I’ve been reading adult books since elementary school, including some horror stuff like Stephen King, but I can’t say that anything ever traumatized me. There weren’t even many movies that could really unsettle me, and I was allowed to see pretty much anything from birth (saw Alien when I was about 6!). And to this day, seeing or reading of someone about to get caught and get in trouble for doing something is much more suspenseful to me than someone about to get killed.
However, Where the Red Fern Grows and My Side of the Mountain probably came closest in that they were both about young boys dealing with extremely real dangers and emotional ordeals. And the latter also because of it’s existential loneliness.
Get the fuck out of town! I thought they made that up as part of Dwight’s background on The Office. I can’t decide if it’s hilarious or terrifying that it’s real.
This thread highlights a question for me - I’m trying to get my 5 1/2 year old re-interested in reading. She loved her picture books for a long time, but now is more interested in playing and doing gymnastics, even at bedtime. So I started hauling out my old chapter books.
She saw the play of Bunnicula a few months ago, so that is a winner. And we played a bit of the Coraline Wii game, so I mentioned that I had that one too (yeah, I read it as a grownup). So now she’s all excited to read Coraline. And I’d forgotten how freaking creepy it is. But on the other hand, I think the GK Chesterton quote Gaiman cites may be true in her case: “Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” So, for now I’ve let her start reading it with me, but I’ve told her if it gets too scary, let me know. What do you all think?
I was probably 6 or 7, reading a collection of stories with animal heroes (I’m not sure that it’s Aesop) and I remember one story about a bear who went from being a weakling to a badass king of the forest, and then one day realizes that his best days are behind him and now young bears are stronger than him. I think he ends up being mauled and dying, and he just accepts his fate. I was so sad and angry that it had to be that way.
Oh, my God - I remember that story! That whole book was kind of odd, but that story in particular, with its illustrations really did a number on me.
I was reading The Amityville Horror when I was about ten or eleven, and just as I got to the part with the red pig eyes in the window, I looked up to see eyes in my window! It was just our cat, but she was black and it was night, so it scared the hell out of me.
Hey, Bunnicula fans! Have you seen The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, a Wallace and Gromit film?
I don’t remember how old I was, but a teacher read us a poem by a Great American Poet. A charming family is outdoors, being charming and familial. A lad is cutting up a fallen tree with a chainsaw. Mother yells for everyone to come in for dinner. The saw, as if to show it knew what dinner meant, kicked back and lopped off the lad’s hand! Aaaaack! My stomach still hurts, just retelling it.
I was quite young when I saw a Three Stooges bit that freaked me out. One of the Stooges got a bowl of chowder or fish stew, and a clam reared up and snapped at him. Might have spit in his eye, too, I’m not sure.
I’m still wary of bivalves, after all these years.:eek:
All I ever did as a kid was read, so you’d think I would have come across a pile of things that bothered me…and sitting here I can only think of one.
The story of Bluebeard the pirate, who keeps dead wives in a locked room, discovered by his currently living wife, who gets blood on the key so he knows she’s been in there…
I’ve read adult books since I could read (my aunt was a librarian, I hung out there with her unsupervised and read some really troubling stuff kids shouldn’t know about). But as for more of “children’s” books, a book of the more obscure and unadulterated Grimm’s Fairy Tales gave me nightmares for months. There were also several books of Alfred Hitchcock’s stories-for-young-readers anthologies. Most were pretty lame. But there was one story that has haunted me to this day - involves a “garbage monster” that was chased out of town and buried in a field…and a young girl? woman? - at the end lay down on the ground where it was buried and could hear it deep below in the earth. Creepy as all hell, no explanations, very short. Just wierd!..“Black Beauty” or anything at all featuring cruelty to animals. “Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson - read this at age 12 and have slept with a nightlight ever since!
We were forced to read Where the Red Fern Grows as an English assignment, then if that weren’t torture enough, we had to watch the movie in class. I’ll never forgive Mrs. Miller for that.
I read Salem’s Lot and Pet Semetary when I was 9. Both books gave me nightmares and hooked me on Stephen King.
What kind of demented poem for children is that? I could (almost) understand a cautionary tale about chainsaw safety, but to make the chainsaw sentient is just nuts!
A couple of stories kind of soaked into my brain, and still pop up and have to be forced down every once in a while. They never actually flat out scared me (that was reserved for Planet of the Apes), but they did disturb me.
The first was a short story in a sci-fi anthology about a fuzzy, intelligent, gray alien that comes to say hi to earth. He is captured by some backwoods hick, kept in a cage, and essentially turned into a zoo animal. It made me feel ill.
The second was some book I pulled off a classroom shelf one day when I was bored. I can’t even remember the title (it seems like it was two words, like “The Cell” or something). The main character is a girl who gets in a fight with one of her friends. She is going to meet the friend to drop off a typewriter in kind of a “I don’t want your stuff anymore” gesture, but within sight of the friend, is grabbed by some people in a van. She wakes up to find herself in a little cellar, with a bucket to use as a toilet, a bucket of water, and some donuts (I think?). The rest of the book covers the letters she writes and slips out the crack of the cellar door in hopes of someone finding her while she slowly dies of starvation/water deprivation.
Additionally, I could never finish Animal Farm. I hated that book.
I know the story you mean. My grandma had a whole series of these books (in fact, I think I have them now). They all had red covers and were called Bedtime Stories for Children or something else too generic to search for.
I do remember the climax of the story, when the little boy is found, his arm propped up by pillows, face shining with peace because he’s gone to be with Jesus. How sweet!
This book traumatized me, but in a good way, and this seemed like the right place to share it: Ghosts and More Ghosts, by Robert Arthur. When I was a kid, I could never remember the name, but I was familiar with the cover (it had a skeleton on it), and I checked it out of the library every time I happened to run across it. An odd title, come to think of it…I’m not sure there’s more than one ghost story!
I’m bummed because my library doesn’t have any Margaret Ronan.
Roald Dahl’s Charlie books were a bit disturbing. The bedridden grandparents, the people lying still in Minusland, etc. The story of the girl who took a bunch of pills from the medicine cabinet and now has to spend all day on the toilet really freaked me out.
