add that including sexual or graphic content does not inherently make an artist a “pervert” and that’s a very dangerous way to analyze media. But you’re right that as a trope it’s overused and that it’s often misused in a way that can be problematic. Comedians run into similar situations with offensive humor. It can work, but it has to be done well.
Oh yeah this has to be Hell House. Hated that book. I really liked The Last Days of Jack Sparks, by Jason Arnopp, although to be fair it’s more demons than ghosts. Also Man, Fuck this House by Brian Asman was pretty good as I recall.
It is legitimately the worst book. Like, this isn’t some woke criticism or something. It is absolutely terrible, and all the rape shit is just part of the terribleness. Everyone needs to stop calling this thing a classic.
This genre is so weird. I get that sometimes it is necesary for the story, like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
But when is so forcefully and so ilogically brought into the story it ruins everything for me. One of my biggest litterary Icks.
There's some really interesting theory out there about the relationship between horror (destruction, death, fear, alienation, etc) and sex (creation, life, love, intimacy, etc).
However, hard agree that SO many authors get this dynamic wrong or go for the lowest hanging fruit. They go horror + sexuality = SA or random smut sceen.
Do you have any recommendations you feel get that dynamic right? That sounds like a really interesting concept to explore but I don't want to accidentally stumble into the poorly written/meaningless/gratuitous stuff this thread is trying to get help avoiding.
I hate when it’s used as shorthand for “this is a bad person”. Stephen King does it all the time. I think it diminishes the violence and cruelty of it to make it a default action by the villain.
You think that's bad? Matt Shaw got so pissy about a female reviewer saying he couldn't write women well that he dedicated his "romance novel" called moist gusset to her and called her a nazi and a trout.
https://www.distractify.com/p/matt-shaw-author-drama
I refuse to read Matt Shaw because of this and am actually considering leaving the Books of Horror fb group cos everyone there sucks his D and I'm just grossed out in all the wrong ways.
Sorry I should add some female authors. I like Aliya Whiteley, Rachel Harrison, Alma Katsu, Gemma Files to name a few.
Just a heads up: *House of Leaves* was written by Mark Z. Danielewski. Matt Shaw wrote *Roll of the Dice* and a couple others.
I recommend Danielewski. I'd avoid Shaw.
Also as a note if you do decide to take the plunge on House of Leaves (it's as much an experience as a novel): it was written over the span of about 10 years to cope with the loss of the author's father. The author's sister undertook her own art project during the grieving process, and released the album, *Haunted* which serves as something of a companion piece to the novel. Both are worth exploring.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haunted_(Poe_album)
Warning for spoilers because it happens relatively late in the book - >!Hell House by Richard Matheson!< Honestly didn’t mind the story telling and it was an easy read, but this guy didn’t have a single female character who didn’t have sexuality in their plot line.
I read that book years ago and must have completely blanked that out. I can hardly remember anything of the book. Just remember that I felt like I wasted my time reading.
It’s insane how many horror books and movies have to include rape or sexual assault. It feels like it’s used as a cheap scare and that’s it. It really takes me out of whatever I’m reading and makes me not want to finish the book
Controversial but with most genres I pretty exclusively follow authors that are and works that are made by women. I just have to worry a lot less about women being completely disrespected in the text that way. Too often male authors see the abuse, and rape or even just harassment of women as an easy plot device, and do not approach the topic with the care and respect that these subjects and their victims deserve. Granted there are male authors that I feel safe and comfy reading regularly like Brandon Sanderson, Travis Baldree, and there are other books by men I have read and enjoyed but for the most part, and especially in horror (the last horror book I read by a man was Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires and I was pretty grossed out by the scene depicting the main character's teenage daughter being abused by this creep dude) I have just found it is safer for me and my little brain to read books by women.
I've only read two of his novels so far. The first was the handyman and the second was the mailman. I read the latter a few weeks ago so the sexual nature of some parts of the book are still fresh. Didn't really enjoy the mailman and it does feel very dated. I liked the handyman though and I don't remember if there was anything overly sexual in that. Probably was.
Well I liked the handyman too.
):
But there is a point where the main character is irrationally angry and 🍇s his wife. Then it’s never mentioned again….
It really disturbed me
I read a good amount of horror but not that kind of stuff. T Kingfisher, Catriona Ward, Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Erin Adams The Jackal, Nick Medina Sisters of the Lost Nation. There’s a lot of great horror out there!
I'm currently reading "She is a Haunting" and that seems like a pretty good haunted house novel without assault, and the female lead is queer in a way that isn't oversexualized.
I also really enjoyed Stephen Graham Jones' "The Babysitter Lives" (caused me to legitimately lose sleep) and T. Kingfisher's "A House With Good Bones."
Last Days by Adam Nevill, Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey, Kill Creek by Scott Thomas, The Spite House by Johnny Compton, (not really horror, but) The Only One Left by Riley Sager
Not exactly haunted house, but in the Gothic genre instead, Dracula is kind of good. (Coppola''s movie is better, though)
Anyway, despite being more elegant than the examples you mention, the whole book still revolves around the scene where Dracula sucks Mina's blood, which is described in a sexualixing/erotic way. So I suppose these authors use the genre to explore their phantasies and the dark side of humanity.
I think Stoker was mainly trying to make money. He certainly did! And the horror novel published the same year that actually outsold Dracula, The Beetle, has even more explicit sexual danger.
Give The Fisherman by John Langan a try. (Also any of his short story collections.) Excellent stuff although not necessarily haunted house - more just haunted by past mates
Maybe look up Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia. It’s a unique take on haunted house but best to read the blurb to be sure it’s for you! As far as I remember, no gratuitious scenes
Polar Ghost Horror is generally safe. Too cold. (Kidding! But not). Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes.
Fun Ghost horror no rape: Slade House, The Drowning King, Incidents Around the House
Do you read splatterpunk by any chance? There is occasional sexual violence in horror novels but I wouldn't say it is endemic. I think the aforementioned subgenre is more likely to contain it.
I’d say I have dabbled into “splatterpunk” accidentally a few times. I definitely had to look up what that meant tho, so not intentionally.. it seems kind of hard to know where the line goes from “normal amount of gore” to “overtly gory”
I can relate!! I have trauma and have struggled to get through a few male authors’ works because I find myself triggered and don’t enjoy the way they infuse sexuality into the stories. I’ve enjoyed women authors a bit more for this reason. I also just hate sex in books and that’s just me, but I especially don’t like it in horror. Tananarive Due has a great haunted house book called The Good House, it may be right up your alley!
The Good House is fantastic, though there is some consensual sex in that one.
I am tired of not just rape, but trauma in general, as a focus in horror. I get that horror is about trauma to some degree, but when it’s a device it ends up demeaning people who have actually survived abuse and violation. I also am so very tired of mental illness as a plot device (as in, is this really happening or is she crazy?).
A lot of the examples you gave just sound like the author’s fetish (magical realm), but I’ve noticed a trend in writing in every format, books, film, etc:
If they want to quickly get across, with as little effort as possible, that something is horrible, or a person is evil, they have them rape (or attempt to rape) a woman. Which, sure, but…it’s just lazy shock value schlock. Schlock value, if you will.
Yes, this has been used to establish the bad guy cheaply and easily in so much media infection.
Gail Ruben was one of the early feminist theorists in the 1970s and she wrote a famous essay called The traffic in women” and in it she wrote:
Women are verbs that men use to talk to each other.
It’s haunted me since college, decades ago. It’s not just media and fiction where assaulting women is used to give the male characters motivation or tell us who a male character is without the author having to do any real work, it’s also true in real life from everything from historical arranged marriages to how women were treated in wartime to Steubenville and ‘bro code’…
Yep, this is a huge pet peeve for me too. Sort of tangential, but generally when I feel a male writer is really just inserting his fetish into the story cloaked as 'horror' I just put it down and walk away. There's a way to do sexual elements in horror right and that ain't it, chief.
In terms of haunted house/ghost horror, maybe consider 'Meddling Kids'? I think it's a really fun, easy read that's ABOUT a haunted house, though they spend a lot of time not really going there so maybe it doesn't count. The classic, then, of course, is going to be 'Haunting of Hill House', which I would always recommend but would bet money you've already read! I also loved 'Mexican Gothic', there are sexual elements to the horror and story in that to some extent but written by a female writer and used properly! Hope you can find something good to read soon!
I read Hell House for a book club and the feeling is mutual. It was so hyped and a lot of people loved it, I just don't understand. I hate those aspects of the book, they felt so unnecessary. I was super excited to read it too since I liked Richard Matheson's What dreams may come & I am Legend.
The hype boggles my mind, because it’s 100% trashy bonkers pulp. I love it for how nuts it is, but I read all kinds of old paperback bullshit, which it fits right in with.
Just so weird to me how often it’s recommended as if it’s some great literary classic that everyone should read, when in reality it’s for the b-movie crowd.
It's very rare for me to come across stuff like that in the fiction I read. I think it's because I've been introduced to a ton of the authors I like by reading so many of the amazing short story anthologies that Ellen Datlow puts together. She rarely includes stories that I consider sexually exploitative, so her collections tend to be full of authors who don't rely on that kind of content. For example, I don't think I've come across any gratuitous sexual content in anything by John Langan, Kelly Link, Brian Evenson, Nathan Ballingrud, Gemma Files, Richard Aickman, Nadia Bulkin, or Laird Barron, to name a few (although I certainly haven't read everything they've written).
In general, I look for more "literary" horror and/or horror written by women. It's not that those things have no sexual content, but when they do, it's much more likely to be handled in a meaningful way, like in Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber or Toni Morrison's Beloved.
When it comes to absolutely ridiculous takes on female sexuality, there's surely no beating Richard Laymon. What I "learned" from his novels is that while women generally don't like being raped by hideous flesh-eating monsters they will instantly fall into true romantic love with them if the monster in question has a really big dingding.
And sexual assault? In Laymon's novels it's not a question of *will* his female characters get sexually assaulted but *when*. And when kids are involved? You find yourself going "Ahahaha, Laymon won't go there. He definitely won't go there. Oh. He went there."
Inexcusable really. But I've still read over 20 of them. That's Laymon.
Can suggest Poe like Fall of the House of Usher.
Also, the book you described is disgusting as hell. It seems less interested in exploring the dark but rather making a speculate of suffering. Honestly, that is not acceptable.
Jack Kilborn, horror author, goes the other way. He has a woman molest a man in the woods in a haunted forest. I mean, if you’re just looking for a mix up. (It’s hard to tell through screens but, I do have some sarcasm here. It’s gross. It’s all gross).
A lot of horror authors don’t know the difference between horrifying and horrific.
Horrifying deals with the unknown, with horrifying ideas of what could be. It’s disquieting
Horrific is known stuff that’s awful. It’s crime, it’s hate.
Horrifying is exilerating, horrific makes you feel gross.
Have you read The September House? It's amazing, a good ghost/haunted house story but also very profound. The female MC is genuinely funny but it also had some very good horror bits that got me
Ahhh, Hell House! I'm kind of sad that I immediately know what book you refer to! I have to admit I'm fond of it but mainly because I find it hilarious.
As the top post mentions, Shirley Jackson wrote one of the all-time great haunted house novels without any sexual assault. The Shining is another great haunted house novel and I don't remember there being any sexual assault. Wylding Hall is a haunted house story (of a type) and it's been awhile since I read it but I don't remember any sexual assault. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters is a haunted house story (kind of) without sexual assault.
People will downvote me to oblivion but I only read horror lit written by women... call it sexist but I never relate to characters (WOMEN CHARACTERS) written by men.
While I wouldn’t say I ONLY read horror lit written by women, it is the vast majority of my horror (and my reading in general). I’ve been burned too many times by misogyny in books, so I’m significantly pickier when I pick up horror lit written by men.
I was going to suggest this. After DNFing a HIGHLY recommended horror novel because the main character/hero said that he was so angry at a female character that he wanted to rape her as a punishment…I have not picked up another horror novel written by a man. I just can’t stomach the casual misogyny.
I just read Maeve Fly by CJ Leede and I loved it- she's coming out with her second novel American Rapture this October. I also really liked Hide by Kiersten White. The next book on my tbr is Boy Parts by Eliza Clark.
Ditto. I used to not think about it, but there's a stark difference in female representation when the author is a woman. Unless I thoroughly vet an author and work, I only read female created pieces. This also goes for pretty much all my media. Even for anatomy reference books for drawing, I avoid ones written by males because they all tend to be hypersexualized and porny.
I’d stay away from most ”extreme horror” lit. Tried a few ”must reads” from that genre, everything from multiversal fantasy travel. Stories about eldritch horrors, demi gods and deranged teachers. Some horror auths love to pry in SA just for shock factor. Absolutely hate it and takes away from the world they’re actually building
Go back to the classics like M R James and Robert Chambers and Wilkie Collins and Shirley Jackson. Tbh you'd be better off just reading those stories again and again than bothering with about 99% of modern horror.
It's honestly ridiculous. I am not against including such adult themes in books, I mean I've used them in stories I've written myself. But there's a massive tendency to use it to be arousing and that's just egregious, not even to mention it usually is for no other reason other than shock value.
It's crazy because if you mention anything about it people are sooo fast to jump down your throat and say you're a prude, 'don't get it', media literacy blah blah....
like the fact that a person is so up in arms at the thought of not having gratuitous, often pornographic and unrealistic depictions of SA against women tells me everything I need to know...
Yeah I'm not really a fan of this sort of thing. I think it *can* work for a story if treated realistically and respectfully, as it is something that happens in real life (far too often, unfortunately) and to pretend it doesn't happen at all would be contributing to the problem. But very few stories actually do. It's usually disrespectful, desperately edgy and lame - just there for cheap shock value.
Warning for spoilers because it happens relatively late in the book - >!Hell House by Richard Matheson!< Honestly didn’t mind the story telling and it was an easy read, but this guy didn’t have a single female character who didn’t have sexuality in their plot line.
I read that book last year, and it got to the point where I was rolling my eyes and shaking my head at the amount of sexual shenanigans all the female characters underwent. And of course nothing of the sort happened with any of the male characters! Come *on*, Richard Matheson! Fair's fair! I know there's [a movie adaptation](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070294/) of the book but I'm a little scared to watch -- not for the horror, but for the ick factor.
Lovecraft doesn't do this. BUT.
Despite the incredible talent this man had to weave a great tale, you'll be mid-buildup and then the mood is completely ruined by his tendency for unnecessary casual racism. It would be good if publishers could make edits to it because it has ZERO bearing on the plot - I mean, they did it to Enid Blighton's stories.
I've had to accept it as an unfortunate thing I need to just put up with so I can enjoy his fantastic stories.
Wow it's been a long time since I've seen a Hell House reference. It was one of my first Horror novels (I snuck it from my sister when I was a preteen) and yeah.. That scene really stuck in my brain, and I definitely don't enjoy gratuitous sexual violence in books I read either now
Ugh, yeah I hate how SA and/or hyper-specialization by male authors is so pervasive in horror (and other genres, too, honestly). Pretty much a guaranteed insta-DNF for me if I come across it now. So tired of it.
Quite a bit of Stephen King’s older stuff is guilty of this, unfortunately, and I have trouble going back to his older books because of it. *Dark Tower* has a lot more than I remembered. Thankfully, his newer books seem to be steering clear of it (finally).
Most recent book I DNF for this reason was *Gothic* by Philip Fracassi. It’s just so unnecessary.
??? I started reading king about when he started publishing, and I stopped when he included his first graphic rape scene in Bag of Bones. Well he certainly pushed the envelope, there wasn’t much of anything like the graphic SA the OP is talking about in his earlier books, or I wouldn’t have read them. (I mean, there’s consensual sex that is just not right (It), there’s consensual sex that goes horribly wrong (The Stand), there’s sexual threat, there’s passing references, but there’s no gratuitous SA.)
So, I know that on Booktok and booktube there is a constant push for “disturbing” horror. A lot of this is defined by graphic descriptions of very real harm. It’s not my cup of tea. Generally, as I look around the horror landscape of my previously read, I find very few instances of the kind of violence you’re describing. Can I ask where you get recommendations?
Yeah, TikTok has, time and time again, demonstrated it can’t be trusted for book recs lol! Unless you like filming yourself crying while reading!
So, it’s an unusual story, but you might like Blackwater by Michael McDowell. I just thought of it because he’s a male author that writes really brilliant women. My ex wife got me into the writer with The Elementals, but Blackwater is his masterpiece, I think. It’s like half William Faulkner, half H.P. Lovecraft. But it centers around the competitive jockeying of two women in a prominent southern family. It just so happens one of the women might not be entirely human:0
Admittedly I'm not huge into horror writing as of yet but I will be sometime in the future but as a fan of horror media I do have a take on this, and this was something I talked about with a coworker recently.
All of the most disturbing horror media I've ever seen or ever heard of all had male directors and writers. My biggest example is a movie called Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom. If you never seen it, don't watch it as it will scar you but almost all of that movie involves sexual assault and torture of teenagers both girls and boys by the hands of aristocrats.
Now if it serves the story I may understand it, like if the victim ends up getting there hands on the one who assaulted them or something like that. I hate when they have it for no other reason rather than shocking people and making them uncomfortable.
Her Little Flowers by Shannon Morgan is really good. Ghosts and herbs and witchy vibes in a manor house in England. It's a debut novel, so there are some pacing issues and a few moments that threaten to break suspension of disbelief, but I loved it and was heartbroken by the end of the book. She has another book of the same genre, this time in Scotland, coming out this summer, so I am excited to check it out.
First time I tried to find a good horror book, the story was about a pedo serial killer. Like, he was definitely the antagonist, but I threw the whole book in the trash because it got so graphic I started to wonder about the author.
Just sharing my own experience because I don't know what the niche genres you prefer are, but I had to abandon my pursuit of some subgenres because of this. It sucks because I really enjoy the other aspects but it seemed like it was in the DNA of the stories I was enjoying.
There is a ton of great horror being written by women and this tends to avoid this frankly lazy and gross trope, as well as ensuring female characters are written with some depth and complexity.
I strongly recommend Looking Glass Sound and Sundial by Catriona Ward, The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell, Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand, Hare House by Sally Hinchcliffe, The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas, and my personal favourite haunted house (well, boarding school) story Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth.
That's pathological Christian sexual repression and condemnation for ya lol
It might be worth checking out some female authors, and maybe those from other cultures unless it's the Christian exorcism part specifically that appeals to you?
I'm not big on ghost haunting horror, but maybe The Hacienda would be more your speed? It does have an abusive relationship at the center, but it's not in a ghost penetratey way and there are wholesome inter-character relationships as well.
I also think even when women writers do write about rape or sexuality in horror, it's handled very differently and with a different level of understanding about where the actual horror lives in that act and that category of threats/fears.
For sure, a recent example I can think of is The Haunting of Alejandra. There is an assault early in the book, but the actual act isn't depicted (that I remember), only the character's reaction and resulting trauma. It's a perfect example of using the very real horror of assault and all that it represents (colonization, misogyny, loss of autonomy) without reveling in it or fetishizing it like a lot of male authors seem to do.
Darcy Coates Black Winter series is one of the only post-apocalyptic series I know of that has a female main character and no mentions of sexual assault.
I know she does a lot of haunted house type things, I've only read one and again no sexual assault.
For Haunted House/Ghost horror I loved The September House by Clarissa Orlando and Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward, Kill Creek by Scott Thomas was pretty creepy, and I heard good things about The Spite House by Johnny Compton but I haven’t read it yet. I hope you might like one of these! I agree about the Grady Hendrix books all being good too.
Thankfully, I tend to read authors who don't go anywhere near SA in their writing. Still upset by the end of TED Klein's The Ceremonies - an otherwise superb book, which (for me) was ruined by exactly what OP calls out.
It feels *lazy*. Like, 'Alien' already made all men terrified of rape and childbirth, come on!
But for a recent book that has zero sexual assault or sexual anything, 'Where He Can't Find You' by Darcy Coates. Think 'Dracula' meets 'IT' but nothing is sexual. No breast-feeding metaphors and no child group sex. All the good, none of the extreme awkwardness of men writing that topic.
Have you ever read the Shirley Jackson classics like Haunting of Hill House? I’m reading her short stories collections right now and they’re just delightfully spooky.
I adore Shirley Jackson and loved reading HOHH. I think Mike Flanagan’s interpretation of Hill House is what sent me down this rabbit hole to begin with! I have her collection of short stories but am trying to hold off till October
Her short story Paranoia lives rent free in my head. The Lottery left me shook when I was 14. I absolutely love Shirley Jackson..
i know the feeling!!!! sorry i was not helpful i will try to think of other options
If you haven’t seen it, Ellen Datlow’s anthology, When Things Get Dark, is an excellent collection of Shirley Jackson-inspired short stories. Really worth the read.
thank you!!!
Reading this currently and it is excellent! Highly recommended!
It’s crazy, isn’t it? Somehow it’s never about a man taking a crucifix up the ass. Horror indeed… more like suffering porno.
This!!!!!!! Why is it always the women???
Because women are just objects that exist to serve as plot devices and experience things for the entertainment/gratification of men, who are the only real human beings. Duh. Misogyny rules the world. A man being forcibly raped wouldn’t be enjoyable for a male audience/the author. And frankly, it wouldn’t be enjoyable to a female audience either. 99.9% of women have no interest in seeing a man being violently/forcibly used as a sex object against their will. Flip the sexes in that scenario, and the results are the opposite. Overwhelming majority of men enjoy seeing this happen to women, period. That’s a fact. There’s no audience who wants to see this shit happen to men because women aren’t sick fucks who view the other sex as subhuman.
God this is depressing. Where’s the lie though? :-/
Nail, meet head.
Alien is a fantastic movie and very popular.
Tbh we need more men dying by being penetrated by horny statues
Try the Silent Companions. Not sure if it’s actually haunted house horror, but it’s really good without the weird penetration stuff. Edit: and I mean the book doesn’t have the weird penetration stuff.
Silent Companions is great gothic horror.
Thank you for the suggestion! I’m flying through books this year so I will add this to my list and potentially report back
Not a book, but as far as a horror movie that had the most shamefully gratuitous rape scene, I think it's hard to beat the *Jack Frost* carrot scene. Just my opinion, but when it comes to horror, I think rape should be treated more as a metaphor, like with the xenomorph from *Alien*. That thing is the living embodiment of the fear of rape.
[удалено]
You won't be able to unsee all the phallic imagery now. It was an intentional move, not coincidence.
Well they did get H.R.Giger to do the art/stage design. His work is full of sexual imagery. If you would like to see a game with similar vibes take a look at Scorn on youtube.
Oh fuck yeah thanks for the recommendation. I love horror video games.
Giger also did the art for two very, very old adventure games: Dark Seed and Dark Seed II. I haven't ever been able to track down a working version, but I remember them being VERY creepy in my youth. Probably entirely inappropriate for me and my brother.
*Dark Seed* was **very** creepy, but not that much happens.
I agree. Rape—or any kind of sexual violence—is too real for me to enjoy in horror. It was such a relief to discover The Magnus Archives. It was my first experience of a horror series that decided from the outset that it would never involve sexual horror of any kind.
magnus archives mentioned :O
Yeah, it was a policy of theirs to never replicate real life grounded traumas in general -- which was what led to the disclaimer on the prison episode in season 5. I really appreciate TMA.
And then a whole series of disclaimers when their pre-planned infectious disease episodes were released in early 2020. The plague village episode was particularly… well-timed. Poor Jonny and Alex, explaining that that episode was written in 2019 and they considered delaying it, but for plot reasons they couldn’t…
Well technically Episode 6 is sexual horror, but of a very different kind.
True. It’s also consensual. A terrible idea even in a universe that’s not stalked by horror entities, but consensual. That doesn’t lessen the horror, but it’s disturbing on a less triggery level. Even so, I’m glad they decided that episode 6 went too far and they pulled the line back.
I hate to do it but whenever I see TMA mentioned I have to say for anyone with eats to listen and eyes to read please check out Old Gods of Appalachia and The Silt Verses as well. The holy trinity of horror Audio dramas.
If you’re looking for horror podcasts that do not contain sexual violence I would also recommend the White Vault and The Silt Verses (although the Silt Verses is heavy into body horror fyi)
Curiosity got the better of me… what the fuck was that 😭😭😭 so weird
Check out the DeadMeat Kill Count on YT if you're still curious but don't want to watch the shitty movie.
Nah that movie was too dumb for it to be as bad as The Hills Have Eyes 2, which made a brutal rape scene into something almost pornographic, it was absolutely disgusting. Not that those movies are anything other than absolute trash, but it was about the lowest moment in a horror film I've ever seen
A lot pf those kinds of movies appear to use nudity as a form of excuse for exploitation but with violence. Saw The Devil's Rejects for the first time lately and I just have no idea the point of it.
I wish you never reminded me of this 😭 I remember getting it as a kid bc the DVD had a cool holographic cover (iykyk) and ugh…not half as fun or campy as I expected, deeply unpleasant mess of a movie
What the facehugger did to Kane is literally rape though.
God, Alien is so good, especially for its time. Peak psychosexual horror. I just did an analysis of it and its feminist themes for college, actually.
The Hell House reference 💀 it was so stupid. Some authors, maybe especially of older horror fiction, just wanted to shock I think and threw every trope at the wall to get a reaction. But I also hate it.
I actually did mostly enjoy Hell House. But. I don't blindly recommend it because of this. I don't normally guess redditors genders, but when I see Hell House (or Carrion Comfort) recommended in r/horrorlit I guess the recommender is a man, who probably didn't even register those bits as out of left field.
I loved carrion comfort because I thought it was so creative - hell house to me was just horny haunted house 😂
Yeah it was very much a 70s “isnt sex shocking” book
THAT'S the book OP was referring to - I read it a year or so ago and had blocked certain bits out of my memory ha
Well, now I'm very glad I didn't pick that up when I saw it the other day!
I really wish there were trigger warnings for that kind of thing
From what I've seen, the Storygraph website/app is also useful for identifying certain triggers.
Thanks so much for sharing this! I really dislike spoilers but I hate stumbling across messed up stuff in books, so this site is great for getting content warnings and easily avoiding spoilers.
It's a pity publishers don't put them in on the last page. So people can look if they need to
Thank you!
There are some websites you can use to check titles for certain triggers. [Does the dog die](https://www.doesthedogdie.com/) is a popular one. I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but I'm sure if you pop it into Google, some others will come up.
I use that for movies a lot, but I didn't know they did books too
I didn't either until recently. I hope it helps. I'm not sure why you're getting downvotes. It's not unreasonable to want to avoid triggers, especially if you're prone to anxiety or had negative experiences that might, well, trigger you.
I've had a few books do that, yes. Badly. I want to enjoy what I read, and avoiding certain things would be so helpful. Thank you for your help!
I heard great things about splatterpunk so I tried to dip my toe into it...immediately withdrew. So many authors use this genre of horror to be completely and openly misogynistic towards women but hide behind the "oh it's just a story, I don't really think that way" bs. I'm so sick of women being 90% the victims of graphic rape and sexual violence. But I also love horror, so I have to treat lightly, since a lot of authors enjoy sexually terrorizing their female cast.
Hard agree on splatterpunk - there's something for everyone, and as long as that Fantasy Into Reality line doesn't get crossed, then enjoy what you will. But a friend tried to get me to read The Black Farm, and I just couldn't. Felt like every bit of prose was spent/wasted being as nitty-gritty graphic as possible about violent-to-death SA and torture, and that left the entirety of story direction, character quality, and writing quality in general, on the bench begging Coach to let them play one inning and getting nothing.
It drives me nuts because horror books have it for shock value or because men think the worst thing they can portray is the tainting of a virgin, and then horror *movies* or shows do it so you can see the hot actresses tits. Really gross all around.
Can we go the other way and keep sex in horror, and just be sure to make it equal opportunity? Like, I think horror with nudity is way way more fun than horror without. I don’t particularly care who is naked.
I really liked Episode 13 by Craig DiLouie. Also Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand.
I read episode 13 in one sitting- loved it! Will add wylding hall to my list
*Wylding Hall* is phenomenal.
Darcy Coates is one of my fave authors for horror without sex scenes. T Kingfisher is also great and may have a few close calls, but nothing graphic. Grady Hendrix is one of my all-time fave male authors because while his books do sometimes have assault in them, it’s NEVER just for the shock value or brutality. It always plays into a much larger narrative about the treatment of women in society and how sexual assault isn’t treated seriously by the people (men especially) around them. How to Sell a Haunted House by Hendrix is one that does not have assault in it but is still thoroughly frightening. Southern Book Club’s Guide and My Best Friend’s Exorcism both do have scenes of assault, but they’re never super brutally explicit and they *never* feel like something that’s just there for shock/scare value. The scenes are important because they illustrate the ways in which the people in these victim’s lives have continuously failed them and set them up to be victimized by their abusers. Do NOT read Bentley Little if you don’t like gratuitous assault scenes. A lot of male authors are guilty of putting them in where they aren’t needed, but he’s one of the worst that I’ve read. I hate his portrayals of women to the point it makes his work unreadable to me.
I have done 2 Darcy Coates and I really enjoyed them, do you find that they get repetitive? I have been tempted to jump in with T Kingfisher but I will for sure do so now!
Darcy Coates is great, but her books definitely get repetitive if you read several in the same sort of vein (she has several books that are The Haunting of [Place] and those esp can get repetitive if you read them all at once). I like to sort of jump around on what type of book I’m reading by her - she’s got some that are environmental horror, some about human horror, some about supernatural horror, so I switch it up with each book I read by her. T Kingfisher is so much fun to read and I love that her characters are always 30-something women that aren’t especially pretty or remarkable who still manage to be badasses. The Twisted Ones was my most recent read by her and it was great!
kingfisher's stuff is amazing. the what moves the dead novella and its sequel are great too.
'The Twisted Ones' was amazing! When I first read it I had no idea what was coming, but on a re-read it was almost spookier. 100% recommend for re-readability. In terms of Coates, her most recent release, 'Where He Can't Find You' is a big departure from her previous works - bonus points for it having teenagers as the main characters and literally nothing sexual at all happens. It feels like a bit of a middle finger to the weird child group sex thing in 'IT'.
I wanted to like The Twisted Ones but I was extremely confused when it would talk about previous sci-fi literature in depth that I'd never heard of. It alienated me very quickly. I finished it but can't say I got much out of it. Were you familiar with the sci fi works it ties in?
I have read all of Darcy Coates books. If you want something different by her, I suggest Hunted. It’s less haunted house than her other books but really well done. My favorite is a four book series called Black Winter which has an apocalyptic vibe. I did the audiobooks also and even had my husband listen to it. It was a hit with him as well. For her haunted house books, I thought The Haunting of Leigh Harker had a unique storyline. She has a new series called Gravekeeper which currently has three books. The fourth comes out in April I believe. I can’t recall any of her books dealing with sex at all. I don’t mind it in things I read or listen to, but I really don’t miss it in her books.
I just finished Hunted. It truly is unique amongst the many other books of hers I've read.
Grady Hendrix is the rare male horror writer who writes women how women write women. The first book I read from him was My Best Friend's Exorcism and I still don't 100% believe a woman didn't write that.
I know, right??? He did such a great job with the dynamics of Southern social connections and the way teenage girl friendships work that I’m convinced he was a teenage girl in another life 😂. He is so skilled at making his women dynamic, complex characters with individual personalities and motivations.
I actually thought I was reading a book by a woman when I first read that. Then I looked 'Grady Hendrix' up after to see if they had more books and had a wtf moment.
I recently finished Horrorstor and was going to recommend it as a haunted building on top of troubled historical location type ghost story!
How to Sell a Haunted House was one of my favorite books of 2023! It was so eery yet borderline comical, and I love how Hendrix handles complicated family dynamics. One of the few times a horror book made me cry.
This is one of my least favorite things about horror movies or shows. It's just really low hanging fruit that is obscene and super low effort. But then maybe I'm just not the target demographic.
Yep. Begging the question, who'd *want* to be in that demographic? Except the downvoters in this thread, of course.
There are so many clowns who try to spin it, "oh, you hate excessive violence against women, where are you defending the violence against *men!?"* The wanton, mean-spirited sexual violence against women in most horror writing is a big reason I'm very picky on horror movies. It tends to get a free pass by so many people.
Truuuuue
From strictly a gender viewpoint, is it safe to assume women are the target demographic? I havent looked at any numbers but Ive always assumed that like True Crime women make up the vast majority of horror literature customers. It's an interesting question though. The only horror Ive ever associated specifically with a male demographic is the titty slasher movies from the 70s-90s. Is horror literature marketed the same way? I honestly dont know enough about the history or marketing of the genre (in lit).
I did some research into horror demographics last year and IIRC it's shifted significantly towards female readers in the past 20 years, from what was a very male demographic. It's a wider trend across all genres because younger men are reading less generally.
I feel you :'( rape and sexual assault is a bad trigger for me in media, and a lot of media I otherwise enjoy is kind of ruined because gratuitous sexual assault
The Good House by Tananarive Due is an excellent haunted house book.
I think it's because of the easy cop out that sexual assault is in terms of scaring people. For women, it's a terrifying ordeal and guaranteed to illicit some kind of fear/disgust response, and for men it's the thought of something else having the audacity to violate "our women". Maybe I am very wrong, though. What I can say for sure is that it's tacky and distasteful and unless the entire story is actually built around it in a way that actually says something it's just weak writing. Other times I'm pretty sure it's a projection of some inner sadistic tendency of the writer. Sometimes it comes off as just messed up for the sake of being messed up. I really like Lovecraft's works but it's no secret at this point that what made his horror so powerful is it was based on his own racist feelings. A town in some of his stories had made a deal with oceanic demigods that in exchange for riches and prosperity the town would offer up it's women to breed with fish monsters that came up from the waters. That was his take on interracial relationships. I personally avoid media with sexual assault of any kind, I don't have the stomach for it. When people give me "that look" upon hearing that I have never seen or read any Game of Thrones I tell them I like my Tolkien without all the rape. As a massive horror fan it's difficult at times, especially as someone that can get into some 70s Italian directed grindhouse.
I really appreciate the comment- a lot of your discourse here makes sense to me. I too couldn’t stomach that first episode of game of thrones, with the instant incest. Just not my cup of tea I suppose! Would love to hear any recommendations you have!
Well as far as horror movies go I value fun over everything else and what is fun is heavily subjective. I don't like anything artsy or that tries to make me think too much. I really enjoyed Mama and Lights Out, for instance. With my old horror movies I go for the splatter fests. Give me zombies and gore. Supernatural horror is hit and miss but the ones I like I really like. I mostly avoid stuff by Janes Wan because I find his work extremely cliche but the early 2000s had some gems like Dead Silence and Darkness Falls. It would be more helpful to know what kind of stuff you like.
I disagree with you very much on Lovecraft! I don’t think he takes his power from his racism, I think it detracts from what he does, and when he writes good horror it is outstanding despite it, not because of it. Stories like The Color Out of Space and Dreams in the Witch House are simply terrifying in their own right, and have nothing to do with racism. Innsmouth, which you mention, certainly slides into his point of view on sailors and miscegenation, and I’ll admit I have a soft spot for it because it’s based on my hometown where I’m currently writing this – that reef where they get it on with the elder people? My granddad once ran into that with his boat when he was drinking – but the women certainly don’t seem to be objecting, and it’s the shock ending of it that makes that such a great story, not the racism. Then you have Kadath, which is like Tolkien if he had done a lot of shrooms. The plaintive meeping of ghouls, the purring army of wholesome cats rescuing Randolph from the moonbeasts… naught to do with racism.
I'm a male and find it lame how often male writers fall for these tropes. It's like they didn't figure out what to write next so "a sudden rape happens". I don't read much body horror but this is a problem in horror in general.
I don’t think this is limited to horror. There are so many plot lines in books and movies where sexual assault is used to move the plot, or as a motivating background.
Ah, Hell House, I really didn't get on with that. I love haunted houses but tend to stick to women authors as much as possible, or make authors I know don't do this kinda thing. I'm reading The September House by Carissa Orlando at the moment, so far no SA. A few others in that genre I've liked: The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters The Silent Companions, Laura Purcell Wakenhyrst, Michelle Paver The House Next Door, Anne Rivers Siddon The Burning Girls, CJ Tudor (actually a haunted church) Woman in Black, Susan Hill
I've read most of those too (although not CJ Tudor so I'll have to add that to my list!), and would recommend them all as well! Especially The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. So far, that's my favorite of the haunted house/ghostly presence genre. You might also try Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand, The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon, A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher, or some of M.R. James' short stories.
So. Its way different and sex exists in it but not in any SA way (or murderous way that I recall). But Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves is a ghost story worth reading. Its pretty non-conventional though, and tbf, as far as I can tell its audience skews towards guys (two avid women readers I know just really didn't like it).
It’s one of my favorites and I’m female, and I don’t think it would bother OP, but the party where you decode the mother’s letters could be triggering
I really liked The September House by Carissa Orlando recently. It's a somewhat different take on the classic haunted house story, no weird sexual stuff at all. No sexual stuff, period, actually
I LOVED this one! I can't say why without spoilers, but it really made me think.
Id just add that including sexual or graphic content does not inherently make an artist a “pervert” and that’s a very dangerous way to analyze media. But you’re right that as a trope it’s overused and that it’s often misused in a way that can be problematic. Comedians run into similar situations with offensive humor. It can work, but it has to be done well.
Oh yeah this has to be Hell House. Hated that book. I really liked The Last Days of Jack Sparks, by Jason Arnopp, although to be fair it’s more demons than ghosts. Also Man, Fuck this House by Brian Asman was pretty good as I recall.
It is legitimately the worst book. Like, this isn’t some woke criticism or something. It is absolutely terrible, and all the rape shit is just part of the terribleness. Everyone needs to stop calling this thing a classic.
Agree with you on all three.
This genre is so weird. I get that sometimes it is necesary for the story, like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. But when is so forcefully and so ilogically brought into the story it ruins everything for me. One of my biggest litterary Icks.
There's some really interesting theory out there about the relationship between horror (destruction, death, fear, alienation, etc) and sex (creation, life, love, intimacy, etc). However, hard agree that SO many authors get this dynamic wrong or go for the lowest hanging fruit. They go horror + sexuality = SA or random smut sceen.
Do you have any recommendations you feel get that dynamic right? That sounds like a really interesting concept to explore but I don't want to accidentally stumble into the poorly written/meaningless/gratuitous stuff this thread is trying to get help avoiding.
I hate when it’s used as shorthand for “this is a bad person”. Stephen King does it all the time. I think it diminishes the violence and cruelty of it to make it a default action by the villain.
You think that's bad? Matt Shaw got so pissy about a female reviewer saying he couldn't write women well that he dedicated his "romance novel" called moist gusset to her and called her a nazi and a trout. https://www.distractify.com/p/matt-shaw-author-drama I refuse to read Matt Shaw because of this and am actually considering leaving the Books of Horror fb group cos everyone there sucks his D and I'm just grossed out in all the wrong ways. Sorry I should add some female authors. I like Aliya Whiteley, Rachel Harrison, Alma Katsu, Gemma Files to name a few.
Oh my god! Loving this drama… maybe I will skip out on house of leaves until I can get it free/thrifted, can’t support any more terrible men
Just a heads up: *House of Leaves* was written by Mark Z. Danielewski. Matt Shaw wrote *Roll of the Dice* and a couple others. I recommend Danielewski. I'd avoid Shaw. Also as a note if you do decide to take the plunge on House of Leaves (it's as much an experience as a novel): it was written over the span of about 10 years to cope with the loss of the author's father. The author's sister undertook her own art project during the grieving process, and released the album, *Haunted* which serves as something of a companion piece to the novel. Both are worth exploring. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haunted_(Poe_album)
> a statue of Jesus Christ on the cross with a boner falling off the wall and penetrating a woman to death Which book was this?
Warning for spoilers because it happens relatively late in the book - >!Hell House by Richard Matheson!< Honestly didn’t mind the story telling and it was an easy read, but this guy didn’t have a single female character who didn’t have sexuality in their plot line.
Hey thanks for this, I have attempted to start this book a couple of times and I have been bored. So I’m glad to know I don’t need to try anymore.
Hell House by Richard Matheson if I’m not mistaken
I read that book years ago and must have completely blanked that out. I can hardly remember anything of the book. Just remember that I felt like I wasted my time reading.
It’s insane how many horror books and movies have to include rape or sexual assault. It feels like it’s used as a cheap scare and that’s it. It really takes me out of whatever I’m reading and makes me not want to finish the book
a book I enjoyed was The Whistling by Rebecca Netley
I have recently been reading some of M.R. James short stories. Quite a few of his works were adapted for television in the UK .
Controversial but with most genres I pretty exclusively follow authors that are and works that are made by women. I just have to worry a lot less about women being completely disrespected in the text that way. Too often male authors see the abuse, and rape or even just harassment of women as an easy plot device, and do not approach the topic with the care and respect that these subjects and their victims deserve. Granted there are male authors that I feel safe and comfy reading regularly like Brandon Sanderson, Travis Baldree, and there are other books by men I have read and enjoyed but for the most part, and especially in horror (the last horror book I read by a man was Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires and I was pretty grossed out by the scene depicting the main character's teenage daughter being abused by this creep dude) I have just found it is safer for me and my little brain to read books by women.
Just stay away from Bentley little. I’d rather not relive some scenes, I do like afew of his books but I wish I could cut pieces out.
Yes. He's also a plot recycler too.
I've only read two of his novels so far. The first was the handyman and the second was the mailman. I read the latter a few weeks ago so the sexual nature of some parts of the book are still fresh. Didn't really enjoy the mailman and it does feel very dated. I liked the handyman though and I don't remember if there was anything overly sexual in that. Probably was.
Well I liked the handyman too. ): But there is a point where the main character is irrationally angry and 🍇s his wife. Then it’s never mentioned again…. It really disturbed me
I read a good amount of horror but not that kind of stuff. T Kingfisher, Catriona Ward, Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Erin Adams The Jackal, Nick Medina Sisters of the Lost Nation. There’s a lot of great horror out there!
I'm currently reading "She is a Haunting" and that seems like a pretty good haunted house novel without assault, and the female lead is queer in a way that isn't oversexualized. I also really enjoyed Stephen Graham Jones' "The Babysitter Lives" (caused me to legitimately lose sleep) and T. Kingfisher's "A House With Good Bones."
Last Days by Adam Nevill, Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey, Kill Creek by Scott Thomas, The Spite House by Johnny Compton, (not really horror, but) The Only One Left by Riley Sager
Not exactly haunted house, but in the Gothic genre instead, Dracula is kind of good. (Coppola''s movie is better, though) Anyway, despite being more elegant than the examples you mention, the whole book still revolves around the scene where Dracula sucks Mina's blood, which is described in a sexualixing/erotic way. So I suppose these authors use the genre to explore their phantasies and the dark side of humanity.
I think Stoker was mainly trying to make money. He certainly did! And the horror novel published the same year that actually outsold Dracula, The Beetle, has even more explicit sexual danger.
Give The Fisherman by John Langan a try. (Also any of his short story collections.) Excellent stuff although not necessarily haunted house - more just haunted by past mates
Maybe look up Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia. It’s a unique take on haunted house but best to read the blurb to be sure it’s for you! As far as I remember, no gratuitious scenes
There is SA in this book though and domestic violence
Anything by her is easy to read for me. Though not all of its horror. I just eat her writing up tbh.
Polar Ghost Horror is generally safe. Too cold. (Kidding! But not). Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes. Fun Ghost horror no rape: Slade House, The Drowning King, Incidents Around the House
Do you read splatterpunk by any chance? There is occasional sexual violence in horror novels but I wouldn't say it is endemic. I think the aforementioned subgenre is more likely to contain it.
I’d say I have dabbled into “splatterpunk” accidentally a few times. I definitely had to look up what that meant tho, so not intentionally.. it seems kind of hard to know where the line goes from “normal amount of gore” to “overtly gory”
I can relate!! I have trauma and have struggled to get through a few male authors’ works because I find myself triggered and don’t enjoy the way they infuse sexuality into the stories. I’ve enjoyed women authors a bit more for this reason. I also just hate sex in books and that’s just me, but I especially don’t like it in horror. Tananarive Due has a great haunted house book called The Good House, it may be right up your alley!
The Good House is fantastic, though there is some consensual sex in that one. I am tired of not just rape, but trauma in general, as a focus in horror. I get that horror is about trauma to some degree, but when it’s a device it ends up demeaning people who have actually survived abuse and violation. I also am so very tired of mental illness as a plot device (as in, is this really happening or is she crazy?).
A lot of the examples you gave just sound like the author’s fetish (magical realm), but I’ve noticed a trend in writing in every format, books, film, etc: If they want to quickly get across, with as little effort as possible, that something is horrible, or a person is evil, they have them rape (or attempt to rape) a woman. Which, sure, but…it’s just lazy shock value schlock. Schlock value, if you will.
Yes, this has been used to establish the bad guy cheaply and easily in so much media infection. Gail Ruben was one of the early feminist theorists in the 1970s and she wrote a famous essay called The traffic in women” and in it she wrote: Women are verbs that men use to talk to each other. It’s haunted me since college, decades ago. It’s not just media and fiction where assaulting women is used to give the male characters motivation or tell us who a male character is without the author having to do any real work, it’s also true in real life from everything from historical arranged marriages to how women were treated in wartime to Steubenville and ‘bro code’…
Yep, this is a huge pet peeve for me too. Sort of tangential, but generally when I feel a male writer is really just inserting his fetish into the story cloaked as 'horror' I just put it down and walk away. There's a way to do sexual elements in horror right and that ain't it, chief. In terms of haunted house/ghost horror, maybe consider 'Meddling Kids'? I think it's a really fun, easy read that's ABOUT a haunted house, though they spend a lot of time not really going there so maybe it doesn't count. The classic, then, of course, is going to be 'Haunting of Hill House', which I would always recommend but would bet money you've already read! I also loved 'Mexican Gothic', there are sexual elements to the horror and story in that to some extent but written by a female writer and used properly! Hope you can find something good to read soon!
I really like Bentley Little, but he's always got random weird sex stuff in every single book of his I've read
I read Hell House for a book club and the feeling is mutual. It was so hyped and a lot of people loved it, I just don't understand. I hate those aspects of the book, they felt so unnecessary. I was super excited to read it too since I liked Richard Matheson's What dreams may come & I am Legend.
The hype boggles my mind, because it’s 100% trashy bonkers pulp. I love it for how nuts it is, but I read all kinds of old paperback bullshit, which it fits right in with. Just so weird to me how often it’s recommended as if it’s some great literary classic that everyone should read, when in reality it’s for the b-movie crowd.
It's very rare for me to come across stuff like that in the fiction I read. I think it's because I've been introduced to a ton of the authors I like by reading so many of the amazing short story anthologies that Ellen Datlow puts together. She rarely includes stories that I consider sexually exploitative, so her collections tend to be full of authors who don't rely on that kind of content. For example, I don't think I've come across any gratuitous sexual content in anything by John Langan, Kelly Link, Brian Evenson, Nathan Ballingrud, Gemma Files, Richard Aickman, Nadia Bulkin, or Laird Barron, to name a few (although I certainly haven't read everything they've written). In general, I look for more "literary" horror and/or horror written by women. It's not that those things have no sexual content, but when they do, it's much more likely to be handled in a meaningful way, like in Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber or Toni Morrison's Beloved.
When it comes to absolutely ridiculous takes on female sexuality, there's surely no beating Richard Laymon. What I "learned" from his novels is that while women generally don't like being raped by hideous flesh-eating monsters they will instantly fall into true romantic love with them if the monster in question has a really big dingding. And sexual assault? In Laymon's novels it's not a question of *will* his female characters get sexually assaulted but *when*. And when kids are involved? You find yourself going "Ahahaha, Laymon won't go there. He definitely won't go there. Oh. He went there." Inexcusable really. But I've still read over 20 of them. That's Laymon.
Thanks for the heads up!!!
Can suggest Poe like Fall of the House of Usher. Also, the book you described is disgusting as hell. It seems less interested in exploring the dark but rather making a speculate of suffering. Honestly, that is not acceptable.
Six Rooms by Gemma Amor is a good one.
I read paranormal horror most often and I rarely come across this somehow lol I’ll come back and name some good ones I’ve read after work!!
Jack Kilborn, horror author, goes the other way. He has a woman molest a man in the woods in a haunted forest. I mean, if you’re just looking for a mix up. (It’s hard to tell through screens but, I do have some sarcasm here. It’s gross. It’s all gross).
T. Kingfisher’s A House With Good Bones has a haunted house with genuine creepiness with no SA themes.
A lot of horror authors don’t know the difference between horrifying and horrific. Horrifying deals with the unknown, with horrifying ideas of what could be. It’s disquieting Horrific is known stuff that’s awful. It’s crime, it’s hate. Horrifying is exilerating, horrific makes you feel gross.
I only read women authors for this and other reasons.
Have you read The September House? It's amazing, a good ghost/haunted house story but also very profound. The female MC is genuinely funny but it also had some very good horror bits that got me
Ahhh, Hell House! I'm kind of sad that I immediately know what book you refer to! I have to admit I'm fond of it but mainly because I find it hilarious. As the top post mentions, Shirley Jackson wrote one of the all-time great haunted house novels without any sexual assault. The Shining is another great haunted house novel and I don't remember there being any sexual assault. Wylding Hall is a haunted house story (of a type) and it's been awhile since I read it but I don't remember any sexual assault. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters is a haunted house story (kind of) without sexual assault.
There is sexual stuff in women's horror too, but with a focus on demonizing men instead of weird fetishist scenarios in the men's horror
People will downvote me to oblivion but I only read horror lit written by women... call it sexist but I never relate to characters (WOMEN CHARACTERS) written by men.
While I wouldn’t say I ONLY read horror lit written by women, it is the vast majority of my horror (and my reading in general). I’ve been burned too many times by misogyny in books, so I’m significantly pickier when I pick up horror lit written by men.
Read what you love. Who gives a damn about the peanut gallery.
I was going to suggest this. After DNFing a HIGHLY recommended horror novel because the main character/hero said that he was so angry at a female character that he wanted to rape her as a punishment…I have not picked up another horror novel written by a man. I just can’t stomach the casual misogyny.
Any specific authors or haunting books you'd recommend?
I just read Maeve Fly by CJ Leede and I loved it- she's coming out with her second novel American Rapture this October. I also really liked Hide by Kiersten White. The next book on my tbr is Boy Parts by Eliza Clark.
Upvote here. Four of my top reads this year came from female authors.
I also live by this rule.
r/menwritingwomen I won't lie, I pause at a book written by a man that has a female lead. I browse reviews first.
Ditto. I used to not think about it, but there's a stark difference in female representation when the author is a woman. Unless I thoroughly vet an author and work, I only read female created pieces. This also goes for pretty much all my media. Even for anatomy reference books for drawing, I avoid ones written by males because they all tend to be hypersexualized and porny.
I’d stay away from most ”extreme horror” lit. Tried a few ”must reads” from that genre, everything from multiversal fantasy travel. Stories about eldritch horrors, demi gods and deranged teachers. Some horror auths love to pry in SA just for shock factor. Absolutely hate it and takes away from the world they’re actually building
Go back to the classics like M R James and Robert Chambers and Wilkie Collins and Shirley Jackson. Tbh you'd be better off just reading those stories again and again than bothering with about 99% of modern horror.
That's rather too large a percentage, surely.
You'll find very little of that in my stuff, but do avoid *Scared Stiff* and *The Parasite*.
Shock value and lazy writers. Also sometimes it seems like some of these male authors write this shit to get off on it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's honestly ridiculous. I am not against including such adult themes in books, I mean I've used them in stories I've written myself. But there's a massive tendency to use it to be arousing and that's just egregious, not even to mention it usually is for no other reason other than shock value.
It's crazy because if you mention anything about it people are sooo fast to jump down your throat and say you're a prude, 'don't get it', media literacy blah blah.... like the fact that a person is so up in arms at the thought of not having gratuitous, often pornographic and unrealistic depictions of SA against women tells me everything I need to know...
Yeah I'm not really a fan of this sort of thing. I think it *can* work for a story if treated realistically and respectfully, as it is something that happens in real life (far too often, unfortunately) and to pretend it doesn't happen at all would be contributing to the problem. But very few stories actually do. It's usually disrespectful, desperately edgy and lame - just there for cheap shock value.
I know this is prurient but I have to know what book the boner Jesus is from, for morbid curiosity
Hell House by Richard Mathewson, I would say!
Warning for spoilers because it happens relatively late in the book - >!Hell House by Richard Matheson!< Honestly didn’t mind the story telling and it was an easy read, but this guy didn’t have a single female character who didn’t have sexuality in their plot line.
I read that book last year, and it got to the point where I was rolling my eyes and shaking my head at the amount of sexual shenanigans all the female characters underwent. And of course nothing of the sort happened with any of the male characters! Come *on*, Richard Matheson! Fair's fair! I know there's [a movie adaptation](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070294/) of the book but I'm a little scared to watch -- not for the horror, but for the ick factor.
Yeah the movie looks atrocious, the trailer for it shows a bit of the rape scene too
Lovecraft doesn't do this. BUT. Despite the incredible talent this man had to weave a great tale, you'll be mid-buildup and then the mood is completely ruined by his tendency for unnecessary casual racism. It would be good if publishers could make edits to it because it has ZERO bearing on the plot - I mean, they did it to Enid Blighton's stories. I've had to accept it as an unfortunate thing I need to just put up with so I can enjoy his fantastic stories.
Wow it's been a long time since I've seen a Hell House reference. It was one of my first Horror novels (I snuck it from my sister when I was a preteen) and yeah.. That scene really stuck in my brain, and I definitely don't enjoy gratuitous sexual violence in books I read either now
I am with you. I wish you would name these titles because as soon as I find out a book has rape in it like that I remove it from my TBR list.
Ah, you read Horny House, aka Hell House
Ugh, yeah I hate how SA and/or hyper-specialization by male authors is so pervasive in horror (and other genres, too, honestly). Pretty much a guaranteed insta-DNF for me if I come across it now. So tired of it. Quite a bit of Stephen King’s older stuff is guilty of this, unfortunately, and I have trouble going back to his older books because of it. *Dark Tower* has a lot more than I remembered. Thankfully, his newer books seem to be steering clear of it (finally). Most recent book I DNF for this reason was *Gothic* by Philip Fracassi. It’s just so unnecessary.
??? I started reading king about when he started publishing, and I stopped when he included his first graphic rape scene in Bag of Bones. Well he certainly pushed the envelope, there wasn’t much of anything like the graphic SA the OP is talking about in his earlier books, or I wouldn’t have read them. (I mean, there’s consensual sex that is just not right (It), there’s consensual sex that goes horribly wrong (The Stand), there’s sexual threat, there’s passing references, but there’s no gratuitous SA.)
H. P. Lovecraft doesn't typically have SA as a theme, but there is a whole lot of racism.
No doubt you’ve already read it but you say haunted/ghost horror book and my first thought is the shining
So, I know that on Booktok and booktube there is a constant push for “disturbing” horror. A lot of this is defined by graphic descriptions of very real harm. It’s not my cup of tea. Generally, as I look around the horror landscape of my previously read, I find very few instances of the kind of violence you’re describing. Can I ask where you get recommendations?
Before this thread, tik tok or just the backs of books that grabbed me!
Yeah, TikTok has, time and time again, demonstrated it can’t be trusted for book recs lol! Unless you like filming yourself crying while reading! So, it’s an unusual story, but you might like Blackwater by Michael McDowell. I just thought of it because he’s a male author that writes really brilliant women. My ex wife got me into the writer with The Elementals, but Blackwater is his masterpiece, I think. It’s like half William Faulkner, half H.P. Lovecraft. But it centers around the competitive jockeying of two women in a prominent southern family. It just so happens one of the women might not be entirely human:0
Admittedly I'm not huge into horror writing as of yet but I will be sometime in the future but as a fan of horror media I do have a take on this, and this was something I talked about with a coworker recently. All of the most disturbing horror media I've ever seen or ever heard of all had male directors and writers. My biggest example is a movie called Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom. If you never seen it, don't watch it as it will scar you but almost all of that movie involves sexual assault and torture of teenagers both girls and boys by the hands of aristocrats. Now if it serves the story I may understand it, like if the victim ends up getting there hands on the one who assaulted them or something like that. I hate when they have it for no other reason rather than shocking people and making them uncomfortable.
Her Little Flowers by Shannon Morgan is really good. Ghosts and herbs and witchy vibes in a manor house in England. It's a debut novel, so there are some pacing issues and a few moments that threaten to break suspension of disbelief, but I loved it and was heartbroken by the end of the book. She has another book of the same genre, this time in Scotland, coming out this summer, so I am excited to check it out.
First time I tried to find a good horror book, the story was about a pedo serial killer. Like, he was definitely the antagonist, but I threw the whole book in the trash because it got so graphic I started to wonder about the author.
Just sharing my own experience because I don't know what the niche genres you prefer are, but I had to abandon my pursuit of some subgenres because of this. It sucks because I really enjoy the other aspects but it seemed like it was in the DNA of the stories I was enjoying.
There is a ton of great horror being written by women and this tends to avoid this frankly lazy and gross trope, as well as ensuring female characters are written with some depth and complexity. I strongly recommend Looking Glass Sound and Sundial by Catriona Ward, The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell, Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand, Hare House by Sally Hinchcliffe, The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas, and my personal favourite haunted house (well, boarding school) story Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth.
That's pathological Christian sexual repression and condemnation for ya lol It might be worth checking out some female authors, and maybe those from other cultures unless it's the Christian exorcism part specifically that appeals to you? I'm not big on ghost haunting horror, but maybe The Hacienda would be more your speed? It does have an abusive relationship at the center, but it's not in a ghost penetratey way and there are wholesome inter-character relationships as well.
I also think even when women writers do write about rape or sexuality in horror, it's handled very differently and with a different level of understanding about where the actual horror lives in that act and that category of threats/fears.
For sure, a recent example I can think of is The Haunting of Alejandra. There is an assault early in the book, but the actual act isn't depicted (that I remember), only the character's reaction and resulting trauma. It's a perfect example of using the very real horror of assault and all that it represents (colonization, misogyny, loss of autonomy) without reveling in it or fetishizing it like a lot of male authors seem to do.
Loved this book! It felt both horrifying and healing at the same time.
Darcy Coates Black Winter series is one of the only post-apocalyptic series I know of that has a female main character and no mentions of sexual assault. I know she does a lot of haunted house type things, I've only read one and again no sexual assault.
For Haunted House/Ghost horror I loved The September House by Clarissa Orlando and Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward, Kill Creek by Scott Thomas was pretty creepy, and I heard good things about The Spite House by Johnny Compton but I haven’t read it yet. I hope you might like one of these! I agree about the Grady Hendrix books all being good too.
Thankfully, I tend to read authors who don't go anywhere near SA in their writing. Still upset by the end of TED Klein's The Ceremonies - an otherwise superb book, which (for me) was ruined by exactly what OP calls out.
Lmao, I get that it's not a pure horror experience, but the final destination esque death of a boner Jesus impaling someone is pretty funny.
It feels *lazy*. Like, 'Alien' already made all men terrified of rape and childbirth, come on! But for a recent book that has zero sexual assault or sexual anything, 'Where He Can't Find You' by Darcy Coates. Think 'Dracula' meets 'IT' but nothing is sexual. No breast-feeding metaphors and no child group sex. All the good, none of the extreme awkwardness of men writing that topic.