Whenever someone mentions the classic horror genre, one of the first name that comes to mind is Dracula, but, compared to how well the name is known, relatively few people have read Bram Stoker’s classic novel. I recommend giving it a try.
The story is told through a series of letters, diary and journal entries, and newspaper excerpts, as Dracula tries to move from Transylvania and gain a foothold in England, contemporary to the time Stoker was writing in the 1890s. While the reader comes to know some half-dozen viewpoint characters, Dracula is not one of them. He remains a monster, inhuman and unknowable, however charming he may make himself for a time. Instead the novel is narrated by people, mostly in their twenties and mostly English, who enter into the situation confident that the world is logical and reason will solve any problem. This makes it all the more shocking to them when they begin to be terrorized and people are killed by something the no science or logic they know can explain, a figure from a then-barely known foreign myth.
Dracula is by no means a quick read, but Stoker’s methodical construction of a world of lawyers and doctors who keep records in shorthand and dictation onto phonographs being invaded by a deadly supernatural force is still chilling more than a hundred years later. Consider it if you’re looking for a good, old-fashioned scare to make you double-check your window locks at night.