There's actually a psychological angle on why horror (written) fiction general sucks. I doubt you'd want to discuss this because it is too sciency, but I find it interesting and I can dig up lots more info if it is wanted.
In the limbic system of the brain, we have the amygdala (largely capable for producing emotion and emotionally "stamping" memories, and the thalamus, which bawsically puts the senses together and presents the full picture, sights, sound, hearing, et, to the cerebral cortext, the rational/human part of the brain.
When something scares us in real life or in a movie, the primal amygdala spazzes, and uses its own emergency, flight or flighty, pathway to the cerebral cortex, before the thalamus could accurately put it into the perception picture and figure out whether it was a threat or not.
Written text by itself is never scary or spooky. The amygdala probably pretty much ignores it on input. It's only post-processing by the thalamus and upon entry into the cerebral cortex (where higher language skills like reading are housed) that we realize the text is scary. So when we are reading horror fiction, by the time the horror text has made it to the brain, it's already been heavily rationalized and deemed safe, not a threat, by the nervous system.
