I’ve read most of Stephen King, some James Herbert, “The Silence of the Lambs”, Edgar Allen Poe, “Omen” etc etc. None of these scared me (I think I’m just sick and twisted!). The grossest scene in a book I can remember was in Herbert’s “The Rats” in the cinema when a rat is eating through a guy’s stomach while he’s just sitting there!! I can’t even think of films that have scared me - I tend to laugh - except “Candyman”; it was ages before I could look in a mirror again!
Hands down, Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”.
The first time I read it, I left all the lights on for weeks, and I STILL didn’t sleep much!
Also the second time, and the third time, and…
Scotti
Myron: I thought I was the only person alive who adored Martin’s Fevre Dream.
Agreement on Lovecraft; he was the Stephen King of his day.
Agreement, selectively, w/ King; his early stuff was better in general, but some truly inspired stuff has been sprinkled along the way. He has a real gift for short stories.
My “most scared” favorite:
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Don’t judge by the movies; the 60’s version was okay; the recent Liam Neeson offering sucked.
The premise is standard: 4 people of varying mental states stay in a reputedly haunted house as part of an experiment in the paranormal. But Jackson plucks nerves and makes magic out of it. (FWIW, I prefer mind scared over gore.) Appropriately, the fear is all mental and emotional, where real fear comes originates. This is the genuine stuff of nightmares, where the mind resides and boundaries waver.
Give it a little time; the book builds. The closing paragraph echoes the opening paragraph, but by the time you get there the whole world will shift.
As a side recommendation, try her We have always lived in the castle. You only think you know the nature of the true horror.
Veb
Well, I dont hardly ever read fiction. I read a Dean Koontz book once about people trapped in a highrise.
But the scariest book I’ve ever read was called Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. Scarier cause its True.
Excellent input !!!. Dracula was great, but I read it when I was twelve.
True Crime creeps me out and I won’t go there.
I’m currently reading an excellent book by Dan Simmons,
“Carrion Comfort”. It was his first. Has to to do with a select group of humans that have the “Ability” with which they take control of others and push them beyond natural human capability. They do this to amuse themselves. There is a creepy concentration camp people size chessboard scene. A mind-vampire thing. The book says that Khadaffy(sp?) had this ability and he thought it meant he was God! Very intricate story beginning with old Nazi’s reminiscing. Don’t let the slow start fool you… EEeeeppp!
Peaches: You beat me to it. I was going to nominate Helter Skelter as well. That scene where one of the family (Tex, maybe? Don’t have it here with me) describes how they would “Creepy-Crawl” houses at night - brrr…
For more good true crime, Zodiac by Robert Graysmith is rather shiver-inducing as well. And that’s still an open case…Double yii. (The theory that the Zodiac killer and the Unabomber are the same person is interesting, though, from what little I’ve looked into it.)
This is sort of off the topic but …
I’ve read a lot of King’s books and I noticed that he always uses the idea of some great underlying evil controlling things … the town in IT, in The Stand the force behing Flagg, in Christine the car, in Desperation the thing in the pit (I didn’t like Desperation as much as the other ones I’ve read), in Pet Sematary the cemetery, and so on. Also in IT, The Stand, and Desperation, there was also definitely an opposing goodness controlling the characters. Hmm.
Ever since I figured this out King’s books scare me less because I am always analyzing them instead of just letting them scare me. Too bad.
-j-u-l-i-e-
The creepiest novel I’ve read is Candyman which takes place in Liverpool England and played on English fears of those wild and crazy Liverpudlians. The original movie transferred the plot to Chicago and played wonderfully on our North American racism… made the story more creepy.
Helter Skelter was enough to scare me off of those serial killer books forever.
Real Life creepy/scary: The Coming Plague about AIDS/HIV, drug resistant TB and malaria, all those weird hemorraghic fevers like Lassa…
Ukulele Ike,
Just FYI, didn’t read “The Green Man” but saw the A&E adaptation on TV. Was so impressed that I called to order a copy on tape. IIRC, it stars Albert Finey and is quite well done.
Damn!!! Now I’ve got to track down the novel! 
The book Beloved by Morrison(I think)
The actual book wasnt scary, it was the fact that someone got paid lots of money to write the thing that scared the hell out of me.
And they made a movie out of it with Oprah, which even made the whole thing even scarier.
Yoko Ono’s book of poetry. Let me give you an example:
Yes.
Truly frightening, isn’t it?
Veb – here’s another vote for Fevre Dream. What a rich, romantic story.
Martin’s Armageddon Rag has some nice intensity too. And it’s not horror, but his Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series has quite a following.
Lucius Shepard’s Green Eyes is a nicely intense zombie love story with some scary moments. I think Shepard’s ashamed of it now, because it was – horrors – “popular” and he seems to want to be above that. And it’s working – hardly anyone seems to have heard of him.
Tom Reamy’s Blind Voices was a nice take on the carnival-comes-to-town-and-the-kids-are-the-only-ones-who-see-the-evil (a’la Bradbury’s Something Wicked), and he published a very original short story collection before he died. He’s worth searching for.
I don’t remember the title, just that it’s a Bradbury short story:
A little boy with a fever becomes convinced that the virus is taking over his body, limb by limb. As in, he’s becoming a walking disease. The last image in the story, after everyone thinks he’s gotten better, is utterly creepy.
Pundit: you win.
I second on Thomas Harris, but I thought that Red Dragon was more frightening than either SotL or Hannibal.
Don’t stop now !! Let’s hear from the Weekenders !!
This book still creeps me out. It is the only book that I own that I will never read again. :eek:
The Exorcist, when I was 15. It reached the climax at 3 am during a thunderstorm. The lights went out with a crash of thunder, and I about wet myself while the book hit the ceiling!
The movie was tame in comparison.
When I was about ten, someone gave me a book called “Fifty Greatest Short Stories” or something like that. The one I read which was so scary was called “Christ in Concrete.” I don’t know who wrote it. It frightened me to the point that I never read it again, and even was afraid to have the book in the same room with me, because it brought that story to mind!
I don’t know, relatively speaking, how scary someone else would find it. I do remember how I felt after reading it. It horrified me because it was fairly realistic.
I don’t usually go in for scary stuff, so I would have to say, although not technically horror, the most frightening book I think I’ve read is Frank Herbert’s White Plague.
I don’t count things that leave me horrified or disgusted as scary, so most intentionally “scary” stuff does not count with me, because that’s really how I feel about it: disgusted and horrified, but not actually scared. I guess I equated “scariness” more with suspense stories.