Scariest Book You've Read

[lablonde]

I'm looking for things scary, not gory. Best I've read so far is Peter Straub's "Ghost Story".

Title, Author, and brief storyline appreciated :)

[Milossarian]

Stephen King has had two or three collections of short stories. One was about the scariest I'd ever read; the other one or two didn't do much for me.

Can't remember the name of the one I really liked, but I particularly remember one short story in it: "The Jaunt." The premise was, in the future, technology had advanced to where people could be transported light years away instantaneously, but the catch was, they had to be asleep. One young, curious kid faked being anesthetized so he could see why.

When they got to the other side, the kid's family was shocked to see he had become a drooling madman. Turns out that if you aren't asleep, your consciousness travels the distance of your body in real time in some parallel plane. So he'd been in the nothingness of space sort of in solitary confinement for a few million years or so, unable to kill himself.

Yeesh.

[BigJoe]

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig.

The SOB tells me A: he is even smarter than me and B: Think More... (taking a slug from a bottle of rot gut gin).

Jesus, what a sadist :D

[BigJoe]

On a serious note - Pet Sematary (sp) by the afore mentioned S. King. Made the hair on my arms stand up... could sleep for two friggin' days.

Scary stuff.

[Apollyon]

I'm with Milossarian.

Earlier works by Stephen King: The Dead Zone, Salem's Lot... and my own personal not-for-reading-after-dark favourite, IT.

*Shudder* Ancient evil awakens periodically to feed... and you'll never look at clowns the same way again... :eek:

[BigJoe]

IT was bad, but the last line of Sematary was absolutely evil.

BTW - anybody else creeped out by the short story about the blood thirsty dry cleaning machine (echo's of Christine)?

[lablonde]

I've read most Stephen King, and Dean Koontz for that matter. Lighting and Watchers being two of my favorites. I'm looking for a new source. Any lesser known masters of the genre out there?

[Max Torque]

H.P. Lovecraft. Read the fun stuff, like "At The Mountains Of Madness", "The Horror At Red Hook", and, my favorite, "Herbert West - Reanimator".

[BigJoe]

Clive Barker - the dude is SICK!!! :)

(think he's responsible for the "Hell Raiser" films)

[Una Persson]

The story referenced by Milossarian was really scary!

HP Lovecraft, "The Haunter in the Dark".

Karl E. Wagner "Sticks", and "In the Pines" (although I really liked "River of Night's Dreaming" Hmmmm lesbians, horror, and Robert Chambers...).

[brachyrhynchos]

Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House. Original movie made in the early 60's (I think) was terribly scary - remake done about a year ago was just terrible.

Ditto on King's It - damn clown.

[BigJoe]

Anthracite,

Damn!!! Too Bad you prefer girls :)

Clive Barker did this thing called "The Weave" or something like. Scared me back to reading Heinlein.

[ChiefScott]

Steve King's The Langoliers disturbed me in a "that-could-just-possibly-be-true" sorta way.

[Rosebud]

Gotta agree about It. There are also elements of The Stand that really get to me-- more so the potential reality of a Captain Tripps than the Walkin' Dude. I thought the mini-series version of the book was pretty good, fwiw.

BigJoe-- I think the King short story you're referring to is "The Mangler." And yeah, it creeped me out as well!

lablonde, you might want to check out Ellen Datlow & Terry Windling's "Year's Best Fantasy and Horror" collections. I'm not sure that they're precisely annual, but the one volume I was given some time ago had some major scary stuff in it. One about a deranged dentist (some gore there, but not tons), some very strange stories about circus "freaks" and other unusual folks. Of course I don't have the book in this apartment, but with an anthology like that you often get turned on to up and coming authors.

[Fillet]

Pet Sematary scared me so badly that I had to keep putting it down every few pages until I got my courage up again. I also stupidly read Salem's Lot one night while I was home alone... I swear, I was afraid to get up to answer the phone because the light wasn't on in that room.

Big Joe - you're talking about The Mangler! Creepy, yes... so were the other stories in the "Night Shift" collection. I highly recommend "Night Shift" to anyone who hasn't read it yet - great stuff!

Clive Barker is good too, but his stories definitely have more of an unworldly air than Stephen King's. I'll never forget a couple of Barker's subway-related short-stories - the one about the doors being fitted with blades that would cut you in half if you didn't get off the train fast enough had me spooked for a long time.

[Rosebud]

Fillet, the 9 trains are actually like that. That's why the only use 'em during rush hour-- thins the slow-moving from the herd ;)

[Kyla]

It. I went through a horror phase when I was about 15 or so, and except for the really stupid ending, It was the scariest book I ever read. Pet Sematary didn't scare me at all - but I liked it because one chapter starts off with "The last happy day of Louis Creed's life was March 24, 1984." My little sister was born on March 25, 1984, so I found that rather amusing.

[BigJoe]

"The Mangler" - sounds right - definately scarey stuff.

"Night Shift" is nearly certainly the collection.

btw - how about "I'll tear your soul apart!" for a sig - I'm thinking it mucho flame attraction. (lol)

[Fillet]

Rosebud, I knew there was a good reason why I only rode the East Side IRT. ;) Taking the 3 to Brooklyn reminded me of Barker's other short story about the subway, where some poor sap gets transported into some hellish trainyard with fiends that had teeth like knives, IIRC. :D

[divemaster]

Ditto with the King, especially 'Salem's Lot. The Shining was pretty scary also. His short story The Boogeyman (also in Night Shift) really creeped me out.

[BigJoe]

"Boogeyman" - is that the one about the basement of a textile mill?

If so (shudder).

Can you believe he writes only at night?

[Fillet]

Big Joe, the textile mill story is called "Graveyard Shift."

For Stephen King fans, check out http://www.horrorking.com/ - it's got brief description of all the novels and short stories.

[AuntiePam]

No horror library should be without Horror: 100 Best Books, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.

It's not the books themselves, but short essays by horror and fantasy writers (and some mainstream folks that'll surprise you) who write about their favorite horror stories.

It's a wonderful collection. You get Poe commenting on Hawthorne, James on Le Fanu, Pratchett on Hodgson, Tem on Kafka, Lansdale on Bradbury, King on Marasco (he liked Burnt Offerings, one of my favorites too).

As for the OP, I don't think I've ever been scared by anything I've read. Grossed out, chilled, thrilled and awed, but not scared. "At the Mountains of Madness" came closest. I believed that stuff when I was reading it.

[Milossarian]

And the winner in the Phrases Least Likely to Be Uttered in the Stephen King Household is:

"Daddy, will you tell me a bedtime story?"

lablonde: You ever try nonfiction, true crime stuff? Some of the occult-related books will curl your toes.

Try "The Ultimate Evil" by Maury Terry. It makes a case that one Satanic cult may be responsible for 20 years worth of mass murders -- and may have been connected to the Son of Sam and the Manson Family slayings. Offers pretty compelling evidence that David Berkowitz didn't act alone.

It creeped me out rather sufficiently.

[BigJoe]

Hummm...

I used to be the strangest person I know.

Thanks to both Fillet and AuntiePam. :D

[C K Dexter Haven]

How about Daphne du Maurier's short story, THE BIRDS ... ?
Runs circles around Stephen King.

Also, Bram Stoker's DRACULA (at least the first section, in Castle Dracula) is pretty much guaranteed to give you shivers...

[Little Nemo]

One of the creepiest horror novels I've ever read is Sins of the Blood by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. It's about vampires and various authors have used vampirism as a metaphor for everything from alcoholism to the Red Menace. In Rusch's novel, vampirism is metaphorically equated with child abuse. So this book is effective because it uses a real world crime to invoke a horror of the supernatural.

[Astroglide]

I'm looking for things scary, not gory. Best I've read so far is Peter Straub's "Ghost Story".

Title, Author, and brief storyline appreciated

Title: The Bible
Author: God
Storyline: You are doomed to an eternity of unimaginable torment.

This book is so scary so people actually have lost their mind and begun believing it, much like the movie "Mouth Of Madness."

[tomndebb]

Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here. in the summer of 1980 while Reagan accepted the nomination and Falwell and company cheered 30 miles south of me.

[Fillet]

Tom~, have you ever seen the "news from the future" skits in "Laugh In"? (I forget what they were actually called.)

One skit produced in 1968 predicted the news 20 years in the future:

"President Reagan is still denying that he's planning to run for Governor of California..."

[evilbeth]

I agree with almost all of the above! The only new one I can add is one that really creeped me out when I read it. Other people might not find it as scary as I did but I spent an entire summer spooked! It is called Somebody Come and Play by Clare McNally. I think it is out of print now but a library or used bookstore may have it.

[lee]

FUNGUS!

I still freak out when i see mold of any kind.

[SkeptiJess]

Have you (or anyone else) tried Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books? I'm not a horror person as a rule (although I have read most of Stephen King, all of Shirley Jackson and some of Dean Koontz), but a friend at work (I work at a bookstore) gave them to me. The short and dirty description is 'Buffy the vampire slayer for grownups,' but that doesn't even begin to convey the true splendor of this series. Twisted, weird, creepy and just plain fun. I took the first one (Guilty Pleasures -- very aptly named, BTW) and was hooked from the first sentence. There are around 8 books in the series and I read one a day until I finished them. I actually dreamed about Zombies a couple of times while I was reading them... Good stuff! Get 'em quick -- you won't regret it.

[Derleth]

Title: Misery
Author: the local favorite, Stephen King
Plotline: Author crashes his car, gets stuck in remote mountain house with a crazy lady who does not like how his last book ends.

I plan to start writing seriously one of these days, and I live within spitting range of the Rockies. I like that book's minimalist style (two main characters, nobody else for miles and miles, plenty of time to develop both) and its setting (reading about terror in a house like yours is more effective than reading about it in Castle Freakula). I like how so many people are metioning Lovecraft. My nick comes from August Derleth, a man who collaborated with him in a few works. Everything modern horror does is directly traceable to him. Rule of thumb: If it's been sleeping for more than 1000 years, don't wake it up!

[Koxinga]

I've found Stephen King's most disturbing vignettes to be those occurring in his "non-supernatural" stories. These include (some spoilers):


Deloris Claiborne's husband calling to her from the bottom of the well, and then later trying to climb out.

Annie Wilkes chopping off Paul Sheldon's foot off with an ax, and then cauterizing the stump with a blowtorch. I had to put the book down for a few minutes at that point.

Many of the scenes in "Apt Pupil". I never had any intention of seeing the recent movie adaptation; I felt that most of the suspense and creepiness is too psychological (i.e., inside the characters' heads) to translate well to the big screen.

"The Ledge", from Night Shift

And, "Survivor Type", from Skeleton Crew. Oooh, oooh, oooh, just thinking about that story creeps me out.

DHR

[Derleth]

My favorite quote from Misery:

"MISERY CANNOT DIE!"
-Annie Wilkes

Screamed when she found out how Paul's last book ended. She was throwing things around at this point, jolting Paul awake. If you've ever been awakened by people who have every intention of kicking your ass around, you'd understand.

Second favorite quote:

"Now we must rinse."
-Annie Wilkes

You'd have to read the book to understand. It's a close second, and it still gives me the chills.

BTW, I've read the book and rented the video. In the book, Annie is much more dangerous. In the book, things don't go nearly as nicely for Paul. Just like Dune (felt the urge to mention a rather large, unwieldy book I've read and an equally large movie I've seen twice now), nothing beats reading the book.

[TomH]

1. Anything by M R James. Collected Ghost Stories is a good starting point.

2. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

3. Naomi's Room by Jonathan Aycliffe (who also writes political-religious thrillers under the name Daniel Easterman).

4. Bits and pieces by H P Lovecraft, though some of it is rubbish.

[Koxinga]

. . . That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb and revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom . . .

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange eons even death may die.

[manhattan]

This thread, as mentioned, is a great candidate for In My Humble Opinion. I'll shoot it over there.

[Rhythmdvl]

First I've got to get on the King bandwagon (hey, everyone likes to be part of a crowd) and tip my hat. Like Kyla I went through a horror phase that lasted several years. King and Lovecraft… brrrrr!

However, before this turns into a complete King-lovefest, I'd like to throw out a couple books that I daresay had a stronger psychological impact on me than any King novel. Can't say exactly why, but despite the terror IT struck in me (I read it in my first apartment, all alone in a new city, no electricity turned on yet, by candlelight!) it didn't quite leave me as spooked as Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky) did.

Essentially, it is the story of a man who contemplates and then commits a crime. His subsequent psychological slide into the nightmarish world of guilt, and the cat and mouse game played between he and the police kept me on a harsher edge than any book I've read filled with monsters and mayhem. Dostoevsky is a masterful author.

In addition, I'd like to recommend Blindness by Jose Saramago. Within, people, one by one, begin to loose their sight. That is all I will say about the novel, as I despise it when anyone else but the author gives me a bit of the plot. After reading it you will be more thankful for your sight then ever before. You will get an unnerving chill when sleep keeps your vision from returning first thing in the morning. I daresay you will see many threads in GD in a new light. It won the Nobel Prize for Literature a couple of years ago, quite deservedly so.

My apologies if these don't quite fit into the traditional horror genre. But if you like putting yourself on edge, if you like increasing the amount of adrenaline in your blood, if you like looking at the world a bit differently and with more appreciation and a bit more apprehension after reading a novel, than these books will do justice to those desires.

Thanks for listening,

Rhythmdvl

PS How about Invasion of the IMHO Thread?

[Mr. Cynical]

Milossarian sez:
Can't remember the name of the one I really liked, but I particularly remember one short story in it: "The Jaunt." The premise was, in the future, technology had advanced to where people could be transported light years away instantaneously, but the catch was, they had to be asleep. One young, curious kid faked being anesthetized so he could see why.

To this day, I try to explain to Mrs. C. that this is the absolute most horrifying thing I have ever read. The way the story is told, and the idea behind it make for instant gooseflesh. The last line of the story was possibly the best possible ending. I can't think of a better one!
This, if done properly, could make one of the most scary movies ever. All they would have to do is keep it from getting campy.

[Mr. Cynical]

Oooh! I just thought of another one in the Stephen King collection! The Long Walk. THAT one was scary.

For those of you who are not familiar with it, here's the premise.

There is a government contest in which 100 boys, early teens all IIRC, line up in a single row. At the sound of the pistol, they start walking. And they walk. They must maintain a speed of at least 4 miles per hour. If they slow, they get a warning. A second warning. If they continue to lag behind the pace...they are shot dead.

The last one walking gets the Grand Prize.

A horrible, awful story, and I absolutely love it.

[CalMeacham]

I agree with a lot of the above -- I'm a big Lovecraft and King fan. But...

One of the scariest stories I've read is Alan E. Nourse's "The Bladerunner", because I could see this happening. Nourse was a doctor who wrote science fiction novels, mostly "space opera" types. But Bladerunner was different (Ridley Scott liked the title so much he used it for his adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". If you look close at the end credits you can see his acknowledgment to Nourse).

The premise: In the future there are too many people with conditions like hemophilia. In an earlier age they would die of their conditions, but medical science is now keeping them alive. Result: too many people with unwanted conditions. Natural selection isn't weeding them out. They threaten to overrun the medical services. The chilling solution: a form of eugenics. Anyone can come into a hospital for free treatment. But the price is sterilization. An black market in medical services develops. Clandestine medical suppliers are called "bladerunners".

Scary nough. But the real threat s a disease that strikes that looks like a common cold in its earliest stages. No ne wants to go for treatment for a cold if the price is sterilization. So it spreads like the bubonic plague and becomes a major problem, especially to a society that doesn't want to acknowledge it or change the rules.

There's a lot more to it than that, but the concept seemed so logical and plausible that it scares me in a deep philosophical (rather than a look-over-you-shopulder) kind of way.

[missbunny]

It is probably the overall scariest for me. Some others I have been totally creeped out on are:

Pet Sematary

Julia - by Peter Straub. Story is about a woman who keeps seeing this little girl who looks like her daughter (who, if I am remembering correctly, is dead). Little girl, who isn't necessarily still of this world, turns out to be not all sugar and spice. Anyone who reads this will never look at baby birds and bicycle wheels without thinking of the horrible little monster in this story.

The Other - by Thomas Tryon. A boy and his twin brother alternately charm and terrorize their family and the residents of the small town in which they live. It's not until the end of the book that you will realize that something weird has been going on with these two boys the whole time - great surprise twist.

The Dark Secret of Harvest Home - also by Thomas Tryon. Family moves to idyllic small Connecticut town. They slowly realize the town harbors some kind of dark secret, but the wife and daughter don't find too much problem with that, since the benefits outweigh the cost. The husband can't let it alone, though, and the town makes sure he will never have the opportunity to tell any outsiders their little secret.

Interesting note about Thomas Tryon's books: I think most or all of them are based in CT; he disguises the names of the towns but not their geography, so if you are familiar with the area you can easily figure out where he is talking about. The Other is supposed to be either Willimantic or Wethersfield (can't remember which), and Harvest Home is supposed to be the Ledyard/North Stonington area. I grew up around there, so this made the story even more creepy for me.

[Myron Van Horowitzski]

He's mostly thought of as a science fiction writer, but his Fevre Dream, a novel about vampires on a Mississippi steamboat in the 19th century, is sublime, exquisite, and the scariest thing I've ever read.

See also Nightflyers, about a haunted spaceship, complete with mysterious captain seen only by hologram and passengers being gruesomely picked off one after another. ::hair stands up on the back of Myron's neck::

Forget about the movie, though. It sucked.

[Biggirl]

Include me in on the S. King bandwagon for fiction. It, Salem's Lot and the short story The Jaunt.

The Jaunt scared the beejeezus out of me. That poor kid!

When I was 11 I read The Excorsist. I couldn't sleep for a month and kept imagining I was levitating off the bed.

Non-fiction: Buried Dreams. This is the story of John Wayne Gacy the serial killer. I couldn't finish it.

[Trion]

missbunny - I grew up in that area also. I never knew that "The Other" was set there. No wonder I found it creepy. I haven't read the other one yet. I'll have to track it down.

[Rosebud]

Ohh, ohh, thought of another one!

The Girl in the Swing by Richard Adams. Yeah, he of Watership Down, with the bunnies.

Without giving too much away, it's the story of a guy who finds his true love and a whole lot more than he bargained for... suffice it to say that the above mention of Julia reminded me of it.

[Ukulele Ike]

No horror library should be without Horror: 100 Best Books, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.


Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Don't give away the store, AuntiePam! If the Teeming Millions were to acquire copies of the above title, plus its brother and sister volumes, H.R.F. Keating's CRIME AND MYSTERY: THE 100 BEST BOOKS and James Cawthorn/Michael Moorcock's FANTASY: THE 100 BEST BOOKS, it would spell the end of some of the most entertaining threads in this forum!

My picks: Kingsley's Amis's THE GREEN MAN is an effectively eerie novel; the protagonist is an alcoholic innkeeper and modern-day satyr (a strongly realistic portait) who comes into nasty contact with the Other World.

Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows" and Robert Chambers's "The Yellow Sign" were two stories that were particular favorites of Lovecraft...both strong on spooky (VERY spooky) atmosphere.

Joe R. Lansdale's tale "The Night They Missed the Horror Show" is frequently anthologized, and gives you some nice visceral shocks...just in case the above suggestions are too pantywaist for you.

And, not that tomndebb needs any backup, but Lewis's IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE is an inspired recommendation. If you want to repeatedly feel the sensation of your heart sinking in your chest, this is the novel for you.

[Trip Fall]

Aftermath, by Levar Burton (Geordi LaForge!) is the most frightening book I've read recently. Not because it's scary. The level of ineptitude is what scares me. It's written so badly, I can almost believe he wrote it himself.

Actually, that's not really true. I couldn't bring myself to read it. I took it to work and abandoned it. Now my boss is reading it. He'll probably like it.

Trip (don't) Fall

[Shayna]

Milossarian Stephen King has had two or three collections of short stories. One was about the scariest I'd ever read; the other one or two didn't do much for me.

Skeleton Crew had some freakin' scary stuff in it!

My vote for the absolute scariest was The Raft. I'm a grown woman and to this day I still get completely creeped out on any kind of slatted wooden dock. {{shivver}}.

The Mist was pretty scary, too.

BigJoe, the Clive Barker book you're thinking of is Weaveworld. I don't know what to say about your taste in books though -- I thought that book absolutely sucked. :)

[GraceTX]

I guess I'm the only one that likes to scare herself with True Crime books. Reading about serial killers and murderers is scarier to me than fiction.

When I read the story of the Night Stalker I kept getting up and making sure all the doors and windows were locked. Of course I read it when my husband was out of town so every little noise I heard scared the crap out of me.

[Spoke]

Dracula, no contest.

That book holds up amazingly well. I recommend it highly to anyone who has not yet had the terror...I mean pleasure...of reading it.

[gobear]

My candidate for all-time scariest book is Carrion Comfort, by Dan Simmons. The plot concerns three elderly people who have the power to control other peoples' minds at a distance, and for decades they have been playing a ghoulish game of oneupmanship by causing wars and assassinations using unwitting human pawns. The game gets out of control and the last third of the book is absolutely bloodcurdling.

I would also recommend Anno Dracula, by Kim Newman. It's an alternate history story in which Dracula kills Van Helsing and rules as Prince Consort with a vampirized Queen Victoria. The book isn't scary, but it's a top-notch horror novel which cleverly imagines a vampirized London where eminent Victorians, both historical and fictional, rub shoulders.
As far as Stephen King's works, nothing tops "The Mist", a novella published in his short story collection, Skeleton Crew. It concerns a small Maine town where something has gone wrong with a mysterious government project, unleashing a mist containing carnivorous Lovecraftian horrors.

[Kyla]

I realized I forgot two extremely frightening books: 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale.

:: shiver ::

[Annie-Xmas]

All these posts, and nobody has mentioned Thomas
Harris? The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal.
I can read Stephen King and fall asleep, but
Harris keeps me awake nights.

I do love Misery and The Long Walk (which always
makes me think of the Powerball Lottery).

[Stephe96]

Scariest books? Let's see....off the top of my head:

"The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
"In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote
"In The Heart Of The Sea" by Philbrick (?)
"Isaac's Storm" by ?
"Death Of Innocents" by ? (Devastating and heartbreaking
account of an alleged SIDS case)
"The Perfect Storm" by Sebastian Junger

As you can probably tell, "scary" fiction simply doesn't do it for me.

[AuntiePam]

Rhythmdvl -- if you like "descent into madness" stories like Crime and Punishment, you might like Toplin by the late Michael McDowell. Straub and duMaurier (as mentioned earlier) have done nice jobs with this theme too.

Toplin is only available in a limited from Scream Press, but Hellnotes has a copy in its sale bin. Illustrations by Harry Morris, who was maybe influenced by J. K. Potter.

And Uke, I didn't know about the crime and fantasy books. Thanks!

[galadriel]

I've read most of Stephen King, some James Herbert, "The Silence of the Lambs", Edgar Allen Poe, "Omen" etc etc. None of these scared me (I think I'm just sick and twisted!). The grossest scene in a book I can remember was in Herbert's "The Rats" in the cinema when a rat is eating through a guy's stomach while he's just sitting there!! I can't even think of films that have scared me - I tend to laugh - except "Candyman"; it was ages before I could look in a mirror again!

[galadriel]

I've read most of Stephen King, some James Herbert, "The Silence of the Lambs", Edgar Allen Poe, "Omen" etc etc. None of these scared me (I think I'm just sick and twisted!). The grossest scene in a book I can remember was in Herbert's "The Rats" in the cinema when a rat is eating through a guy's stomach while he's just sitting there!! I can't even think of films that have scared me - I tend to laugh - except "Candyman"; it was ages before I could look in a mirror again!

[galadriel]

I've read most of Stephen King, some James Herbert, "The Silence of the Lambs", Edgar Allen Poe, "Omen" etc etc. None of these scared me (I think I'm just sick and twisted!). The grossest scene in a book I can remember was in Herbert's "The Rats" in the cinema when a rat is eating through a guy's stomach while he's just sitting there!! I can't even think of films that have scared me - I tend to laugh - except "Candyman"; it was ages before I could look in a mirror again!

[Scotticher]

Hands down, Bram Stoker's "Dracula".

The first time I read it, I left all the lights on for weeks, and I STILL didn't sleep much!


Also the second time, and the third time, and.........

Scotti

[TVeblen]

Myron: I thought I was the only person alive who adored Martin's Fevre Dream.

Agreement on Lovecraft; he was the Stephen King of his day.

Agreement, selectively, w/ King; his early stuff was better in general, but some truly inspired stuff has been sprinkled along the way. He has a real gift for short stories.

My "most scared" favorite:

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Don't judge by the movies; the 60's version was okay; the recent Liam Neeson offering sucked.

The premise is standard: 4 people of varying mental states stay in a reputedly haunted house as part of an experiment in the paranormal. But Jackson plucks nerves and makes magic out of it. (FWIW, I prefer mind scared over gore.) Appropriately, the fear is all mental and emotional, where real fear comes originates. This is the genuine stuff of nightmares, where the mind resides and boundaries waver.

Give it a little time; the book builds. The closing paragraph echoes the opening paragraph, but by the time you get there the whole world will shift.

As a side recommendation, try her We have always lived in the castle. You only think you know the nature of the true horror.

Veb

[vanilla]

Well, I dont hardly ever read fiction. I read a Dean Koontz book once about people trapped in a highrise.
But the scariest book I've ever read was called Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. Scarier cause its True.

[lablonde]

Excellent input !!!. Dracula was great, but I read it when I was twelve.

True Crime creeps me out and I won't go there.

I'm currently reading an excellent book by Dan Simmons,
"Carrion Comfort". It was his first. Has to to do with a select group of humans that have the "Ability" with which they take control of others and push them beyond natural human capability. They do this to amuse themselves. There is a creepy concentration camp people size chessboard scene. A mind-vampire thing. The book says that Khadaffy(sp?) had this ability and he thought it meant he was God! Very intricate story beginning with old Nazi's reminiscing. Don't let the slow start fool you... EEeeeppp!

[Rock-n-Rolga]

Peaches: You beat me to it. I was going to nominate Helter Skelter as well. That scene where one of the family (Tex, maybe? Don't have it here with me) describes how they would "Creepy-Crawl" houses at night - brrr...

For more good true crime, Zodiac by Robert Graysmith is rather shiver-inducing as well. And that's still an open case...Double yii. (The theory that the Zodiac killer and the Unabomber are the same person (http://home.att.net/~mignarda/connect.htm) is interesting, though, from what little I've looked into it.)

[shimmery]

This is sort of off the topic but ...
I've read a lot of King's books and I noticed that he always uses the idea of some great underlying evil controlling things ... the town in IT, in The Stand the force behing Flagg, in Christine the car, in Desperation the thing in the pit (I didn't like Desperation as much as the other ones I've read), in Pet Sematary the cemetery, and so on. Also in IT, The Stand, and Desperation, there was also definitely an opposing goodness controlling the characters. Hmm.
Ever since I figured this out King's books scare me less because I am always analyzing them instead of just letting them scare me. Too bad.
-j-u-l-i-e-

[kiffa]

The creepiest novel I've read is Candyman which takes place in Liverpool England and played on English fears of those wild and crazy Liverpudlians. The original movie transferred the plot to Chicago and played wonderfully on our North American racism.... made the story more creepy.

Helter Skelter was enough to scare me off of those serial killer books forever.

Real Life creepy/scary: The Coming Plague about AIDS/HIV, drug resistant TB and malaria, all those weird hemorraghic fevers like Lassa....

[BigJoe]

Ukulele Ike,

Just FYI, didn't read "The Green Man" but saw the A&E adaptation on TV. Was so impressed that I called to order a copy on tape. IIRC, it stars Albert Finey and is quite well done.

Damn!!! Now I've got to track down the novel! :D

[HomeSlice]

The book Beloved by Morrison(I think)

The actual book wasnt scary, it was the fact that someone got paid lots of money to write the thing that scared the hell out of me.

And they made a movie out of it with Oprah, which even made the whole thing even scarier.

[PunditLisa]

Yoko Ono's book of poetry. Let me give you an example:
------------------------------------------------------------





Yes.







------------------------------------------------------------
Truly frightening, isn't it?

[AuntiePam]

Veb -- here's another vote for Fevre Dream. What a rich, romantic story.

Martin's Armageddon Rag has some nice intensity too. And it's not horror, but his Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series has quite a following.

Lucius Shepard's Green Eyes is a nicely intense zombie love story with some scary moments. I think Shepard's ashamed of it now, because it was -- horrors -- "popular" and he seems to want to be above that. And it's working -- hardly anyone seems to have heard of him.

Tom Reamy's Blind Voices was a nice take on the carnival-comes-to-town-and-the-kids-are-the-only-ones-who-see-the-evil (a'la Bradbury's Something Wicked), and he published a very original short story collection before he died. He's worth searching for.

[Rosebud]

I don't remember the title, just that it's a Bradbury short story:

A little boy with a fever becomes convinced that the virus is taking over his body, limb by limb. As in, he's becoming a walking disease. The last image in the story, after everyone thinks he's gotten better, is utterly creepy.

[vanilla]

Pundit: you win.

[2nd Law]

All these posts, and nobody has mentioned Thomas
Harris? The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal.
I can read Stephen King and fall asleep, but
Harris keeps me awake nights.


I second on Thomas Harris, but I thought that Red Dragon was more frightening than either SotL or Hannibal.

[lablonde]

Don't stop now !! Let's hear from the Weekenders !!

[aenea]

Title: Misery
Author: the local favorite, Stephen King
Plotline: Author crashes his car, gets stuck in remote mountain house with a crazy lady who does not like how his last book ends.


This book still creeps me out. It is the only book that I own that I will never read again. :eek:

[Vestal Blue]

The Exorcist, when I was 15. It reached the climax at 3 am during a thunderstorm. The lights went out with a crash of thunder, and I about wet myself while the book hit the ceiling!

The movie was tame in comparison.

[D Marie]

When I was about ten, someone gave me a book called "Fifty Greatest Short Stories" or something like that. The one I read which was so scary was called "Christ in Concrete." I don't know who wrote it. It frightened me to the point that I never read it again, and even was afraid to have the book in the same room with me, because it brought that story to mind!

I don't know, relatively speaking, how scary someone else would find it. I do remember how I felt after reading it. It horrified me because it was fairly realistic.

[Edwardina]

I don't usually go in for scary stuff, so I would have to say, although not technically horror, the most frightening book I think I've read is Frank Herbert's White Plague.

I don't count things that leave me horrified or disgusted as scary, so most intentionally "scary" stuff does not count with me, because that's really how I feel about it: disgusted and horrified, but not actually scared. I guess I equated "scariness" more with suspense stories.

[tracer]

Trip Fall wrote:

Aftermath, by Levar Burton (Geordi LaForge!) is the most frightening book I've read recently. Not because it's scary. The level of ineptitude is what scares me. It's written so badly, I can almost believe he wrote it himself.

If you think that's scary, Walter Koenig (Mr. Checkov) also tried his hand at writing a novel some 20-odd years ago. It was so abyssmal that a webpage I came across several years back proclaimed it the Worst Book of the Decade.

It almost makes you appreciate Walter Koenig's performance in Moontrap....

[Gr8Kat]

I second "The Hot Zone," by Richard Preston. That's the book that made "ebola virus" a house-hold name. The phrase "crash and bleed out" still makes me shudder.

I also have to second some of the S.K. works I've seen named already, especially "Night Shift" and "Pet Sematary."

Damn, I hate arriving late in a thread :)

[GreenEyes]

Stephen King's The Stand really freaked me out the first time I read it. I'm also hooked on everything written by Dean Koontz.

[Falcon]

Grace -

You're not the only one who loves true crime novels. I will NOT read horror novels, or watch horror movies (get too scared), but I'll devour true crime novels like there's no tomorrow. Ann Rule's Stranger Beside Me was great...one of the ones I kept. The other really good one was Sudden Fury, and for the life of me, I can't remember the author. The scariest thing about that one was...I lived where it happened. Drove by there every day. After reading the book, I was creeped out for a month.

[Cowboy Greg]

AuntiePam, you beat me to the punch with Armageddon Rag. Music to wake the dead by... ::brrr!::

The novel that creeped me out the most was Straub's Shadowland. It was one of those books where you're reluctant to turn the page... but you have to find out what happens next....

[BigRoryG]

Gerald's Game by Stephen King, and The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen poe.

[Una Persson]

Oh I forget. The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. It's public domain now, and you can find it here. (http://www.litrix.com/hborder/hbord001.htm)

[AnsaMan]

Stories That Scared Even Me by Alfred Hitchcock
I think it must be out of print, but one can
check Amazon.Com

[Nacho4Sara]

Sorry to jump in late, but I agree with the Steven King votes - The Raft horrfies me, as do It (I am deathly afraid of clowns to this day!) and Gerald's Game. I read the last one about seven years ago, and I still wake up sometimes and check the corners of my room. I still expect to see a necrophiliac knawing on a finger over there.

I also love Koontz. I have nightmares and sleep with the lights on after I read one of his books...I can't even remember all the names. The scariest though, well a tie: one about a girl who goes to a small town with her younger sister and almost everyone had been killed by this giant moth thing, and another about a man whose a child of incest and hears "Whispers" - I think that's the title actually.

Also, Steven Connelly writes some scary, true-crime stuff. My fave is The Poet, which is so frightening, especially the ending.

Incidentally, when I was 14 my older brother's friend had a crush on me. He was rather weird, and so he gave me his dog-eared copy of The Encyclopedia of Mass Murderes and Serial Killers. Eessh I was horrified.

There is also a true-crime book about The Black Dahlia Murder in LA in the 50's...very horrific. The pictures are pretty bad...for those who don't know, she was sliced in half, drained of blood...pretty nasty. It's all there in black and white.

Happy reading!!

[Calredic]

Well, I'm glad to see that H.P. Lovecraft hasn't been overlooked, but my favorite story of his has: The Colour from Out of Space. Brrr. I don't scare easily--I've read a lot of the stuff by King mentioned here without being creeped out too much--but this story had me leaving the lights on for a few days, believe me.

Not to hijack or anything, but there are two other *truly* frightening pieces of media I feel the need to mention here (and neither is a book):

1) Stanley Kubrick's movie version of The Shining. I know a lot of King fans will consider this blasphemy, but as a straight-out horror story I find it way more effective than the book (though I *do* like the book), mostly due to two things: Kubrick's imagery, and the soundtrack. I can watch a guy get disemboweled in realistic detail in Dawn of the Dead without so much as batting an eye, but to this day I *cannot* look at the screen when the close-up shot of those two little girls' faces are on it. The hair on the back of my neck is standing up at this very moment, just from imagining it. That, and the shot of Danny screaming silently, are the two most bloodcurdling images in the entire film, though there's a lot of runner-ups ("Heeeere's Johnny!").

2) The Playstation game Silent Hill by Konami. Laugh at my geekishness if you want to--I'll know you've never played it. The basic scenario? A single father, Harry Mason, is taking his daughter, Cheryl, on a late summer vacation to the nearby town of Silent Hill. As they near the town, a figure steps into the road in front of their car, and Harry swerves to avoid it. The car crashes, and he loses consciousness. Upon waking up, he finds that Cheryl is missing. Getting out to look for her, he notices that something is not right in Silent Hill: a thick fog covers everything, and snow is falling--despite the fact that it's late August. On top of that, the town seems to be completely abandoned. You play as Harry searching the town for his daughter, but the *real* story is about what has happened in Silent Hill, which is something the game never comes out and tells you. Instead, it gives you all the necessary pieces of the answer, then leaves it up to the player to put them together. This game is a match for even The Shining in the "horrific imagery" department; one of my favorite examples being a disconnected phone sitting in the middle of a table that suddenly starts ringing when you walk past it... ("Daddy? Help me! Daddy?! Where are you...?!"). Oh, and I guarantee you'll never be able to get in a hospital elevator again without being creeped out...

--Calredic

[Eposia]

I also love Koontz. I have nightmares and sleep with the lights on after I read one of his books...I can't even remember all the names. The scariest though, well a tie: one about a girl who goes to a small town with her younger sister and almost everyone had been killed by this giant moth thing, and another about a man whose a child of incest and hears "Whispers" - I think that's the title actually.



The first Koontz book you mentioned is called "Phantoms". I am also a major Koontz fan, though I do believe that some of his books bite the big one, others are fantastic. My favorite all time book of his is still "Watchers", but one of the freakier ones is "The Bad Place". I find that King is really good at evoking the visceral feelings, while Koontz is better at messing with your head.

[sewalk]

I don't usually go in for scary stuff, so I would have to say, although not technically horror, the most frightening book I think I've read is Frank Herbert's White Plague.


I would definitely agree with you about White Plague. There is something about a horrifying story that is actually plausible that sends chills down my spine. I've tried to read many of Stephen King's stories, but since the supernatural doesn't really scare me, they usually end up being pointless and I put them aside before finishing (The Stand and The Green Mile were notable exceptions). I just read Hannibal (and reread Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs) and found it interesting, but hardly scary.

If you haven't read White Plague, it is about a American (virologist, doctor, scientist? - can't remember; it's been 15 years) who loses his wife and children in a terrorist attack while on vacation. In the aftermath of his loss, he rages out at the world for taking from him the things he loved and unleashes a plague upon the world. The kicker? The plague causes, at most, only mild illness in men but is invariably fatal to women.

I can't really think of any other fiction that I found particularly scary, but On the Beach (Neal Shute?) was pretty bleak. I'm looking forward to the new movie version coming out soon. It is about a group of nuclear holocaust survivors in Australia facing the slow spreading of nuclear fallout into the southern hemisphere after everyone in the northern hemishpere has already died. I first read it in about 1987, when all-out nuclear war was something more of a spectre over our heads than it is now.

[sewalk]

Try to find The Killer Department by Robert Cullen. It tells the story of the hunt for one of the most sadistic and prolific serial murderers in history: Andrei Chikatillo. The real twist is that Chikatillo was loose in a society that publicly and officially denied that such a man could even exist there. Chris Geralmo made a drama for HBO a few years ago based on it called Citizen X.

If there happens to be a true crime fan out there who hasn't read the oft-mentioned Helter Skelter, it is definitely the penultimate true crime story. Vincent Bugliosi gives it an especially personal feel since he knows more about the murders, the investigation, and the trial than anyone else could possibly know. Few crime stories are written by one of the prinicpals in a case but are usually written by a reporter or novelist. (Bugliosi was the L.A. ADA that prosecuted Manson, et al).

[Floompy]

I agree with those who mention Stephan King's "Misery". For some reason, although I read it about 6 years ago, images form in my mind about that horrible woman! Also Dean R. Koontz's "Whispers" was so weird that it was frightening. And there's always E.A. Poe. Something about the Birds or the Raven or something like that.


Has anyone read The Blackstone Chronicles by John Saul? A CD-ROM (game) was made of that, which was really creepy, but I was wondering if the book was any good?