Looking for a good, spooky read for the Halloween season that won't imperil your soul? Want to read about real heroes confronting real monsters? Too often these days, heroes are made from monsters and real heroes, like our priests, are made into monsters.
It is high time that Catholics reclaim the horror genre. Catholics invented the horror novel. Take Dante's Inferno or the really scary Morality plays of the Middle Ages, for example.
The world needs Catholics to identify the real monsters.
Stephen King may have made clowns terrifying, but the world needs Catholics to identify the real terror: Satan.
The Handmaid's Tale may have made reproduction and motherhood terrifying, but Catholics need to show the real horror: Abortion.
Spooky Catholic Books Table of Contents
- The First Pro-Life Horror Novel - The Seventh Word
- The First Catholic Zombie Apocalypse Series - The Cajun Zombie Chronicles
- The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty
- Real Catholic Exorcisms - True Catholic Ghost Stories and Hauntings
- Dean Koontz - Odd Thomas Series
- Frank Peretti - This Present Darkness Series
I'm such a big fan of Catholic horror that I have published quite a number of books in the genre, including the first pro-life horror novel AND the first Catholic zombie apocalypse series!
The First Pro-Life Horror Novel - The Seventh Word
Abby Johnson, the pro-life leader and former Planned Parenthood abortion clinic director, described this book as “legit scary … I don’t like reading this as night! It was good, it was so good … it was terrifying, but good.”

LET SLEEPY TOWNS LIE ...
A horror thriller about the residents of a small town chosen to confront the evil lurking beneath the starched white masks of an abortion facility.
The First Word came with Cain, who killed the first child of man. The Third Word was Pharaoh’s instruction to the midwives. The Fifth Word was carried from Herod to Bethlehem. One of the Lost Words dwelt among the Aztecs and feasted on their children.
Evil hides behind starched white masks. The ancient demon LaColt conducts his affairs in the sterile environment of corporate medical facilities. An insatiable hunger draws the demon to a sleepy Louisiana hamlet. There, it contracts the services of a young attorney, whose unborn child is the ultimate object of the demon’s designs. Monsignor, a mysterious priest of unknown age and origin, labors unseen to save the soul of a small town hidden deep within Louisiana’s plantation country, nearly forgotten in a bend of the Mississippi River.
With roots in Bram Stoker's Dracula, this is a horror novel which reads like Stephen King's classic stories of towns being slowly devoured by an unseen evil and the people who unite against it.
The book is set in southern Louisiana, an area the author brings to life with compelling detail based on his local knowledge.
The First Catholic Zombie Series - The Cajun Zombie Chronicles
The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty
Real Catholic Exorcisms - True Ghost Stories & Hauntings
- The exorcism of Anneliese Michel, the heroic real-world Emily Rose
- Brandings and hideous faces appeared on the skin of “Roland Doe,” whose exorcism inspired The Exorcist novel and movies
- The exorcism of Emma Schmidt, whose ridiculous outpouring of sludge inspired the infamous vomiting of The Exorcist
- And more, including the original texts of “Begone, Satan!” and the historic exorcism of Vervins, France
Dean Koontz - Odd Thomas Series
The Odd Thomas books aren't always distinctly Catholic, but the Catholic worldview is obvious. Odd Thomas is an amazing and understated character, at times tragic and heroic, and always self-deprecating.
Here's part of the blurb from the first book in the series:
"The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why."
But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Sometimes the silent souls who seek out Odd want justice. Occasionally their otherworldly tips help him prevent a crime. But this time it’s different.
Each book is written as a stand alone novel so you can pick up the story wherever you want. In Odd Hours, Odd befriends and protects a young pregnant girl who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Holy Mother.
Frank Peretti - This Present Darkness
This Present Darkness is among the classic novels of the Christian, if not Catholic, horror genre. It also serves as strong commentary against the hidden dangers of New Age-ism, which is as important now as it was in the 1980s, when the book was first published. Set in the deceptively peaceful small town of Ashton, the book's ingredients are solid: an intrepid Christian pastor, Hank Busche; the dogged editor of The Clarion, Marshall Hogan; and sinister figures slowly manipulating a town toward their own dark purposes.
This Present Darkness is the first book of a two-part series, including Piercing the Darkness.
First published in 1986, Peretti's book set the standard for suspense for spiritual warfare story-telling. Nearly every page of the book describes sulfur-belching, ash-choking demons battling fierce angelic warriors. All of this occurs on a level of reality that is just beyond the senses. It is a helpful spiritual practice for Christians to read books such as these. They help us tinge our reality with the supernatural, even as the rest of the world focuses on the purely material.
This book also teaches us about the power of prayer in our own unseen spiritual battles. Christian believers and New Age demon-worshippers influence the unseen clashes between the angels and demons through prayer. This book is not for the faint of heart. The descriptions of exorcisms are especially vivid: "There were fifteen [demons], packed into Carmen's body like crawling, superimposed maggots, boiling, writhing, a tangle of hideous arms, legs, talons, and heads."
What else should be added to this List of Catholic Books?
Comment below and tell me.
Interested in more from the Christian and Catholic horror genre? Check out the page I made for this purpose: ChristianHorror.com.
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