If you liked Jacob have I loved try and get hold of katherine Paterson’s book of essays about writing for children The Spying heart. It’s excellent and gives a lot of insight into her writing.
I wasn’t really disturbed by any books growing up. Obsessed yes, but not scared.
The most disturbing book I read when I was growing up was ‘American Psycho’ by Bret Easton Ellis. This was back when I was about 15.
The knife in the eye socket and all the other grisly shit the main character did wasn’t the disturbing part. The TRULY disturbing part was how obsessed with consumerism late 1980’s yuppie types were.
Yeah, but what uplifting parts? The worst of it, for me, was the last chapter. Louise (the neglected one; Caroline is Miss Thing) is grown and married, working as a midwife in some mountain hamlet. She’s called to the birth of twins, eerily like her own birth. The first baby is born easily, as was she. Then the second turns out to be breech, and needs immediate care when she’s finally out, exactly like Caroline.
Early on, Louise describes her childhood up to the point that the narrative begins. The rejection that hurts more than all the others is that, while everyone was frantically trying to preserve Caroline, she was lying in her basket, forlorn. Grandma washed her and put a diaper on her, but no cuddling or anything.
So here she is, presiding over the same situation: she puts the healthy baby in his basket, then brings his sister back from the brink, and even nurses her (she was still nursing her own son). On the way out, she remembers Baby One, and tells the father, “You should hold him. Hold him as much as you can. Or have his mother hold him.”
Okay, so she remembered. But goddamn it, that’s not enough! Nurse him, too, since you have so much to go around! SIT there with dad, and watch the joy on his face as he meets his first-born son! Bring him to mom; get the message across immediately that she has TWO children! Sorry, I’m too agitated to use code. I wanted to SEE someone cuddle that baby. None of this “oh, by the way” crap!
Grrr!
I also didn’t like it that that addled old coot gave Caroline a scholarship instead of Louise! “Well, I knew you’d find a way to educate yourself…” Go suck on a barnacle. Ambition withers up pretty quick when you know no one gives a damn.
My father had a copy of what I think was called “Knights of the Bushido” hidden away - supposedly because it was too gruesome to go on the bookshelf. It was about Japanese methods of torture during World War 2 and was full of illustrations of curiously childlike figures both carrying out torture and being tortured. I’m not sure about the title to be honest because I was quite young at the time. I suppose my father had a legitimate reason for having the book - he was in the Pacific in World War 2. I used to read it in secret. When people become parents they really do lose a shocking amount of privacy.
One story I remember creeping me out when I was probably about five is “The Old Woman and the Willy-Nilly Man.” This old woman is unable to sleep because at night her shoes become possessed and dance around by themselves. I always thought that was kind of evil. The only person who can help her is the Willy-Nilly Man, this grotesque looking hillbilly/witch doctor who lives in a shack in the woods. He has this very long beard that is apparantly sewn to his knees and is infested with spiders and bugs. The W-N man also lives in a broken down shack in his own filth with many rats and various bones scattered about. (The illustrations of these things were also suitably creepy.) Of course when the old women goes to see the W-N man, he tries to intimidate and terrify her. I forget what happens after that, but I think in the end he agrees to exorcise her shoes.
When I was eight years old, someone made the mistake of giving me the Great Illustrated Classics version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
shudder “Good-bye, Dr. Jekyll, good-bye…” I haven’t touched the book since that day, and I can still quote that last line. Walked around in a daze for the rest of the day. For years I lived in fear that I would one day be assigned that book for school.
When I was 12 or so, I started reading a lot of pop culture horror fiction, written as if it were non-fiction memoirs: Sybil, The Amityville Horror, and Audrey Rose (reincarnation). I also read some book about supposedly haunted places - there was a section of photos, with a picture of what is supposed to be a ghost on a stairway that frightened me for days. I wish today that someone had seen those books and taken them away from me - they messed me up for a while.
We got something called Read magazine that once had an article about Egyptian mummies, describing in detail the whole mummification process, which upset me quite a bit for a long time to come.
I remember reading “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” as well and being dismayed by the sad ending. Many of the Grimm fairy tales are quite violent and dark.
When I was about 14 I read The Martian Chronicles. Many of the stories, IIRC, involve humans vandalizing the beautiful ruined Martian cities, just because they can, and just generally having no respect for Martian history and culture. I was so depressed that it was more than a week before I picked it up again.
I didn’t read 1984 until I was 22 or so. I wasn’t bothered by the Memory Hole. I wasn’t bothered by Big Brother, or the neighbor children being indoctrinated into betraying their own parents. I wasn’t bothered by Winston and Julia’s stolen hours. I wasn’t bothered by their capture and the whole business with the rats and his forced betrayal. I wasn’t even bothered by the thing with “how many fingers?”. What gave me the willies was the very end, when Winston painfully sits up, weak and sick, and takes a little slate, and begins re-educating himself. By the time I got to the last line of the book, I left my room and went to the kitchen where my roommate was entertaining her friends. I explained to them that I had just finished reading 1984, and I needed a hug. One of her friends had read the book and knew exactly what I meant and he held me for a long moment. 
Oh, and The War of the Worlds was way spooky, too. I generally frown on movie adaptations, but I would love to see a really classy, literary adaptation of this movie. Not as a booga-booga “sci-fi” monster movie, but more about how “people panic and society crumbles within days” type of movie.
I read a book a long time ago, like 20 years ago, that I got from the library. I don’t remember the title or author, but it concerned a small town where things had gone missing - someone had stolen them. But they were things like a stream, a shadow or something - they were things you really couldn’t steal. Unfortunately that’s all I remember and it’s really not a lot to go on. It doesn’t ring a bell for anyone else. Anyway, it was a bit creepy, I recall.
There was also, at my library in the childrens section, a book of horror stories. One was called “Precious Bodily Fluids” and one (maybe the same one) involved some kind of were-frog thing. That one also gave me the creeps.
And then there was D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths, which I loved and wish I had a copy of, but the drawings of the creatures in Pandora’s Box and such kind of spooked me.
I still have my copy of D’Aulaire’s! But yeah, I know the one you’re talking about, and it used to freak me out, too.
jayjay;
Maybe I’m just a sicko, but I just read the Bradbury story you mentioned, and it did nothing to me. Do I need more therapy? Maybe less? 
Oh, and btw…I remember getting the D’Aulaires book for Christmas when I was…Five, maybe six. I was so thrilled to have gotten a book (was I a dork? ;)). My sister and I read that thing about a thousand times. I might just go look at it now.
Yes, you’re right. The kids were 7, and, as the sun only came out once every 7 years, none of the Venus-born kids had any memory of sunshine. The girl who was locked in the closet had come from earth about two years earlier, was unpopular, and was miserable on Venus.
I stopped reading Steven King’s “IT” right after the little kid gets beaten to death with his own dismembered arm. A mental image I did not need in 6th grade.
I read “Catcher in the Rye” while I was at Valley Forge Military Academy, the same school Salinger attended. For some reason, it was spooky to think parts of the story took place in the same school. I know that doesn’t make sense, but the idea that the same types of characters that I was dealing with every day, where similar to the ones J. D. Salinger was inspired to write about, was a wierd thing to get around. Oh well, guess you had to be there.
Lord of the Flies permanently grossed me out.
I read that same book, the edition I had was illustrated. In the story of the girl who lets the monster out of the neighbors mail there was a picture of her standing in this dark attic, seemingly alone, until you noticed the hulking beast standing just in the shadows…crap, I am getting the shakes just thinking about it. This is my first post to any thread ever so if I did something wrong, hunt me down and kill me.
Hi there, SteveSteve. You haven’t done anything particularly wrong, though you don’t need to quote the entire post. Nonetheless, there’s no need for anyone to hunt you down…
Oh, and stuff about the plague (text and creepy medieval illustrations) has always given me the creeping willies…doesn’t help that I come from a long line of hypochondriacs. Danse macabre imagery used to freak me out, too, although one of my favorite Shakespeare speeches uses it as a theme (namely Richard II’s “sad stories of the death of kings”).
Monkey toys are inherently evil. Except for sock monkeys, which are OK, generally. (Anyone see “Merlin’s Shop of Magical Wonders” on MST3K?)
And I think there should be a Bradbury support group.
Right, I saw the “don’t quote the whole thread” thing on a thread making fun of people who do stupid things on threads about 45 seconds after I posted, thanks for your patience.
I don’t know if there needs to be a Bradbury support group, maybe just a discussion forum where people have a chance to talk about books that scared/disturbed them when they were young. You know something where lots of different people could express their opinions about the subject…if only something like that was available, oh well.
I remember reading “The Lottery” when I was about 13 (I was NOT precocious in any way) and realizing that I had seen a low budget film of that story in someone’s basement when I was like 5. When I look back on my childhood I think “Who let me do/see/eat/drink/wear that?!” and “Why were they allowed to care for children?!”
But of course not. Sooner or later, I’m sure he’ll go into the attic…
On a different note, D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths is one of the best children’s books ever!
-Ben
So Ben was your edition illustrated? Did you see the attic picture? You are the first person I have ever met who has read that same book. Than again I am the only person I know who has yet learned how to read…
One of the first things I can remember reading was “A Wrinkle in Time” and being terrified of the two dimensional univererse, the idea of being so wrong, so out of place that you have too many dimensions really screwed with my slow to develop brain.
Oddly, I didn’t find this book the least bit disturbing. Annoying yes, disturbing no.
Many posts back someone mentioned the Stephen King story where the guy amputates and eats his own parts to live. THAT was disturbing.