“Boogeyman” - is that the one about the basement of a textile mill?
If so (shudder).
Can you believe he writes only at night?
“Boogeyman” - is that the one about the basement of a textile mill?
If so (shudder).
Can you believe he writes only at night?
Big Joe, the textile mill story is called “Graveyard Shift.”
For Stephen King fans, check out http://www.horrorking.com/ - it’s got brief description of all the novels and short stories.
No horror library should be without Horror: 100 Best Books, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.
It’s not the books themselves, but short essays by horror and fantasy writers (and some mainstream folks that’ll surprise you) who write about their favorite horror stories.
It’s a wonderful collection. You get Poe commenting on Hawthorne, James on Le Fanu, Pratchett on Hodgson, Tem on Kafka, Lansdale on Bradbury, King on Marasco (he liked Burnt Offerings, one of my favorites too).
As for the OP, I don’t think I’ve ever been scared by anything I’ve read. Grossed out, chilled, thrilled and awed, but not scared. “At the Mountains of Madness” came closest. I believed that stuff when I was reading it.
And the winner in the Phrases Least Likely to Be Uttered in the Stephen King Household is:
“Daddy, will you tell me a bedtime story?”
lablonde: You ever try nonfiction, true crime stuff? Some of the occult-related books will curl your toes.
Try “The Ultimate Evil” by Maury Terry. It makes a case that one Satanic cult may be responsible for 20 years worth of mass murders – and may have been connected to the Son of Sam and the Manson Family slayings. Offers pretty compelling evidence that David Berkowitz didn’t act alone.
It creeped me out rather sufficiently.
Hummm…
I used to be the strangest person I know.
Thanks to both Fillet and AuntiePam.
How about Daphne du Maurier’s short story, THE BIRDS … ?
Runs circles around Stephen King.
Also, Bram Stoker’s DRACULA (at least the first section, in Castle Dracula) is pretty much guaranteed to give you shivers…
One of the creepiest horror novels I’ve ever read is Sins of the Blood by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. It’s about vampires and various authors have used vampirism as a metaphor for everything from alcoholism to the Red Menace. In Rusch’s novel, vampirism is metaphorically equated with child abuse. So this book is effective because it uses a real world crime to invoke a horror of the supernatural.
Title: The Bible
Author: God
Storyline: You are doomed to an eternity of unimaginable torment.
This book is so scary so people actually have lost their mind and begun believing it, much like the movie “Mouth Of Madness.”
Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. in the summer of 1980 while Reagan accepted the nomination and Falwell and company cheered 30 miles south of me.
Tom~, have you ever seen the “news from the future” skits in “Laugh In”? (I forget what they were actually called.)
One skit produced in 1968 predicted the news 20 years in the future:
“President Reagan is still denying that he’s planning to run for Governor of California…”
I agree with almost all of the above! The only new one I can add is one that really creeped me out when I read it. Other people might not find it as scary as I did but I spent an entire summer spooked! It is called Somebody Come and Play by Clare McNally. I think it is out of print now but a library or used bookstore may have it.
FUNGUS!
I still freak out when i see mold of any kind.
Have you (or anyone else) tried Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake books? I’m not a horror person as a rule (although I have read most of Stephen King, all of Shirley Jackson and some of Dean Koontz), but a friend at work (I work at a bookstore) gave them to me. The short and dirty description is ‘Buffy the vampire slayer for grownups,’ but that doesn’t even begin to convey the true splendor of this series. Twisted, weird, creepy and just plain fun. I took the first one (Guilty Pleasures – very aptly named, BTW) and was hooked from the first sentence. There are around 8 books in the series and I read one a day until I finished them. I actually dreamed about Zombies a couple of times while I was reading them… Good stuff! Get 'em quick – you won’t regret it.
Title: Misery
Author: the local favorite, Stephen King
Plotline: Author crashes his car, gets stuck in remote mountain house with a crazy lady who does not like how his last book ends.
I plan to start writing seriously one of these days, and I live within spitting range of the Rockies. I like that book’s minimalist style (two main characters, nobody else for miles and miles, plenty of time to develop both) and its setting (reading about terror in a house like yours is more effective than reading about it in Castle Freakula). I like how so many people are metioning Lovecraft. My nick comes from August Derleth, a man who collaborated with him in a few works. Everything modern horror does is directly traceable to him. Rule of thumb: If it’s been sleeping for more than 1000 years, don’t wake it up!
I’ve found Stephen King’s most disturbing vignettes to be those occurring in his “non-supernatural” stories. These include (some spoilers):
[ul]
[li]Deloris Claiborne’s husband calling to her from the bottom of the well, and then later trying to climb out.[/li]
[li]Annie Wilkes chopping off Paul Sheldon’s foot off with an ax, and then cauterizing the stump with a blowtorch. I had to put the book down for a few minutes at that point.[/li]
[li]Many of the scenes in “Apt Pupil”. I never had any intention of seeing the recent movie adaptation; I felt that most of the suspense and creepiness is too psychological (i.e., inside the characters’ heads) to translate well to the big screen.[/li]
[li]“The Ledge”, from Night Shift[/li]
[li]And, “Survivor Type”, from Skeleton Crew. Oooh, oooh, oooh, just thinking about that story creeps me out.[/ul][/li]
DHR
My favorite quote from Misery:
“MISERY CANNOT DIE!”
-Annie Wilkes
Screamed when she found out how Paul’s last book ended. She was throwing things around at this point, jolting Paul awake. If you’ve ever been awakened by people who have every intention of kicking your ass around, you’d understand.
Second favorite quote:
“Now we must rinse.”
-Annie Wilkes
You’d have to read the book to understand. It’s a close second, and it still gives me the chills.
BTW, I’ve read the book and rented the video. In the book, Annie is much more dangerous. In the book, things don’t go nearly as nicely for Paul. Just like Dune (felt the urge to mention a rather large, unwieldy book I’ve read and an equally large movie I’ve seen twice now), nothing beats reading the book.
Anything by M R James. Collected Ghost Stories is a good starting point.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
Naomi’s Room by Jonathan Aycliffe (who also writes political-religious thrillers under the name Daniel Easterman).
Bits and pieces by H P Lovecraft, though some of it is rubbish.
This thread, as mentioned, is a great candidate for In My Humble Opinion. I’ll shoot it over there.
First I’ve got to get on the King bandwagon (hey, everyone likes to be part of a crowd) and tip my hat. Like Kyla I went through a horror phase that lasted several years. King and Lovecraft… brrrrr!
However, before this turns into a complete King-lovefest, I’d like to throw out a couple books that I daresay had a stronger psychological impact on me than any King novel. Can’t say exactly why, but despite the terror IT struck in me (I read it in my first apartment, all alone in a new city, no electricity turned on yet, by candlelight!) it didn’t quite leave me as spooked as Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky) did.
Essentially, it is the story of a man who contemplates and then commits a crime. His subsequent psychological slide into the nightmarish world of guilt, and the cat and mouse game played between he and the police kept me on a harsher edge than any book I’ve read filled with monsters and mayhem. Dostoevsky is a masterful author.
In addition, I’d like to recommend Blindness by Jose Saramago. Within, people, one by one, begin to loose their sight. That is all I will say about the novel, as I despise it when anyone else but the author gives me a bit of the plot. After reading it you will be more thankful for your sight then ever before. You will get an unnerving chill when sleep keeps your vision from returning first thing in the morning. I daresay you will see many threads in GD in a new light. It won the Nobel Prize for Literature a couple of years ago, quite deservedly so.
My apologies if these don’t quite fit into the traditional horror genre. But if you like putting yourself on edge, if you like increasing the amount of adrenaline in your blood, if you like looking at the world a bit differently and with more appreciation and a bit more apprehension after reading a novel, than these books will do justice to those desires.
Thanks for listening,
Rhythmdvl
PS How about Invasion of the IMHO Thread?