Not horror, but more in line with the OP, I cried for hours over Old Yeller. I couldn’t believe they couldn’t find some way to save him.
Return to Oz was disturbing as hell. I think I read a story book based on the movie which was based on Frank Baum’s work.
After her return to Kansas, Dorothy’s insistence that Oz is real prompts Auntie Em to sign her up for shock treatments. Eventually, Dorothy returns to Oz (well, duh) and finds it even more sick and twisted than before. Flying monkeys got nothin’ on the stuff in that movie.
Hmmm…hangings figure prominently in both stories, and that would be enough to peg my creep-o-meter.
I was seriously creeped out by a single photograph as a kid: in a collection of photos from WWII, I came across one (you’ve probably seen it) taken in a Japanese POW camp, of a POW about to be executed by samurai sword. That picture’s been branded in my brain for a few decades now.
Oh, yeah! The part that sticks in my mind was the lady with the head collection. That scared the hell out of me.
Also, in my original post I forgot to mention Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.” And, in a different vein (no pun intended), Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.”
I’m one of Hamadryad’s Dreaded Early Readers (HaDER™). 
Seriously, my mother taught me to read really early, drilling me and my brother with blocks, cards, you name it.
I read many of the mentioned books at an early age – Animal Farm, Flowers for Algernon, Lord of the Flies, Bradbury, 1984, Shirley Jackson, Of Mice and Men, and so on. I had started Stephen King in grade school and was most of the way through Lovecraft by the time I started junior high.
And just like pepperlandgirl said, none of them really bothered me. Maybe I’m warped, but I distinctly remember an incident from when I was four. A family member came to visit, and they left their copy of Peter Benchley’s Jaws on the coffeetable. (FWIW, I know I can peg it to when I was four, because (1) this was in California, before we moved, and (2) the book, which I still have someplace, is the pre-movie edition.) Anyway, I found the book and had read the first dozen or so pages, where the shark’s jaws crush that swimming woman to “jelly,” before my mother noticed and took it away. Made no negative impression on me at all; I recall enjoying it in a vague way, even if I didn’t get a lot of the words. Maybe that’s why.
There are, however, three noteworty exceptions. I specifically remember three things that successfully freaked me out.
The first is just a subject; as mentioned by pesch, I loved the UFO abduction stuff, even though it gave me the willies. I remember the first time I read about Barney and Betty Hill; I lay awake, staring out the window by my bed, unable to tear my eyes away from the dark and hugely oppressive sky, expecting something evil to come barreling down for me at any moment.
Exception two: The White Mountains, by John Christopher. Don’t get me wrong, I loved this (and the sequels). But for some reason, the thing about the Caps really got under my skin. I can recall the whole thing with that one girl, the ceremony, and lifting the bonnet to show the fresh Cap dug into her skull… <shudder>
Exception three: The Atlantic Abomination by John Brunner. Came across it used; I had read Stand on Zanzibar (at like the age of 10 or 11), liked it, looked for more by the same author. The whole premise of dredging up this huge, bloated, ancient creature from the bottom of the ocean, and then he turns out to have awful malevolent mind-control powers, plus the images of people being “mentally whipped” to work until their hands are literally nothing but bloody bone… that one stuck with me for quite a while. Yeah, it’s pulpy schlock, but it’s powerful pulpy schlock.
I read Halloween in middle school (wasn’t allowed to see the movie…), and had to check the closet right before bedtime every night for about a year afterwards. Then I finally saw the movie on video, and got creeped out even more.
That folk song also gave me the willies. You know, “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly…” I hated that lady.
You can find An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge here.
I really didn’t like The Monkey’s Paw by MRJames…that really creeped me out (at about age 8). In addition, I hated The Omen & stopped reading it for several hours but went back & finished it (age 12), and I once threw a book by Charles Platt across a room at the wall it was so bad (ugh, vomit inducing seriously nasty type of bad, but that was at about 18, so probably doesn’t count) and I really, really like books - unless I’ve read a book about 20 times, you can’t usually tell it’s been read its’ in such good condition.
That’s about it, most horror stories don’t bother me - much to my mom’s relief, given the large amount of them I read when I was little. None of the nightmares that she was dreading.
so much so that I typed the wrong name…WWJacobs…sigh. I typed it right yesterday when the board locked up on me… [sub]honest[/sub]
Wow! Finally, someone else who’s read that trilogy. I thought the second book was the most disturbing: the hero had to infiltrate an alien city, and he was constantly in fear of what could happen to him while at the same time bewildered by the technology of the Masters.
For those who haven’t read these books: the setting seems generally post-WWII era, and aliens have essentially subdued the Earth. Whenever a person reaches their mid-teens, all human cultures have a coming-of-age ceremony, and then a mysterious alien tripod-vehicle appears, grabs the person into its depths, and fits them with a somewhat lobotomizing cap. The hero is terrified by this, and as he flees his own Capping ceremony he discovers a human resistance movement struggling to understand and defeat the invaders.
Like Cervaise said: there’s a part where the hero makes friends with a sweet girl (always wearing bonnets or hats), but one day discovers that she’s been Capped. Creepy enough, but what the aliens do to her in Book 2—eeeeugh.
Most of the works mentioned so far seem to be fictional, but it was two non-fiction books that weirded me out.
As a third grader I checked out a book about cats.The first section was about the history of how people have regarded cats. Besides sometimes being revered they were as often hated, and when I came to the part about medieval archers using them for target practise I was so hysterical(unheard of for me) that I couldn’t eat supper. Nothing had ever put me off my food before.
Then as a seventh grader I got a copy of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. I was a late bloomer, and had only recently learned what INTERCOURSE was.(You mean, Mom and Dad, they…? Eeeeewwww!) So the mental images from EYAWTKAS were REAL mindblowers. You mean, people kiss each other’s what? They put their hands on WHAT? Double Eeeeeeewwwwwww!
But it sure did explain a few passages I hadn’t understood in adult books I had already read.
I wasn’t all that young when I read it, but The Painted Bird taught me a valuable lesson: Be careful what you put in your head cuz you can’t get it out later. There should have been a warning label on that book. I probably would have read it anyway, but still . . .
I read Last Tango in Paris when I was about 10 or so. Really not the best idea. The book that really weirded me out, though, was a book about alien abductions that I read when I was about 14. Yikes. Locked doors, weapons, nothing can save you if they want you. I don’t believe in them now and didn’t really believe in them then, but I guess I believed just enough to get seriously frightened.
Oh, scary books deserve another post altogether. When I was young, I was all about those school Book Fairs, and I always bought the nonfiction short stories about killers and mysterious disappearences, etc. I don’t even want to think about those stories. I think I was 8 when I learned about Son of Sam and the Zodiac Killer.
But the all time scariest book ever was An Encyclopedia of Serial Killers and Mass Murderers. How did I come across this book, you ask? When I was twelve, my brother’s 14-year-old best friend gave it to me as a present to show me that he had a crush on me! Eww! I never finished it.
Great, now I’m all creeped out and alone in the house. Thanks a lot, people!
I didn’t read that book until my freshman year in high school, but it still upset me. When I finished it I thought, “Well, at least it’s just a novel. It’s not like all these terrible things really happened to a real kid.” Then I read the “About the Author” note and learned that the book is based on his actual experiences…
A friend of mine read the same book when she was quite young, nine I think. She says she was traumatized by the scene where they killed the rabbit.
all the sexual scenes and illustrations in my parents’ copy of the Decameron.
the rat eating face scene of 1984
Thanks for reminding me of this repressed childhood trauma. I remember checking it out of the school library when I was about 10 and being scared silly for the next few weeks. Especially because of that damn patchwork monkey.
–sublight.
I read Flowers for Algernon when I was young, but didn’t remember it until I was in a production of it this past fall. I played Charlie’s mother…I came out of most of my scenes shaking, near tears.
Those Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark illustrations haunted me. I can still remember some of them and shiver.
The first time I read Fall of the House of Usher, The Monkey’s Paw, The Tell-Tale Heart, and the Dunwich Horror, I was frightened out of my mind.
There was one book I read when I was about 10 years old. I don’t remember the title, but it was about Dracula (prolly just called Count Dracula or something). The main problem was that I did not finish the book because I was on holiday at the time and another kid I met there let me borrow it to read and when we both went home he took it back with him. I had nightmares about it afterwards and it took me ages to recover from that.
Rick
AMEN! I’d almost included this in my post above but I didn’t have time. I remember being really distressed the entire time, but thrilled as well. I think there were four books in the series, each of them fantastic.
When I was younger my dad gave me a picture-book of fairy tales (and fairy-tale satires), by Tomi Ungerer. The illustrations creeped me out so badly that I left it on my shelf for years, only to discover that the stories are incredibly funny.