What is Cosmic Horror? Here are 12 of The Most Petrifying Titles To Get You Started

Cosmic horror, which is most times used instead of Lovecraftian horror, is a spine-stinging sensational subdivision of the genre of horror fiction and weird fiction that portrays the horror of the mysterious and unfathomable more than bloodshed, violence, and other mind-bending actions. It widely delves into the unimportance of the existence of humans in comparison with the Universe at large. The subgenre is broad in scope, and it’s the blood-chilling nihility of the outward space which trades in a minute and more physical forms of fear.

Cosmic horror has dominated various other subdivisions of the genre of horror fiction and movies just like body horror. The elements of the writings of Lovecraft is observed in the various modern genre just as it is seen in manga and sci-fi.

How To Identify A Good Cosmic Horror

• It gives readers a protagonist that they wish they can help.
• It brings up the idea of things or someone to be scared of.
• A good cosmic horror makes readers uncomfortable.
• It plunges common fears and anxieties into the minds of readers.
• It makes you scout for more.

The Origin Of Cosmic Horror

Cosmic horror was created by a prolific American author of fantastic and macabre short stories and novels, Howard Philips Lovecraft. The creative cosmic author came up with the concept of pre-human, supernatural, and extraterrestrial elements storytelling. Lovecraft however made his work different from the gothic and supernatural fiction in existence by developing the horror to a cosmic level in his own words. The trademark of Lovecraft’s writing is based on cosmicism aimed at exploring dark ideas that sink into the hearts of readers. His writings were championed and published by the publisher Laird Barron at the start of his career. Horror authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, Arthur Machen, Robert Chambers, and Lord Dunsany greatly influenced Lovecraft’s writings.

The Influence Of Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Lovecraft’s together with his follower firmly developed Cosmicism as a philosophy and literally movement using their stories in which his outstanding cosmic horror is an example. Amongst the cosmic horror stories penned by Lovecraft are At the Mountains Of Madness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Call of Cthulhu, The Rats in The Wall. His work has no doubt experienced an advancement as it has been modified into video games and role-playing games.

He has been a great influence to writers all over the universe over the years as well as transformed the widely used perception of the horror genre which led to his commendation by a great author Stephen King for influencing his fiction writings. In as much as his published works which were mainly done on pulp magazines have been suppressed by modern writers, his impact is still felt by writers of modern fiction.

The death of Lovecraft however rocketed his works all over the universe and made his works a rock on which other horrors stories stood. He became examined more critically ranging from his fiction, personal life, and racist perception.

A Collection Of The Most Petrifying Titles To Get You Started

The Call of Cthulhu By H.P. Lovecraft

• Goodreads: 4/5
• Audible: 4.4/5
• Publication Date: November 5th, 2019
• Publisher: Design Studio Press
• Language: English
• Print Length: 64 Pages

Being one of the featured stories of the Cthulhu Mythos published in 2019, the Call of Cthulhu has inked recognition from all over the universe for its cosmic horror. It was inspired by Lovecraft’s dream and includes unspeakable horror works of murder, blood rituals, and destruction.

Following the narrator Francis Wayland Thurston, The Call of Cthulhu discloses a frightening knowledge about the physique of Cthulhu as a great-sized monster with tentacles with wings like that of a dragon. It however came to Thurston’s knowledge that the monster has a cult that worships and sings his inescapable gaincoming to unleash insanity and destruction to the world. Obviously, the Call of Cthulhu is one of Lovecraft’s fascinating stories which is worth reading.

The Imago Sequence And Other Stories By Laird Barron

• Goodreads: 4/5
• Audible: 4/5
• Publication Date: January 1, 2009
• Publisher: Night Shade
• Language: English
• Print Length: 256 Pages

The Imago Sequence is an exemplary work from the stockpile of Laird Barron whose cosmic horror is topnotch. This collection contains some cosmic fiction which the author claims to be short like the World Fantasy Award-nominated Novella Imago Sequence. Barron however expressed his poetic style in the Imago Sequence which lends a resounding creepy meaning to the perfected plotted horror story arousing tension gradually to its peak. The impact made at the climax of the cosmic horror always meets readers unprepared.

The Fisherman By John Langan

• Goodreads: 4/5
• Audible: 4.3/5
• Publication Date: June 30, 2016
• Publisher: Word Horde
• Language: English
• Print Length: 282 Pages

The Bram Stoker Award-winning novel was written by John Lagan, an American author, and contemporary horror writer. The novel talks about two widowers Abe and Dan who are emotionally bonded to each other over their shared pain with the same ardor for fishing. They both heard whimsical rumors of Dutchman’s Creek where fishes were at infinity, easy to capture and a solution to their losses. However, they dismissed the rumor and were compelled to embark on the search after many other rumors. The fascinating novel will leave you hanging on the cliff just like the characters and make you feel more chased like the contingencies of the deep.

Songs Of A Dead Dreamer And Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti

• Goodreads: 4/5
• Audible: 4/5
• Publication Date: October 6, 2015
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Language: English
• Print Length: 464 Pages

Songs of a dead dreamer are Thomas Ligotti’s debut cosmic horror and Grimscribe his later which were influenced by the bizarre horror of Poe and Lovecraft. He has however introduced a new category of horror fiction that will last till infinity and has avoided frugal, bloody excitements for his own category of horror.

This constitutes three divisions,  Dreams for Sleepwalkers, Dreams for Insomniacs, and Dreams for the Dead in which the fearful sensation increases as the story progress. Ligotti sets to portray deteriorating municipality as well as horrifying fantasy in a manner that runs from rich, artistic fiction to frigid, clinical disconnection. His works obviously portray how insignificant the world is and the disgusting nature of the human state. He tends to change the perception of reality to the extreme, setting loopholes to draw people to ponder on the anxiety of the dark chasm. Though the title seems soothing, it is a real terror.

Shadows Of Carcosa by H.P. Lovecraft, R.W. Chambers, Arthur Machen, Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce

• Goodreads: 3.8/5
• Audible: 4/5
• Publication Date: October 6, 2015
• Publisher: NYRB Classics
• Language: English
• Print Length: 368 Pages

Coming from different iconic horror and sci-fi writers, it was written from a somewhat more cosmic angle. The weird fiction has something to it more than a concealed bloodshed, blood dripping bones, or a loud non-stop metal clanking against each other. It explains an atmosphere with the presence of dead and inexplicable fear of the unknown that insinuates the most dreadful conviction of the human brain. An evil and specific tension or defeat of those static laws of nature which are our shield against the onfall of commotion and fiend of eternal time.

The Shape Of Water by Guillermo Del Toro and Daniel Kraus

• Goodreads: 3.9/5
• Audible: 4.5/5
• Publication Date: March 6, 2018
• Publisher: Feiwel and Friends
• Language: English
• Print Length: 320 Pages

The novel The Shape Of Water has received many recognitions and awards as well as the New York Times best-selling novel. It is a story based on the relationship between humans and creatures from the other world, the struggle for survival, and heartbreak.

In the story, Elisa Esposito was an orphan dump all her life works as a janitor in a graveyard on shifts in Baltimore’s Occam Aerospace Research Centre and was greatly helped by her colleague Zelda and Giles her neighbor. She pitied a creature that was set out as a specimen to be studied as the cold war advances. The creature which is equally dumb but has the power of understanding feelings and languages became close to Elisa. This made Elisa embark on the quest to set it free and fell in love with the creature in the long run.

Agents Of Dreamland By Caitlin R. Kiernan

• Goodreads: 3.8/5
• Audible: 3.5/5
• Publication Date: February 28, 2017
• Publisher: Tordotcom
• Language: English
• Print Length: 128 Pages

Agents of Dreamland is a cosmic horror novel written by an award-winning female author Caitlin R. Kiernan. The story illustrates how Signalman a government special agent set out in an attempt to gather details about the “Children of The Next Level” an evading cult who in a bid to physically exalt themselves ate fremd fungi. Signalman found out about them when there were no more fungi left. However, he was left with an option of biology-wrapping weapons from a different world. The book constitutes many body horror, voluminous discomforting narrative styles which makes it interesting to own.

A Lush And Seething Hell by John Honor Jacobs and Chuck Wendig

• Goodreads: 3.9/5
• Audible: 4.3/5
• Publication Date: October 8, 2019
• Publisher: Harper Voyager
• Language: English
• Print Length: 384 Pages

A World Fantasy Award Nominee written by a horror master explores the inhumanity and degradation of the state of humans. Following a commendatory foreword by Chuck Wendig, the novella sets out into The Sea Dreams It Is In The Sky a cosmic horror fictionalized in the settings of the South American nation. Here, Isabel Certa, a young academic became associated with a lawbreaker Rafael Avendano a popular one-eyed poet. On setting off for the seat of war, he left her with his apartment, money, a cat for protection, and a passionate persuasive poem which she spends most of her time oversetting.

The skin-freezing craftily narrated My Heart Struck Sorrow illustrates a librarian who is a specialist in oral tradition suffering from severe shame as a result of infidelity. Unknowingly, he came across a blue recording, a hidden secret treasure which might be of the Devil himself.

Lush Seething Hell is a thrilling, horror-stricken, and soul-stirring, an odyssey into the endless gloom that forces us to challenge hidden secrets which are better left undisturbed.

Seven Spires: Whispers Of The Necropolis by J.M. Nelson

• Goodreads: 3.6/5
• Audible: 4.2/5
• Publication Date: October 2, 2018
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Language: English
• Print Length: 299 Pages

Reflecting a world of insanity and cosmic horror, the novella illustrates mind-bending terror that can send a heart into a mouth. The novel consisting of 16 tales of chaos, dread, and terror centers on a lost city Necropolis.

The Night Will Find Us by Matthew Lyons

• Goodreads: 3.4/5
• Audible: 4/5
• Publication Date: October 20, 2020
• Publisher: Keylight Books
• Language: English
• Print Length: 336 Pages

The Night Will Find Us is an intriguing novella that illustrates four friends that set out to celebrate their graduation by camping in the woods in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. In no distant time, they were greatly influenced by the gloom in the forest erupting an act of violence out of the blues. This sent the whole group into confusion causing the death of one by an unknown killer and the dispersion of the group into unknown destinations. In a quest to find the killer by the remaining friends, the forest changes making them realize the darker, dreaming, primeval dead horror which lays in the lake beckoning on them. The call for survival is clinched to as the spirit possesses one, puts another into a test, offers the third the gift of bloodthirsty vision of erstwhile misery that tracks them. The mind-freezing novel will make bedtime a terror.

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher

• Goodreads: 3.8/5
• Audible: 4/5
• Publication Date: November 3, 2020
• Publisher: Titan Publication Group Limited
• Language: English
• Print Length: 336 Pages

Joining the league of divorcees and setting out to starting a new life, Kara fondly called Carrot by her uncle Earl the owner of a Museum moves in with him in a bid to keep records of the items in the museum. The museum containing natural wonders, mysterious items, arts, and crafts doesn’t seem new to her as she grew up knowing them. Carrot in no distant time started enjoying the company of Simon the next-door coffee shop attendant. Curiosity got the best of Carrot and Simon when uncle Earl was hospitalized for knee surgery. In the course of patching the hole, they discovered a corridor leading to the outer world where willows whisper the evil that is soon to befall Carrot’s world. The Hollow Places is best for horror fans who can withstand fear.

One Last Gasp by Andrew C. Piazza

• Goodreads: 4.5/5
• Audible: 4/5
• Publication Date: August 20, 2013
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Language: English
• Print Length: 513 Pages

One Last Gasp contains a mixture of war and horror with a strange twist. The pursuit of the rebel SS Panzer battalion by the US Army during the battle of the Burge towards the end of World War 11 led them to the sequestered Ardennes forest. There, they found an old mansion that contained a strange evil that has never been seen, concealed extensively in the pines covered in snow. In the quest for survival in the surrounded mansion by the enemy troop, the soldiers are to resolve the secrets of the being Geist and the spine-chilling battle for the body and soul.

Cosmic horror stories are however interesting and spine-chilling. Making choices of titles to start with shouldn’t be daunting as the aforementioned chilling titles are best to start with. The considered factors in listing the petrifying titles were the thrilling aspect, horripilation sensation, themes of subversion of matters of value.