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8 Horror Books Based on Urban Legends by Asian Authors

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Who hasn’t been terrified by The Ring or Sadako? Or those films featuring scary Japanese dolls?

The Asian continent also has plenty of horror movies and TV series based on its culturally diverse

Unfortunately, there’s just far and few between when it comes to books

But before we get to them, just a note: I was only able to include books in

Find below are eight urban-legend horror books by Asian authors

Get ready to be frightened by a different kind of horror this scare season!

This is a collection of 10 horror short stories based on urban legends in Indian universities

In here, there’s a story about someone who died but their body is unable to be

A different tale features a haunted school in which the students want to call bluff

This terrifying mix of urban legend stories is sure to please horror seekers

Trese is a suburban horror fantasy graphic novel series about a heroine named Alexandra Trese as she

This compilation is replete with urban legend creatures such nuno sa punso (dwarf), tikbalang (half-human, half-horse), and

You might be familiar with this one already, too, as a Netflix TV series adaptation of Trese

Though it’s not really a horror book, it features horror stories and one based on an

“Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez?” follows a girl with the same name who was

No one knows what happened to Anamaria until the gardener died and a storm felled a tree

The book follows Okiku, also thrown down the well, as she kills criminals such as murderers and

Everything changes when Okiku meets a boy who has attracted a powerful spirit

This book is a collection of short stories based on existing urban legends and is centered around

Rather, they were originally popular urban legends that he collected and edited

This is a collection of short stories from a Singaporean writer

And though most of the stories are not really based on urban legends, there are two in

Pontianak is a known urban legend ghost in three Southeast Asian countries: Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia

Meanwhile, pocong is another urban legend ghost that is common in Indonesia

As a child, these urban legend creatures never failed to keep me up at night; there are

Part horror and part thriller, this book is based on a Japanese urban legend

The story goes like this: A woman was too young to raise her baby, so she hid

When she saw a small boy crying in front of the locker, she realized that he was

However, they grow up to be orphans, harboring resentment against the women who abandoned them

Want more horror books from Asia? Here are 7 Eerie Books By Asian Authors That You Must Read