Spooky season is the perfect time to revisit the stories people have told for centuries to explain the uncanny, with spirits lurking at the edge of the woods, curses passed down through families, and creatures that punish anyone who ignores old warnings. Contemporary horror and fantasy books draw from these traditions, transforming familiar supernatural ideas into something unsettlingly new.
These ten books approach myth and folklore from different angles. Some explore Irish legends or colonial-era beliefs about witchcraft, while others use ghost stories, eerie local superstitions, and the logic of dark fairy tales. Whether you prefer isolated forests, haunted houses, restless spirits, or stories that make the familiar feel dangerous, these reads offer plenty of atmosphere for an October night.
10 Bone White by Ronald Malfi
Bone White is available to purchase now through this link
In Ronald Malfi’s Bone White, the remote Alaskan hamlet of Dread’s Hand is a place where local legends feel close to reality. Paul Gallo travels there after a loner confesses to murdering eight hikers. Paul has another reason to visit: his twin brother, Danny, disappeared in the same wilderness a year earlier.
As Paul searches, locals tell him about old superstitions and a devil said to steal souls. Wooden crosses ring the frozen woods, supposedly keeping something inside. Malfi blends a missing-person mystery with folk horror, giving the landscape rules outsiders don’t understand, and breaking them may be fatal. The mystery keeps both supernatural and human explanations in play.
9 Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
Cemetery Boys is available to purchase now through this link
Aiden Thomas’s Cemetery Boys brings the supernatural into an East Los Angeles Latinx community, where brujx traditions let some people sense, see, and speak with the dead. Yadriel, a trans boy, wants his traditional family to recognize him as a brujo, so he performs a ritual with his cousin Maritza to prove his abilities.
The ritual works, but Yadriel summons Julian Díaz, a recently murdered schoolmate who refuses to move on quietly. Their effort to uncover what happened becomes a ghostly mystery with romance, danger, and questions about death and belonging. More character-driven than straight horror, its cemetery setting and restless spirits still make it a fitting autumn read.
8 Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Mexican Gothic is available to purchase now through this link
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic moves Gothic unease to 1950s Mexico. Socialite Noemí Taboada visits the isolated mansion High Place after receiving a desperate letter from her newly married cousin. There she finds an unsettling English family, a decaying mining fortune, and a house that invades her dreams with disturbing visions.
Rather than retelling one folk legend, the novel uses Gothic conventions like family secrets, a seemingly sentient house, and a landscape shaped by exploitation to make old horrors feel alive. High Place seems to have a will of its own, while the family’s past suggests a curse left to grow for generations. It’s ideal for readers who like spooky fiction slow, lush, and increasingly strange.
Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery is available to purchase now through this link
Brom’s illustrated dark fantasy Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery begins in Connecticut in 1666, when an ancient spirit wakes in the forest. The wildfolk call him Father, while Puritan settlers see him as a devil. Abitha, a recently widowed woman treated as an outsider in her strict village, has few people she can trust.
The story pits religious authority against older, wilder beliefs. As Abitha and the spirit form an alliance, suspicion and persecution spark a brutal conflict between Puritan rule and the forest’s pagan power. More than two dozen full-color paintings by Brom intensify its grim storybook quality, perfect for readers seeking witchcraft, revenge, and striking folklore-inspired imagery.
6 The Ritual by Adam Nevill
The Ritual is available to purchase now through this link
Adam Nevill’s The Ritual follows four former university friends on a hiking trip in Sweden’s Arctic wilderness. Injuries and exhaustion force them onto a shortcut, and they become lost in a forest that seems untouched by modern life. They discover an isolated building decorated with ancient objects and disturbing remains, proof that something older may inhabit the woods.
The forest’s threat is tied to pagan rites and a bestial presence that turns the landscape into a trap. Tension also comes from the friends’ strained relationships; they have grown apart, and isolation sharpens their resentments. Nevill draws on the idea that wilderness belongs to forces humans cannot control, creating folk horror where every path leads deeper into the unknown.
5 The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
The Twisted Ones is available to purchase now through this link
In T. Kingfisher’s The Twisted Ones, Mouse clears out her late grandmother’s cluttered home in rural North Carolina. Among the junk, she discovers her step-grandfather’s journal. His rambling descriptions of strange beings in the woods seem delusional, until Mouse begins seeing the same impossible things herself.
Inspired by Arthur Machen’s unsettling story The White People, the novel brings an older, inhuman world into an ordinary modern setting. Mouse and her dog navigate a landscape where reality’s rules no longer seem reliable. Kingfisher balances dread with dry humour, making this a strong choice for readers who enjoy folklore-inspired horror and a resourceful protagonist.
4 The Man of Wind and Moss by Alex Gonzalez
The Man of Wind and Moss is available to purchase now through this link
Released September 29, 2026, Alex Gonzalez’s The Man of Wind and Moss follows six college friends spending a weekend at a cabin in upstate New York. Marco Wonder is nearly 30 and feels stuck without a stable career or clear future. He hopes to confess his feelings for Pansy, but a supernatural threat soon overtakes their personal drama.
The title creature offers direction to the lost, but its help comes at a bloody price. Gonzalez fuses witchcraft, demonic curses, and millennial uncertainty into modern folk horror. The forest’s ancient presence preys on the characters’ need for purpose, making this a strong pick for readers who like vicious mythology concerned with the fear of not knowing what comes next.
3 Banshee: Irish Myths Retold, edited by Ailbhe Malone
Banshee: Irish Myths Retold is available to purchase now through this link
Edited by Ailbhe Malone, Banshee: Irish Myths Retold gathers contemporary Irish writers to revisit legends in which women too often played supporting roles. Published October 6, 2026, the 320-page anthology includes stories by Naoise Dolan, Jess Kidd, Nikita Gill, Megan Nolan, and Wendy Erskine. Its stories range across treacherous landscapes, mystical islands, and generational curses.
The anthology gives its heroines fresh motives, voices, and agency. Witches, mothers, queens, and women resisting destiny take center stage, each rendered through a different writer’s style. It suits readers who want to explore Irish myth directly rather than through a single horror plot, with danger and dark magic throughout. Its contemporary perspectives also give familiar legends new emotional weight.
2 Winterset Hollow by Jonathan Edward Durham
Winterset Hollow is available to purchase now through this link
In Winterset Hollow, Jonathan Edward Durham follows Eamon and friends Caroline and Mark to Addington Isle, where their favorite children’s book was supposedly inspired. It describes animals preparing for an annual end-of-summer festival, but the friends discover a real and sinister counterpart to the fictional world. Their nostalgic trip quickly becomes a fight to survive.
The novel turns the comfort of classic animal stories into a dark fairy tale, where familiar imagery conceals violence and rules outsiders don’t understand. The festival should feel cozy, but instead becomes a ritual with deadly consequences. An October 2026 edition includes the complete fictional book within the novel, adding another layer for readers drawn to sinister fables.
1 Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
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Jessica Johns’s Bad Cree follows Mackenzie, a young Cree woman haunted by dreams of crows, a snowy forest, and her sister Sabrina’s death. One morning, she wakes with a severed crow’s head in her hands, only for it to vanish when she looks again. Soon, the dreams bleed into everyday life.
Mackenzie returns to rural Alberta to understand what happened during a long-buried weekend at her family’s lakeside campsite. Drawing on Cree understandings of dreams and omens, Johns explores grief, family ties, and damage to Indigenous land in this book. The uncanny is woven into Mackenzie’s relationships and community, creating slow-building horror that is as emotionally grounded as it is eerie.
English (US) ·