Oh shit, I remember reading this story about a young girl, Laura Brigman or something like that-and like Helen Keller, she was blind, deaf and mute. Well, at one part it talked about how when she was little she accidentally squeezed a bunny to death. WAAAAh. THEN, she accidentally threw a family cat into the fire at age two. I was hysterical, and didn’t want to finish, even though I had to for school.
And speaking of school, I remember refusing to open my science textbook in 2nd grade, because of the snake pictures. I HATE snakes. I still hate snake pictures. Mean teachers. 
I read this story when I was very young, no more than 7, about this rat (told from his point of view) who was owned by a deranged kid who did various cruel experiments on his pets - I remember in one he taped the paws of some kittens to a cookie sheet and put them in an oven to see how long they would live. That one really bothered me, as I’ve always had a lot of empathy for animals. I can’t remember the name of the story though.
I believe the name of the book was Go ask Alice. It was about a teenage girl who runs away from home and gets involved with drugs if I remember correctly. I was in junior high when I read it and remember being shocked at some of the things she went through to survive.
Does anyone here remember reading a book about a boy whose family moves into a new house, and he discovers this whole other family living in an unused secret wing of the house? At the end, he resists the family’s urging to “join them”. Turns out that the family only exists in his own mind. I read this in the 6th grade, and it freaked me out for months. I would love to read it again though!
Man, am I boring. Earliest trauma: “Charlotte’s Web.” Cut to close up of me crying hysterically on Christmas morning when I finished the book. Also, “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” and “The Fir Tree,” both by Hans Christian Anderson, I think. (The soldier gets melted, the tree gets burned up.) In sixth grade, that old favorite, “Lord of the Flies.” Most recently disturbing book (although my youth is a distant memory) was “Hannibal.” Seeing Clarice Starling reduced to eating brains, playing with her father’s skeleton and (presumably) becoming Hannibal Lecter’s lover had me depressed for weeks. So much for great female characters in popular fiction.
Speaking of great female characters: Jadis, I love your name!
I read a book called “Bloodletters and Badmen” at a very early age, all about famous gangsters and criminals. It included many very graphic photos of carnage that really affected me.
I was also among those creeped by Stephen King and “The Amityville Horror” at an early age.
And I used to read scary magazines like Creep (Creepy?) and Vampirella and others of that ilk, which occasionally had stories that would really mess me up.
When I was a kid, we had a book called (IIRC) “Our Mysterious Planet” that seriously creeped me out. It was about supposed unsolved mysteries involving UFO’s, mysterious monsters, hauntings, etc. I’m a grown-up skeptic now, but I still recall the sense of dread most of the stories filled me with; especially one night when my dad decided we should have an “encourage the kids to read and stop rotting their brains with TV” kind of night (as if we didn’t already spend most of our childhood with our noses buried in books). It seems like the TV was on more than off in our house (still is) and I’m used to always having it as background noise, plus it helps illuminate the room :p, so to spend an evening in an unusually dark and eerily quiet room reading that book–shudder.
I think by now most of the stories in that book have been debunked (I’ve come across quite a few of them on Snopes and the Skeptic’s Dictionary), but one that still gives me pause was about vaguely humanish but mostly monsterish creatures that washed up on a beach somewhere a few months (or years?) apart. One was pinkish in color, the other I thinks was brownish red. And I think one only had a head with eyes, a body and legs, while the other had more facial features and maybe arms. The book wondered if these were primitive ancestors of man, aliens, or sea monsters, and was there a whole race of them out there, somewhere. The book didn’t have photographs, just cartoony (but still disconcerting) drawings. I’d love to find out if this mystery has ever been resolved. Were they just badly decomposed humans, apes, or some other non-cryptozoological creature that tricked the True Believers who wanted to believe they were something else (like Kent Hovind’s “dinosaurs”)? Or was the whole story a fabrication? Or… ???
In the same vein, we had another book called (again, IIRC) “Beware! This House is Haunted” about supposedly true hauntings. The stories about British castles were especially effective and the “I’m skeptical but still oh-so-curious” imp inside of me would love to spend the night in a Scottish castle just to see if I really would hear the sounds of bodies rolling down the stairs or blood-curdling screams and sobs. Sounds spine-tingley-dingley 
Hmm… that reminds me, there were some “Scholastics Books” type ghost story anthologies that used to scare my sister and I as children, but I’ve forgotten what they were called. I also had a text-book that had two or three ghost stories right in the beginning of it that used to chill me to the bone; especially the illustrations of ghosts with sad, empty eyes and gaping, wailing maws… I learned I could creep myself out just by copying these pictures. Funny thing, it seems like these simple stories were more disturbing and/or scarier than anything I’ve read by Stephen King (“Pet Sematary” excepted; that one still makes me feeling very vaguely nauseated. Not scared, just… ill. And scared).
While some books have given me the creeps, like the ones mentioned above, and many, many have moved me to tears (“Where the Red Fern Grows,” “Ol’ Yeller,” and the part of “On the Shores of Silver Lake” where Jack the bulldog dies stand out as three of the earliest–what is it with authors killing off sweet doggies?), I have a hard time recalling any book disturbing me to the point where I felt traumatized. And, yes, I have read a few of the books on this list, while a schoolgirl, even. Maybe I’m just numb (from the neck up)?
Ok, I take it back, “Where the Read Fern Grows” was pretty brutal. Even worse than “Ol’ Yeller” because two doggies died
The October Game, which has gotten so much press, thanks to that link, was made into a story in an issue of Tales From The Crypt. You can find it in the massive Tales From The Crypt coffee book, which you can probably find at your local library.
I also second the disturbing quality of the Scary Stories illustrations. Something about the realistic quality of the faces twisted in the eeriest of ways. . . However, if you want to read a psychologically disturbing story, check out the second book of the series for a story called, “The Drum”. It’s about two children who meet a gypsy girl who promises to give them a toy drum if they can be very, very bad. The story is also known under the alternate title “The New Mother”.
On my part, I was so inundated with horror as a child that I find it hard to pinpoint actual origin points of disturbance. I can name quite a few movies, but not many books.
One of my favorite authors wrote some of the most terrifying stories I have ever read as a child. His name was John Bellairs. The first book I read of him was The Figure in the Shadows. There’s one point where the hero of the story, a pudgy boy, has being seeing a robed figure in the periphery of his vision, in the shadows. Late one night a note is pushed through his mail slots with only the latin word for “I Come” printed on it. But for truly terrifying, try reading The Eyes of the Killer Robot late at night. There is a scene where the hero is the stands of a local baseball field late at night. In the alien atmosphere that this familar place presents during the night he hears a voice cry softly from the back of the stands, “They took my eyes!”
I read all those Stephen King books and the rest, but John Bellairs was the first true horror author I’ve ever read, and still the most vivid.
You know, I meant to mention this one. It’s one of the freakiest children’s stories I’ve ever read- the sort of thing someone would come up with if, as a joke, they wanted to write the most inappropriate children’s story possible.
Scary factoid: “the New Mother” was written for the author’s children, and the names of the two girls in the story are actually the author’s nicknames for her daughters. It’s like “Winnie the Pooh” for sadists…
-Ben
The most disturbing book I’ve ever read was definitely Jude the Obscure by Hardy (If you’ve ever read it or seen the movie, you know which scene I’m talking about.) I was upset for weeks. I was only 31 years old when I read it.
Ah, yesssssss…“The New Mother.” Utterly and viscerally terrifying, combining the themes of mother-abandonment AND scary monsters.
By Lucy Clifford, from her 1882 collection Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise. Currently available in David Hartwell’s superb anthology The Dark Descent (Tor, 1987), which every good little horror fan should own.
I couldn’t list this story, because I didn’t read it until I was a big grown-up with children of my own. And I certainly made a point of reading it to THEM, for their moral edification, y’know. SO what if they didn’t sleep for a month?
“If we were very, very, very naughty, and wouldn’t be good, what then?”
“Then,” said the mother sadly – and while she spoke her eyes filled with tears, and a sob almost choked her – “then,” she said, “I should have to go away and leave you, and to send home a New Mother, with glass eyes and a wooden tail.”
…and she DOES IT, too. Yumpin’ Yiminy!
I remember reading a short story called “The Last Round” when I was probably 10 or 11. Don’t remember the author but I think it was written by a woman.
The story revolved around two rival gang members who were picked to settle a “turf” dispute by playing Russian Roulette with each other. At first, they were cold and unfeeling as they sat across from each other in an abandoned building, taking turns putting the gun to their head and pulling the trigger.
During the course of the game they begin conversing with each other and unknowingly start to identify with each others individuality. They discover that they have a lot in common and, in their short period of time together, develop a suprisingly strong bond of friendship (the writer sets this up wonderfully).
They decide that their new friendship is more valuable to them than their gang ties, and promise each other that they will break those ties and hang with each other, maybe go back to school and graduate.
They agree on one more round of RR before they call it quits and start their new lives together.
Well, the feel good ending should have been that they finished the game and went on to completely turn their lives around and lived happily ever after…but there was not a happy ending. Shocked the shit out of me.
Hey, Ukulele Ike could you possibly email me?
Ack! I tried to forget “Where The Red Fern Grows”. It made me cry, both times I read it. God, did I cry. I bet if I re-read it now, I’d probably cry again. That book didn’t shock, or disturb me. But it touched me in away that was heart-wrenching, yet oddly pleasant. Hmmm, maybe it was the first time I felt empathy, or could relate to a character in a book.
I read it as “The Drum” too…god, it’s sending chills all over me just reading this excerpt.
Scares the hell out of me…I was reasonably young when I read the Scary Story collection…8 or 9, I think. I don’t know that I realized how psychologically damaging it was for a mother to dangle such an evil threat over her kids (and whatever happened to unconditional love, man?) and then make good on it. I do remember praying for the two girls to be good, for god’s sake be good. Maybe it’s better though. I mean, think of the two girls in adolescence with her for a mother…yuck…
I too was a bit disturbed by all those Scary Stories- not so much the actual tales- but those pictures. Vivid stuff. Well if corpse pics can be vivid.
Oh- but I do remember one of those Scary Stories in particular standing out as a really scary experience for me.
I don’t remember the name but it was about poltergeists, those ghosts who make mischief, etc.? The story in and of itself was pretty bland stuff…a poltergeist basically breaks plates and bottles, causes a lot of trouble. It’s written in sort of an Amytville-Horror type…as though its supposed to have happened. The problem was that it was preceded by a note from the author saying that indeed, this story was scary because it could actually happen to you. As in, poltergeists were common to teenagers- and when under a lot of stress things, weird things would manifest themselves. (Think a toned-down Carrie.)
Alright, NOW I know that was bull…but back then I was horrified. I was nine or so back then and just waiting to see poltergeists come from out of the woodwork when I turned the big 1-3. Thankfully I forgot the story years later and its not as if I thought of it every day, but still. Kind of freaks me out thinking about it. And hey…I’m sixteen now. Not quite yet out of the woods…
We read that in 4th grade- anybody else forced to endure the “Great Books” public school reading program? It upset me so much… but wasn’t the thing that made it so bad that the girl had grown up on Earth and had had trouble adjusting to a sunless world? She was bullied because she was from Earth, and the one day of sunlight was what she had been looking forward to ever since they moved? Or was that just from my depressed memory… Terrible story, though.
I remember reading all of John Bellairs’ books when I was little. Just for old times’ sake, I got them from the library last year and they still creeped me out. I had horrible nightmares for a few weeks. Stephen King didn’t scare me nearly as much, either.
What? Am I the only one who read Animal Farm as a young kid and liked it?
The only stories I can remember really disturbing me as a kid were:
-Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. My 5th grade teacher had us read it, and I was so upset about the dogs. That’s the same year I got a puppy, so I couldn’t imagine something that awful happening to her.
- The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst. I read it in 3rd or 4th grade, and the image of the coffin(gathering dust in the barn)that they built for his brother who’d been expected to die at birth haunts me as much as the end. Such a tragic story for little kids to read!
-I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier. Let’s just say the whole mental illness thing brought up bad childhood memories of someone I know.
Now, as an adult, I read scores of horror novels, and I don’t think they’re particularly scary. I even write horror myself. I’d thought myself “scare-proof” when it came to books…until a couple of months ago when I read Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors
by Joseph A. Citro. Reading all those stories that happened in places I’ve visited or even lived scared the crap out of me! Who’d of thought it would take more or less true stories to scare me?
Ah, thanks for reviving old traumas, everyone… :eek: 
(Really. I’ve got a serious case of the willies now.)
The story from “Scary Stories” that got to me the most, though, was the one about the bride who hides in a chest or something, and they find her dead body later. Damn claustrophobia…
Oh, and I remember having one of those “Great Books” as an English text in sixth grade – a lot of the stuff I’ve mentioned in my posts were in there. (“The Veldt,” for instance, and “To Build a Fire.”)
I read stephen King’s book The Running Man after watching the movie. It disturbed me that the film industry had the most perfect plot of the movie, a canned cross-country manhunt, and reduced it to a neighborhood-sized game show. I lost faith in Hollywood that day.
A few new ones.
The story “The Raft” from Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew. God this freaked me out a lot! More then “Survivor Type” also from that book, which someone already mentioned. It’s about these kids who go out on a raft in the middle of an abandoned lake. There they find what looks like an oil slick. After that it gets pretty disgusting.
"A Clockwork Orange" freaked me out. I read it at way too young an age. A friend told me it was a story about the future, and I was really into futuristic stuff. I don’t think when I read it I really understood it well, but I got a good enough idea of what was going on.
"Hiroshima" was required reading for me in 7th grade. One image, of a person’s skin coming off like a glove, just sticks out in my memory till this day.
Another Bradbury story I feel deserves a mention, since so many people talked about “All Summer in a Day.” Didn’t freak me out, but it disturbed me greatly. I believe it’s called “And There Will Come Soft Rains.” It’s about an automated house running by itself, in an empty post-apocalyptic world.