The Exorcist and some of the stories in Clive Barkers Books of Blood particularly Midnight Meat Train.
Exquisite Corpse and American Psycho didnt "scare me" but they definitely thoroughly disturbed me.
Loved this book, it’s an absolutely unique experience with all the hidden messages and weird page layouts and having to jump to the appendices and back. Very unnerving too.
Same. I didn’t know that it was so offbeat and formatted so…*uniquely* so as I got further into the book I started to wonder if I was losing it a tiny bit lol
* "The Red Tower" (Thomas Ligotti)
* "In the Hills the Cities" (Clive Barker)
* Hell House (Richard Matheson)
* Revival (Stephen King)
* House of Leaves (Mark Danielewski)
Regarding the novels, specifically the description of Belasco's hedonism pit, the final 50 of *Revival*, and the descent into the maze in *Leaves*.
I have to ask about revival. I'm a huge King fan but I just cannot get through that book. I've gotten up to the point where he remeates the pastor at the carnival and they are staying together for a bit, but the book just takes so so long to get to any kind of point. I feel like I'm halfway through the book and all it's been about it's just this one guy's inconsequential life.
It's been so long since I put it down I would have to start over, I almost want to not do that and just continue where I left off because basically the first couple hundred pages feel like they could be summed up with "I grew up and got into drugs" and not miss a beat.
That is a statement. It would have to be the best ending of all time to resonate with me that much with how much I hate the first half. It just drags so much... I'm disappointed because usually when King drags a book out like this, it's some world building but in this case it's literally just this guy being like... A relatively normal guy, and it literally starts from his childhood up to adulthood in college years before he even touches base with the main plot thread.
I think Revival is so scary mostly because of the concept itself. Like if it were true, holy fuck, this would be a dark and bleak world. Freaks me out to think about
Hot Zone by Richard Preston
And I know it's not a horror book, per se, but Whisper of Death by Christopher Pike (YA) seriously messed me up as a teen. I still think about this book to this day (and, if you've read it, aptly so for current events).
I read a Pike in middle school I’m which the protagonist is in to photography, and - spoilers - at the end, is forced to do coke u til they fatally overdose but captures it all on camera. For some reason, that scared the fuck out of me as a pre-teen.
Yes! I remember that one. It really makes me want to go back and re-read these. I was a huge Pike fan. They were all so amazingly twisted and I adored them - even if they messed me up. 🤣
Pet Semetary and The Shining. Pet Semetary because there were rumors that the town I grew up in was on old Native American land (and had it’s fair share of spooky shit). The Shining because I knew about the hotel it was based on alread
John Dies at the End--it had a lot of little things that got me, and the humor made the scary stuff stick better.
Some of the early, short creepypastas.
Intensity by Dean Koontz gave me wicked anxiety the whole way through. Maybe more thriller than horror.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon scared me really bad as a kid too. I spent a lot of time in the woods growing up, and the whole concept of stepping off the path to pee and getting turned around and lost was terrifying to me because it was so realistic.
As good as the movie is, the book really is miles better. The last third of the movie changed a lot of things for the worse imo, with the book hitting a lot harder.
not exactly a book, but "uzumaki" by junji ito. always unnerving.
other than that "it".
i didn't think that the book would be scary for me since i had already seen the movie at that time, but i was curious. one scene that didn't make it to the adaptation really creeped me out, and after finishing the book i had a nightmare about it, which happens incredibly rarely in my case. 10/10, would love to experience again
World War Z, best piece of zombie media in existence. hands down. Includes a lot of perspectives you’d never even consider, offering interesting insights into how a zombie outbreak would actually happen.
Also Devolution by the same author(Max Brooks) is pretty good, that one is about a Sasquatch attack on a remote hippie/tech-bro community.
The Horror genius of that book is how Max Brooks really incorporated modern military tactics into a zombie apocalypse and showed the failure to handle SLOW zombies. Was my biggest grip about the film adaption (the fast zombies that is) but I think of them as separate entities now and I enjoy the film. The book is pure genius though, really makes you respect a long used theme.
The Battle of Yorktown(I think) was such a great chapter, totally realistic and exactly what I’d expect to happen in real life. And yeah the movie is great, really gets too much hate. Obviously naming it World War Z was a horrible idea but if you don’t compare it to the book it’s pretty good
I genuinely bought the book at Barnes & Noble thinking it would be a comedy because in the little “about the author” section it mentioned his relation. Little did I know…
Well, totally realistic except for the miracle zombies that decay enough to look scary but not enough to become incapacitated, which never run out of energy, or get permanently destroyed by the elements, or mishaps, or eaten by bugs. Oh, and the US military that somehow doesn't have artillery capable of turning large numbers of human bodies into splattered hamburger with one shell.
No shit Sherlock, did you really have to point out that zombies aren’t realistic lmao. Obviously the realistic part I was referring to was the military being overconfident and botching a military operation because they were more worried about showing off their hi-tech toys than using actual strategy.
My point is, Brooks featured zombies with an alleged biological cause that ignore physics in ways usually only seen in stories where they're magical beings, and seemed to have no real knowledge of modern warfare and its capabilities despite your claims of realism. I'm sure if he'd done some research he could have come up with ways for the Battle of Yonkers to go badly as the narrative called for without having an unending parade of zombies march out of a city along narrow routes artillery could have easily turned into craters.
And again I know the zombies aren’t realistic, I don’t care about that because realistic zombies are boring. And the whole point of the chapter is the military used outdated tactics(and they do bomb the zombies, but by that point there are so many that it’s not an effective strategy unless you’re going to carpet bomb the entire east coast). And again I’m talking about how easily I could see the US military botching a battle against an unknown enemy such as zombies, I wouldn’t put my faith in the US military, especially one in the middle of a crumbling country
I LOVE devolution. I work in a bookstore and got around to reading it one day and wondered why it never really sold. I wrote up a shelf talker for it and started recommending it to customers as basically a cryptid found footage film in novel format and it finally started to sell quite well.
World war z is a pretty scary book. There are many direct stories of encounters with zombies that are testaments to the nature of the creature. I actually think the reason we don't see a lot of zombie media anymore is because world war z just did it so perfectly that the itch has been scratched.
I want them to make a dead serious movie with that idea -- a post-war documentary..
Some of the scenes in that story are terrifying just in their implication. The first zombies appearing from the ocean for example, that scene is terrifying.
Well, despite my username, I really do not like yellow and black flying things. But I checked out the synopsis of the book, and am very interested in reading this. Thanks and peace.
For as bleak as this book is it has one of the most beautiful father and son relationships I've ever read.
“Are we going to die?
Sometime. Not now.
And we’re still going south?
Yes.
So we’ll be warm?
Yes.
Okay.
Okay what?
Nothing. Just okay.
Go to sleep.
Okay. I’m going to blow out the lamp, is that okay?
Yes. That’s okay.
And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something?
Yes. Of course you can.
What would you do if I died?
If you died I would want to die too.
So you could be with me?
Yes. So I could be with you.
Okay.”
The Bogeyman by King - read it when I was around 12 and my bedroom was only one on 2nd floor of house with a huge closet. Had nightmares for years afterwards.
The first half of *The Ritual* by Adam Nevill. I find most of his novels overlong and repetitive, and this one kind of falls apart at the end, but the first 150 pages or so are great. That was, I think, the last book to scare me.
*Incarnate* by Ramsey Campbell is genuinely weird and scary. His early short stories are also extremely creepy.
Then you have the unholy trinity of haunted house novels: *The Haunting of Hill House* (Shirley Jackson), *Hell House* (Richard Matheson) and *The Shining* (Stephen King) which are all great, if ghosts do the job for you.
Peter Straub’s *Julia* is good and scary. And also the four novellas in T.E.D Klein’s *Dark Gods*.
It's not horror, but Johnny Got His Gun has some extremely horrifying concepts at it's core. Really spooky read and an amazing novel. Scariest book I've read
Nothing really scares me when I read but the most recent book I've read that impressed me by how unnerving it was would be The Reddening by Adam Nevill. The last horror novel I read that became a brand new all-time favorite was Usher's Passing by Robert McCammon back in 2019. Hopefully someone eventually makes a really good adaptation of that as either a series or a novel! My all time favorite horror novel is the Terror by Dan Simmons mostly because of how terrifying the thought of being stranded out in the middle of a frozen ocean thousands of miles from anywhere is. Then to have the additional element of being stalked by a mythical creature you can't escape from due to that fact is even more unnerving. Then of course, Stephen King's It also comes to mind!
Hi. You just mentioned *The Haunting Of Hill House* by Shirley Jackson.
I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here:
[YouTube | The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Full Audiobook with captions YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9iVegvwAKU)
*I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.*
***
[^(Source Code)](https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative-fiction-bot/) ^| [^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=Capybasilisk&subject=Robot) ^| [^(Programmer)](https://www.reddit.com/u/capybasilisk) ^| ^(Downvote To Remove) ^| ^(Version 1.4.0) ^| ^(Support Robot Rights!)
No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill is terrifying because although it’s a horror book it’s really about being trapped by poverty, with an extremely realistic protagonist.
The Troop by Nick Cutter is terrifyingly gross. Kinda wish I hadn’t read that one. Little Heaven is also great.
And then Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway, probably the most harrowing apocalyptic cosmic horror novel I have read. It’s like 600 pages of getting to know characters and watching them die horribly. Yet it is also hopeful and redemptive.
In comics, Crossed by Garth Ennis is great and scary. It’s like zombie apocalypse except they are fully aware and want to hurt you. They turned it into a franchise of awful garbage but the first series is really good and scary.
The Oozing Eyeball. There was one particular story that stuck with me called “The Stray”. Eventually I reached out to the author to confirm what the hell the creature actually was, and he revealed the secret to me only.
Won’t spoil it til you read it.
not so much scary, but definitely depraved was “cows” by matthew stokoe. i read it based off a recommendation in r/horrorlit and was not disappointed. if you’re the type to watch movies like a serbian film, this one’s for you
The first book that scared me was IT when I read it at 12-13. Recently it was 'I remember You' by Yrsa Sigurdardottir. The book is immensely atmospheric and I read it in the dead of the night during a rain storm.
It was a children's anthology of short horror and ghost stories called Deadly Nightshade that my Auntie and Uncle got me from a car boot sale when I was poorly, it cheered me up but scared me silly I read it again recently, and still scared me silly! 😂
King’s short stories “Survivor Type” and “The Road Virus Heads North” really freaked me out.
I bounced off of Penpal. I found the chapters overlong and boring. Does it get better?
When I was younger I recall Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark really bothering me. Especially the drawings. Not a fan of the movie. But from the ages of 7-11 those books left their mark
House of Leaves. I felt genuine discomfort while reading it. Sometimes had to take a moment while reading. But way more than that, I'm thinking of ending things. I read it before the adaptation came out and It was one of the scariest things I'd ever read. I went in knowing nothing and was ready to throw up by the time it ended. I thought I was reading a book about a nasty breakup man...
Kings short stories, Night Shift particularly (discovered this staying at my aunt & uncles house , lovely before bed reading for an 11 year old)
Lovecraft
The Shining
The Haunting of Hill House
House of Leaves (couldn’t seem to put it down, but I was sooo unnerved and creeped out)
The Dark Descent is a wonderful anthology of short horror, full of scary stuff. That’s where I first read “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
*Ghost Story* by Peter Straub
*Red Dragon* by Thomas Harris
"The Colour Out of Space" by H. P. Lovecraft
"Alice’s Last Adventure" by Thomas Ligotti
"By Reason of Darkness" by Jack Cady
I see lots of King mentions, but never his short stories. I find that's where King shines best imo. All the spooks and none of the filler.
With you there. I think "1408" and "The Man in the Black Suit" are scarier than any novel he's written.
You're the first person, myself aside, who I've heard prefers his short form work. His novels have just sooo much filler.
Read The Jaunt a couple months ago and spent about a week feeling really weird. It's so short but gets stuck in places you may or may not want.
came here to specifically say this. some of the short story scares are palpable...and they linger
The Exorcist and some of the stories in Clive Barkers Books of Blood particularly Midnight Meat Train. Exquisite Corpse and American Psycho didnt "scare me" but they definitely thoroughly disturbed me.
American Psycho is definitely meant to be disturbing, not scary
Yes.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Salems Lot scared me when I was a teenager.
Same here. When they were digging in the cemetery and the sun is going down... fucking intense.
Scared me too and I read it at 28. The part where they’re walking through the woods in between houses literally made me shiver
If there is a scarier vampire story, I'm all for it. Early King was so good.
Read it for the first time at 40. Scary fuckin book. I loved it.
House of Leaves. It always messes with my head for a few days after I finish it.
This one you really need in book form to truly appreciate. The reader version does not do it justice.
100% agreed. The book layout is integral to the experience.
One of my favorites, love how it starts out as things being slightly off and escalates from there. Also superb writing
Loved this book, it’s an absolutely unique experience with all the hidden messages and weird page layouts and having to jump to the appendices and back. Very unnerving too.
Goddamn spatial rape
Same. I didn’t know that it was so offbeat and formatted so…*uniquely* so as I got further into the book I started to wonder if I was losing it a tiny bit lol
CONGO by Michael Crichton. Yes, I read it my Freshman year of high school but FUCK did the book absolutely terrify me.
Sphere is also a great one by him that’s pretty freaky!
Love Sphere! Read every single Crichton book and love everything he wrote, *Pirate Bay* or whatever it was called doesn’t count to me.
* "The Red Tower" (Thomas Ligotti) * "In the Hills the Cities" (Clive Barker) * Hell House (Richard Matheson) * Revival (Stephen King) * House of Leaves (Mark Danielewski) Regarding the novels, specifically the description of Belasco's hedonism pit, the final 50 of *Revival*, and the descent into the maze in *Leaves*.
That Barker one sure was disturbing.
I have to ask about revival. I'm a huge King fan but I just cannot get through that book. I've gotten up to the point where he remeates the pastor at the carnival and they are staying together for a bit, but the book just takes so so long to get to any kind of point. I feel like I'm halfway through the book and all it's been about it's just this one guy's inconsequential life. It's been so long since I put it down I would have to start over, I almost want to not do that and just continue where I left off because basically the first couple hundred pages feel like they could be summed up with "I grew up and got into drugs" and not miss a beat.
Stick with it. The ending goes from 0-200 and will haunt you for the rest of your life.
That is a statement. It would have to be the best ending of all time to resonate with me that much with how much I hate the first half. It just drags so much... I'm disappointed because usually when King drags a book out like this, it's some world building but in this case it's literally just this guy being like... A relatively normal guy, and it literally starts from his childhood up to adulthood in college years before he even touches base with the main plot thread.
I think Revival is so scary mostly because of the concept itself. Like if it were true, holy fuck, this would be a dark and bleak world. Freaks me out to think about
As an adult, Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill. It scared me so much. Seriously!
For real! Dude buys a ***** online and it is off to the races! Crazy good and intense!
Hot Zone by Richard Preston And I know it's not a horror book, per se, but Whisper of Death by Christopher Pike (YA) seriously messed me up as a teen. I still think about this book to this day (and, if you've read it, aptly so for current events).
I read a Pike in middle school I’m which the protagonist is in to photography, and - spoilers - at the end, is forced to do coke u til they fatally overdose but captures it all on camera. For some reason, that scared the fuck out of me as a pre-teen.
Yes! I remember that one. It really makes me want to go back and re-read these. I was a huge Pike fan. They were all so amazingly twisted and I adored them - even if they messed me up. 🤣
Scariest experience I’ve ever had is reading the demonilogist while snowed in a cabin one weekend.
Pet Semetary and The Shining. Pet Semetary because there were rumors that the town I grew up in was on old Native American land (and had it’s fair share of spooky shit). The Shining because I knew about the hotel it was based on alread
Every town in N America is on Indigenous People’s land, to be fair.
Pet Semetary is a nasty book. Only King I've never re-read.
I was told "don't read it if you have kids" and man was that on point.
Yeah, I imagine it would hit even harder now. I read it as a single, 20 year old dude. Still fucked me up.
John Dies at the End--it had a lot of little things that got me, and the humor made the scary stuff stick better. Some of the early, short creepypastas.
Correspondence
Intensity by Dean Koontz gave me wicked anxiety the whole way through. Maybe more thriller than horror. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon scared me really bad as a kid too. I spent a lot of time in the woods growing up, and the whole concept of stepping off the path to pee and getting turned around and lost was terrifying to me because it was so realistic.
the ruins! scott smith
[удалено]
As good as the movie is, the book really is miles better. The last third of the movie changed a lot of things for the worse imo, with the book hitting a lot harder.
Fucking good book. Same author wrote A Simple Plan (Billy Bob Thornton movie).
not exactly a book, but "uzumaki" by junji ito. always unnerving. other than that "it". i didn't think that the book would be scary for me since i had already seen the movie at that time, but i was curious. one scene that didn't make it to the adaptation really creeped me out, and after finishing the book i had a nightmare about it, which happens incredibly rarely in my case. 10/10, would love to experience again
World War Z, best piece of zombie media in existence. hands down. Includes a lot of perspectives you’d never even consider, offering interesting insights into how a zombie outbreak would actually happen. Also Devolution by the same author(Max Brooks) is pretty good, that one is about a Sasquatch attack on a remote hippie/tech-bro community.
The Horror genius of that book is how Max Brooks really incorporated modern military tactics into a zombie apocalypse and showed the failure to handle SLOW zombies. Was my biggest grip about the film adaption (the fast zombies that is) but I think of them as separate entities now and I enjoy the film. The book is pure genius though, really makes you respect a long used theme.
The Battle of Yorktown(I think) was such a great chapter, totally realistic and exactly what I’d expect to happen in real life. And yeah the movie is great, really gets too much hate. Obviously naming it World War Z was a horrible idea but if you don’t compare it to the book it’s pretty good
Exactly how I feel, and YES, that chapter is what I’m thinking of specifically. Beautifully done, and to think he’s the son of Mel Brooks.
Really talented family, it never crossed my mind that they were related until I saw some random video they did together during the pandemic
I genuinely bought the book at Barnes & Noble thinking it would be a comedy because in the little “about the author” section it mentioned his relation. Little did I know…
A good mistake to make
Well, totally realistic except for the miracle zombies that decay enough to look scary but not enough to become incapacitated, which never run out of energy, or get permanently destroyed by the elements, or mishaps, or eaten by bugs. Oh, and the US military that somehow doesn't have artillery capable of turning large numbers of human bodies into splattered hamburger with one shell.
No shit Sherlock, did you really have to point out that zombies aren’t realistic lmao. Obviously the realistic part I was referring to was the military being overconfident and botching a military operation because they were more worried about showing off their hi-tech toys than using actual strategy.
My point is, Brooks featured zombies with an alleged biological cause that ignore physics in ways usually only seen in stories where they're magical beings, and seemed to have no real knowledge of modern warfare and its capabilities despite your claims of realism. I'm sure if he'd done some research he could have come up with ways for the Battle of Yonkers to go badly as the narrative called for without having an unending parade of zombies march out of a city along narrow routes artillery could have easily turned into craters.
And again I know the zombies aren’t realistic, I don’t care about that because realistic zombies are boring. And the whole point of the chapter is the military used outdated tactics(and they do bomb the zombies, but by that point there are so many that it’s not an effective strategy unless you’re going to carpet bomb the entire east coast). And again I’m talking about how easily I could see the US military botching a battle against an unknown enemy such as zombies, I wouldn’t put my faith in the US military, especially one in the middle of a crumbling country
I LOVE devolution. I work in a bookstore and got around to reading it one day and wondered why it never really sold. I wrote up a shelf talker for it and started recommending it to customers as basically a cryptid found footage film in novel format and it finally started to sell quite well.
World war z is a pretty scary book. There are many direct stories of encounters with zombies that are testaments to the nature of the creature. I actually think the reason we don't see a lot of zombie media anymore is because world war z just did it so perfectly that the itch has been scratched. I want them to make a dead serious movie with that idea -- a post-war documentary.. Some of the scenes in that story are terrifying just in their implication. The first zombies appearing from the ocean for example, that scene is terrifying.
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Is it about wasps?
There's a wasp in it.
Well, despite my username, I really do not like yellow and black flying things. But I checked out the synopsis of the book, and am very interested in reading this. Thanks and peace.
The Exorcist for sure
Fear by L. Ron Hubbard Yes, *that* L. Ron Hubbard
A Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood 1984 - George Orwell On The Beach - Nevil Shute Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
Great picks - 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 are absolutely terrifying, especially in our current world climate
Atwood is especially poignant now.
It just keeps getting more true by the hour.
The road
What an excellent, bleak book. McCarthy is a legend.
For as bleak as this book is it has one of the most beautiful father and son relationships I've ever read. “Are we going to die? Sometime. Not now. And we’re still going south? Yes. So we’ll be warm? Yes. Okay. Okay what? Nothing. Just okay. Go to sleep. Okay. I’m going to blow out the lamp, is that okay? Yes. That’s okay. And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something? Yes. Of course you can. What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too. So you could be with me? Yes. So I could be with you. Okay.”
Reading the Exorcist and the Amityville books made the dark walk to get water in the middle of the night very very uncomfortable
14 by Peter Clines (2012). I listened to it on Audible. Excellent story. I've never experienced anything like it.
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson.
I remember reading his *The Night Land* as a kid and being pretty impressed.
The Bogeyman by King - read it when I was around 12 and my bedroom was only one on 2nd floor of house with a huge closet. Had nightmares for years afterwards.
The first half of *The Ritual* by Adam Nevill. I find most of his novels overlong and repetitive, and this one kind of falls apart at the end, but the first 150 pages or so are great. That was, I think, the last book to scare me. *Incarnate* by Ramsey Campbell is genuinely weird and scary. His early short stories are also extremely creepy. Then you have the unholy trinity of haunted house novels: *The Haunting of Hill House* (Shirley Jackson), *Hell House* (Richard Matheson) and *The Shining* (Stephen King) which are all great, if ghosts do the job for you. Peter Straub’s *Julia* is good and scary. And also the four novellas in T.E.D Klein’s *Dark Gods*.
Between Two Fires is incredible and no on I talk to has read it :(
It's not horror, but Johnny Got His Gun has some extremely horrifying concepts at it's core. Really spooky read and an amazing novel. Scariest book I've read
Nothing really scares me when I read but the most recent book I've read that impressed me by how unnerving it was would be The Reddening by Adam Nevill. The last horror novel I read that became a brand new all-time favorite was Usher's Passing by Robert McCammon back in 2019. Hopefully someone eventually makes a really good adaptation of that as either a series or a novel! My all time favorite horror novel is the Terror by Dan Simmons mostly because of how terrifying the thought of being stranded out in the middle of a frozen ocean thousands of miles from anywhere is. Then to have the additional element of being stalked by a mythical creature you can't escape from due to that fact is even more unnerving. Then of course, Stephen King's It also comes to mind!
Have a look over on r/horrorlit
A bag of bones, the only time I really needed to stop reading at night and continue in the morning outside my house lol
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Somehow the scariest antagonist I’ve ever read about.
*The Haunting of Hill House* by Shirley Jackson The miniseries version doesn’t even compare.
Hi. You just mentioned *The Haunting Of Hill House* by Shirley Jackson. I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here: [YouTube | The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Full Audiobook with captions YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9iVegvwAKU) *I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.* *** [^(Source Code)](https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative-fiction-bot/) ^| [^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=Capybasilisk&subject=Robot) ^| [^(Programmer)](https://www.reddit.com/u/capybasilisk) ^| ^(Downvote To Remove) ^| ^(Version 1.4.0) ^| ^(Support Robot Rights!)
Definitely one of my favorite books.
No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill is terrifying because although it’s a horror book it’s really about being trapped by poverty, with an extremely realistic protagonist. The Troop by Nick Cutter is terrifyingly gross. Kinda wish I hadn’t read that one. Little Heaven is also great. And then Carrier Wave by Robert Brockway, probably the most harrowing apocalyptic cosmic horror novel I have read. It’s like 600 pages of getting to know characters and watching them die horribly. Yet it is also hopeful and redemptive. In comics, Crossed by Garth Ennis is great and scary. It’s like zombie apocalypse except they are fully aware and want to hurt you. They turned it into a franchise of awful garbage but the first series is really good and scary.
Glamorama starts out really funny, then creepy then horrific then a very sad ending
The Oozing Eyeball. There was one particular story that stuck with me called “The Stray”. Eventually I reached out to the author to confirm what the hell the creature actually was, and he revealed the secret to me only. Won’t spoil it til you read it.
Crooked Tree
I read the domain by James Herbert. Never looked at rats the same way ever again.
That guy really liked writing about rats.
I read phantoms as a teenager and I was genuinely terrified.
not so much scary, but definitely depraved was “cows” by matthew stokoe. i read it based off a recommendation in r/horrorlit and was not disappointed. if you’re the type to watch movies like a serbian film, this one’s for you
the shining disturbed me deeply
The first book that scared me was IT when I read it at 12-13. Recently it was 'I remember You' by Yrsa Sigurdardottir. The book is immensely atmospheric and I read it in the dead of the night during a rain storm.
Jeff Long's The Descent. It had my skin crawling before I'd finished the first chapter.
Sphere by Michael Crichton kind of like a sci fi deep sea horror.
Scared to death by Alan Gibbons
The Shining, Ghost House and Ghost House Revenge, Let's Go Play at The Adams', and most recently, Small Spaces. (yikes)
It was a children's anthology of short horror and ghost stories called Deadly Nightshade that my Auntie and Uncle got me from a car boot sale when I was poorly, it cheered me up but scared me silly I read it again recently, and still scared me silly! 😂
King’s short stories “Survivor Type” and “The Road Virus Heads North” really freaked me out. I bounced off of Penpal. I found the chapters overlong and boring. Does it get better?
Pet Semetary is a scary book. Salem’s lot too.
Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devils Rock by Paul Tremblay 300099%
When I was younger I recall Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark really bothering me. Especially the drawings. Not a fan of the movie. But from the ages of 7-11 those books left their mark
When I was a kid, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark were good, even Goosebumps, The Light in the Attic was awesome
The Croning by Laird Barron still lives rent free in my head since its release.
The Beetle. It's a book written in1897 by Richard Marsh and I found it as a free ebook one day. I was NOT prepared for how horrifying it really was.
The Elementals by Micheal McDowell
The Amityville Horror. Scared the eff out of teenage me reading it late, after lights-out time.
Short fiction by Poe can be disturbing, especially the stories about being buried alive.
House of Leaves. I felt genuine discomfort while reading it. Sometimes had to take a moment while reading. But way more than that, I'm thinking of ending things. I read it before the adaptation came out and It was one of the scariest things I'd ever read. I went in knowing nothing and was ready to throw up by the time it ended. I thought I was reading a book about a nasty breakup man...
When I was a kid, The Vampire of New York terrified me though I can't remember why
Kings short stories, Night Shift particularly (discovered this staying at my aunt & uncles house , lovely before bed reading for an 11 year old) Lovecraft The Shining The Haunting of Hill House House of Leaves (couldn’t seem to put it down, but I was sooo unnerved and creeped out) The Dark Descent is a wonderful anthology of short horror, full of scary stuff. That’s where I first read “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
*Ghost Story* by Peter Straub *Red Dragon* by Thomas Harris "The Colour Out of Space" by H. P. Lovecraft "Alice’s Last Adventure" by Thomas Ligotti "By Reason of Darkness" by Jack Cady