# What is the scariest book you ever read? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 25, 2007, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124 "2007-07-25T18:32:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2007, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/41 "2007-07-25T22:46:53Z")
Not a horror novel as such, but S.M. Stirling’s [_The Domination_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Domination) series gave me nightmares. I never had nightmares about Dracula, Cthulhu, Freddy or Jason, but I had nightmares about the Draka! ---
**Author:** ![stretch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@stretch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stretch)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2007, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/42 "2007-07-25T22:49:25Z")
Stephen King’s _Pet Sematary_ is my scary one…even thinking about it makes me afraid to turn around cuz there will be Gage’s mom, ready to kill. I didn’t read _Salem’s Lot_ until after I finished the Dark Tower series–if I’d read it earlier, I would have had nightmares. And many of King’s short stories–especially the one from Night Shift where the guy is growing eyes in his hands and elsewhere. ::shudder:: ---
**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/43 "2007-07-26T00:29:44Z")
Neil Gaiman’s _Coraline_. Wonderfully creepy. So creepy, that while I was reading it in the middle of the day, in the middle of the desert, in my classroom during lunch, I had to go put it down and take a walk, because it creeped me out so badly. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/44 "2007-07-26T00:44:22Z")
[QUOTE=TroubleAgain] _1984_. Oh, and _Brave New World._😃 :eek: 🆒 [/QUOTE] Books don’t really scare me. However, that kind of literature is closer to things that that bother me than any horror. Anyway, amusingly enough, I finished reading The Shining for the first time last week. I don’t know how anyone thinks it’s scary (and no, I haven’t seen any of the adaptations unless you count The Shinning.) ---
**Author:** ![Full\_Metal\_Lotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/df705f/32.png) [@Full\_Metal\_Lotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Full_Metal_Lotus)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/45 "2007-07-26T00:59:42Z")
The Shining… But some background I was 15, and we were rebuilding the heritage farmhouse we lived in… at the time of the reading, there was NO power so I was reading it by cadle light… Also, the rest of the family had left me alone with a high fever (flu… nothing serious)… I had half dozed off… and the dog stuck her white/speckled dalmation nose into my room… Thanks to fever vision, I saw it as a skeleton hand… screaming ensues… wished I had been reading martin gardner’s “annotaited Alice” instead… regards FML ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/46 "2007-07-26T01:42:26Z")
_Who Moved My Cheese?_ ---
**Author:** ![NajaNivea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/22d042/32.png) [@NajaNivea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NajaNivea)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/47 "2007-07-26T02:45:24Z")
[QUOTE=TroubleAgain] _1984_. [/QUOTE] Seconded! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/48 "2007-07-26T03:23:56Z")
In all honesty…Crichton’s _Eaters of the Dead_. ---
**Author:** ![bathsheba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@bathsheba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bathsheba)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/49 "2007-07-26T03:48:35Z")
Devil on the Road by Robert Westall. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/50 "2007-07-26T03:56:45Z")
_Broca’s Brain_ by Carl Sagan. What freaked me so profoundly was a small bit of theoretical cosmology. IIRC, Sagan reasoned that whatever model of universe you posited - expanding, steady state, whatever - at some ungodly far-off point in time, something like 10^600 years into the future, all the matter there ever was would have decayed into pure hydrogen. No more expansion. No more contraction. No more cosmos, unless by “cosmos” you just meant a permanently dead void. And God said, “I got nuthin’.” ☹ ---
**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:** [July 26, 2007, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/51 "2007-07-26T04:00:21Z")
[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip] _Who Moved My Cheese?_ [/QUOTE] Based on the [amazon.com](http://amazon.com) excerpt, it seems to be a book written totally in glurge-speak. ::shudder:: I can’t limit myself to just one… As for me, the Alvin Schwartz Scary Stories to Tell in the dark books always scared me (recently, even…those pictures are evil). Agree with those of you who said Pet Sematary. Roald Dahl’s short stories are often quite creepy–Tales of the Unexpected is a great collection of some truly diabolical stories. (And when I was younger, his book The Witches would’ve been on my list of scariest books. Oh, who am I kidding? It still is.) Rosemary’s Baby, and by the same author, the Stepford Wives, as well. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/52 "2007-07-26T04:01:30Z")
_Willard_, by Stephen Gilbert. Yes, the one they made into the rat movie. It was frightening, especially at the end as he’s waiting for the rats to break in and eat him. The original title of the book was _Ratman’s Notebooks._ ---
**Author:** ![NajaNivea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/22d042/32.png) [@NajaNivea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NajaNivea)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/53 "2007-07-26T04:10:02Z")
[QUOTE=Ranchoth] In all honesty…Crichton’s _Eaters of the Dead_. [/QUOTE] Hmm. I have a copy of this and have never gotten around to reading it. ---
**Author:** ![Marconi\_Schmeese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@Marconi\_Schmeese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marconi_Schmeese)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/54 "2007-07-26T04:52:19Z")
Pet Sematary Red Dragon Gerald’s Game ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/55 "2007-07-26T05:18:15Z")
For some reason, Algernon Blackwood’s short story “The Wendigo” really affected me. To this day, every so often I’ll look up into the sky on crisp autumn nights and shudder. ---
**Author:** ![Bogeyman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3e96dc/32.png) [@Bogeyman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bogeyman)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/56 "2007-07-26T09:31:30Z")
[QUOTE=delphica] _Red Dragon_, by Thomas Harris. I never thought that Hannibal Lecter was anywhere near as scary as the … Red Dragon guy. [/QUOTE] Completely agree with this - Francis Dolarhyde gave me the willies. I’ll also agree with the people who mentioned _1984_, though I’m not quite sure whether it scared me more or depressed me more on my first reading. (I read this first when I was in hospital far from my home town, sharing a room with a couple of Parkinson’s patients and the only things I had to read were _1984_ and Wilde’s _De Profundis_ - not a wise choice. Talk about leaving the hospital feeling worse than when you got there.) I also found the _Alice_ books somewhat disturbing when I first read them, though now I take them in my stride. ---
**Author:** ![KRC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/45deac/32.png) [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/57 "2007-07-26T11:31:43Z")
Strieber’s _Communion_ . I could only hope he was crazy. Anything by Robert Schuller. That people like him exist is frightening. ---
**Author:** ![auRa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@auRa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/auRa)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/58 "2007-07-26T11:46:28Z")
[QUOTE=Steve Wright] Collected ghost stories of M. R. James. [/QUOTE] Oh, yeah. I read these at around age 12, when I had this whole big horror thing going on, and some of them freaked me the hell out. _Whistle And I’ll Come To You My Lad_ and the one with the skeletons wandering around in the park were the worst. Also read at the same time were most of the works of Stephen King and Clive Barker’s _Books of Blood_. _The Moving Finger_ was… gaa-a-ah. And the one with the fog and the creatures in it, can’t remember the name. And Barker had _Rawhead Rex_… Man, I really need to read those again. I think I need a horror fix. ---
**Author:** ![Caprese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9a28c/32.png) [@Caprese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caprese)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/59 "2007-07-26T12:31:58Z")
[QUOTE=delphica] _Red Dragon_, by Thomas Harris. I never thought that Hannibal Lecter was anywhere near as scary as the … Red Dragon guy. [/QUOTE] I completely agree. I read it many years ago before the Hannibal hoopla. Reading that book alone at night while my spouse was off on a business trip did not help. ::shudders:: The only other book that comes close (_mighty_ close) is Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, which was much scarier than the movie. In terms of shorter works, Edith Wharton wrote some spine-tingling ghost stories, as well. Hers are more the classical tale, in which everything seems normal at first, but then a few things seem off-kilter, and a growing sense of unease develops… ---
**Author:** ![DellieM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cdc98d/32.png) [@DellieM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DellieM)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124/60 "2007-07-26T12:38:33Z")
I have read Stephen King and Lovecraft and Barker and Laymon, but I’m yet to read a book as frightening as 666 by Jay Anson (the bath part in the haunted house stopped me taking baths for at least a year, especially as I lived at the time in old farmhouse). Also a book from my teenage years called “The Brownstone”. All the more scary as it was set in the middle of New York during current times. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-scariest-book-you-ever-read/413124.md?page=4)