# Need a scary short story! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [October 29, 2022, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950 "2022-10-29T04:39:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2022, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/21 "2022-10-30T23:20:42Z")
Anything published by the RNC or its facilitators, especially since 2020. (I found **It Can’t Happen Here** by Sinclair Lewis to be upsetting when I lived in Metro Detroit during the Republican Convention that used the Moral Majority to select Ronald Reagan as candidate.) ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2022, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/22 "2022-10-31T00:34:59Z")
I recently read that _The New Yorker_ received more letters after they published “The Lottery” than any other article or story they ever ran. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2022, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/23 "2022-10-31T01:35:06Z")
Ursula LeGuin’s _The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas_ isn’t exactly scary, but it’s haunting. I still get chills thinking of it, 20 years after I first read it. EDIT: actually upon reconsideration, probably not appropriate for a 12 year old. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/24 "2022-11-01T04:18:23Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Figuring out what would scare the OP’s daughter is tricky, for two reasons. One is that different people find different things scary: what’s terrifying to one person is ho-hum to another. (See the [That’s for children?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thats-for-children/973784) thread for examples.) > > The other reason is that there are different kinds of scary. Both great points. First, it’s funny you brought this up. We sat down and watched Poltergeist and she noped right out of the room in the early scene where the kid is walking up to the fuzzy screen. Not the kid talking to the TV, what scared her was a child born in 2010 has never seen a tv channel turned to ‘salt/pepper’ or the snow ‘channel’. The clown doll was of course scary, that is just timeless terror. For the second, as a jumping off point tomorrow morning I’ll ask her about the scariest things in films she’s seen. 'Cause you’re right, different things scare different people. Print, in particular, is tricky because it all plays out in your mind, so surprises like jump scares don’t work. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9fc29f/32.png) [@Dead\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Cat)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/25 "2022-11-01T09:22:38Z")
I nominate “The Entrance” by Gerald Durrell - I think I was about 12 when I first read it, when it terrified me, and even re-reading as an adult I still find it pretty disturbing and very well-done. It was published, very incongruously, in his collection “The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium”, which is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read - until you get to that story, at the end. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/26 "2022-11-01T09:53:37Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > Print, in particular, is tricky because it all plays out in your mind, so surprises like jump scares don’t work. Well, unless you’re 10 years old reading _Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark_ for the first time and you flip the page to discover this illustration that haunts my generation’s nightmares to this day; [![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/08/11/arts/00scary-stories-01/merlin_158699214_6ecf7ac8-5d61-45bb-a983-62b5d652067c-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) ](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/08/11/arts/00scary-stories-01/merlin_158699214_6ecf7ac8-5d61-45bb-a983-62b5d652067c-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale) ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/27 "2022-11-01T14:18:25Z")
Crap. I really want to read it now but can’t find it on the net. I’ll have to try and borrow through interlibrary loan. ETA: Interlibrary loans temporarily unavailable. Dern you, @Dead_Cat! Dern you to heck, I say. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@salinqmind1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind1)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/28 "2022-11-01T14:33:33Z")
‘The October Game’ by Ray Bradbury. And also ‘Zero Hour’ by him, two stories that gave me the creeps all my life. … When I was young, I spent much time at the library and read a lot of collections of stories put together by Alfred Hitchcock. One book was called ‘Stories They Won’t Let Me Do On TV’ (and for good reason). … I will mention, while I’m here, a couple of creeptastic stories I don’t know who wrote them but they’ve stayed with me for decades. One was about a group of Victorian gentlemen who somehow came across an invisible…creature? …from another dimension? They took a mold of it and saw it was the ugliest demonic looking thing they ever saw (and eventually it died)…Another was set in the deep south, a pile of trash took human form and was driven out of town by angry townspeople and buried deep in the ground. And the ending, was a young woman who crept out at night, laid on the ground, and listened to the sound of the trash monster buried deep in the ground, scratching, scratching…wish I knew the names of these two beauts… I was 12-ish when I read these, and many more disturbing short stories. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2022, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/29 "2022-11-01T15:10:26Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > First, it’s funny you brought this up. We sat down and watched Poltergeist and she noped right out of the room in the early scene where the kid is walking up to the fuzzy screen. Not the kid talking to the TV, what scared her was a child born in 2010 has never seen a tv channel turned to ‘salt/pepper’ or the snow ‘channel’. The clown doll was of course scary, that is just timeless terror. If you want to pull a great prank on her, I can get you a customized signed photo of the little boy from Poltergeist. I’m very good friends with his SO. I could have him autograph it to her with an appropriately scary inscription, which would be doubly scary if she didn’t know _how he knew her name or that she was scared of the movie._ :evil grin: ---
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2022, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/30 "2022-11-02T17:18:33Z")
Footsteps Invisible [https://www.unz.com/PDF/PERIODICAL/ArgosyWeekly-1940jan20/46-57/](https://www.unz.com/PDF/PERIODICAL/ArgosyWeekly-1940jan20/46-57/) ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2022, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/31 "2022-11-02T17:27:26Z")
Good one! I first read it in this collection by Robert Arthur, [Ghosts and More Ghosts](https://www.amazon.com/Ghosts-More-Robert-Arthur/dp/0394811925/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=). However, the story that scared the socks off me was The Believers, about a radio host doing a live show while handcuffed to a bed in a haunted house. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2022, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/32 "2022-11-02T18:02:25Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Robert Arthur As an aside, Robert Arthur was the creator of the Three Investigators series of mysteries that I loved as a kid. The first book in the series, _The Secret of Terror Castle_, had parts that I found genuinely spooky (although in the end it turns out that there are Rational Explanations for all the ghostly phenomena). ---
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2022, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/33 "2022-11-02T18:05:21Z")
> Danny Tell em not to believe! It’s cause they believe! It didn’t exist! i thought it up! But they all believed me. You said they did. Five million people all believing at the same time!..they’ve made it Danny! They brought it to life! ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2022, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/34 "2022-11-02T18:06:40Z")
Man, I totally believed it could work like that, too. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2022, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/35 "2022-11-02T22:52:49Z")
“Candle Cove” by Kris Straub. It’s about a group of people online who are trying to remember a TV show they watched as kids. > **[Candle Cove - Creepypasta](https://www.creepypasta.com/candle-cove/)** > > It comes most often at night. That niggling memory, gnawing in some corner of your mind like a rodent chewing the corners of the drywall. The memory of some ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/36 "2022-11-03T05:56:51Z")
> One was about a group of Victorian gentlemen who somehow came across an invisible…creature? …from another dimension? They took a mold of it and saw it was the ugliest demonic looking thing they ever saw (and eventually it died) Fitz James O’Brien, [What Was It? A Mystery - Wikisource, the free online library](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/What_Was_It%3F_A_Mystery) > Another was set in the deep south, a pile of trash took human form and was driven out of town by angry townspeople and buried deep in the ground. A similar story was parodied in Mad Magazine #5 in “Outer Sanctum”, as “Heap”! > **[The Maddest Heap!](https://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-maddest-heap.html)** > > In a strange and bewildering coincidence, the MADmen Harvey Kurtzman (writer) and  Will Elder (artist) concocted their own "Heap" in the ... ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@salinqmind1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind1)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/37 "2022-11-03T08:42:07Z")
Huh! that goes back a ways! Late 40’s? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/38 "2022-11-03T09:01:08Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > “Candle Cove” by Kris Straub. There’s a Youtube spinoff by Straub called Local 58, which consists of analog recordings of a low-power TV station in West Virginia which is apparently being hijacked by an eldritch god that lives in the Moon. It’s good stuff. Of particular note is Contingency, which depicts the “accidental” broadcast of an emergency message meant for use in the event that the US is occupied by a hostile nation. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/3c66w6fVqOI/maxresdefault.jpg "ＬＯＣＡＬ５８ＴＶ - Contingency") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c66w6fVqOI) ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2022, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/39 "2022-11-03T14:26:56Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > Fitz James O’Brien, [What Was It? A Mystery - Wikisource, the free online library](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/What_Was_It%3F_A_Mystery) Ah, thank goodness! I knew I’d read this one but couldn’t find it. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2022, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950/40 "2022-11-04T00:33:41Z")
> [@Dead\_Cat](#): > > I nominate “The Entrance” by Gerald Durrell - I think I was about 12 when I first read it, when it terrified me, and even re-reading as an adult I still find it pretty disturbing and very well-done. > > It was published, very incongruously, in his collection “The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium”, which is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read - until you get to that story, at the end. Thanks for the recommendation! The first story I went to was “The Entrance” – spooky indeed! Being a fan of humour, I then proceeded through the other stories from the beginning. The first one, “The Picnic”, was entertainingly funny writing, but a sort of gentle humour reminiscent of the classic _Life with Father_ series by Clarence Day. But the second one, “Maiden Voyage”, went all-out and had me laughing out loud – in fact it had dozens of laugh-out-loud moments! Thank you! I’m just now starting on the next one. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-a-scary-short-story/973950.md?page=3)