Shot in the Heart. It’s an almost pulpy memoir/true crime kind of deal, but for some reason it freaked me out to no end. All that talk about Mormons and ghosts and execution…
Two books I read during a Russian history class:
“Into the Whirlwind” by Eugenia Ginsburg is a very disturbing story of the Stalinist terror and the author’s desperate attempts to survive after she is imprisoned and sent to Siberia.
“Execution By Hunger” by Miron Dolot is an account of the famines Stalin inflicted on Ukraine in the early 1930’s. The descriptions of starving people dragging themselves and their half dead children out to beg for a crust of bread from other starved people are good for several years worth of nightmares.
I agree with Zoe, Red Dragon was pretty disturbing.
I guess I’m going to be looking for Firefly in a couple of weeks. It’ll be a good book to contrast Cider House Rules which I’m reading right now.
1984 was very disturbing. I found myself very interested in the darkness of it. Animal Farm got into me too. The Long Walk by Richard “Stephen King” Bachman was a little dumb, but it was creepy. The idea of a deadly game show based on on of my favorite activities was scary. I guess it hit the mark.
I have to second that, I couldn’t sleep for ages after I read that.
Very, very hard to begin to understand how he could do what he did.
Yet another vote for American Psycho. The most disturbing book I have even read.
I made the mistake of reading it on the train once, and the lady next to me glanced over must have seen a few words. She turned away and was obviously disgusted. 
Andersonville, nonfiction about the Civil War prison.
I second The Rape of Nanking by Chiang.
Night, by Wiesel (sp?).
All nonfiction. Enjoy.
Snicks
Misery, Stephen King.
Guinastasia, ditto on Pet Sematary, the first thing I thought of when I saw the OP. Especially hard for a parent to read.
The most disturbing book I’ve read is “Johnny Got His Gun” by Dalton Trumbo. Anyone who remembers Metallica’s video for “One” should have an idea of what this book is about. I think I was in high School when I read it.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Turner Diaries by Andrew MacDonald (pen name for William L. Pierce, the [former] leader of the National Alliance - one of the largest Neo-Nazi organizations in the U.S. if not the world).
The disturbing part isn’t so much the character development or the storyline (pretty boring actually), but the fact that there are real people who really believe the garbage esposed in the book. Oh, and the fact that it was read and admired by Timothy McVeigh…
Anything by John Douglas, the FBI profiler that Clarice’s boss was based on in the Hannibal Lector series. As he describes his case studies, you realize how much of a fine line exists between ordinary people and serial killers.
Something Happened by Joseph Heller.
Huh. This is my least favorite of her books: I thought it substituted gore for art.
Joyce Carol Oates has written a book with a very similar plot, however, that was infinitely creepier: Zombie. Check it out!
Daniel
That’s all kid stuff.
Try Maldoror by Conte De Lautreamont, an early French surrealist novel.
Ho wcould I forget The Exorcist. I didn’t scare me, but it just…disgusted me. It was soooo…eeeewww…
Especially the Crucifix scene. gag
That was going to be my nomination, but you beat me.
People who like creepy books, DO NOT go out and get this. (God knows where you’d get it anyway…the Internet is likely the only place, I suppose.) It is NOT creepy in a fun way. It is creepy in a “touching this book makes my hands feel dirty, throw it against the wall in disgust” way.
I read it for a class. It was just horrifying. What really got to me was that all of the minor, extra characters, like waiters in restaurants and people on the street, secretly supported the Neo-Nazi movement in the book. They had all been pretending to be nice and egalitarian, but underneath, everyone really wanted to have a race war and exterminate the mud people, or whatever. I just have to wonder, did Pierce really think that? Did he really think that Americans were on the edge of this sort of event?
Because that is just incredibly vile.
Santa Steps Out by Robert Devereaux
I think this one doesn’t really fit with the OP, as it’s an erotic splatterpunk sort of book. Much more bizzare than anything Poppy Z. has come up with.
Did you know that the Tooth Fairy EATS those teeth under your pillow, and the coins one finds are just what she had to leave behind?
Makes a great xmas gift![
I second Snickers nomination of “Night”. I read that in a single night and my eyes were permanently in “shock” position for the next few weeks.
Although not traditionally scary, the murder scene and the dream about the horse being whipped in “Crime and Punishment” still send uneasy feelings down my spine. The description of the murder was terrible because it was so suspenseful and I read it at two in the morning when no one else was in the house. Creeped me out severely.
–greenphan
Under the Skin , a novel by Michel Faber (this is the second time today I’ve posted about this book…). I laughed, I cried, I felt sick.
And Chop Shop, non-fiction about a funeral home in Pasadena, CA, whose owners did quite a few illegal and revolting things for many years before they were caught.
:eek: