Books like The Exorcist: 15 novels that haunt you the same way

Some affiliate links below. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no cost to you. What stayed with me from The Exorcist wasn’t the possession scenes. It was Father Karras, a priest who had lost his faith before he ever met Regan, and Chris MacNeil running out of doctors who could help her daughter. Blatty wrote a novel about faith and motherhood that happens to have a demon in it. The fifteen books below work on the same nerve: dread that builds slowly, and evil treated as a real subject. I’ve read some, and some are on my stack. I’ll tell you which is which. Start here If you want one book that captures The Exorcist’s tone more than its plot, start with Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings. A family, a summer house, and a dread that builds so quietly you don’t notice until it’s too late. Possession and the devil Possession The Case Against Satan (1962) by Ray Russell Russell published this nine years before Blatty’s Exorcist, and almost nobody remembers it. A troubled teenage girl, a parish priest who isn’t sure he still believes, and a bishop who is. It’s short and talky in the best way, and it cares more about the priest’s faith than the girl’s symptoms, the same ins...