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What are the scariest books you ever read? |
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triptych 
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Joined: June 27 2019 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 870 |
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 Topic: What are the scariest books you ever read?Posted: February 11 2021 at 14:24 |
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3 scariest books ever:
Carrie by Stephen King,The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury & The Andromeda Strain by M. Chricton. |
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BaldFriede
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Joined: June 02 2005 Location: Germany Status: Offline Points: 10266 |
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Posted: February 05 2021 at 11:35 |
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The monk whose big sin is pride and who winds up with smashed bones in a hot valley after sleeping with his sister and killing his mother.
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 BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
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moshkito
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Posted: February 05 2021 at 10:37 |
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Hi,
Easy .... MATHEW GREGORY LEWIS ... The Monk
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com |
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dr wu23
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Posted: February 04 2021 at 14:41 |
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Don't know about 'scary'....can't say any novel or short story 'scared me' but a few brooding creepy ones over the years:
'The Ceremonies' by TED Klein HP Lovecraft tales 'Ghost Story' by Straub Books by Ramsey Campbell....'The Parasite', 'The Nameless,' etc |
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One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin |
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BaldFriede
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Posted: February 04 2021 at 11:25 |
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My story began like this: "In night's restless insomnia. The ho, the ho, the ho and the ho-ho-ho. Insectous nocturno, reptilious inferno". Mark that this secretly shows that the writer is very religious because "I.N.R.I." appears in the first and third sentence. The writer is afraid of the sounds of the night, which he tries to express in his second sentence. In the following sentences he describes the sounds of the night in detail. I made a lot of use of onomatopoeia in this part of the story. This part is very difficult to translate into English (the story was written in German) because onomatopoeia vary greatly between different languages. Later he muses about his reasons for living there. This part begins with: "Why do I live here? What evil spirit forces me to seek refuge in this mockery of a house, once lordly, now only a decomposed ruin? Ah, but you don't understand - the house and I belong together; we share the same fate". Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" definitely was an influence for this story, but it goes into a very different direction.
Edited by BaldFriede - February 04 2021 at 11:57 |
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BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
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Machinemessiah
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Joined: April 02 2005 Location: Santiago, Chile Status: Offline Points: 594 |
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Posted: February 04 2021 at 08:37 |
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^ He. I didn't know you also wrote some
 Now I don't remember much about SK's Insomnia, but my nightmares were about conventional thieves or thugs chasing through stairs or something. I have had many scary nightmares, more fantastic ones, maybe in part because I read at nights, but those left me sweating like no other, I don't know why. It's funny how *not knowing* is in itself a source of fear. Also made me remember those child games in which they start to tell a frightening story only to end shouting and pointing at you!
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BaldFriede
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Posted: January 26 2021 at 12:09 |
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I actually once wrote a short story named "Insomnia" that was kind of a mockery of many horror stories and novels - the kind of story in which the hero tells you at the beginning that he really should not tell you about this, and then he goes and tells it anyway. There are countless stories and novels like this. In my story you are told of a before and an after situation. In the before situation there is a beautiful landscape with a proud castle in which a beautiful young man lives, and in the after situation everything in the landscape has died, the castle lies in ruins and the young man has aged long before his time. But he never tells why. The last words in the story are: "No, I must never tell you what happened, for if you knew how could you bear to live on? Nobody must ever know what happened, and so I take this terrible secret with me to my grave".
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BaldJean and I; I am the one in blue. |
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Gentle and Giant
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Posted: January 26 2021 at 11:53 |
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Thanks. That's brought back some fond memories of reading those Horror compilations as a kid, and some really good stories too. Which reminded me of probably the best sets of short stories I've read; and whilst I read them when I was quite a bit older, and therefore not scary, they were The Books of Blood by Clive Barker. They were so well thought out and written so well I wonder what went through his mind to think up stuff like that. I also loved the early books of Clive Barker too - the later ones (post Imajica), not so much.
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Oh, for the wings of any bird, other than a battery hen
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Machinemessiah
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Posted: January 25 2021 at 19:40 |
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'The Descent' by Jeff Long, a late 90's novel; I read it in my twenties.  It's about an excavation kilometers into the earth and, guess what.. there really are demons down there, nasty ones.
Not long ago I grabbed a Lovecraft compilation on the street. I found 'The Dunwich Horror' brilliant. How he manages the suspense... the plot is about a guy who has to spend the night in a town to study the surreal and deep bonds of the town with the sea and/or a wreckage. 'Insomnia' by Stephen King got me a week of sweaty nightmares. Others worth mentioning: Lestat by Anne Rice (the part of the druids.. phew!), Michael Crichton's 'Sphere' and, also of vampires, Douglas Clegg's 'The Priest of Blood' has its moments. Asimov's 'Tales of the Occult' has one or two good ones I think. I'll see if I can find my copy.  Edited by Machinemessiah - January 25 2021 at 20:52 |
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BaldJean
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Posted: January 25 2021 at 17:48 |
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"Uncle Silas" by Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu gave me the creeps when I read it at age 14. and I have to agree with Friede that "Krabat" is a really scary book. I read it on her recommendation; it is in my opinion much too terrifying for a kid
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 A shot of me as High Priestess of Gaia during our fall festival. Ceterum censeo principiis obsta |
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richardh
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Posted: January 25 2021 at 16:25 |
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A bit predictable as a choice but Salems' Lot was effectively creepy. I read that maybe 35 years ago or thereabouts but don't read much.
At school I read all the Pan Book Of Horror Stories and also a book called the Supernatural Omnibus which had some of the best ghost stories ever written. There is one that made a massive impression on me and that I could recite if necessary . It was about a couple who meet a stranger on ship and he basically tells them about his haunted house. They think he is telling porkies but in the end decide to take him up on his offer to stay over for one night in the most haunted part of the house. I can tell you that even thinking about what happens still gives me a severe case of the goose bumps! It's very clever and based on the ide that they think he has created an apparition to deliberately fool them , that is until it becomes very obvious that's not the case. Shivers all down my spine.
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SteveG
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Posted: January 24 2021 at 14:51 |
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TCat
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Posted: January 24 2021 at 14:43 |
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I read a lot of horror books, but there is only one that I had to stop reading and that was "Communion" by Whitley Streiber. He claims it's all true, but I'm not so sure. I do know that when I was reading it was back when I had to stay alone in a lot of hotel rooms because of my work, and the fact that I lost three consecutive nights of sleep made me not want to read anymore of it. All I could think of is being taken by aliens and then not being able to remember it the next day.
I must admit, though, that I find Clive Barker to be the best as far as delving into the unknown and weird. I tend to recall the scenes he writes the most out of every author, even though I am an avid Stephen King fan. I find Peter Straub one of the best for atmosphere and making monsters out of humans. Also, I was surprised at how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is so different from what popular culture has made it out to be. As far as Cormac McCarthy, "The Road" didn't affect me quite as much as what "Blood Meridian" did. Out of all the scary things out there, humans are always the worst.
Edited by TCat - January 24 2021 at 14:44 |
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Logan
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Posted: January 24 2021 at 13:10 |
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Cormac McCarthy's The Road gave me recurring nightmares and helped to turn me vegetarian. I read that, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let me Go, Jose Saramago's Blindness, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake all in very quick succession, so together they might have made the nightmares worse.
As a young teen, Stephen King's Pet Semetary I found quite scary. |
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Watching while most appreciating a sunset in the moment need not diminish all the glorious sunsets I observed before. It can be much like that with music for me; immersed in experiencing the moment.
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The Dark Elf
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Posted: January 24 2021 at 12:51 |
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The Exorcist novel by WP Blatty was far scarier than the movie. Even the preface, describing unrelenting and inexplicable historical horror committed by real men (a mafia meat hook torture, communist Viet Cong jamming chopsticks in children's ears, etc.), was frightening and set a tone before the story even began.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Stephen King's Salem's Lot were genuinely scary as well. And a special shout out to Edgar Allan Poe for scaring the crap out of me when I was a kid.
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...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
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Catcher10
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Posted: January 24 2021 at 12:11 |
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Sadly it's true...
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lazland
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Posted: January 24 2021 at 08:27 |
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I enjoyed The Rats books, but found Fluke far more unsettling, and he wrote it deliberately to be so. It confronted serious questions about the nature of man, death, and what becomes of us without ever descending into naked “shock horror”. I used to read a lot of horror and sci-fi when I was younger. These days I rarely do, and find more than enough horror in reading biographies or discussions about the state of man. I am presently reading The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray, which is hard going, but excellent in its exposition of the social meeja and woke culture we live in. Far scarier than being eaten by a load of vermin.
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Gentle and Giant
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Posted: January 24 2021 at 07:37 |
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The Rats by James Herbert as a kid. I'd read Dracula by Bram Stoker before, but found the style too much for my child brain.
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Oh, for the wings of any bird, other than a battery hen
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SteveG
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Posted: January 24 2021 at 07:33 |
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The Bible.
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Shadowyzard
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Posted: January 24 2021 at 07:20 |
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IT by Stephen King has gotta be the only one. It may be because, after my childhood, I became almost "immune" to that feeling; and when I was a child, I didn't have the habit of reading books. I normally get thrilled, while reading a scary book. Even the affright in me caused by the book melds with amusement.
Also, I don't believe in anything supernatural, irregardless of my vast imagination and despite all my "wizard self" and all. Fictional works only serve as "the temporary suspension of disbelief" fun for me. I like this quote very much: 
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moshkito wrote: