Scariest book you've ever read...

[CallMeDeth]

Originally Posted by Anima_Severem

Did it make a loud bang when it hit the wall?

Some people might find me absolutely looney, but the one book that makes me crap my pants just thinking about it too much to even read it is Orwell's 1984. I don't think anything could terrify me more than being subjected to such a dictatorship.

I second that completely

[Sinjob]

House of Leaves by far. The depth in the novel's prose that make it sound so dry yet realistic give me shills even mentioning it. And some Lovecraft falls under there, too.

[NachtSorcier]

Originally Posted by iroti

Honestly, the only thing that ever genuinely creeped me out, and still does is the artwork in those "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark". The art is by Alvin something, but it always irked me. :x

Yes! I discovered those books in my elementary school library and I've loved them ever since - I bought books one and three on eBay a few years ago; never did get a hold of the second one. They were written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell.

The stories are based on urban legends and folklore, but they're very short and not very detailed, so much is left to the imagination - that's the scary part, not to mention those bone chilling drawings. *shudder* When I feel like scaring myself, I pull one of those books off the shelf.

[Pastamancer]

The scariest book I ever read was The Doomstone. I can't remember if that was the exact title but it was Domestone something. It's about a monster that lurks around Stonehenge. The monster would make a clicking noise while it was hunting people. When reading this before going to bed it made me very aware of the clocks we had that would give an extra loud click with the passing of a minute.

It was kind of creepy but I doubt it would have freaked me out as much if we didn't have so many clocks.

I remember there were a few Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark that put me a little on edge. I forget which ones they were but I always checked that out of the school library as much as I could.

[Pineapple_Juice]

I have those Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark and they scared me too. I also had this book, simply called Real Ghost Stories. It was black with Purple writing and I remember the stories in there used to scare the shit out of me when I was young. There was one about a dead girl in a swamp, and that other story about the mom and her baby who were buried in the same coffin together, and then later the mom was seen at a general store getting milk, so the townsfolk followed her. She went to the cemetery and to her headstone where they unearthed the coffin and found the mom dead but the baby still alive with milk bottles all around her. Something like that.

[Solumina]

Originally Posted by PastMidnight

"The Historian" was scary, especially when they got to meet Dracula.

Really? I found it rather unsatisfying, I kept waiting to be thrilled, scared, or excited but it just didn't happen.


I never get scared while reading Lovecraft but as soon as I put the book down my mind starts fucking with me and I spend the next week or so completely freaked out by my own imagination.

[honeythorn]

I'll second Lovecraft. Whilst not scary as such, it does make my brain a bit doolally for a while.

[Mr E Nigma]

Shake My Sillies Out - by Raffi

[TechnicolorNightmare]

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", believe it or not, is the only book that has ever scared me. I'll probably get a lot of s*** for saying that but bear with me, I thought the first chapter was just really creepy for some reason.

[Pineapple_Juice]

To whoever said 1984 gave them nightmares:
I just read that book and thought it was pretty creepy, but nothing spectacular. Then I went to bed and horrible nightmares of evil dictatorships and mind control and woke up in a cold sweat.

1984=scary fucking book.

[Apathy's_Child]

Originally Posted by Pineapple_Juice

To whoever said 1984 gave them nightmares:
I just read that book and thought it was pretty creepy, but nothing spectacular. Then I went to bed and horrible nightmares of evil dictatorships and mind control and woke up in a cold sweat.

1984=scary fucking book.

On a completely different tack, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest uses a lot of ideas from 1984. It's tamer, as it's focused on the present and swirly psychadelic musings rather than the future and bleak dystopian musings, but I drew a lot of parallels reading it.

[Pineapple_Juice]

Did you? Perhaps I'm stupid. I need to reread Cuckoo's Nest then, I suppose.

[Knight in Shining Armour]

There was this book by Dean Koontz I read when I was twelve.
It was called 'False Memory', and it was the first Koontz novel I'd ever read.

I think it might have been the setting while I was reading it as well as my vivid imagination that caused my heart to pound the way it did, but it was an enjoyable sort of terror.

[Black_Nyx]

Originally Posted by Sinjob

House of Leaves by far. The depth in the novel's prose that make it sound so dry yet realistic give me shills even mentioning it. And some Lovecraft falls under there, too.

House of Leaves was super scary. It really pulls you in and has you looking over your shoulder. Probably the only other book that really scared me (and I read horror all the time) was The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper. Both highly recommended!

[Lord Whiskerton]

Originally Posted by Pineapple_Juice

To whoever said 1984 gave them nightmares:
I just read that book and thought it was pretty creepy, but nothing spectacular. Then I went to bed and horrible nightmares of evil dictatorships and mind control and woke up in a cold sweat.

1984=scary fucking book.

I concur. The possibility of that being our destiny sends chills down my spine. I fear that I may never get a moment of solitude ever again.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Atlas Shrugged. But it's not so much the book itself, but rather that someone would be so fucked up to write it, and there's people too gullible to eat that shit, and becoming such a favorite among many rich motherfuckers that they even give you a $10,000 scholarship if you're the student that LEAST challenges Ayn Rand.

[Still Jack]

I haven't been scared sufficiently by any book yet, which annoys me. I can't see how people find Lovecraft scary either. Fantastically written , yes. Scary, no. What peeves me most about good ol' Howard Phillips is that in most of his work, the phrase "It was to horrible for human language to describe" ( or some variation of that phrase ) appears.

[Lord Whiskerton]

"Big Brother is watching you."

[erotomaniac87]

I remember being creeped out by the short story "The Little Sisters of Eluria."

[Underwater Ophelia]

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

[Lord Whiskerton]

Originally Posted by Underwater Ophelia

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

I have read that before. The pictures in the book are just as scary.

[Underwater Ophelia]

Originally Posted by Lord Whiskerton

I have read that before. The pictures in the book are just as scary.

Yeah.
I'm not afraid to say that sometimes if I'm feeling nostalgic and read it, I'll fold over the pages with pictures on them so I don't have to see them.

[Sermon Bathe]

The Bell Witch...nothing could be creepier than that

[Ophelia's Snorkel]

'Salem's Lot kept me up and avoiding windows at night, long ago. Now I just enjoy it as a great antidote to sparkly vegetarian 'vampires'. Scariest short story I ever read? "Nule" by Jan Mark. Had me going up the back (newel-post-less) staircase for weeks.

[ZombyQueen]

well it was a really good book that had me wondering the whole time but it wasnt truely scary, well not if your strong minded,but im talking about Carrie by: Stephen King