There is a YA book by one of our own AWers with a Lovecraftian theme... I think this is the one
GIMME GIMME GIMME!!
I don't know if I watched too many horror movies and read too many horror novels when I was younger, and I'm just jaded now... but I just find it extremely rare these days to find a book or movie that actually creeps me out.
A 'gore and guts' fest isn't scary to me; it's gross and an easy out. What I find effective (and way harder to pull off) is psychological horror, whether or not it has supernatural elements. And I think (hope???) there surely MUST be room for that/more of that in YA.
I've read a bunch of contemporary authors whose YA books are classified as "horror," and I really didn't find them all that scary, save for a scene or two in each (yeah: that scene in Anna Dressed in Blood, and maybe one other one in Asylum, but that's about it). Not necessarily saying I didn't enjoy them, but ADiB was pretty much a boy-version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where ghosts take the place of vampires... I mean, it was fun and everything, but scary? Not so much. And I don't care zombies are scary and originally the stuff of actual horror movies: I still wouldn't call Forest of Hands and Teeth (and sequels) or Warm Bodies "horror." Again, I enjoyed them, but are they horror? Not so much, IMO. More dystopian.
My current WIP started out as YA horror, but then it just kinda went elsewhere. It still has a few horror elements, but I definitely wouldn't call it true horror.
Personally, I'd love to see a YA Haunting of Hill House, but that may be because I'm a sucker for a good haunted house story.
That being said, I've read the OP's (The_Ink_Goddess/Beth) query-in-progress for her WIP, and it does sound like true horror to me and I would SO COMPLETELY READ IT!!! Got that, Beth? Hurry up! Write, revise, submit, publish! Can't wait.
I totally mean it! It sounds right up my alley. Nope. Not querying yet. With betas. Still waiting to hear from a couple of them. I wonder if there's a way to work with all that 'psychological horror downer' thing, and somehow still manage to end on a note of hope or something. That way, a book would be able to fulfill the expectations of our current YA readers, while also staying somewhat true to the horror genre. Obviously, I don't mean a peppy, happy, and-they-all-went-to-the-beach ending. Just leaving off with some [perhaps understated] sense of hope. I don't know. 
It's really, really good
Awww... Now who's being sweet!
All excellent points!
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Most young MCs can't just change schools, move houses or switch towns because something weird is happening. They have to go through their parents, and the parents might not believe them (or, in my case, be in on it themselves
That's one of the reasons why it kinda baffles me that there's no more YA horror per se out there! The possibilities are totally there. But we go back to audiences expectations of happy/satisfying endings (and romantic tension of some sort), right? Mind you, far as I'm concerned, The Shining has a satisfying ending of sorts. One could even call it 'hopeful,' if with sad undertones. I think that's exactly the kind of ending YA horror could get away with--which falls kind of in between the bleakness of psychological horror and the 'scarred-for-life-lone-survivor' ending of the slasher genre.
