It really depends on what you mean by horror, as there are typically two approaches: the things that are scary, and the things that are horrific.

scary: this gets the reader's heart racing. One trick is to take everyday objects/surroundings and put them in situations where they become threatening in the narrative. If it's done well, those objects then become creepy to the reader in their own lives, sitting there alone at night, reading when they should be asleep. Use all the senses, particularly sound and its variant as touch ("She could hear the faintest scraping noise coming from outside, which was probably a tree branch blown by the wind...but as she listened, she noticed that it was slightly irregular, and too low on the wall to be the tree in the backyard. scrape...scrape... the sound came, and as she put her ear to the wall she could feel something being dragged purposefully back and forth against the wall just on the other side. It was just on the other side, inches from her head! Now faintly she heard a low undertone, as if someone was humming as well. She pushed her ear closer, trying to hear, telling herself she was imagining it, and all the noise stopped. She listened for a few moments to the silence and started to pull away when the noise started again. But it was different. Tap. Tap. Tap. as if it knew she was there and listening!") The goal is to get the reader imagining stuff themselves, in their own environment. If the reader makes the creepy stuff their own, then they're much more likely to be scared.

Horrific: this is the horrible, rather than the pulse-pounding. This is usually invoked by situations that go awry, rather than everyday objects or locations. It can be invoked through no-win situations ("The only way to stop the demon was to kill her, plunging the dagger in her heart before it had fully recovered its control of her body, but as he raised the dagger, his daughter looked at him with tears streaming down her tender little face and cried 'No, daddy, please!'") or by the supernatural (She heard a faint noise behind her, a scuttling as she typed at the keyboard, but when she turned, there was nothing in the small room with her. She spent a few moments looking around, calling herself foolish for getting jumpy, but then she noticed her backpack. She'd left it on the bed, but now it was right on the ground behind her chair!"), but what is particularly effective in either case is to NOT explain things. As humans we have anxiety about the things that can happen to us, but we fear the unknown.

A note: because of horror films over the last 25 years, horror writers tend to be stuck on gore, eviscerations, mayhem and bloody deaths of all kinds. This, to me, actually detracts from the horror, unless your reader happens to be hematophobic.

Main thing to note: SUSPENSE

Almost all horrors contains a cliffhanger after every event that occurs, leaving the audience/reader guessing what will happen to the main character or not.

Aside from that, in a horror novel, they tend to make it graphic, by that I mean they may or may not use blood imagery, but if they do, they will describe it in detail.

Keeping your audience "in the dark" is a good guideline in any medium. Your techniques for doing so will vary depending upon whether it's a play, book, movie, etc. I think prose (books and stories) are a bigger challenge because they require you to describe everything to the reader. The trick becomes deciding how much to share with the audience, and when to share it. I've written a couple of stories in the horror genre myself and this is a constant challenge.

BTW, have you checked out "On Writing" by Stephen King?

Instead of going all out on gore. I find it scarier ifyou go for more erery....not sure if I spelt that right but anyway......

be disturbing.like for example,stephen kings the mist is about a man,his wife,and his son.he goes to a local store to buy some food suplies after a big storm.thats when an old man runs in screaming about a mist that took john lee and killed him.so the mist comes and traps them all in the market.but many people think they can walk out like its a normal mist,but its not.one man ties string around his waist but when the people in the store pull/tug on the yarn to reel him back in they drag back only his corpse.without the top half.but the man and his son escape the market and the mist.but he brings along his son another woman and an elderly couple.they drive miles away in a car when they gas is gone mr.drayton (the main character) takes the womans gun and shots the couple in the backseat,the woman,and his son,but their isnt an extra bullet to kill himself.so he walks outside to let the monsters in the mist kill him.but when he hears some thing its the army.not monsters/aliens from the mist.thats when he relizes that if he waited a few more mineuts he wouldnt have needed to kill his son and friends.thus the story being twisted and horribly disturbing.and make sure too be discriptive

well when i write horrors, i think of things that are scary, that always scare people and i think back to horror films that had things that where getting people scared shittles, it just gives me an idea of what i shud put in it, also you could put sme common fears in your writing, by that i mean things that people are scared of, genrally :)

Write in detail and use alot of rememable quotes. (sorry, never read or writen a horror story but I've been working on it)

I really agree with the first quote you have by Stephen Mallatratt. You could do something like, 'And then she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, a dark, looming shadow in the corner of the room. The silver daggar he held in his hand glinted off the moonlight.' I've never written horror before, but always make it suspensful. Remember it doesn't have to be TOO gorey; you don't want to freak your audience out haha. But make sure it's a little creepy, and describe locations and appearances with great detail. Like make sure to describe the scar on the killer's face that makes him look even more threatening, or to describe his underground torture chamber with lots of details, like, say, 'The chamber had a heavy metal door with at least 6 different locks. A bloodstained table in the corner held weapons of all shapes and sizes. There was a red-stained shovel propped up in the corner, and another table held some duct-tape, some rope, and an assortment of items that he must have confescated from his victims' pockets.' And (since I am inexperianced) if nothing I said here works, try reading a Stephen King or James Patterson novel. (My friend read Stephen King and she said it was the sickest, creepiest, and most disgusting book she'd ever read.)

well, i feel that yu should always build up to the fear the person's feeling, and 'build up' to the POW that will give yu a spine-tingling read. I'm not good at writing horror, but yu may also need a LOT of discription, unless in first person and the character so scared they dont know what to do, i no im not good at writing horror, hell im not good at writing FULL STOP!
But heres and example if yu want, (1st person)

The creaking on the stairs got louder, louder until I could take it no more, I ran to the stair case and looked up. Nothing. Nothing but the dust that filled the air.
I went back to my chair, heart pounding in my chest, picked up my book and started to read.
Then a knock on the door, I sighed, put down the book and got up to answer it. The door knocked again, more loud and frantic this time.
"I'm coming!" I called, then went to open the old creaky door, it swung open before my hand touched the door knob, and banged on the wall.
No one was there but a chilly breeze had started to form, lifting my hair and lacy night gown.
I pulled it down and slammed the door shut, breathing heavily. Rap rap rap, the window sounded, the creaking of the stairs giving me a shiver down my spine, an eerie air swirled around the room, a cackling laugh came from the broken TV. I started gasping in short, sharp breaths as something touched my shoulder, caressed it, even.
As an automatic relfelx, I spun round.
A horrible blue man with a twisted face, sharp teeth and the features you'd find in a horror film was snarling at me, his filthy, overgrown fingernails sliding down my throat, his eyes the colour of coal.
I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out, I tried to run, but my legs wouldn't move as the horrible man started to caress my cheek, then he went down to my neck again, and ran his finger across it. A sharp pain, then nothing.

It's cr*p and random, I know, I was just bored :D

Heres a few things thatI'd like to read in a horror book sometimes

Mystery
Suspense
Murder
Contact with the dead
scary,predictive dreams
scary sounds (like, themain character hears ascream or something)
Idiotic Police
lots and LOTS of tears
a special occasion (ex, christmas, birthday, prom, wedding, date ect ect)
MURDER on the occasion
Blood(and LOTS of it)
Completely horrific murders (see the Jack the Ripper's 5th murder for ideas)

Oh, and dont go overboard with the murders.As in,dontputlike 5 in every chapter.Put like...one in every 4-10 chapter (depending on the length of the book) and make them random,unexpected, and mysteruous.And especially suspnsfull (btw, thedeferince between mystery and suspense isthat suspense has a distant, almost unbelievealbe guess,that is contasntly pushed aside and cant is hardto put your fingeronexactlywhat itis and ,mystery doesnt haveit to that extent)for example, have something in atleast 3-4 murders that themain character identifies as "familiar", but really cant think ofwhat.




Btw, excuse the bad spaces,please.My spacebar canbe evul sometimes.