Spellbinding Witch Horror Books That Will Haunt Your Nightmares

When single mother Liv is commissioned to paint a mural in a 100-year-old lighthouse on a remote Scottish island, it’s an opportunity to start over with her three daughters–Luna, Sapphire, and Clover. When two of her daughters go missing, she’s frantic. She learns that the cave beneath the lighthouse was once a prison for women accused of witchcraft. The locals warn her about wildlings, supernatural beings who mimic human children, created by witches for revenge. Liv is told wildlings are dangerous and must be killed. Twenty-two years later, Luna has been searching for her missing sisters and mother. When she receives a call about her youngest sister, Clover, she’s initially ecstatic. Clover is the sister she remembers–except she’s still seven years old, the age she was when she vanished. Luna is worried Clover is a wildling. Luna has few memories of her time on the island, but she’ll have to return to find the truth of what happened to her family. But she doesn’t realize just how much the truth will change her.

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay ’til death. Whoever settles, never leaves. Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children’s bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear. The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town’s teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into dark, medieval practices of the distant past.

Connecticut, 1666: An ancient spirit awakens in a dark wood. The wildfolk call him Father, slayer, protector. The colonists call him Slewfoot, demon, devil. To Abitha, a recently widowed outcast, alone and vulnerable in her pious village, he is the only one she can turn to for help. Together, they ignite a battle between pagan and Puritan – one that threatens to destroy the entire village, leaving nothing but ashes and bloodshed in their wake. This terrifying tale of bewitchery features more than two dozen of Brom’s haunting full-color paintings and brilliant endpapers, fully immersing readers in this wild and unforgiving world.

Desperate to escape the city’s smog and crime, Theodore Constantine moves his family to the seemingly idyllic village of Cornwall Coombe—where the air is clean, the crops are lush, and the locals are just a little too welcoming. But peace comes at a price. Beneath the village’s pastoral charm lies an ancient rite—Harvest Home. It’s a quaint tradition, presided over by the enigmatic Widow Fortune. But as the Constantines are drawn deeper into Cornwall Coombe’s rituals, Theodore begins to suspect that something older, darker, and disturbingly alive pulses beneath the soil. Credited as inspiration for Children of the Corn, Harvest Home is a masterclass in folk horror—slow-burning, atmospheric, and deeply unsettling. What grows in Cornwall Coombe may nourish the village, but it will devour the unsuspecting.

Boston, 1662. Mary Deerfield is twenty-four-years-old. Her skin is porcelain, her eyes delft blue, and in England she might have had many suitors. But here in the New World, amid this community of saints, Mary is the second wife of Thomas Deerfield, a man as cruel as he is powerful. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary’s hand, she resolves that she must divorce him to save her life. But in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary—a woman who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the brazen hypocrisy of so many men in the colony—soon becomes herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in Mary’s garden, when a boy she has treated with herbs and simples dies, and when their servant girl runs screaming in fright from her home, Mary must fight to not only escape her marriage, but also the gallows.

In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet’s word is law, Immanuelle Moore’s very existence is blasphemy. Her mother’s union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement. But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood. Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.

The wind-battered isle of Altnaharra hides a deadly secret, and the clan that lives there is ready to end the world and begin again. Among them is Eve, a young woman desperate for power and willing to do anything to claim it. As the Adder—a dark force of unimaginable strength—nears, Eve prepares to prove she’s worthy of its legacy. But when a murder brings Chief Inspector Black to their shores, the clan’s ritual takes a deadly turn. With the future of Altnaharra at stake, Eve must choose between the power she craves and the truth she can no longer ignore. If she fails, not only will she lose her chance at greatness, but her entire world may fall. Will Eve risk it all for power, or will the island’s secrets destroy her first?

Montserrat, a gifted sound editor, has always been overlooked in the male-dominated world of ’90s Mexican cinema. Her unrequited love for her best friend, Tristán—a washed-up soap star—only adds to her frustration. When Tristán’s neighbor, a once-famous horror director, reveals a cursed Nazi-era film reel, Montserrat is skeptical but intrigued. The director insists that finishing the film will break the curse that destroyed his career. As Montserrat agrees to help, she senses an eerie presence, and Tristán starts seeing his dead ex-girlfriend. Now, they’re caught in a sinister web where film and dark magic blur, and the stakes grow deadly. Will Montserrat uncover the truth before the past consumes them both? Or has she already been cast in a nightmare with no escape?