Undoubtedly, the ’90s were the peak era of YA horror books, with scary kid lit for children and teens flooding the market and terrorizing ’90s kids forever. Many of the best-loved classic kids’ books of the ’90s were coming-of-age tales, but plenty of others were pulpy thrillers and horror stories that dove into the dark side of human nature and the supernatural. The 1980s through 1990s saw a glut of horror books aimed at teen readers, but scary books for kids also exploded in popularity, driving a horror boom in books that had previously been reserved for adults.
Unlike today, most material aimed at children didn’t pull punches out of fear of traumatizing children, and that included books. Much has been made of ’80s kids’ movies being incredibly dark, but while the new PG-13 rating put an end to it in that same decade, books continued to deliver horror, gore, and existential nightmares to a younger audience for a long time after. Not all the most memorable kids’ horror books of the era are literary works of art, but the best ones shaped the nightmares of a generation of ’90s kids.
10
Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (1981)
Alvin Schwartz & Stephen Gammell
Of all the books on this list, Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series is undoubtedly the most iconic vehicle of childhood trauma for kids of a certain generation. It’s also the most memorable, thanks to being the most widely read, having sold millions of copies after the first book was so successful it spawned two sequels: More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1984) and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones (1991). Not a novel, but a collection of short stories taken from folklore and urban legends, reading Scary Stories is the closest a kid in the ’90s got to sitting around a campfire or in a dark room during a sleepover and terrifying each other with ghost stories.
The stories themselves are truly creepy, though some are more funny than scary. But what really drove home the horror was Stephen Gammell’s iconic original illustrations, which were pure, delightful nightmare fuel. Gammell’s gory, striking charcoal-and-ink drawings haunted a generation, with the 2019 movie adaptation wisely ripping its creature designs straight from the pages. Over the years, various conservative parent groups have tried to get the books banned, to varying degrees of success. They never understood what Schwartz and Gammell did: kids are resilient and scary childhood stories form core memories that become great nostalgia in adulthood.
9
Thirteen: 13 Tales of Horror by 13 Masters of Horror
Tonya Pines (Editor) & Various Authors
Another memorable collection that was aimed less at kids like Scary Stories, and more at teenagers and YA readers was the anthology Thirteen: 13 Tales of Horror by 13 Masters of Horror. The anthology featured some of the Point Horror imprint’s most notable horror and thriller writers of the era, including Christopher Pike, R.L. Stine, Caroline B. Cooney, and others. They did not disappoint, bringing some of their best and most nightmarish one-off stories for the anthology.
Unlike children’s horror, which largely dealt with straightforward monsters, ghouls, and ghosts, Thirteen introduced an element of existential horror in many of its tales.
Unlike children’s horror, which largely dealt with straightforward monsters, ghouls, and ghosts, Thirteen introduced an element of existential horror in many of its tales, adding a new, horrific wrinkle for preteen and teenage minds to wrap themselves around. Particular nightmare fuel was Caroline B. Cooney’s “Where the Deer Are,” a story that got an entire generation of kids thinking twice before walking down forested roads and eyeballing every deer they saw. Falling forever in a dimension between worlds? No, thank you.
8
The New Girl (Fear Street #1) (1989)
R.L. Stine
In the 1990s, there was arguably no bigger name in kids and YA horror than R.L. Stine. In fact, he was so big that he’s on this list twice, as the next entry shows. Stine started out as a writer of children’s stories and a producer of kids’ TV shows, but he really hit his stride in 1989 when he released his first book in the formative YA horror-thriller series, Fear Street. The New Girl was book #1 in the Fear Street series and hit a generation of teenage girls like a tidal wave, ushering in a whole new world of thrills and chills.
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R.L Stine’s Fear Street books were all set in the fictional town of Shadyside, specifically on Fear Street, an element that influenced later YA genre offerings like Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Sunnyvale and other fictional towns full of supernatural events. Stine blended campy thriller narratives, serial killers, paranormal happenings, ghosts, murder, curses, witchcraft, twisted love stories, and more. The New Girl introduced readers to a pulpy tale of obsessive love and stolen identity at the hands of a teenage murderer. Immediately, it let readers know that in the Fear Street books, dark subject matter verboten in scary kids’ books was no longer off-limits.
7
Welcome to Dead House (Goosebumps #1) (1991)
R.L. Stine
R.L. Stine was a powerhouse, writing not one, but two iconic book series. Fear Street was his YA horror series aimed at teenage writers, but a few years later, he launched his Goosebumps series aimed at kids and preteens. Amazingly, it was even more successful than the already wildly successful Fear Street, selling over 400 million copies and becoming a bona fide franchise, spawning comic books, video games, TV adaptations, movies, and merchandise along with the books themselves.
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Just as Fear Street didn’t pull any punches when it came to spinning genuinely scary stories for teenagers, the Goosebumps series didn’t pander or talk down to younger kids. Right out of the gate, Welcome to the Dead House introduced the living dead, and dead kid zombies that have to consume the blood of a newly-killed person to survive. While future Goosebumps books dabbled in more comedy and tongue-in-cheek scares, Dead House was pure horror: dead people, dead kids, dead pets, and plenty of gore. It set the tone moving forward that anything was possible in the books, even though they were for kids.
6
The Midnight Club (1994)
Christopher Pike
If R.L. Stine was the #1 name in young adult and kids’ horror in the ’90s, then Christopher Pike would be considered 1A. Unlike Stine’s long-running series, Pike had multiple shorter series, including Cheerleaders, Chain Letter, Final Friends, Remember Me, and The Last Vampire. However, it was Pike’s standalone novels that won him greater acclaim, and with good reason, as they allowed him to explore different ideas and settings without being beholden to a specific place or narrative structure.
Of those standalone books, The Midnight Club was the greatest mindbender and existential trip. The subject matter itself was heavy, revolving around a group of hospice teenagers with terminal illnesses from cancer to AIDS who are staring mortality in the face, telling each other stories to cope. But it’s the twist of them making a pact to contact the others from beyond the grave that introduces profound, haunting questions about what happens when we die, how to face one’s death with grace, and whether life means anything if it’s so short. There are supernatural elements, absolutely, but it’s the horror of the great unknown and the unanswered questions that make The Midnight Club so impactful.
5
Wait Till Helen Comes (1986)
Mary Downing Hahn
Not all terrifying YA and kids’ books dealt with psycho serial killers or macabre monsters. Some of the most haunting books were about exactly that: hauntings. In the ’80s and ’90s, plenty of ghost stories for children and teenagers hit shelves, but few authors had cornered that market quite like Mary Downing Hahn, who specialized in tales involving ghosts. Of her books, the best-known and most influential is the tragic, gothic ghost tale Wait Till Helen Comes. Though it was published in 1986, it still continued to sell copies well into the ’90s, a regular fixture school libraries.
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Wait Till Helen Comes has its scary moments, but the real horror comes from the tragedy of the backstory and the Gothic elements that saturate the story, including the old graveyard, an isolated rural small town with secrets, and the ghost herself, Helen. The grief and guilt Helen carried with her into the afterlife turned her vengeful and desperate for company, leading to Wait Till Helen Comes‘ chilling climax and horribly sad revelation. Plenty of kids gave ponds a wide berth, their imaginations convinced they saw the ghostly figure of a girl lurking at the edge and waiting to pull them in. It’s literally and figuratively haunting, sticking with a whole generation of kids.
4
The Face on the Milk Carton (1990)
Caroline B. Cooney
While she never achieved the atmospheric heights of Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine, as one of the smaller satellites of ’90s YA horror thrillers, Caroline B. Cooney was in regular rotation for many teen readers, especially girls. Her books spanned multiple genres including romance, horror, suspense, and mystery, garnering multiple awards and nominations. Similar to Pike, she had a few shorter series, including The Vampire’s Promise trilogy, the Time Travelers quartet, the Losing Christine trilogy, and the Janie Johnson series.
More than a few kids started paying closer attention to the missing children photos on the back of milk cartons after reading The Face on the Milk Carton.
The first book in that last series is The Face on the Milk Carton, which introduced an existentially horrifying concept: What if your parents weren’t actually your parents and you weren’t actually who you thought you were? That’s the nightmare 15-year-old Janie faces when she sees a picture of her younger self on a milk carton, labeled as a missing child. The milk carton practice was common through the ’80s and ’90s when “stranger danger” panic was a legit cultural phenomenon, and more than a few kids started paying closer attention to the missing children photos on the back of milk cartons after reading The Face on the Milk Carton, wondering if they’d see someone they knew and hoping it wouldn’t be them.
3
The Curse of the Blue Figurine (Johnny Dixon #1) (1983)
John Bellairs
John Bellairs was an unsung hero of kids’ horror, spinning Gothic mysteries for children and preteens through the 1980s and ’90s. While all of his book series involved that Gothic mystery element, his Lewis Barnavelt series is largely a junior mystery series, with some supernatural and dark fantasy elements. His Johnny Dixon and Anthony Monday series, though, were pure Gothic horror for children. With Anthony Monday only featuring in four books and Johnny Dixon in three times as many, it’s the latter series that left a mark. It doesn’t hurt that the series illustrator was none other than Edward Gorey.
Not just an illustrator and artist, Edward Gorey was also a prolific writer, illustrating an estimated 500+ books for other authors but also writing 116 books of his own in his lifetime.
The Johnny Dixon series kicked off with 1983’s The Curse of the Blue Figurine, introducing kids to the series protagonist Johnny Dixon and his only friends, history professor Roderick Childermass and neighbor boy Fergie. The book was for children, but it didn’t dumb things down. Bellairs layered the story into an oppressive creepiness, the atmosphere growing more cloying and dark to reflect Johnny’s deteriorating mental state as a dark specter gains a foothold in his mind. The story taught kids a stark lesson: don’t steal, especially not old artifacts – you never know what might be attached.
2
Stranger with My Face (1981)
Lois Duncan
Lois Duncan was similar to Caroline B. Cooney in the ’80s and ’90s in the sense that her name may not have been the biggest name in horror, but young readers who were steeped in the world of YA thrillers and horror novels knew her well. Duncan was a prolific writer, penning dozens of novels, over a dozen picture and chapter books for children, a few books of poetry, multiple audiobooks, and editing a few anthologies. While her best-known work is I Know What You Did Last Summer, thanks to the movie adaptations and more recent TV series, Stranger With My Face remains the favorite of many readers.
The idea of watching someone else steal your very face to live your life was a nightmarish scenario that lingered with more than a few readers.
Stranger With My Face introduced a whole generation to the concept of astral projection when protagonist Laurie learns she has a twin sister, Lia, who has been using astral projection to send her soul outside her body. It was a fascinating thing to contemplate until the story also stretched the concept to a dark outcome when Lia possessed Laurie’s body, casting her soul out. With that twist, Stranger With My Face incorporated the concept of the malevolent doppelgänger. The idea of watching someone else steal your very face to live your life was a nightmarish scenario that lingered with more than a few readers.
1
Flowers In The Attic (1979)
V.C. Andrews
A book so famous (or infamous, depending on how one looks at it) that it has been caricatured, satirized, and referenced in countless other pieces of pop culture, V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic is the best and worst of excessive Southern Gothic. V.C. Andrews published fewer than a dozen novels credited to her name in her lifetime (and two posthumously), but while all were fairly well-received, none had the impact of Flowers in the Attic – so much so that it continued to be read by teens in the ’90s and resonated with them like it did kids in the late ’70s thanks to its titillating storyline of sibling incest and overwrought family drama.
|
Dollanganger Family Series Books |
Publication Year |
|---|---|
|
Flowers in the Attic |
1979 |
|
Petals on the Wind |
1980 |
|
If There Be Thorns |
1981 |
|
Seeds of Yesterday |
1984 |
|
Garden of Shadows (with Andrew Neiderman) |
1984 |
The incest between the two siblings locked away in the attic is, of course, the main thing people remember of the novel, but there was so much else going on in Flowers in the Attic to scandalize a young reader. It is, in short, a lot: child abuse and starvation, psychopathic religious zealotry, sibling incest, rape, slow poisoning, abusive guardians, lies, the death of a child, and more. It’s not a particularly well-written book, but it’s certainly memorable, with every horrifically problematic moment seared into the brains of an entire generation who were baptized by fire with the reading of this book and came out the other side traumatized.
