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The best horror audiobooks, ranked by the data

Ranked by weighted listener rating, the best horror audiobook in our dataset is The Silver Eyes (Five Nights At Freddy's #1) by Scott Cawthon, Kira Breed-Wrisley: 4.58★ across 74 ratings and 11.7 estimated listening hours. We scored every published horror audiobook in our dataset: 131 qualify (horror-shelved titles with full pages here), carrying 8,689 listener ratings between them. The top 20 are below. No opinions: the formula in the method note decides the order.

131books qualify
8,689listener ratings behind the list
12.6avg hours (est.)
1,653combined hrs ranked (est.)

The top 20

  1. The Silver Eyes (Five Nights At Freddy's #1) by Scott Cawthon

    11.7 hrs est. · 4.58★ · 74 ratings · weighted score 4.36

    About 12 days at an hour a day, 43% longer than the average horror audiobook.

  2. Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman

    6.6 hrs est. · 4.54★ · 46 ratings · weighted score 4.28

    About 7 days at an hour a day, 40% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.

  3. The Shining / 'Salem's Lot / Night Shift / Carrie by Stephen King

    29.3 hrs est. · 4.82★ · 22 ratings · weighted score 4.28

    About 30 days at an hour a day, 166% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.

  4. The Green Mile by Stephen King

    13.8 hrs est. · 4.33★ · 108 ratings · weighted score 4.24

    About 14 days at an hour a day, 12% longer than the average thriller audiobook.

  5. Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

    11.2 hrs est. · 4.49★ · 37 ratings · weighted score 4.23

    About 12 days at an hour a day, right at the average fantasy length.

  6. The Stand by Stephen King

    34.1 hrs est. · 4.31★ · 87 ratings · weighted score 4.21

    About 35 days at an hour a day, 177% longer than the average thriller audiobook.

  7. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

    47.3 hrs est. · 4.57★ · 23 ratings · weighted score 4.21

    About 48 days at an hour a day, 330% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.

  8. Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe

    24.2 hrs est. · 4.50★ · 28 ratings · weighted score 4.21

    About 25 days at an hour a day, 192% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  9. Worlds' End by Neil Gaiman

    5 hrs est. · 4.48★ · 27 ratings · weighted score 4.20

    About 5 days at an hour a day, 39% shorter than the average horror audiobook.

  10. Preludes & Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman

    7.1 hrs est. · 4.28★ · 78 ratings · weighted score 4.19

    About 8 days at an hour a day, 35% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.

  11. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

    5.5 hrs est. · 4.31★ · 55 ratings · weighted score 4.18

    About 6 days at an hour a day, 37% shorter than the average mystery audiobook.

  12. Welcome to Dead House by Robert Lawrence Stine

    4.3 hrs est. · 4.35★ · 37 ratings · weighted score 4.17

    About 5 days at an hour a day, 51% shorter than the average mystery audiobook.

  13. Dream Country by Neil Gaiman

    4.7 hrs est. · 4.32★ · 44 ratings · weighted score 4.17

    About 5 days at an hour a day, 57% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.

  14. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

    13 hrs est. · 4.26★ · 69 ratings · weighted score 4.17

    About 13 days at an hour a day, 18% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.

  15. The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

    17.9 hrs est. · 4.29★ · 48 ratings · weighted score 4.16

    About 18 days at an hour a day, 116% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  16. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

    10.4 hrs est. · 4.24★ · 74 ratings · weighted score 4.16

    About 11 days at an hour a day, 5% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.

  17. Night Shift by Stephen King

    11.3 hrs est. · 4.37★ · 27 ratings · weighted score 4.16

    About 12 days at an hour a day, right at the average fantasy length.

  18. The Walking Dead, Vol. 1 by Robert Kirkman

    4.3 hrs est. · 4.37★ · 27 ratings · weighted score 4.16

    About 5 days at an hour a day, 48% shorter than the average horror audiobook.

  19. Jaws by Peter Benchley

    9.1 hrs est. · 4.39★ · 23 ratings · weighted score 4.15

    About 10 days at an hour a day, 26% shorter than the average thriller audiobook.

  20. The Shining by Stephen King

    15 hrs est. · 4.17★ · 282 ratings · weighted score 4.15

    About 15 days at an hour a day, 22% longer than the average thriller audiobook.

How this ranking works

Every published horror audiobook in our dataset qualifies: 131 books. Each is scored by its Open Library listener rating weighted by its rating count: score = (v·R + 50·C) ÷ (v + 50), where R is the book's rating, v its number of ratings, and C = 4.04★ the mean across all 1,508 published books we measured. Fewer ratings pull a score toward that mean, so a high rating on a handful of votes can't outrank a slightly lower one backed by hundreds. A book ranks here only when its own Open Library subject data confirms the horror shelf; surfacing in a horror search alone doesn't qualify it. Children's titles, memoirs and autobiographies are excluded from these rankings; they keep their regular book pages. No editorial picks, no sponsored placement. Dataset build 2026-07-14; rankings recompute with every data refresh. Full methodology · All horror audiobooks we measured

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