6 Unforgettable And Hauntingly Beautiful Queer Horror Books

A slow-burn, eerie fever dream of medieval dark fantasy horror.

Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months, and supplies are running so low that the occupants are considering ‘thinning their numbers’ when the Constant Lady and her Saints arrive. Suddenly, the food stores are replenished, the sick are healed, and hope is restored. All that the Saints require in return for these miracles is people’s adoration and worship.

With the enemy army still surrounding them, those inside the castle descend into a hedonistic debauchery, including feasts of dubious origin (hint: it’s cannibalism). Only three women with messy pasts and complicated connections to each other can see that something is wrong.

Staples’ 2020 horror novel This Town Sleeps explores how history, culture, and lineage shape our lives and the realities of being a gay man in a small town.

On a reservation called Languille Lake in northern Minnesota, Marion Lafournier, a young gay Ojibwe man, realizes he can see and interact with spirits, which naturally makes him compelled to investigate the mystery of an old murder.

Passing Through a Prairie Country finds Marion seeking solace from a break-up in the Hidden Atlantis Lake Resort and Casino, the primary source of revenue for the Languille Lake reservation. Here, he encounters a dark force that seeks to ensnare those who play there.

Known as ‘the sandman,’ this trickster-predator has terrorized the reservation for decades, leeching off patrons' dreams and preventing ghosts from moving on. Marion only escapes being caught in its web by the intervention of his cousins Alana and Cherie, who both work at the casino.

Crane is a trans man in rural West Virginia who serves the Infestation, a parasitic alien species who have covertly invaded Earth. Hives of worms and flies have appeared in dark corners across Appalachia and require a constant supply of fresh corpses.

Among the followers of the Hive, which Crane serves, he can be himself, and it’s where he meets Levi, a handsome ex-Marine who becomes his lover. But when Crane falls pregnant, the Hive demands he give birth despite his desperation not to.

As you can tell from the extensive content warnings, this book can be brutal.

The title Bury Your Gays refers to the TV trope where LGBTQIA+ characters are treated as generally more expendable than their heterosexual counterparts.

Misha is a scriptwriter for a successful TV series reminiscent of the 90s shows like ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ ‘The X-files,’ and ‘Supernatural.’

He has just been nominated for an Oscar when studio execs tell him to kill off his gay main characters in the upcoming season finale for ratings: ‘queer tragedy sells.’

When he refuses, he and his friends find themselves being stalked by some of the nightmarish villains and monsters Misha himself created over the years.

Gothic horror, sapphic monster romance, and a mystery to solve all in one book. What’s not to love?

The title of this novella is taken from the English fairytale Mr. Fox, the oldest known version of the Bluebeard story. And like a monstrous female Bluebeard, the Lady of the Capricious House kills her brides.

But Madam Anatema is a giant humanoid spider who devours the beautiful women who come into her house and keeps their memories in little drawers.

Dalia, the new Keeper of the Keys, is tasked with uncovering clues to the theft of one of Anatema’s keepsakes. But as she does so, Dalia becomes increasingly fascinated by her mistress despite the danger of Anatema’s insatiable hunger.

Atmospheric, foreboding, and dreamlike, White Is for Witching reads like a dark fairytale — a neo-Gothic horror story of a haunted house with themes of racial politics, generational trauma, and grief.

Miranda Silver has pica, an eating disorder inherited from her late mother, which compels her to eat chalk and plastic… She also inherited her mother’s ability to sense spirits.

Generations of Silver women have lived in Silver House in Dover, on the coast of England, now run as a bed-and-breakfast by Miranda’s father, Luc. The story is told from the POVs of Miranda, her twin brother Eliot, her Nigerian girlfriend Ore, and the house itself—and at least one of these narrators is unreliable.