Mountains are undeniably alluring and awe-inspiring. But mountain climbing can be fraught with life-threatening dangers—falls, frostbite, avalanches, and oxygen deprivation are amongst the most common ways to die. And yet, the attraction of scaling lofty peaks like Everest continues to exert a hold on humanity.
I love reading non-fiction survival stories about mountain climbing (despite not actually being a climber myself!), so it’s no surprise that I also love it when writers of fiction take that kind of story and add a dash of SFF and horror into the mix. Here are five books which take the already perilous activity of mountaineering and amp up the fear factor even further by adding ghosts, monsters, and possession.
Ascension (2023) by Nicholas Binge
I think it’s crucial to go into Nicholas Binge’s Ascension with the right expectations. It’s typically billed as a speculative thriller, which to me evokes the works of authors such as Blake Crouch and Michael Crichton. It’s fair to say that Ascension starts off in that vein, but it definitely takes a turn for the horrific and fantastical, making it more in line with the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
The bulk of the story is told via letters that Harold Tunmore, a scientist who mysteriously dropped off the map, has written to his niece Harriet. The letters reveal that Harold has been recruited to be part of a team tasked with exploring a massive mountain that has suddenly appeared in the Pacific Ocean.
Harold quickly realizes that time behaves strangely on the mountain and that members of the previous expedition are acting cagey. Driven by a desire to unravel the mystery of the mountain, Harold finds himself compelled to continue climbing despite the difficulty of the endeavor. To make matters even worse, the team encounter some bizarre and decidedly dangerous creatures on their way up.
Ascension is a fun and lightly frightening story wrapped up in freezing cold atmosphere. It may wear the coat of a sci-fi thriller, but at its heart it’s pure pulp horror.
The White Road (2017) by Sarah Lotz
The White Road begins with a perilous journey through the fictional Cwm Pot cave system in Wales. Simon Newman hires a guide to lead him through the claustrophobic tunnels, but he isn’t just seeking adventure; in the hope of driving traffic to his website, Journey to the Dark Side, he’s planning to film the bodies of three students who were trapped years earlier by a flood. Simon nearly ends up trapped in the cave himself, but he manages to escape with both his life and the footage.
Simon’s viral moment leads to him trying to replicate his success by attempting to climb Mount Everest, in order to (once again) film dead bodies. Clearly, Simon isn’t a great guy. But his messed-up sense of morality doesn’t make things any less tense when he starts to experience something potentially supernatural on the mountain’s snowy slopes.
Everest is a terrifying enough location as it is—the summit is literally in the “death zone,” the name for altitudes above 26,000 feet (8,000 meters) where there isn’t enough oxygen to live—but adding a specter or two into the mix adds yet another layer of fear.
Echo (2022) by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (translated by Moshe Gilula)
Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s Echo turns away from ghosts and monsters and instead offers up a possession story. Nick and Sam are a couple with very different hobbies; Nick loves to go mountain climbing, while Sam doesn’t understand the appeal and fears for Nick’s life. His fears come true when Nick and his climbing buddy, Augustin, attempt to summit Mount Maudit in the Alps. Something goes wrong, leading to Augustin’s presumed death, and while Nick makes it down alive, he’s suffered severe facial injuries and mental trauma.
Nick’s behavior becomes increasingly odd after the mysterious accident and Sam begins to suspect that something from the mountain might still have a hold on him. Far more of Echo is about the aftermath of the incident, rather than the incident itself, but we do find out what happened through a manuscript, written by Nick, which revels in mountainous imagery that’s both spectacular and deeply scary.
The horror in Echo goes in some weird and unexpected directions (this isn’t your usual possession story!), but it all feels grounded by Nick and Sam’s love for each other.
This Wretched Valley (2024) by Jenny Kiefer
Technically This Wretched Valley is about a cliff face and the valley at its feet, but it feels very much in keeping with the mountain stories on this list. Taking inspiration from the eerie Dyatlov Pass incident, Jenny Kiefer’s novel opens with the remains of three missing people being found in the woods. The state of the bodies leaves investigators perplexed, with one body being stripped to the bone, another eviscerated, and the final one mutilated. Plus, there’s a fourth person still missing.
The story then jumps backwards in time to explain how these people met their grisly fates. Clay, a geology student, discovers a hitherto unknown cliff face deep in the wilderness and for the research trip he brings along research assistant Sylvia, professional rock-climber Dylan, Dylan’s boyfriend Luke, and a very good dog called Slade.
Clay’s research about the cliff could help complete his PhD thesis, while rising star Dylan plans to make her mark by being the first person to scale it. But when the group ends up stranded, relationships quickly start to sour. This Wretched Valley isn’t just survival horror, though—it’s supernatural survival horror, with the woods having a mind-bending effect and the cliff face proving to be disturbingly magnetic.
Although it’s established at the outset that at least three of these characters meet gory ends, the mystery of how they ended up like that maintains the tension and drives the novel forward.
The Other Side of the Mountain (2011) by Michel Bernanos (translated by Gio Clairval)
Originally published in French in 1967, I read Gio Clairval’s 2011 English translation of The Other Side of the Mountain (which can be found in The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories), but a standalone edition of an older translation is also available. The novella is told in two parts: the first part is set aboard a ship that becomes trapped at sea thanks to a lack of wind—carnage ensues; the second part sees two survivors from the ship wash up in an otherworldly land—weirdness ensues.
The landscape is drenched in red light and the plants behave oddly, but with death nipping at their heels, our two survivors—a cabin boy who serves as the unnamed narrator and Toine, the ship’s cook—have no choice but to push onwards. A mountain looms over the forest beyond the beach and Toine is convinced that if they can just make it to the other side of the mountain, they’ll be saved.
The setting feels like it came out of a fever dream, but for all of the novella’s surreal imagery, the actual narration is recounted with complete clarity. Surreal stories run the risk of becoming confusing (this is sometimes quite purposeful, of course!), but The Other Side of the Mountain manages to chart a lucid path even when things gets weirder and weirder as the characters draw closer to the menacing mountain.
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So, these are my favorite horror novels featuring strange and spooky mountains! Let me know which of your own favorites I’ve overlooked in the comments below…
