As far as I know (and Amazon seems to back me up), Sybil actually is non-fiction.
I was so petrified by The Shining as a teenager that I couldn’t go into a bathroom for years without first casting a nervous glace at the bathtub. I was sure a rotting woman would someday greet me there. Later, when I was in my 20s, I read It. I couldn’t stand to be alone in the house while I was reading it, so I often would sit outside within the sound of neighbors and traffic. See, then I’d be safe …
I’ll second Go Ask Alice - read it in 5th grade, and I still haven’t tried any drugs entering my freshman year of college. Take note all you moms and dads with preteens…
Another one that freaked me out in middle school: The House of Stairs by William Sleator. From the cover you think it’s a teen adventure book, and it turns out to be a horrific, sadistic, and cruel psychological drama.
Yet another one that has already been mentioned is After the First Death by Robert Cormier.
But the MOST disturbing book I have ever read was one that I came across in Russia, when I was maybe four or five years old. It was about a young boy named Matheius (or something like that) who inherits a kingdom. The worst part is that in the end, Matheius is SHOT with POISON ARROWS and DIES. That was definitely the first time I had ever been introduced to the concept that a character who you like and care for can be killed. I don’t think I ever really got over that one. Anyone know more about this book? I don’t think the original language is Russian, I must have read a translation.
When I was in high school, I picked up The Demonologist from the local Jefferson Parish Public Library branch. That was the only book that ever gave me nightmares!
First:
The National Enquirer ran excerpts from that book that I read when I was a kid. It terrified me for months. There was a bit about “The Lady” that scared the bejesus out of me.
Second:
Where in Jefferson Parish? I grew up in River Ridge.
Yes, it was illustrated, and I remember the attic picture! I would love to be able to read it again, but a copy goes for $150 or so now. The funny thing is that I’ve never heard anyone say, “That book? Yeah, I read it. It was ok.” Instead they say things like, “What kind of sadist could write such a scary book for children?!? It took me years to get over that book!”
By any chance do you remember the story about the big bushbaby thing? The only stories I remember are the ones I mentioned earlier, and the bushbaby picture stands out in my mind, but I don’t remember the accompanying story. For that matter, do you remember any of the other stories?
-Ben
That one kind of falls under the category of “Yes, but . . .” The woman on wom the book was based died in 1998, and in recent years, there has arisen a great deal of controversy over just how accurate the MPD diagnosis was, and how much of the book was fact. There’s a good link here.
gallows fodder: If you haven’t already seen it, Felicia’s Journey was made into an excellent movie by Atom Egoyan starring Bob Hoskins.
As far as books that disturbed me, I first rea Helter Skelter in the 7th grade and it freaked the hell out of me. A few years earlier, in Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, for some reason it always got under my skin when Fudge swallowed Peter’s turtle.
All this talk about “The October Game” reminds me of the time I first read it. It was late at night I remember. I found the story in a link posted in a Straight Dope Thread I was reading at the time about disturbing books and stories. It disturbed me so badly that I still aren’t sure if I’ll ever go to sleep again.
There is an old anthology book with many wonderful stories called “Stories to be read with the Lights on.” It is an “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” book. There is one story in particular called, I believe, “Hello Down there.”
It’s about a family living on a farm who find a giant hollow place in the Earth when digging a well. They lower a flashlight down to see how deep it is, and discover a race of “people” living down there. They learn to communicate with them (by lowering a dictionary among other things) and start a trade with them by lowering things down and bringing things back up. The “people” refer to the flashlights as “Death Rays” and want many of them. They also would like to try some of this “Turkey” they have heard about.
It sounds corny, but it is a nice, well written story. The ending disturbed me and I still think about the story from time to time. I don’t know who wrote it (I’d have to dig up the book). The anthology has a few good, memorable stories.
I can’t think of anything else that was disturbing.
LateComer, i’ve read that book. i thought that story was disturbing, too.
I read Bradbury’s “October Game” from the link posted in this thread. Frankly, I could see the shocker ending coming a mile off. That lessened the impact a lot. Instead of willing suspension of disbelief, my mind instead picked up the writer’s craftiness in trying to shock the reader.
Lord of the Flies was pretty disturbing as a youth because of it’s apparent attempt to make me realize I had that kind of uncivilized behavior surpressed beneath a falsely manageable exterior.
The Story of O just bummed me because I was too young to be getting any.
I’m curious what some of my old buddies would choose. I mean, for christ sakes my nickname was Red because I was the only one who ever finished a book.
I agree with psychogumby about “American Psycho.” I was bothered by the graphic violence/sex in the book (at one point the psychopath has sex with a freshly dead skull). The Yuppie-ish portions of the book did not bother me, I read it as this horrible creatures attempts to be a human, by modeling himself after his yuppie friends. I was very sorry I had read this piece of junk.
Vaguely, the image of being trapped in an attic with a beast you are not aware of, you think it is safe because it is dark, the monster can’t grow in the dark, but you are too late, the monster has already grown, and it is right behind you…but check this out, it’s called “Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures” and these are the story titles
The Patchwork Monkey
The Yamadan
Monster Blood
Tigger
The Spell of Spirit Stones
The Night Creature
To Face a Monster
You Are What You Eat
Nightmare in a Box
The patchwork monkey is obvious, but i couldn’t remember if nightmare in a box is the cockatrice or the girl and the neighbor’s mail…see if you can match up titles with plots. Also I was serious about this being my first thread ever so if I am being a complete nob please let me know.
I agree. I also followed the link and was disappointed. I thought the build-up was rather skillfully done, but the ending was nothing special. Maybe reading it off a computer screen at work is not the same as reading it under the bedsheets with a flashlight, but I thought the ending wasn’t nearly as frightening as the father himself.
By the way…
<October game spoiler>
When the hell did he have time to kill his daughter and cut her up when his house was full of people? Didn’t she scream or anything?
Maybe I just misunderstood the events of the story?
</October game spoiler>
I think the idea was that she was very very very very quiet, Bradbury kept making a point of that. And in addition
<October game spoiler>
he could have broken her neck and then cut her up while everyone was shuffling around in the dark in the basement, (he makes apoint baout how long it takes for everyone to get settled) with a big very very very very sharp knife, or even a sturdy pair of kitchen shears (well maybe not)…
I was totally freaked the first time I read it, I was totally screaming along with the mother, NO NO NO NO, don’t turn on the light! don’t turn on the light! I don’t want to see my daughters slaughtered body in pieces all over the room, people holding her entrails in their arms, some kid with his hand in her severed head, thinking it is a pumpkin. Can you imagine the look on his face? Everyone looks at him and then he looks down, into the little girls lifeless eyes, uheehulllh…gives me the shivers just thinking about it, but I am easily scared.
<October game spoiler>
I was not dissapointed, but I could see how maybe the suspension of disbelief was too much.
Spent a year in Kenner (6/83 to 6/84) and four more in Harahan (6/84 to 7/88). Had summer school in John Curtis once and graduated from Riverdale (Class of '86).
I read and understood the stuff in Blackwell’s Medical Dictionary on menstruation before I had any “Facts of Life” talks from my parents. I think I must have been about six or seven. I went into denial.
When I was a wee lad, I was depressed for weeks after reading H.C. Anderson’s The Little Match Girl. But the creepiest book I read as a kid (one that I probably won’t read again for quite awhile as it deals with the death of your children and we have a little 'un on the way) is Steven King’s Pet Semetary. 15 years later and I can still remember the final line in the novel:
“Darling.”
:eek:
I’m trying to think back as far as I can now. When my brother and I were either pre-literate or semi-literate, my mom read to us a lot and one story thought was a big treat was called “Benjy.” It’s really a fairy tale for grown ups, and little kids just don’t understand irony. Mom gave us way too much credit for being sophisticated enough to understand it. Anyway, it’s about this very good little boy who loves his mother, and in the end he gets carried off by some giant bird! Mom always acted like we were supposed to think that was cool. I’ve reread it recently as an adult, but man, my brother and I cringed when she’d bring out “Benjy.”
when I was four or five…maybe younger…I decided I wanted to be just like mommy and read me a novel. So I grabbed one off her shelf. It had a bloody ax on a tree-stump on the cover. I read about ten pages and threw the book on her bed, then ran away screaming with tears in my eyes. I guess I was sensitive or something, but people getting decapitated and brutally maimed wasn’t suitable for my then very young brain. I didn’t pick up another “grown-up” book again until I was nine. The first Stephen King book I ever read was given to me then by my mom just to shut me up. “The Dead Zone”. He’s been my favorite author ever since.
Having learned to read at age four, and having a mother and aunt who were into Hitchcock, the first stories I read were his children’s collections. Most of these were “One-minute Mysteries” and therefore, not scary at all.
Then when I was about 6 or 7, I picked up a collection not by Hitchcock,called “Stories Not For the Nervous”.I remember it had a green cover with a pair of disembodied, ominous-looking eyes.
In it there is a story called “Don’t Look Behind You”. The author narrates in the first-person, and explains that, as a bet, he has written this story and inserted it into this book; he then watched to see who would buy it from the bookstore, so he could follow them home and KILL THEM! He keeps taunting the reader, telling him/her that it’s just a story, keep reading.
The final line?
“Don’t look behind you…until you feel the knife!”
Literally didn’t sleep for about two days.
Anybody know or remember the author on this one?
Chris W.