112. Communion (Whitley Strieber, 1987)
Noted horror and sci-fi author Whitley Strieber narrates a supposedly factual first-person account of his and his family's experiences with missed time, strange pains and behaviors and an increasingly elaborate story of alien abduction that he conjures forth while under hypnosis. Strieber approaches the subject matter initially with some skepticism but using a kind of internal logic that isn't entirely sensical at times, he slowly starts to piece together what he feels has been encounters with visitors from beyond.
So first of all, let me start this out by saying that this spun as a true story seems highly far-fetched. While on the surface Strieber seems very matter of fact and lucid about his experiences, some basic research finds a lot of issues with his accounts. Additionally I just don't find alien abduction stories even remotely scary. So there's that too. Having said that, Strieber is a seasoned writer and spins this tale with a certain amount of gravitas and story-telling skill that makes it at least somewhat entertaining on a surface level as well as adding a more humanistic, philosophical tone that I appreciate that keeps it from coming across like a raving conspiracy nut story. One other little thing of note I found interesting is that while Strieber does portray the "Greys", the prototypical aliens often cited (and referenced famously as this cover of this book as well), he also describes more benevolent visitors painted as short, squat little fellas in blue coveralls. Was Strieber visited by Minions!?
Anyway I digress. Overall I can't say I was a massive fan of this and definitely don't buy into it as a true story, but it is well-written for what it is.
To Read (187)
| Title | Author |
| The Passage | Justin Cronin |
| We Have Always Lived in the Castle | Shirley Jackson |
| The Historian | Elizabeth Kostova |
| Silence of the Lambs | Thomas Harris |
| The Wasp Factory | Iain Banks |
| Hell House | Richard Matheson |
| The Silent Companions | Laura Purcell |
| Her Fearful Symmetry | Audrey Niffenegger |
| Fledgling | Octavia E. Butler |
| Whispers | Dean Koontz |
| The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Carrion Comfort | Dan Simmons |
| Zone One | Colson Whitehead |
| Ring | Koji Suzuki |
| The Changeling | Victor LaValle |
| HEX | Thomas Olde Heuvelt |
| Pandemonium | Daryl Gregory |
| Frankenstein in Baghdad | Ahmed Saadawi |
| Last Days | Brian Evenson |
| Heart-Shaped Box | Joe Hill |
| The Snowman | Jo Nesbø |
| The Case Against Satan | Ray Russell |
| Night Film | Marissa Pessl |
| Drawing Blood | Poppy Z. Brite |
| The Last Werewolf | Glen Duncan |
| Lovecraft Country | Matt Ruff |
| Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories | China Miéville |
| The Bad Seed | William March |
| The Walls Around Us | Nova Ren Suma |
| The Good House | Tananarive Due |
| Mr. Shivers | Robert Jackson Bennett |
| Hammers on Bone | Cassandra Khaw |
| Fiend: A Novel | Peter Stenson |
| The Frangipani Hotel: Fiction | Violet Kupersmith |
| Rebecca | Daphne Du Maurier |
| Rosemary's Baby | Ira Levin |
| Those Across the River | Christpher Buehlman |
| The Hunger | Alma Katsu |
| Let the Right One In | John Ajvide Lindqvist |
| Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories | Mariana Enriquez |
| Feed | Mira Grant |
| The Other | Thomas Tryon |
| The Collector | John Fowles |
| Queen of the Damned | Anne Rice |
| World War Z | Max Brooks |
| The House with a Clock in its Walls | John Bellairs |
| "Young Goodman Brown" | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Shadowland | Peter Straub |
| Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation | Octavia E. Butler, John Jennings and Damian Duffy |
| Down a Dark Hall | Lois Duncan |
| Intensity | Dean Koontz |
| The Cipher | Kathe Koja |
| Bloodchild | Octavia E. Butler |
| The Screwfly Solution | James Tiptree Jr. |
| Elizabeth | Ken Greenhall |
| The Red Tree | Caitlin R. Kiernan |
| "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" | Joyce Carol Oates |
| Goosebumps (The Complete Series #1-#62) | R.L. Stine |
| Lunar Park | Bret Easton Ellis |
| Minion | L.A. Banks |
| The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories | Edited by Ann VanderMeer |
| The Imago Sequence and Other Stories | Laird Barron |
| The Jumbies | Tracey Baptiste |
| The Werewolf of Paris | Guy Endore |
| Spirit Hunters | Ellen Oh |
| Furnace | Livia Llewellyn |
| "Left Foot, Right Foot" | Nalo Hopkinson |
| John Dies at the End | David Wong |
| The Girl Next Door | Jack Ketchum |
| Grendel | John Gardner |
| Northanger Abbey | Jane Austen |
| Uncle Silas | Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu |
| Out of Space and Time | Clark Ashton Smith |
| Conjure Wife | Fritz Lieber |
| The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce | Ambrose Bierce |
| The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch | Phillip K. Dick |
| Worse Things Waiting | Manly Wade Wellman |
| The Trial | Franz Kafka |
| Murgunstrumm and Others | Hugh B. Cave |
| The Land of Laughs | Jonathan Carroll |
| She | H. Rider Haggard |
| The Painted Bird | Jerzy Kosiński |
| The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner | James Hogg |
| Song of Kali | Dan Simmons |
| Caleb Williams | William Godwin |
| A Voyage to Arcturus | Dave Lindsay |
| The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade | Herman Melville |
| The Crystal World | J.G. Ballard |
| The Dark Tower and Other Stories | C.S. Lewis |
| The Green Man | Kingsley Amis |
| The Lurker at the Threshold | H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth |
| Falling Angel | William Hjortsberg |
| The Black Spider | Jeremias Gotthelf |
| The Wolfen | Whitley Strieber |
| The Ceremonies | T. E. D. Klein |
| The Arabian Nightmare | Robert Irwin |
| The White Devil | John Webster |
| Something about Eve : a comedy of fig-leaves | James Branch Cabell |
| The Totem | David Morrell |
| The Wandering Jew | Eugène Sue |
| All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By | John Farris |
| Night has a Thousand Eyes | Carnell Woolrich |
| The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction | Anthony Boucher |
| Sweetheart, Sweetheart | Bernard Taylor |
| The Dark Country | Dennis Etchison |
| Quatermass and the Pit | Nigel Kneale |
| Who Made Stevie Crye? | Michael Bishop |
| In a Lonely Place | Karl Edward Wagner |
| The Track of the Cat | Walter Van Tilburg Clark |
| The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck | Alexander Lang |
| Nine Horrors and a Dream | Joseph Payne Brennan |
| John Silence, Physician Extraordinary | Algernon Blackwood |
| Sub Rosa: Strange Tales | Robert Aikman |
| Dark Feasts | Ramsey Campbell |
| And the Darkness Falls | Edited by Boris Karloff |
| The Second Century of Creepy Stories | Sir Hugh Walpole |
| Deliver Me from Eva | Paul Bailey |
| The Last Bouquet: Some Twilight Tales | Marjorie Bowen |
| The Sleeping and the Dead | August Derleth |
| The Monk | Matthew Lewis |
| The Hound of the Baskervilles | Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
| The Picture of Dorian Gray | Oscar Wilde |
| Jane Eyre | Charlotte Brontë |
| Lost Worlds | Clark Ashton Smith |
| Gormenghast | Mervyn Peake |
| Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | Stephen Sondheim |
| Edge of Running Water | William Sloane |
| Harvest Home | Thomas Tryon |
| The Weirdstone of Brisingamen | Alan Garner |
| Who Fears the Devil? | Manly Wade Wellman |
| The Book of Skulls | Robert Silverberg |
| The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" | William Hope Hodgson |
| The Midwich Cuckoos | John Wyndham |
| The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen | Elizabeth Bowen |
| Tales from the Nightside | Charles L. Grant |
| The Hunger and Other Stories | Charles Beaumont |
| Lost Souls | Poppy Z. Brite |
| Outer Dark | Cormac McCarthy |
| The Manuscript Found in Saragossa | Jan Potocki |
| New Grub Street | George Gissing |
| A Stir of Echoes | Richard Matheson |
| Peace | Gene Wolfe |
| They Thirst | Robert McCammon |
| The Dark Descent | David G. Hartwell |
| Fantômas | Marcel Allain |
| Darker Than You Think | Jack Williamson |
| Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural | Edited by Phyllis Fraser, Herbert Wise |
| Prime Evil: New Stories by the Masters of Modern Horror | Edited by Douglas E. Winter |
| Flicker | Theodore Roszak |
| Carnacki, the Ghost Finder | William Hope Hodgson |
| The Grotesque | Patrick McGrath |
| The Devil Rides Out | Dennis Wheatley |
| The Course of the Heart | M. John Harrison |
| Darkness Weaves | Karl Edward Wagner |
| The Nightmare Factory | Thomas Ligotti |
| The Face That Must Die | Ramsey Campbell |
| A Wrinkle in the Skin | John Christopher |
| Skin | Kathe Koja |
| The Trail of Fu Manchu | Sax Rohmer |
| Tales of Horror and the Supernatural | Arthur Machen |
| A Scent of New-Mown Hay | John Blackburn |
| The Opener of the Way | Robert Bloch |
| The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural | Editors of Playboy |
| The Night Stalker | Jeff Rice |
| X,Y | Michael Blumlein |
| More Tomorrow & Other Stories | Michael Marshall Smith |
| The Third Ghost Book | Edited by Lady Cynthia Asquith |
| The Off Season | Jack Cady |
| Blood Sport | Robert F. Jones |
| Creep, Shadow! | Abraham Merritt |
| Sleep No More | August Derleth |
| Reprisal | Mitchell Smith |
| Feesters in the Lake | Bob Leman |
| They Return at Evening | H. Russell Wakefield |
| Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales | Henry S. Whitehead |
| House of Flesh | Bruno Fischer |
| A Haunting Beauty | Charles Birkin |
| Year of the Sex Olympics: Three Television Plays | Nigel Kneale |
| Fancies and Goodnights | John Collier |
| Throat Sprockets | Tim Lucas |
Read (151)
| Title | Author |
| "The Lottery" | Shirley Jackson |
| Lord of the Flies | William Golding |
| "The Body" | Stephen King |
| "The Monkey's Paw" | W.W. Jacobs |
| Sandman | Neil Gaiman |
| The Turn of the Screw | Henry James |
| "The Tell-Tale Heart" | Edgar Allan Poe |
| The House Next Door | Anne Rivers Siddons |
| "Shadow Over Innsmouth" | H.P. Lovecraft |
| The October Country | Ray Bradbury |
| Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark | Alvin Schwartz |
| 30 Days of Night | Steve Niles, Ben Templesmith |
| Ghost Story | Peter Straub |
| The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Carrie | Stephen King |
| It | Stephen King |
| Something Wicked This Way Comes | Ray Bradbury |
| Books of Blood 1 - 3 | Clive Barker |
| House of Leaves | Mark Z. Danielewski |
| Carmilla | Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu |
| Uzumaki | Junji Ito |
| "At the Mountains of Madness" | H.P. Lovecraft |
| Haunting of Hill House | Shirley Jackson |
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley |
| The Shining | Stephen King |
| Dracula | Bram Stoker |
| A Head Full of Ghosts | Paul Tremblay |
| The Ruins | Scott Smith |
| MacBeth | William Shakespeare |
| The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde | Robert Louis Stevenson |
| Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad |
| Salem's Lot | Stephen King |
| The Man Who Was Thursday | G.K. Chesterton |
| The Lurking Fear and Other Stories | H.P. Lovecraft |
| Deathbird Stories | Harlan Ellison |
| Johnny Got His Gun | Dalton Trumbo |
| The Damnation Game | Clive Barker |
| A Christmas Carol | Charles Dickens |
| The War of the Worlds | H.G. Wells |
| 1984 | George Orwell |
| American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis |
| Pet Sematary | Stephen King |
| Misery | Stephen King |
| The Phantom of the Opera | Gaston Leroux |
| Coraline | Neil Gaiman |
| Horrorstör | Grady Hendrix |
| The Jewel of Seven Stars | Bram Stoker |
| "The Yellow Wallpaper" | Charlotte Perkins Gilman |
| Doctor Faustus | Christopher Marlowe |
| Twice-Told Tales | Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| Red Dragon | Thomas Harris |
| "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" | Harlan Ellison |
| Penpal | Dathan Auerbach |
| Widdershins | Oliver Onions |
| The Island of Dr. Moreau | H.G. Wells |
| Goblin Market | Christina Rossetti |
| Burnt Offerings | Robert Marasco |
| The Road | Cormac McCarthy |
| Invasion of the Body Snatchers | Jack Finney |
| The Devil in America | Kai Ashante Wilson |
| "Please Momma" | Cheysa Burke |
| Meddling Kids | Edgar Cantero |
| Wylding Hall | Elizabeth Hand |
| From Hell | Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell |
| The Stranger | Albert Camus |
| Melmoth the Wanderer | Charles Maturin |
| Infidel | Pornsak Pichetshote |
| The Terror | Dan Simmons |
| The Night They Missed the Horror Show | Joe R. Lansdale |
| Anna Dressed in Blood | Kendare Blake |
| Skin Folk | Nalo Hopkinson |
| Interview with the Vampire | Anne Rice |
| Come Closer | Sara Gran |
| The Blind Owl | Sadegh Heydayat |
| The Exorcist | William Peter Blatty |
| City of Glass | Paul Auster |
| The Devil in Silver | Victor LaValle |
| The Fisherman | John Langan |
| The Mask | Dean Koontz |
| Psycho | Robert Bloch |
| Gothic Tales | Elizabeth Gaskell |
| The Queen of Spades | Alexander Pushkin |
| NOS4A2: A Novel | Joe Hill |
| The Beauty | Aliya Whiteley |
| The Fifth Child | Doris Lessing |
| The Six-Gun Tarot | R.S. Belcher |
| Tales of Terror | Charles Higham |
| The Bloody Chamber | Angela Carter |
| The House on the Borderland | William Hope Hodgson |
| The Girl with All the Gifts | M.R. Carey |
| Experimental Film | Gemma Files |
| I Am Legend | Richard Matheson |
| Beloved | Toni Morrison |
| Horror Horn | E. F. Benson |
| Our Lady of Darkness | Fritz Lieber |
| The Killer Inside Me | Jim Thompson |
| Dark Forces | Edited by Kirby McCauley |
| Dread Nation | Justina Ireland |
| Mongrels: A Novel | Stephen Graham Jones |
| The Grip of It | Jac Jemc |
| The King in Yellow | Robert W. Chambers |
| The Woman In Black | Susan Hill |
| The Anubis Gates | Tim Powers |
| Pages from Cold Point | Paul Bowles |
| The Pet | Charles L. Grant |
| Swan Song | Robert McCammon |
| Her Body and Other Parties: Stories | Carmen Maria Machado |
| Perfume: The Story of a Murderer | Patrick Süskind |
| Parasite Eve | Hideaki Sena |
| The Lesser Dead | Christopher Buehlman |
| Fever Dream | Samanta Schweblin |
| Bird Box | Josh Malerman |
| Exquisite Corpse | Poppy Z. Brite |
| Rotters | Daniel Kraus |
| The Croning | Laird Barron |
| The Cellar | Richard Laymon |
| Collected Ghost Stories* | M.R. James |
| Nightshade | Derek Marlowe |
| The Vampire Lestat | Anne Rice |
| The Troop | Nick Cutter |
| White is for Witching | Helen Oyeyemi |
| The Haunted Omnibus | Edited by Alexander Laing |
| Through the Woods | Emily Carroll |
| Mythago Wood | Robert Holdstock |
| "All Our Salt-Bottled Hearts" | Sonya Taaffe |
| The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories | H.P. Lovecraft |
| The Outsider, and Others | H.P. Lovecraft |
| The Case of Charles Dexter Ward | H.P. Lovecraft |
| The Ballad of Black Tom | Victor LaValle |
| A Nest of Nightmares | Lisa Tuttle |
| Dark Matter | Michelle Paver |
| A Sight for Sore Eyes | Ruth Rendell |
| Strange Toys | Patricia Geary |
| The Best Tales of Hoffmann | E. T. A. Hoffmann |
| Shutter | Courtney Alameda |
| Some of Your Blood | Theodore Sturgeon |
| The Bone Key | Sarah Monette |
| The Elementals | Michael McDowell |
| The Sheep Look Up | John Brunner |
| Obscura | Joe Hart |
| Finishing Touches | Thomas Tessler |
| Alone with the Horrors | Ramsey Campbell |
| "The Willows" | Algernon Blackwood |
| The Revenger's Tragedy | Thomas Middleton |
| Medusa : a Story of Mystery, and Ecstasy & Strange Horror | E. H. Visiak |
| "It's a Good Life" | Jerome Bixby |
| Broken Monsters | Lauren Beukes |
| The Keep | F. Paul Wilson |
| The House of Souls*** | Arthur Machen |
| The Talented Mr. Ripley | Patricia Highsmith |
| The Drowning Girl | Caitlin R. Kiernan |
| Communion | Whitley Strieber |
