Man has a desire to get frightened. This is evident from the ghost stories told and retold over centuries. This desire to get frightened had given birth to thousands of horror stories over ages. Almost all the languages around the globe have a particular section of literature called horror literature which has gained prominence in the past few decades. Most often, horror stories are called fiction as they carry imaginary stories revolving around supernatural powers, evil forces and black magic.

The fiction intended to scare, unsettle or horrify the audience gained popularity as literature since the 1960s. This type of fiction often overlaps science fiction or fantasy and is also called speculative or supernatural fiction. In most of the big cities there are horror book store that sell books based on horror fiction.

Even though not as a polished literary form, the horror stories prevailed years back as tales of demons and vampires in folklores. But as a literature it gained popularity in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein were the famous horror fiction books of the nineteenth century. The first American horror novel was The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irvin. Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James were some of the finest ghost stories writers of English language.

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