# What have you read that made you physically ill? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 17, 2001, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729 "2001-08-17T14:17:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/21 "2001-08-18T01:42:42Z")
The banquet scene in the novel _Hannibal_ (haven’t worked up the nerve to rent the movie). For a week afterwards my stomach twisted into a knot whenever I thought about it. ---
**Author:** ![Lionors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c37758/32.png) [@Lionors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lionors)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/22 "2001-08-18T01:46:56Z")
The Stephen King short story, “The Survivor Type” out of the short story collection Skeleton Crew. I did manage to finish it, just out of sheer cussedness, but I had to put it down twice and walk away a couple of times to get a grip. It was two months before I could look at hamburger again, which is not good when you eat at a college dining hall. ‘On Uses of Torture’ didn’t quite get me that badly, but dear lord, did it make me hurt. ---
**Author:** ![rocking\_chair](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocking_chair/32/2918_2.png) [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/23 "2001-08-18T02:24:24Z")
kiss the girls, the milk enema and snake. ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/24 "2001-08-18T02:30:26Z")
The Vampire Armand, where the children are being thrown into the fire. The worst scene in the book, but there are others that come close. There was a book I started to read, can’t remember what it was called, but it went into sickening detail of a first person perspective of being murdered, and was followed by the next character finding the victim’s head in the fridge. This was in the first couple of chapters. I got rid of the book, I couldn’t read more. It made me want to puke. ---
**Author:** ![Sue\_Jo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Sue\_Jo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sue_Jo)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/25 "2001-08-18T02:40:20Z")
I read a book on canibalism, one that took the position that there were never any “proven” cases, so it never happened. The author had a funny idea of proof, as you can imagine! But lots of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates creep me out and I can’t finish them. Never been sickened by text, but any picture of an injured (or even just emaciated) child will sicken me. ---
**Author:** ![Ace309](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ace309/32/1050_2.png) [@Ace309](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ace309)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/26 "2001-08-18T02:48:16Z")
I’m a big fan of Lovecraft. A year or two ago, I picked up a copy of a “tribute” book called Cthulhu 2000. It was a very entertaining book of short stories by different authors; I highly recommend it. But then I came to a story by Poppy Z. Brite called “His Mouth Will Taste Of Wormwood.” It was about two bisexual male graverobbers, one of which eventually is sapped of his life force by a necromancer… or some other such tripe. The problem is that the descriptions of everything - “the pleasure he could inflict with a femur dipped in rose oil,” the “violet eyes” plucked from a child’s corpse… _shudder_ I swear, if I ever read that passage about the protagonist’s mother’s severed head again… ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/27 "2001-08-18T03:08:30Z")
Stephen King’s **Gerald’s Game** , an otherwise very forgettable novel… spoiler alert… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the scene where she gets out of the cuffs by cutting the skin on her wrists and using the blood as lubricating fluid to slide the cuffs over her wristbones… ::shudder:: ---
**Author:** ![straykat23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c4cdca/32.png) [@straykat23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/straykat23)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/28 "2001-08-18T03:53:07Z")
The title is something like “The Man Who Fell from Grace from the Sea” by a Japanese award-winning author. It’s a very well written but dark book about a widow and her young son and his reaction to the new man (a sailor) in her life. The son runs with a gang and the book set me up to believe there would be a five page explanation of how they tortured and killed a cat. Given the darkness of the book thusfar, I closed it thinking I couldn’t read through the cat torture. Last year someone mentioned the author (the name escapes me now) and I mentioned the cat torture. Seems that never happened… I’ll go back to the book at some point, but given the darkness and promise of torture, I think that there will be other surprises involved. Any book that inspires such dread has to be great…Now if only I can stomach what is to come…Or what might come… ---
**Author:** ![ThisYearsGirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@ThisYearsGirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisYearsGirl)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/29 "2001-08-18T04:19:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by delphica \* > \*\*There’s an excellent book called Bury Me Standing which is about gypsy communities in Europe in the 20th century. The parts about the holocaust made me feel faint and dizzy. The holocaust is always emotionally disturbing, but that was the only time I can remember being actually physically unwell. \*\* Oh Gosh–I’ve read parts of this book, too, but I couldn’t even finish it. It just got to be too much for me, especially since I’m a quarter gypsy on my mother’s side. Really uneasy reading. ---
**Author:** ![anya\_marie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@anya\_marie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anya_marie)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/30 "2001-08-18T09:10:08Z")
I read _Bury Me Standing_ also and i was crying at the end. ---
**Author:** ![Soda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@Soda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soda)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/31 "2001-08-18T13:28:26Z")
Here’s another vote for _ **Gerald’s Game** _. Another creepy one by Stephen King is that short story about the doctor who was stranded on a desert island and started eating himself… _Mmmm, tastes just like chocolate…_ Another one which made me cringe was _ **Waterland** _ by **Graham Swift**. The main character’s wife has just had a nervous breakdown and stolen a baby from outside of the supermarket. The husband is struggling with her, trying to get the baby away from her, while their dog, a Golden Retriever I think, thinks it’s all fun and games and wants to play. The husband is (naturally) quite upset and while trying to get the dog away he kicks him, hard, in the jaw. The sound of the dog’s jaw cracking is described so perfect it made me want to throw up. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/32 "2001-08-18T19:21:36Z")
One of those condensed books in the back of Reader’s Digest written by a father with a hemophiliac son. It was okay up to the point where they get the kid circumsised (sp?) and later that night change a “diaper filled with blood.” Ick. ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/33 "2001-08-18T22:01:24Z")
Stephen King’s _Apt Pupil_ is one that really made me queasy. There was another book called _The Brave_ by Gregory McDonald someone mentioned in a creepy book thread quite a while ago that I checked out and it was indeed horrible. It was about a guy from a sort of shanty village who agrees to star in a snuff film for what (to him) is a lot of money. They of course give him a small amount and promise to deposit the remainder in a bank account for his family after the filming. The book ends with a very detailed account of what transpires during the filming itself. It not only makes you sick while reading it, it haunts you for several days afterward as it sneaks into your thoughts. ---
**Author:** ![Shawn\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@Shawn\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shawn_K)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/34 "2001-08-18T22:39:09Z")
I read this Black Magic book (yes, they actually do exist in libraries) and it contained a passage about the creation of vampires. (goes upstairs to see if he can hunt down the book) Found it. The passage reads: "Contrary to popular belief, vampires are not “turned” in to vampires by being bitten by one. A vampire bite can poison someone with a venom similar to a snake’s, but that is nothing more than a means of defense and/or capture. Becoming a vampire is purely by choice through an incantation (which is not listed due to various legal reasons) before death. On the eve of July 16th of every leap year, the vampire will awaken. This is why many vampires choose not to be embalmed nor buried deep. “Vampires can be raised before/after the aforementioned date through an incantation (Shawn K’s note: they listed this incantation, but it would be fairly pointless to write). However, it is very illegal to practice this in Sweden. In Sweden, they take heavy anti-vampire actions. For example, after death, many dead used to be squashed and eaten to prevent re-animation.” _shudder_ Take it for what it’s worth. I personally don’t believe it, nor have I “practiced” the incantation. ---
**Author:** ![racinchikki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@racinchikki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racinchikki)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2001, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/35 "2001-08-18T23:03:08Z")
Once read this really cheesy collection of short stories that were supposed to be scary but were mostly just lame. “Tales from the Crypt” type of stuff. But one of the stories still makes me ill to think about. It was about a famous rock guitarist, and there was this whole plot about a stalker and getting ready to perform the show and everything, but the main point is that his signature move was to jump out on stage through the billowing smoke from the dry-ice machines, and SLAM a chord down on his electric guitar with one of those obnoxious arm-swings that rock guitarists are so prone to do. But this time somebody’d restrung his guitar with razor wire and the tips of his fingers were cut off. :shudder: Of course, I sit here thinking about it and realize how stupid it is. Even assuming somebody managed to string your guitar with razor wire without any of the roadies noticing and realizing something’s wrong… How would you not notice it’s razor wire when you put your fingers on the fretboard to form the chord and the strings slice through your calluses and into your fingertips? Why the hell would you be playing an electric guitar without a pick - because if you were using a pick and playing properly, all that’d happen would be you’d cut your pick in half. MAYBE you’d knick the tip of one of your fingers? So I know this would never happen. But it still creeps me out. I had to check my guitar every time I picked it up for a week after reading that story. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Just\_Ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Ed)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2001, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/36 "2001-08-19T01:52:23Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by whatisnaughty \* > \*\*can’t remember the name of the book, but it was kind of cheesy. about a nanny who was murdering children. there was an opening scene where it actually describes her placing the baby on an overburner, and describes the melting skin, burning flesh, and crying baby. horrid. > > i actually don’t know much else of the book, because I didn’t read much more of it… \*\* Dunno if it’s what you’re thinking about, but that sounds like the opening of Robert McCammon’s _Mine_, which is indeed about a very sick woman who wants a baby of her own. The queasiness is ameliorated somewhat by the revelation that the baby in this scene is actually a plastic _doll_, with effects provided by the sick woman’s mind. But very disturbing up until that point. ---
**Author:** ![Weird\_AL\_Einstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c67d28/32.png) [@Weird\_AL\_Einstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weird_AL_Einstein)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2001, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/37 "2001-08-19T02:20:00Z")
A novel by F. Paul Wilson called _Dydeetown World_. In it, the protagonist is beheaded by an ultrathin wire, but he is alive and conscious, and will remain so _if_ he can avoid moving his head or jiggling it off in any way. I always thought, what if he had to sneeze? Gives me the creepy crawlies just thinking about it. ---
**Author:** ![galen\_ubal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/galen_ubal/32/4440_2.png) [@galen\_ubal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galen_ubal)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2001, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/38 "2001-08-19T06:41:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Politzania \* > \*\*In his short story collection - Piers Anthony has a short story (probably “On the Uses of Torture”) where a Terran is tortured to prove his worthiness to meet the governors of the planet. Shudders just thinking about it. > \*\* … I remember this story. Mr. Anthony gets _very_ graphic. IIRC, at the end of the story this Terran has been converted to their way of thinking, and is heading back to Eath… The other one is _1984_ - the rats. Nausea o’ plenty. ---
**Author:** ![tavalla](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tavalla/32/89_2.png) [@tavalla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tavalla)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2001, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/39 "2001-08-19T06:58:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by galen ubal \* > **… I remember this story. Mr. Anthony gets _very_ graphic. IIRC, at the end of the story this Terran has been converted to their way of thinking, and is heading back to Eath…** Almost right. He does get converted (although he was already nutbags-a-plenty before he got sent there), but he stays on the planet and prepares to greet Earth’s next envoys, including his own wife… :barfing face: Delacroix’s execution in The Green Mile, Graveyard Shift and Survivor Type (ladyfingers, they taste just like ladyfingers) from Stephen King; most of American Psycho. Schindler’s Ark/Schindler’s List. ---
**Author:** ![Soda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@Soda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soda)\ **Post date:** [August 19, 2001, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729/40 "2001-08-19T15:16:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shawn K. \* > **"Vampires can be raised before/after the aforementioned date through an incantation (Shawn K’s note: they listed this incantation, but it would be fairly pointless to write). However, it is very illegal to practice this in Sweden. In Sweden, they take heavy anti-vampire actions. For example, after death, many dead used to be squashed and eaten to prevent re-animation."** _BWAHAHAHAHAHA!_ Oh, dear Lord, please tell me this is a joke. It is a joke, right? **Shawn** , I am Swedish, and this has got to be the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard of. First of all, we’re not very supersticious in Sweden, and if we ever were, it would have _nothing_ to do with vampires. Trolls, gnomes or elves would be more likely, but not vampires. Oh, dear, my sides hurt… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-have-you-read-that-made-you-physically-ill/76729.md?page=3)