What's the scariest book you've read?

[gamer-printer]

Cornielius wrote:

The Haunting of Hill House - by SHIRLEY Jackson

Shirley Jackson, that's right (don't know where the Terry came from...)

Stephen King even stated in his Danse Macabre (nonfiction study of horror) that Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is the scariest book he ever read - I agree.

This was made into The Haunting, a movie in the last 10 years, but it was not as good as the 1959 version of The Haunting - that's a great movie, because you never see the ghost, only what it does.

[Trinite]

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Actually, the stories themselves are not that scary. It's the illustrations. I'm almost persuaded that they're too scary to be given to children.

I remember going to the library and looking at just a couple of the stories as a kid, and then my mom took the book away from me. When I saw the book again years later, I instantly recognized it. It was seared that strongly into my memory.

As for horror I read later: Ramsey Campbell scares me, especially his more naturalistic psychological stories.

I think there's a distinction between being scary and being horrific. I find Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti extremely horrific, but not especially scary.

[Sanakht Inaros]

Trinite wrote:

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Actually, the stories themselves are not that scary. It's the illustrations. I'm almost persuaded that they're too scary to be given to children.

I remember going to the library and looking at just a couple of the stories as a kid, and then my mom took the book away from me. When I saw the book again years later, I instantly recognized it. It was seared that strongly into my memory.

As for horror I read later: Ramsey Campbell scares me, especially his more naturalistic psychological stories.

I think there's a distinction between being scary and being horrific. I find Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti extremely horrific, but not especially scary.

I find Ligotti scary because all he knows how to do is use a thesaurus. I really could have lived without knowing that there is a seven syllable word for brown. Knowing how to use a thesaurus is NOT the same thing as knowing how to write (especially when all you do is rewrite Lovecraft and Poe).

[Greg Wasson]

I think the book was called "shadowfires" by Dean Koontz.. of course when I read it, he was using a different pen name. For years I avoided a remote public rest area on I-10, even though it was pretty conveniant for my route.

Alien the movie adaptation was scarey for me as a kid. Probably written by Allan Dean Foster, he did tons of movie adaptations.

Overall I avoid novels that are scarey. I read to escape that sort of thing.

OH! Kafka's short story Metamorphosis. My Step father at the time read that to me when I was six. Yeah. I had nightmares for a long long time from that one. And some odd requests..." Mom, If I turn into a giant cockroach, Will you promise not to kill me? "

Greg

[LazarX]

1984. Because there are still times I see the book as prophecy.

[Doodlebug Anklebiter]

It's doubleplusscary.

[Umbranus]

I want to add the books by H.P. Lovecraft.
While not all of them are really scary, they are at least disturbing in some way. After all he invented the idea of the great old ones, like Cthulhu.

And from Steven King's books I want to add Nightshift. A book with shortstories.
I read it some years earlier than salam's lot so that could be part of the reason but in my opinion some of the shorts were scarier.

[Robert Cameron]

I tend to find non-horror stories more frightening than things written with scares in mind. William Gibson's Neuromancer is particularly frightening to me because it seems like a vast, unfriendly, alienating world where people can fall though the cracks and never be heard from again; and it seems like the real world is creeping closer towards that. Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death I find very scary as well because it accurately describes the dumbing down of public discourse (which I think has only gotten worse since the book's publication in '85)

I did however have a very uneasy time reading "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" late one night on vacation at a hotel next to the ocean. I kept checking out the window... just to make sure...

[Matt_Scudder]

Grand Magus wrote:

.

THE. SCARIEST. BOOK. EVER.

The-Descent-by-Jeff-Long

.

Even JJ had something to say.

.

Yeah, this book was pretty good.

McCarthy's The Road.

A few Lovecraft stories.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.

[Bob Evil]

I mainly read short fiction. If you can track them down:

"The Emperor's Old Bones" - Gemma Files

"Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms In Your Cellar!" - Ray Bradbury

"Full Moon Over Moscow" - Stuart Kaminsky

"We Can Get Them For You Wholesale" - Neil Gaiman

"The Jaunt" - Stephen King

"Down, Satan!" - Clive Barker

"Circus of the Dead" - Joe Hill

"I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" - Harlan Ellison

and if you're able to count existential dread as horror:

"All You Zombies" - Robert A. Heinlein.

Also, if you're willing to branch out into comics, virtually anything by Junji Ito or Nakayama Masaaki.

[Dryder]

"House of Leaves" (but its a pain to read!)
and
"EX" by David Ambrose
and
"The house of Deadalus" by Kai Meyer. I don't know, if it was translated into english...

btw you should read Kai Meyer Pirate books (the wavewalker trilogy) if you intend to run Skull&Shackles! Awesome ideas in there, even for the Eye of Abdendego!