Dracula

Stoker built the definitive vampire myth using an epistolary structure that still works today. What surprises modern readers most is how well the suspense holds and how Dracula appears sparingly — which makes him far more menacing. The Victorian morality might grate if it weren't core to the horror the Count represents: the forbidden, the erotic, the foreign. Not flawless — the middle section drags — but it's the source from which almost all supernatural horror flows.