The 14 Greatest Horror Writers of All Time

Victorian ghost-story scholars share this list with the men who gave us Pennywise and Pinhead. Some of them never wrote a novel at all.

1. 1
   Stephen King

   Bestselling American novelist behind Carrie, The Shining and It.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Edgar Allan Poe

   American master of the macabre tale, author of The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher.
   919pts
3. 3
   Clive Barker

   British writer of the Books of Blood and creator of Hellraiser.
   681pts
4. 4
   Sheridan Le Fanu

   Irish Victorian author of Carmilla and Uncle Silas.
   600pts
5. 5
   Mary Shelley

   English novelist who wrote Frankenstein in 1818, at twenty.
   529pts
6. 6
   Ramsey Campbell

   Liverpool author with decades of quietly unsettling horror fiction.
   529pts
7. 7
   Bram Stoker

   Irish author of Dracula, the 1897 novel that fixed the modern vampire.
   448pts
8. 8
   Richard Matheson

   American writer of I Am Legend and Hell House, and a Twilight Zone regular.
   353pts
9. 9
   Algernon Blackwood

   English writer of The Willows and The Wendigo, nature-haunted classics.
   353pts
10. 10
    Ira Levin

    American novelist of Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives.
    353pts
11. 11
    Joe Hill

    Author of NOS4A2 and Heart-Shaped Box, and co-creator of Locke & Key.
    353pts
12. 12
    H. P. Lovecraft

    Providence pulp writer whose cosmic horror created the Cthulhu Mythos.
    241pts
13. 13
    Shirley Jackson

    American author of The Haunting of Hill House and The Lottery.
    241pts
14. 14
    Peter Straub

    American novelist of Ghost Story and King's co-author on The Talisman.
    240pts

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