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I would start with the same premise that Galastel mentions in a previous answer - that horror and humor are both about tension. However, I don't think they are opposed. In fact, both horror and humor rely on building and releasing tension. Humor releases tension with a laugh, horror releases tension with a scare. Both can also work with setting up an expectation and then subverting it. And both can also involve juxtaposing the everyday with something else: the terrifying, the absurd, or both.
The laughs and scares can be more of a relief or more shocking in horror/humor combinations, because the reader can notice the build of tension, and will expect a release, but they don't know the direction of the release. It could be a laugh or a scare, so they are kept on their toes and whichever happens, the impact can be much stronger.
I remember reading a book of Boris Vian's short stories a few years ago and really feeling like I was emotionally gut punched by a few of the stories because the silly, whimsical style of his writing contrasted so hard with the grotesque situations he was writing about. ("Blues for a Black Cat" was the anthology, if you're interested.) My reaction to the horror of these stories would not have been so strong and memorable if I hadn't been laughing at the wordplay on the previous page.
If you want a recommendation, go find and watch as many episodes of "Inside No. 9" as you can. (Hopefully you live in the UK or have access to a region 2 DVD player.) In my opinion, Reese Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton are masters of the horror/humor combo, and while this series is a bit niche, it's also incredibly highly rated by reviewers, so clearly they're doing something right. It's an anthology series so some episodes are almost all horror and some almost all humor, but there are a lot that mix the two in more equal measure.
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