Being a teen has all of the hallmarks of a good horror story: body grotesqueries, shifting alliances, heightened emotions, an utter lack of control over the things you do and what is done to you. And you’re trapped inside of school with a bunch of other people going through all the same nightmares as you. Adolescence is a time of great possibility, when any day could be the one that defines the rest of your life–for good or ill.
My new novel, Killer House Party, is a horror comedy set at a graduation party in a haunted house. It takes place over the span of one bad night that will come to define those who are lucky enough to escape with their lives. The house’s walls and floors bleed. The doors and windows refuse to open. Ghosts keep possessing drunk teenagers to dance and try to kill each other. But the worst part is just being stuck at a house party with your drunk classmates, who are in no way helping to find a way out.
The following five books are similarly horrifying, gory, and shocking. But the greatest, most depraved horror… is high school itself.
There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins
Stephanie Perkins’ first horror novel might just be the definitive YA slasher. The kills (shown in via Killer POV chapters where you can practically hear heavy breathing on the soundtrack) are stomach churning in their creativity. But even worse than being brutally murdered by someone in your small town? Being the new kid with a secret.
Makani Young has moved from Hawaii to Nebraska to finish out her senior year. Makani has a good thing going in Nebraska–a new last name, new friends, a cute, if slightly creepy weirdo to hook up with. But as the bodies of her classmates pile up around her, the secrets she’s been keeping, such as the events that led her to parents shipping her off to live with her grandmother, start to creep to the surface. What’s worse than being a teenager and feeling like everyone’s going to hate you when they see who you really are? (Getting your ears cut off? Pffft. Easy by comparison.)
The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky
A year ago, Rachel Chavez was attacked in her home by two men wearing white masks. Now, she goes to Manchester Prep, a bougie private school in Manhattan. Her mom is worried she’s a friendless loser just because Rachel would rather stay home and comfort-watch horror movies (and internet stalk her attacker) than party. Against her better judgment, Rachel is drawn to one of her classmates, fellow horror aficionado, Freddie Martinez. Even more so when she finds out that Freddie and his friends–the Mary Shelley Club–have been “fear testing” (somewhere between seeking vengeance and pranking) anyone at Manchester Prep who needs to be taken down a peg. Rachel gets initiated into the titular club. Scaring people who deserve it is an outlet that hits better than rewatching Night of the Living Dead.
The classism and entitlement baked into Manchester Prep is worse than any man in a mask. Rachel’s attack might haunt her, but her classmates find new lows with every passing day. And when they go low, the Mary Shelley Club goes lower. Rachel has friends and an outlet for her fear and her rage, but is it making her a monster? Are they all monsters?
Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Okay, the real horror of Squad isn’t high school; it’s rape culture. But what even is American high school without rape culture? Is there anything worse than being trapped in school with sex pests?
High school junior Becca gets adopted by the coolest, prettiest clique at Piedmont High. Everywhere they go, people watch them. Boys watch them the most. There are moments of quiet sexual harassment throughout the graphic novel brought to life by Lisa Sterle’s bright and poppy illustrations. Boys wink at the girls, leer at them, mime cunnilingus at them. When a guy at a party grabs Becca, he’s swiftly attacked by a wolf who eats his heart out in gory detail. Becca’s new squad is actually a pack of creep-eating werewolves. But they still try to confine Becca to the rules of toxic femininity through slights against her fashion, her weight, and her sexuality. To be one of them, Becca has to be perfect. Being a teenage wolfgirl is so hard.
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
What’s a horror list without the master himself, SGJ? Jones’ newest book, I Was a Teenage Slasher, is set in West Texas, in the late 80s, and, yes, in high school.
Everyone knows that Tolly Driver has a nut allergy. He’s been ruining snack time since elementary school. So when he’s force fed peanuts at a party, his attackers know full well that it will kill him. Then again, these are the same bullies who tricked poor Justin Joss into climbing a pumpjack and then turned it on, causing him to fall to his death. God forbid you try to fit in with the cool kids in Lamesa, TX because they have a mean sense of humor and an unsexy body count.
Tolly survives his peanut attack (thanks to an epi-pen, his former babysitter, and his best friend) but he gets infected by Justin Joss’ zombie blood (don’t ask) which compels him to kill those who tried to kill him first.
As Tolly himself tells us early on, “high school’s not the place to try to ever live anything down.” Preach, king.
The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson
It’s reductive to call The Weight of Blood just a reimagining of Stephen King’s Carrie. That might be the pitch, but what Jackson accomplishes with the same bones of ‘tormented girl gets telekinetic revenge’ is remarkable. Whereas King’s Carrie is bullied for her sheltered ignorance, Maddy is all too aware of the horrors of the world she inhabits.
Maddy Washington, a white passing biracial senior, has always been bullied. By her father, who is ashamed of her blackness. And her peers, who refer to her as Mad Mad Maddy. A late spring rainstorm outs Maddy’s previously hidden heritage to her peers (as any girl with pressed hair knows: water is not your friend) the same month as Springville High’s first integrated prom. (Yes, racially segregated proms do, in fact, still occur in the 21st century.)
The horrors of racism, colorism, and misogynoir are on full display throughout this novel and far more difficult to stomach than anything Maddy can do in revenge. The legacy Maddy leaves behind her is terror-filled, but maybe it’s what the town deserves.
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Killer House Party
