Horror Books Featuring Terrifying School Settings

When it comes to the powerful and dangerous, they send their kids to The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted. Some go willingly. Others, like Alessa Li, are kidnapped and forced to attend. It’s not so bad. All she has to do is graduate. Then she’ll get redemption. Acceptance. And most of all, a chance to live a normal life. But something isn’t quite right at Hellebore.

On graduation day, instead of freedom, the faculty begin devouring her classmates. Alessa and a small group manage to escape to the school library. The only problem is they’re trapped. And if they don’t offer one of themselves as a sacrifice every night, the faculty will break in and kill everyone.

Life in the early 1900s wasn’t easy, especially for a child. After his parents are gruesomely murdered, Peter is sent to St. Vincent’s Orphanage for Boys. He and thirty other orphaned boys work, learn, and worship under the watchful eyes of the priests. Until one stormy night when a group of men arrive on their doorstep, one of them badly injured. When he dies, some ancient evil is released from the occult symbols carved into his skin. Soon, the school is infected. The boys begin acting different. And then they start turning up dead. 

Luke Ellis is sleeping peacefully on a normal, quiet night when his parents are murdered. The intruders are silent, disrupting nothing and waking no one, not even Luke. He wakes up in a room that is almost an exact replica of his own, it’s just missing a window. Outside of his room, other doors lead to other kids. Kids with incredible powers like telepathy and telekinesis. Kids that got there just like Luke. He quickly learns that Mrs. Sigsby, the director of The Institute, has one goal: to extract their powers by any means necessary. If you cooperate, you get tokens. If you don’t, you get punished. If you get punished enough, you’re taken to the Back Half, where no one ever seen again. There’s no way out. No way to win. No one to help. Welcome to The Institute.

Tyler High used to be a great school. The principal was laid-back. The janitors kept the halls clean. And students weren’t afraid to walk the halls. But then it was turned into a charter school. And everything changed. Now, the principal is unusually strict. After hearing strange noises, the janitors refuse to work at night. And the students are seeing strange things. It’s all impossible. It seems to defy all logic. A charter school shouldn’t be so terrifying. There has to be an explanation. It just might not be one that anyone will believe. Or be able to survive.

One hundred years ago, Brookhants School for Girls suffered a terrible tragedy when two girls, obsessed with a daring writer, started a private club called Plain Bad Heroines in her honor. Their bodies are found in the orchard, attacked by a swarm of yellow jackets. Five years later, after three more deaths, the school closed for good. Now, there’s a new book out detailing the haunted and cursed history, and a controversial horror film is soon adapted. But as they start filming, the curse bleeds from the past into the prison, until it’s impossible to tell them apart. 

On a rugged clifftop in a remote part of the Pacific Northwest, a mansion overlooks the ocean. It’s a school for gifted children called The Academy. A place for kids with brilliant minds to flourish. Kids like ten-year-old Josh MaCallum. When his mother enrolls him, for the first time in his life, Josh feels like he finally fits in. Until he meets Dr. Engersol, a man with a terrifying intelligence that sparks his dark experiments. But the offer Dr. Engersol gives the children is tempting. And for many, by the time they realize how horrifying they really are it’s too late. Now it’s Josh’s turn. Will he resist the call? Or will be end up in the Shadows with the rest?