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The suspense we feel alone in a too-still forest surpasses language. It is expressed in our heightened senses, the chills at the base of our skulls where our preconscious brains and their millennial-old fears twitch, waiting.
Our dread deepens in the presence of overgrowth and rot, every cell in our bodies squirming as we recognize ourselves in the putrid earth. Though this fear is the most natural thing of all—or, perhaps, because it is—the forest can feel preternaturally horrifying.
Whether you’re going camping (and want to torture yourself) or simply crave the smell of wet soil, read on for five immersive reads that capture the fearful call of the woods.
Humboldt Cut by Allison Mick
Humboldt Cut: A Redwood Gothic
What would the forest do if it understood the violence we inflicted on it? Mick’s tale of the inheritance and revenge has all the classic elements of a chilling campfire tale—missing persons, monsters, and a sense that the natural order has been flipped on its head. Our protagonist, Jas, returns to her childhood town of Redcedar, a logging community buried in the California redwoods. While there, she discovers just how deeply her family’s fate is entwined with the woods.
Girl In The Creek by Wendy N. Wagner
Girl in the Creek
Once again, missing persons and the sentience of the wild are central threads in Wagner’s novel, which centers on a conservation area known as the Clackamas National Forest. Part of the horror microgenre known as “sporror,” Girl in the Creek features a nefarious fungus taking over the landscape.
That people so often go missing in National Parks has inspired many a conspiracy, most famously Bigfoot researcher David Paulides’s Missing 411 series. While reading, Wagner’s explanation feels as convincing as the best of these.
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
Annihilation
Any list about forest horror would be incomplete without Vandermeer’s novel, which has won both a Nebula and Shirley Jackson Award. In an X-Files-esque premise, the story follows a group of scientists exploring a wet, mucky, slowly expanding ecosystem of unknown provenance, which has claimed the lives of researchers on nearly a dozen previous failed expeditions.
This one has the spirit of sporror, eco-horror, and paranormal horror, and provokes our existential fear of what science can’t explain.
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
Plain Bad Heroines
Danforth’s gothic-coded tale of fame and queerness takes place at a rural New England boarding school that is rumored to be cursed. The past converges with the present when our protagonists arrive to film a movie about the mystery, and the campus’s vine-ridden nooks, sickly-sweet blossoms, and rotting orchards provide the perfect backdrop.
Readers will never look at yellowjackets the same way again.
Herculine by Grace Byron
Herculine: A Novel
The forest plays a more tangential role in Byron’s debut novel, but the scenes that take place in it are some of the most emotionally resonant.
Contrary to the other books on this list, most of the horror—in this case, a cult of demon-worshipping trans women in the middle of rural Indiana—takes place on the edge of the forest rather than deep inside it.
At the co-op, women in marginalized bodies trade their souls for self-determination. Our unnamed protagonist spends most of the book alone, either physically or spiritually, and trying to escape. The forest is a wild, uncrossable barrier between her and her survival.
