Whether you’re looking for a light taste of monstrous tropes or a listening experience to raise the hair on the back of your neck, one of these four recent horror audiobooks can meet you at your level.

For listeners looking for a Halloween vibe without the jump scares, Michael Crouch narrates the romantic YA audiobook THE GOOD VAMPIRE’S GUIDE TO BLOOD AND BOYFRIENDS. Nineteen-year-old Brennan returns to college after a suicide attempt, only to nearly die in a car accident and wake up a vampire. Crouch’s talent for voicing moody, emotional characters shines in this tender performance. Brennan’s desperation to be a good person despite his vampirism is heartwarming and heart-wrenching in equal measure. Cole, the super-cute librarian who learns Brennan’s secret, agrees to keep quiet and help him navigate his new cravings. Crouch seamlessly switches between several accents, including American Southern and Australian. Crouch warmly narrates the budding romance between Brennan and Cole as they reconcile how Brennan was turned with the rumors of missing students and animal attacks.

For a step up on the horror scale, Lee Osorio’s narration of the middle-grade horror audiobook LOST ON DOLL ISLAND is creepy enough to leave listeners unsettled, but you’ll still be able to sleep comfortably at night. Diego’s parents are going through a divorce in the U.S., which he worries he caused. In the meantime, he’s sent to live with family in Mexico City, where his dreams are plagued by a mysterious doll asking to be found. When his new school announces a field trip to La Isla de Muñecas, an island filled with dolls, including a doll rumored to grant wishes, Diego jumps at the chance to find the doll in his dreams and wish for his life to be fixed. Osorio voices Diego with youthful authenticity that perfectly conveys his weighty emotions, inward feelings of guilt, and anxiety as he keeps secrets from everyone while outwardly conveying strength. Osorio easily differentiates Diego’s classmates, teacher, and the adults that live on the island by tone and a careful adjustment of their accents. His voice for the doll that whispers in Diego’s mind is breathy and chilling as it seeks Diego’s attention.

Alex Finke utilizes careful pacing to elevate moments of suspense in PLAY NICE, our next step up the horror scale. In this haunted house audiobook, Finke voices fashion influencer Clio with the perfect combination of melodrama and sarcasm as she returns to her childhood home after her estranged mother, Alex, passes away. Long believed to be mentally unstable, Alex always insisted her house was haunted by a demonic presence and wrote about her experience in a memoir. As narrated by Natasha Soudek, these segments are full of steadfast maturity that slowly unravels into fear as the presence haunts Alex and her daughters, especially Clio. Seeing an opportunity, Clio plans to fix the house and sell it while documenting the process for social media. But strange things begin to happen, and Clio finds an annotated copy of her mother's memoir that unlocks long-buried memories implying that Alex might not have been as delusional as everyone believed.

Fair warning: This last audiobook, with its vivid, descriptive prose combined with an ensemble of seven narrators, left this listener unnerved for days after. In THE UNSEEN, Isla’s recent pregnancy loss has her spiraling into depression. Stories in the local news about missing children only upset her further. When a mysterious orphaned boy wanders into her backyard, Isla is desperate for him to join her large family. Erin deWard voices Isla gently as she slowly climbs out of her depression and grows in the certainty that this boy, Rowan, is what her family needs to be complete. But Rowan’s behavior is strange, he doesn’t speak except in screeching bursts, and his disjointed body is twisted and odd, leaving Isla’s husband and five children unsettled. Michael Crouch and Caitlin Davies voice the oldest teens with begrudging cynicism as strange things begin to happen. Curtis Michael Holland’s deep baritone voice for Luke, Isla’s husband, swells with anxiety as he balances his wife’s new happiness with the increasing unease of their children. Ferdelle Capistrano’s innocent voice for Sophie, the youngest child, leaves listeners agonized as reality crumbles and her fear grows.