...yeah, I'm with you both barrels on Dracula... not so much the other two. I loved Haggard when I was 13... went back to him when I was 23 and thought it was awful. Testosterone-laden crap for jerking around kids who don't know any better. Sorry. I prefer to be jerked around in a more adult fashion lol... Rebecca I read when I was a goodeal more mature and afterwards wasn't sure whether it was really worth the time. Not the sensation I look for in a novel.

I was trying to find an example of Lovecraft that I could add and couldn't think of one - but he built strange new worlds, I'm sure you're aware. Wasn't The King in Yellow his? And Chthulu?

Well, and Poe. The Cask of Amontillado was perfect. For modern horror, probably Moby Dick, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies, Hilberg's book Destruction of the European Jews and Gitta Sereny's Into That Darkness... those last two are not works of fiction, but what they discuss is far enough in the past that we have bigger worries now...