# What books/authors have genuinely scared you? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 22, 2009, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644 "2009-06-22T21:00:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/21 "2009-06-23T02:52:47Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > There was a story in one of those Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, can’t remember what it was called but it was about a woman and her mother who were staying in a hotel somewhere, and then all of a sudden the mother disappeared and nobody could find her and the room she had been staying in had new furniture and looked completely different, and everyone at the hotel denied that she was ever even a guest there, and the protagonist thinks she’s going crazy, but it actually turned out that her mother had gotten some kind of extremely contagious disease and she had to be taken away, and they covered the whole thing up. But the protagonist of the story never found that out. That one definitely freaked me out as a kid, much moreso than any of the stories in those books involving ghosts or monsters. I felt the same way. I mean, now, not as much, but as a kid, what a mind fuck. My first Twilight Zone episode that I saw at age ten (Eye of the Beholder) did that to me, too. Also, the Scary Story to Tell in the Dark where there’s a poltergeist and the author explained that it could happen to anyone. Even to me. So I waited to become a teenager wondering if I’d go all poltergeist-y. ---
**Author:** ![Pyper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Pyper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pyper)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/22 "2009-06-23T03:00:51Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > That story scared me more than anything I’ve ever read. (I read a different version of it, but it was more or less the same as the one in that link.) The wooden tail…ughhhh…just reading it again sends a chill down my spine after 15 years. Did you know that it was originally published in a book for children? I would have been scarred for life if I had read that as a child. (Actually, I think I’m scarred anyway.) I’ve got another short story to add that can be read online: [It’s A Good Life](http://www.lucifera-shadow.com/inanna_cornfield.html) by Jerome Bixby. It was made into a pretty faithful Twilight Zone episode. Rather than being deliciously creepy, like _Coraline_ and “The New Mother,” this story inspired feelings of horror and revulsion in me. ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/23 "2009-06-23T03:10:51Z")
I was 11 when I read [Poe’s _The Premature Burial_](http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blpremburial1.htm). Serious pants-crapping stuff, particularly at an age when the impact of mortality is starting to dawn. I was paralysed with fear for hours. Good times. And [The Yellow Wallpaper](http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/yellowwallpaper.pdf). (PDF file). Read it as an adult, in the daytime, and I am certain the sun darkened for me alone. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/24 "2009-06-23T03:27:49Z")
Richard Laymon. He went places other horror writers won’t go. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/25 "2009-06-23T03:33:38Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Richard Laymon. He went places other horror writers won’t go. Ooh. Any books in particular to recommend? ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/26 "2009-06-23T03:45:51Z")
_The Shining_. The bit where Danny is in the concrete pipe on the playground, and snow falls across the entrance, sealing him in, and he hears something in dry leaves at the other end of the pipe moving towards him. I’m getting chills just typing about it. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Daylate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9dc877/32.png) [@Daylate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daylate)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/27 "2009-06-23T04:30:18Z")
I really wish I could go back and read for the first time “The Hound of the Baskervilles”. I still think it has one of the most chilling lines in literature - _“Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.”_ Brrrrr! ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/28 "2009-06-23T05:50:58Z")
> [@Pyper](#): > > I’ve got another short story to add that can be read online: [It’s A Good Life](http://www.lucifera-shadow.com/inanna_cornfield.html) by Jerome Bixby. It was made into a pretty faithful Twilight Zone episode. Rather than being deliciously creepy, like _Coraline_ and “The New Mother,” this story inspired feelings of horror and revulsion in me. Yes - this was horrifying. The idea of being completely under some totalitarian ruler is scary enough, but the notion of that ruler being someone who is obviously completely insane, unfair and unfit to be in charge is what makes it especially frightening and upsetting. It triggers some kind of deep-seated anger, as if you want to reach through the TV and beat that little kid to death. ---
**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:** [June 23, 2009, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/29 "2009-06-23T13:01:20Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Yep, that’s the one. The first time I ever went camping, I woke up in the night and realized that it was very very quiet and very very dark, and we were a long way from anywhere. I started thinking about the Dudleys warning Eleanor that they would not be at Hill House. In the night. In the dark. Then I started thinking about the rest of the story. Before long, I was absolutely petrified. I could have reached out at any moment to hold my sleeping husband’s hand, but I vividly remembered what had happened when Eleanor reached out for Theo’s hand… This is me, the rest of that night. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/30 "2009-06-23T13:19:02Z")
The scariest book I ever read is “The Stranger Beside Me.” Image being a writer of true crime articles for magazines. Image getting a contract to write a book about the disappearance of several young women in the area, a crime for which they have no suspect yet. Image finding out that the killer was your friend Ted Bundy. That true story is the scariest thing I can image. ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/31 "2009-06-23T13:34:53Z")
> [@Busy\_Scissors](#): > > _House of Leaves_ has to be mentioned. It’s a two stranded book with one part dealing with a sort of haunted house. Very original and chilling, really captures your imagination. The book doesn’t really work as a whole (It was a v ambitious structure for a first novel), but the house is really exceptionally feasome. That one scared me a little bit, but more than that, it just messed with my brain. I felt weirdly disconnected from reality for a day or two afterwards. I’ll throw out (and up) [Chuck Palahniuk’s short story “Guts”.](http://www.seizureandy.com/stuff/guts.html) For something so completely short, it took me a long, long, long time to finish it. I’ve been traumatized ever since. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/32 "2009-06-23T13:45:01Z")
Three books that didn’t scare me while reading them but gave me nightmares as an adult- Clive Barker’s THE HELLBOUND HEART- and I’ve seen the first two Hellraiser movies several times before I read it. Harold Schechter’s DEVIANT- about Ed Gein Aphrodite Jones’ CRUEL SACRIFICE- about the Sandra Sharer murder in my area of the country (teen lesbian triangle & a crazy wannabe evil witch= :eek::eek::eek:) ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/33 "2009-06-23T13:52:04Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > Yep, that’s the one. > > The first time I ever went camping, I woke up in the night and realized that it was very very quiet and very very dark, and we were a long way from anywhere. I started thinking about the Dudleys warning Eleanor that they would not be at Hill House. In the night. In the dark. Then I started thinking about the rest of the story. Before long, I was absolutely petrified. I could have reached out at any moment to hold my sleeping husband’s hand, but I vividly remembered what had happened when Eleanor reached out for Theo’s hand… > > This is me, the rest of that night. :eek: Makes for a great real estate ad: > [@](#): > > Hill House - For sale by owner - Motivated Seller!!! $2,995,000 > > Hill House, not sane, stands by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it has stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continue upright, bricks meet neatly, floors are firm, and doors are sensibly shut; silence lies steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walks there, walks alone. > > Prestigious Street. Enter Through Iron Gates. Breath Taking Landscaping. Custom Built Home By Experienced Builder. Home Filled With Wainscotting And Coffered Ceilings. Walkout From Basement. This house, which seems somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of linnd angles, rears its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity.\*\*\*\* EXTRAS \*\*\*\* All Electric Light Fixtures, Built In Appliances, Wine Fridge Included, Cvac, Cac, Sprinkler Systems, Heated Floor, Sauna, Wine Cellar. Measurements To Be Verified. ---
**Author:** ![Labdad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/439d5e/32.png) [@Labdad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labdad)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/34 "2009-06-23T14:11:42Z")
**Ghost Story** by Peter Straub scared the bejesus out of me! ---
**Author:** ![Shark\_Sandwich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f04885/32.png) [@Shark\_Sandwich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shark_Sandwich)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/35 "2009-06-23T15:32:27Z")
A short story by Stephen King called _The Boogeyman_ hit all of my squick buttons: spoiler The creature that preys on babies and small children. (2) The children try to warn the father, but they’re too young to accurately vocalize what they see. (3) When the Dad finally confronts the creature, it’s revealed he’s a coward. (4) The twilight zone ending, which I have to admit I didn’t see coming. [/spoiler] That, plus my apparent OCD (prior to reading the story) of not being able to go to bed at night without every door in the house closed, kitchen cabinets and closets included. _And the closet door was opened. Not much. Just a crack._ ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Credible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a8b319/32.png) [@Justin\_Credible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Credible)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/36 "2009-06-23T17:28:20Z")
> [@Freudian\_Slit](#): > > These may not count as they are pictures, but the pictures in the Alvin Schwartz Scary Stories to tell in the Dark books STILL scare me to this day. Oh my God, yes. It’s been about 15 years since I read those, but I can still visualize those pictures. The White Wolf was the worst for me, due to my fear of wolves and werewolves. Another one, I think it was for a story called The Haunt, still gives me shivers if I think about it. And the one with the spiders ahtching in the girl’s skin, blegh. Those stories were hit or miss, but the images were always scary as hell. There was another horror anthology I read when I was in junior high that I can’t remember the name of, but it had one story that has stuck with me to this day. It was about a group of kids who get this guide named Roger to take them camping, and it turns out he’s a werewolf and he pretty much picks them off one by one. I think that story was in a horror book for young readers, so I don’t know if it would be scary if I read it now, but my memory of it is pretty scary. As for Stephen King stories, I’ll second The Boogeyman and add The Man in the Black Suit. The ending of that one gave me trouble falling asleep for several days after. Also, [Ted’s Cave Story](http://www.angelfire.com/trek/caver/page1.html), which someone mentioned in a previous thread here, was really freaky. > [@Labdad](#): > > **Ghost Story** by Peter Straub scared the bejesus out of me! Tangent/ A question for anyone who’s read Ghost Story. Remember the part where Don recalls Alma telling him that she’s a ghost, but then later he realizes she said “you’re a ghost”? I never got that; why would she say that to him? He wasn’t a ghost. That was a great and pretty scary book. My favorite part, a part that still gives me goosebumps to think about, was when the one kid was hiding and looking at whatshername across the park with his binoculars, and he realizes she’s looking right back at him. ---
**Author:** ![maladroit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f475e1/32.png) [@maladroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maladroit)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/37 "2009-06-23T17:32:27Z")
I read The Exorcist right around the time it came out I’d have been 17 or 18. I kept the lights on for weeks after reading that book. The scariest movie I’ve ever seen is The Haunting of Hill House, the 1963 black & white version. Terrified me, still does. [http://www.amazon.com/Haunting-Julie-Harris/dp/B00009NHB6](http://www.amazon.com/Haunting-Julie-Harris/dp/B00009NHB6) The review at the bottom is brilliant, I could never describe it as well as that. ---
**Author:** ![Wargamer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/df705f/32.png) [@Wargamer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wargamer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/38 "2009-06-23T17:59:47Z")
In _The Stand_, the scene where Stu is escaping the hospital in Vermont just scared the piss out of me. Especially after he defeats the assassin and is headed toward the exit sign and a hand grabs his ankle. That’s the only time a book has ever provoked a physical reaction from me, as I jumped in fear. ---
**Author:** ![TheMerchandise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b487fb/32.png) [@TheMerchandise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheMerchandise)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/39 "2009-06-23T18:00:03Z")
Charles Beaumont’s short story “Miss Gentibelle” scared the bejeezus out of me. It’s about an old woman who can’t stand men, so she raises her son as a little girl. The story is filled with madness and cruelty… scared me more than all the vampire or zombie books I’ve read. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644/40 "2009-06-23T18:13:09Z")
Stokers "Dracula " was the scariest . Then “Hound of the Baskervilles”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-authors-have-genuinely-scared-you/500644.md?page=3)