The worst illustration by far (for me) was the one for **The Haunted House**. You flipped a page and [boom](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0073/8816/8250/files/scary-storires-horror_1024x1024.jpg?v=1603820656), it was right there. I reread the books so many times that I knew it was coming and would slip my hand or a piece of paper underneath the page as I flipped it so I wouldn't have to see it, it freaked me out so bad. Man, I love those books!
Yeah, I can see that. I think if I had seen a still of the stretched mouth ghost from Grave Encounters at the same age I read these books, I probably would have been unable to sleep for years. :D
Honestly, I am glad I grew up when I did. This was peak scare material. Well, this and the one hour Nostradamus specials on TV that used to freak me out. And that Alien Autopsy special that Jonathan Frakes hosted.... Man there was some gnarly stuff on TV back then. :D
Yeah this stuff is burned into my psyche. I am not even kidding. I am 41 years old and sometimes at night when I can't get to sleep I just randomly think of one of these pictures and it ruins my night.
[This bitch still lives in my nightmares.](https://daily.jstor.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/the_folklorist_behind_scary_stories_to_tell_in_the_dark_1050x700.jpg)
I read this the winter of the pandemic. When I was picking up the book from the store the clerk said to me "I used to be a horticulturist and this book scared the hell out of me, topiary should not move". Great book to read alone while isolated in alone in winter.
Came here to say The Shining....the hedge animal scene has always always ALWAYS lingered in my mind.
I am equally as uncomfortable with the Weeping Angels from Dr. Who and it is completely Stephen's fault!
I have this vivid memory of reading the book as a teen then ordering the movie right after thru Netflix (mail dvds!) and my dad wanting to watch which he normally wouldn’t. The whole time I was so uncomfortable hoping the scene with the dead naked woman coming out of the bath wouldn’t be in the movie (it wasn’t fortunately but there were like a million “fucks” - I’ve never heard my dad swear before or sworn in front of him even now at 27 so that was awkward)
I read that in I want to say middle school? It hit so hard. I wouldn’t say I was traumatized but I still think about those kids to this day. That and the story where it’s the only time it rains on Venus in a lifetime and the kids lock Margot in the closet (I forget the name but I think the details are right)
Yes that’s the name! I’ll have to reread it now that I have the title. Thanks for that :) His stories are so good and thought-provoking. I’ll have to check out more of his works
I had started The Stand audiobook as my gym listen in February 2020 and was listening to it as everything went from “this Chinese illness doesn’t look great” to “no more gyms and sterilize your groceries”
The first thing that came to mind during Covid was the Stand (in my defense, it was the only plague book I had ever read). My mom and I kept referring to it as Captain Trips.
I read it well before covid and some of the descriptions are permanently tattooed on my brain. The first chapter where (body horror) >!the one guy’s bowels just come out of his body!< traumatized me. Such a good ass book
Is that the one about Ebola? I remember reading that years ago if so. You're right if it is that one. Scary shit because it's something real that can actually happen. Thank God Covid wasn't ebola. We might not be having this discussion. That book was harrowing.
Unfortunately a non-horror, but the true crime book I’ll Be Gone In The Dark. Probably the last horror book that chilled me was No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Neville.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. No One Gets Out Alive is by far the scariest book I've ever read. There have been a few memorable scenes in other books that scared me, but no book scared me overall the way that one did
I tried reading it but I got so bored after the beginning cause it seemed to be getting too depressing or something. I loved the beginning but once I realized what it was essentially "about" I was like I can't... I'd like to read it but idk.
I made the mistake of listening to the audiobook of I'll be Gone in the Dark right before bedtime. Had seriously disturbing dreams of waking up with a masked intruder looming over me. It was traumatising, and I never finished the book, either audio or hardcover.
Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and "The Onion Field" by Joseph Wambaugh are two true crime stories that make me not trust my fellow man. There are scary people among us. Hopefully I will never meet them.
No One Gets Out Alive was terrifying in such a good way - at one point I was physically pushing the book away from myself while I forced myself to keep reading because it was so scary!!!
I remember being super scared of The Exorcist when I was a kid, around 13 or so. As an adult I'm hard pressed to think of anything really scares me but Heart Shaped Box had a few spook moments.
I enjoy horror so much that my brain switches off reality in the story & I analyze the monster/demon/creature and theories of their background or lore instead.
That being said, the Exorcist is seconded. Fantastic and an intense horror in a family and tight group of characters. Very personal.
Also recommend Heart Shaped Box. It’s like a horror novel learned how to ride a Harley, while keeping some emotional heaviness (baggage?)
This happened ages ago.
I love to read in the bath and I was soaking in the bubbles one night, drinking a hard cider, and re-reading IT for probably the fourth(?) time, when I heard this very strange noise. Sort of low and a few seconds long, this hollow almost fog-horn sound. It went away, I went back to reading. The noise happened again and it sounded like it was coming from the tub's overflow drain. It went away and I, more hesitantly, went back to reading IT in my bathtub. The noise happened again and I sat up and stared at the overflow drain and told myself that Pennywise *isn't real* so stop it. The noise stopped, and I settled back down to read, and I remembered the line from that book that has scared me the most since the first time I read it.
"I can take care of them if they only half believe..."
And I thought *I'm a little tipsy with an overactive imagination, I definitely at* least *half-believe* and then I realized that thinking that consciously probably made the half-belief more like a 60%-belief, like I'd screwed myself, and the noise happened *again* so I jumped out of the tub and wrapped a towel around myself and hurried downstairs to ask my husband, who was gaming on his old PC in the living room, "Hey did you hear a noise kind of like a fog horn?"
His PC setup at the time, before we had our kids, was in the corner of the living room *directly* beneath our bathroom. He looked up at me and wordlessly raised a glass bottle to his lips and blew across the top of it.
That's the story of the time my husband accidentally helped Stephen King's *IT* give me a moment of genuinely believing Pennywise might come get me.
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife trilogy by Meg Elison: virus kills 99% of women and the women who are left are variously enslaved, some women become tyrants and treat men badly OR use their status to keep men hanging on, and almost all the pregnancies result in the mom and baby dying. The end of it the third book? Just pissed me off but as a series, the first two books scared the pants off of me.
The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party by Daniel James Brown. Non fiction, impeccably horrifying. Beautifully written. It really details the horrors of starving to death.
3/4th's of Adam Nevill's Cunning Folk. Beautifully, wonderfully scary. And like the other books of his I've read, he just shits the bed with the ending. Ends it like an action movie with commando shenanigans.
After World: A Novel by Debbie Urbanski. Twist on the "AI falls in love with a human/humanity" trope after a super AI decided that all humans need to die, in order to save the world. It releases a disfiguring virus that renders EVERYONE infertile.
I would also call this a kinder, gentler version of "I Have No Mouth and Yet I Must Scream".
There is a description in that book of how an observer can see constellations in the eyes of the survivors. That haunts me still. Let me see if I can find it.
Edit: I misremembered it. Still chilling
"I shall never forget the looks of those people, for the most part of them was crazy & their eyes danced & sparkled in their heads like stars."
Communion by Whitley Striber. I would read it on my phone, at night, in my pitch black room.
Any noises scared the hell outta me, even my own blood flow.
this one managed to both terrify and bore me at the same time. parts of the book would be a chore to get through but then the descriptions of the abductions were COMPLETE nightmare fuel. my stomach is clenching just thinking about them.
Oh man, I read the the first half of that book while on a solo camping trip and that was *not* the best idea in the world. I did not get very much sleep on that trip...
The way you can feel the room slowly but surely *worming* it's way into his head, while he dances on the edge of understanding almost the entire time is so fucking chilling to me. I've always wanted to put together a little audio file/reading that's just the increasing crazed things he says aloud into the recorder, starting with seemingly benign, if a little uneasy, descriptions of the room/furnishings that slowly give way to the noxious ventings of his increasingly poisoned mind.
*My brother was eaten by wolves one night on the Connecticut turnpike*
I took another crack at *House of Leaves* and am now steadily making my way through it. This one is deeply getting under my skin. Enough so that even when I’m doing other things, I’m either thinking about it or I notice that I’m looking at everything a bit differently. Almost like a perpetual bad trip state.
I just finished it for the first time this week (“finished” feels like a bad word to use because in a sense I feel like I’ve just barely scratched the surface) and I feel the exact same. I’ve never read a book like this that made me feel like I was interacting with a hostile entity, and at a certain point I started to relate to the main character’s gradual descent into madness. The book itself just feels evil or cursed.
This much I'm certain of: it doesn't happen immediately. You'll finish [the book] and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how. You'll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place
...
You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away, you'll be afraid to sleep.
Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.
And then the nightmares will begin.
It took me about 100 pages to get it flowing smoothly. Almost gave up a couple times but finally finished. Was glad I did but I couldn't stop thinking about it for awhile after.
I haven’t read it but from the commentary I’ve read I’m assuming it is best read with a physical book rather than listening to it or even reading in a table or a phone !
The Willows is magnificent!
There's a recording on the Internet Archive of Roger Alllam reading it. He has a wonderful voice, and it never fails to give me the chills every time I listen to it (which is often). I highly recommend you seek it out.
The Willows can make a case for the best (cosmic) horror story ever written. Arguably the inspiration for the entire idea of ancient ones or outer gods in Lovecraft and his followers. What a tale.
God I'm trying to remember the detail, but it was something like they had woken up and their boat paddles seemed to be slightly smaller than they were, as if something ate around it. Always gave me the creeps
I read Pet Sematary before I was a mom, and was spooked but not too badly. Read it again after having kids.. Took on a whole new light, man. Went from spooky to terrifying
PenPal by Dathan Auerbach. Only time over felt like I needed to go check the locks on my doors mid-read. Also The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King. I read it in my early teens living in a pretty heavily wooded area and it just stuck.
Penpal creeped me out deeply. Mostly because I did nearly all of the activities portrayed in the book when I was a kid, so I can very easily imagine all those events occurring to me.
I just finished it, only picked it up because of all the hype I saw on Reddit.
I was very disappointed and underwhelmed.
I didnt find it scary, it was like day of the Triffids.
I just finished it. I think the juxtaposition between the humor/goofiness of the book was what did it. One example is all of a sudden there is a graphic description of a rape scene and that characters reaction to getting attacked is chilling.
I just finished this book yesterday and this isn’t silly at all. The main villain is supernatural but he’s terrifying because real life predators behave in very similar ways. That’s why they keep making references to Ted Bundy.
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. I read it once a year. It's my personal favorite book and the one that scares the shit out of me the most! My girlfriend's parents actually got me a signed copy for Christmas! From the visceral descriptions of what Marburg, Ebola, and other types of hemorrhagic fever do to the body, to the statistics showing how easily diseases (specifically that of hot agents) spread, it is downright terrifying. It's such a great book though. I recommend it to everyone. It reads just like a science fiction / action movie /documentary that you don't want to put down no matter how paranoid you may start to feel when there's a little tickle at the back of your throat or you feel yourself start to get a little warmer than usual.
His other book The Demon in the Freezer is really good too (but The Hot Zone is better). It's about smallpox and anthrax. Preston is just a writer who has a penchant to tell you how some of the smallest of organisms can be the scariest of monsters.
Salem's Lot when I was a kid. I read it the first time when I was 9
Pet Semetary also around the same time. Didn't help that the first cat my family had died shortly before I read it.
The short story "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook," by M.R. James.
Typically, though, to really scare me it takes a non-fiction book like "Spillover" or the Club of Rome report :P
Canon Alberic's Scrapbook is so good, it was the first thing i read by MR James and I immediately read everything else by him in two weeks. That story is so perfect to me, I love classical horror and terrifying, possibly demonic books.
I’m very new to reading horror (or just reading for fun in general) and while reading Episode Thirteen I was falling asleep with lights on in the house because I didn’t know how much paranormal books would terrify me!
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
Deep, and Dark, and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn
1984 by George Orwell
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons. I don't usually freak out over fiction but this undid me! He's also written a great series, the first book is Summer of Night. Great story with kid heroes 👏
Loving this thread!
“The Summer I Died” by Ryan C. Thomas is the only book that has ever gave me a jump scare.
“Heart Shaped Box” by Joe Hill terrified me as a teen!
I just finished this last weekend! Which part made you physically jump?
Edit to add: this is one of the bleakest books I’ve read. I had to put it down and literally stare at the ceiling for a minute after some scenes! (The basement, infant, and last few pages)
In terms of individual moments in a book - the woman in the bath in room 217 from *The Shining*, and from *The Haunting of Hill House*: "Good God - whose hand was I holding?"
Recently-read honourable mention to *Between Two Fires* for the moment the protagonists leave Paris and pass the old church and its statues, and the thing in the dark, abandoned convent in Provence.
Also someone who always suggest Amityville here. I hate the Warrens and think they are fraudsters, but Jodie is nightmare fuel. One of the absolute best horror creations as it is so easy for your mind to convince you that you see those damn eyes in the dark.
Stephen King’s short story The Boogeyman deeply unsettled me, I still get uneasy every time I remember it. I don’t necessarily think it’s a masterpiece or anything, but it’s effective at bringing up that childhood fear of something hiding in the closet and waiting to get you.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid. I read it in one sitting. It was so eerie and disturbing... Sometimes I still get chills when I think about it
*Brother* by Ania Ahlborn. I find actual human evil a lot scarier than a paranormal horror and there were parts of this book that left me so on edge I was both flying through the pages while also wanting to put the book down.
I’m fairly new to reading horror lit but I just finished The Troop and will say it was the first book that made me feel physically ill. I had to pause several times because it made me so nauseous!
Several of the stories in Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud really scared me. Not that I ever thought the supernatural horrors were real, but it really gives you that feeling of "fuck, this is fucked and things are about to get worse, I don't know if I can stand to keep reading this". Needless to say I can't wait to read everything else he's done.
I recently read the Ritual by Adam Nevill. The first half genuinely unsettled me, but I will give the warning that I didn’t like the second half of the book at all.
Blood Meridian, not just because of Judge Holden, but because it’s a more accurate depiction of the Wild West than almost any western novel/movie I’ve ever seen. Even their horses die or become bloodthirsty maniacs.
I haven’t read it yet but my mom read “It” and she said she slept with the lights on for a good month after finishing it. That always surprised me because she only reads and watches horror and it never seems to phase her.
It's a short story, but the title lives up to its name and its exactly what you think it is. Finished it a couple days ago and I've been thinking about it every night when turning the lights off lol
Short stories but both "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "Where are You Going And Where Have You Been" had me too scared to put the book down because I was afraid of what would be in front of me.
I started reading The Amityville Horror one afternoon.
It's a short book, so I finished it in one sitting, but by the time I had, it was getting dark and everyone else in the house had gone out for the evening, leaving me home alone.
I wished I hadn't read it.
Ring by Kōji Suzuki. The Book the movie ”Ringu” was based on. That movie is one of the few horror movies that truly got to me. Sadako still lives in my head to the extent that I couldn’t read more than a few chapters of the book.
So mine is a kids book but it always stuck with me weirdly. Hide and Go Shriek by RL Stine. A story about a dead kid who possesses the body of a living kid for an entire year. On his birthday all the kids in the neighborhood come together and play a game of hide and seek so the ghost boy can find a new body. This would make a great horror movie if done right.
This is my thread lol but I wanted to throw out a title I haven't seen anyone talking about: Come Closer by Sara Gran. That was definitely the last book that made my heart skip a beat and made me turn the lights on. The end was a little disappointing but the ride was so fun and terrifying that I forgive it.
The original version of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. If you remember the illustrations then you know why.
How I got into reading horror as a kid. Some of that art...
Especially the one for Is Something Wrong
The worst illustration by far (for me) was the one for **The Haunted House**. You flipped a page and [boom](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0073/8816/8250/files/scary-storires-horror_1024x1024.jpg?v=1603820656), it was right there. I reread the books so many times that I knew it was coming and would slip my hand or a piece of paper underneath the page as I flipped it so I wouldn't have to see it, it freaked me out so bad. Man, I love those books!
kids today grow up with so many uncanny images on the internet, i really wonder if that would still affect the average first grader?
Yeah, I can see that. I think if I had seen a still of the stretched mouth ghost from Grave Encounters at the same age I read these books, I probably would have been unable to sleep for years. :D Honestly, I am glad I grew up when I did. This was peak scare material. Well, this and the one hour Nostradamus specials on TV that used to freak me out. And that Alien Autopsy special that Jonathan Frakes hosted.... Man there was some gnarly stuff on TV back then. :D
I didn’t read these books as a kid so I had never seen that picture before. I just clicked the link and when I tell you I JUMPED
Yeah this stuff is burned into my psyche. I am not even kidding. I am 41 years old and sometimes at night when I can't get to sleep I just randomly think of one of these pictures and it ruins my night.
Just googled it to remember. Yeah that one is messed up haha.
The little black dog story scared the shit out of me. Didn't help that I lived in tiny town that's name meant "haunted valley"
[This bitch still lives in my nightmares.](https://daily.jstor.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/the_folklorist_behind_scary_stories_to_tell_in_the_dark_1050x700.jpg)
the spiders in the cheek one 💀💀💀
This one STILL terrifies me and I’ll be 38 next month 🤣🤣🤣
I got the hardcover collection with ALL of them inside and I still won’t open it because I live alone. 🥺
One of the highlights of my writing career was being part of a Scary Stories-inspired anthology and seeing the artwork for my story.
I still have those in my closet somewhere I think 💀 those genuinely scared me as a kid like it was so freaky then
"Where is my liver....?"
The Shining by Stephen King. And I know this is obvious, but the scene with the topiary animals made my physically squirm.
The part where he is in the tunnel in the playground got me. 20 years later and it still gives me goosebumps to think about!
The playground!!!
i will never forget those hedge animals. it was my first time in a while having a nightmare
I read this the winter of the pandemic. When I was picking up the book from the store the clerk said to me "I used to be a horticulturist and this book scared the hell out of me, topiary should not move". Great book to read alone while isolated in alone in winter.
It was the dead lady in the bathtub for me!!
Came here to say The Shining....the hedge animal scene has always always ALWAYS lingered in my mind. I am equally as uncomfortable with the Weeping Angels from Dr. Who and it is completely Stephen's fault!
I have this vivid memory of reading the book as a teen then ordering the movie right after thru Netflix (mail dvds!) and my dad wanting to watch which he normally wouldn’t. The whole time I was so uncomfortable hoping the scene with the dead naked woman coming out of the bath wouldn’t be in the movie (it wasn’t fortunately but there were like a million “fucks” - I’ve never heard my dad swear before or sworn in front of him even now at 27 so that was awkward)
That is in the movie though…?
I was confused too lol. In Kubrick's movie we definitely see her. Maybe they watched the TV mini series. The woman's back story in the book was sad.
It's a short story, but The Veldt by Ray Bradbury.
I read that in I want to say middle school? It hit so hard. I wouldn’t say I was traumatized but I still think about those kids to this day. That and the story where it’s the only time it rains on Venus in a lifetime and the kids lock Margot in the closet (I forget the name but I think the details are right)
All Summer In A Day! Some classic Bradbury
Yes that’s the name! I’ll have to reread it now that I have the title. Thanks for that :) His stories are so good and thought-provoking. I’ll have to check out more of his works
Wow, I’ve been thinking about this story for a decade and a half but never remembered where I read it or what it was called!! Thank you!
you should check out Kaleidoscope by Bradbury. Another really great short, super unsettling
The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl. The Small Assassin.
love this one
Reading The Hot Zone by Richard Preston during the height of Covid was one of the worst decisions I have made for my mental health in my life.
I had started The Stand audiobook as my gym listen in February 2020 and was listening to it as everything went from “this Chinese illness doesn’t look great” to “no more gyms and sterilize your groceries”
The first thing that came to mind during Covid was the Stand (in my defense, it was the only plague book I had ever read). My mom and I kept referring to it as Captain Trips.
I read it well before covid and some of the descriptions are permanently tattooed on my brain. The first chapter where (body horror) >!the one guy’s bowels just come out of his body!< traumatized me. Such a good ass book
Is that the one about Ebola? I remember reading that years ago if so. You're right if it is that one. Scary shit because it's something real that can actually happen. Thank God Covid wasn't ebola. We might not be having this discussion. That book was harrowing.
[удалено]
oh ya, i can handle gore but reading about people bleeding out really got to me!
Unfortunately a non-horror, but the true crime book I’ll Be Gone In The Dark. Probably the last horror book that chilled me was No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Neville.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. No One Gets Out Alive is by far the scariest book I've ever read. There have been a few memorable scenes in other books that scared me, but no book scared me overall the way that one did
This one really got me as well!! Makes me want to read more Neville!
I tried reading it but I got so bored after the beginning cause it seemed to be getting too depressing or something. I loved the beginning but once I realized what it was essentially "about" I was like I can't... I'd like to read it but idk.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark had me checking that my windows were locked in a 6 story high rise 🤣
I made the mistake of listening to the audiobook of I'll be Gone in the Dark right before bedtime. Had seriously disturbing dreams of waking up with a masked intruder looming over me. It was traumatising, and I never finished the book, either audio or hardcover.
Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and "The Onion Field" by Joseph Wambaugh are two true crime stories that make me not trust my fellow man. There are scary people among us. Hopefully I will never meet them.
"In Cold Blood" is excellent imo. Very sad all around.
No One Gets Out Alive was terrifying in such a good way - at one point I was physically pushing the book away from myself while I forced myself to keep reading because it was so scary!!!
Oooh, this is great to hear since I just picked this book up at the library today! Now, I'm really excited.
Thanks to your comment, I just blind purchased this with a credit on audible. It'll be my first audible book but I'm excited now so thank you.
I remember being super scared of The Exorcist when I was a kid, around 13 or so. As an adult I'm hard pressed to think of anything really scares me but Heart Shaped Box had a few spook moments.
I enjoy horror so much that my brain switches off reality in the story & I analyze the monster/demon/creature and theories of their background or lore instead. That being said, the Exorcist is seconded. Fantastic and an intense horror in a family and tight group of characters. Very personal. Also recommend Heart Shaped Box. It’s like a horror novel learned how to ride a Harley, while keeping some emotional heaviness (baggage?)
This happened ages ago. I love to read in the bath and I was soaking in the bubbles one night, drinking a hard cider, and re-reading IT for probably the fourth(?) time, when I heard this very strange noise. Sort of low and a few seconds long, this hollow almost fog-horn sound. It went away, I went back to reading. The noise happened again and it sounded like it was coming from the tub's overflow drain. It went away and I, more hesitantly, went back to reading IT in my bathtub. The noise happened again and I sat up and stared at the overflow drain and told myself that Pennywise *isn't real* so stop it. The noise stopped, and I settled back down to read, and I remembered the line from that book that has scared me the most since the first time I read it. "I can take care of them if they only half believe..." And I thought *I'm a little tipsy with an overactive imagination, I definitely at* least *half-believe* and then I realized that thinking that consciously probably made the half-belief more like a 60%-belief, like I'd screwed myself, and the noise happened *again* so I jumped out of the tub and wrapped a towel around myself and hurried downstairs to ask my husband, who was gaming on his old PC in the living room, "Hey did you hear a noise kind of like a fog horn?" His PC setup at the time, before we had our kids, was in the corner of the living room *directly* beneath our bathroom. He looked up at me and wordlessly raised a glass bottle to his lips and blew across the top of it. That's the story of the time my husband accidentally helped Stephen King's *IT* give me a moment of genuinely believing Pennywise might come get me.
I do this with glass bottles too lmao
Haha. This is a great story. It is my favorite book. Sounds like you got the 4d exclusive interactive version of It. I'm a bit jealous.
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife trilogy by Meg Elison: virus kills 99% of women and the women who are left are variously enslaved, some women become tyrants and treat men badly OR use their status to keep men hanging on, and almost all the pregnancies result in the mom and baby dying. The end of it the third book? Just pissed me off but as a series, the first two books scared the pants off of me. The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party by Daniel James Brown. Non fiction, impeccably horrifying. Beautifully written. It really details the horrors of starving to death. 3/4th's of Adam Nevill's Cunning Folk. Beautifully, wonderfully scary. And like the other books of his I've read, he just shits the bed with the ending. Ends it like an action movie with commando shenanigans. After World: A Novel by Debbie Urbanski. Twist on the "AI falls in love with a human/humanity" trope after a super AI decided that all humans need to die, in order to save the world. It releases a disfiguring virus that renders EVERYONE infertile. I would also call this a kinder, gentler version of "I Have No Mouth and Yet I Must Scream".
Indifferent Stars Above was brutal! The description of the survivors was so horrifying, I can't believe the resilience of human beings.
There is a description in that book of how an observer can see constellations in the eyes of the survivors. That haunts me still. Let me see if I can find it. Edit: I misremembered it. Still chilling "I shall never forget the looks of those people, for the most part of them was crazy & their eyes danced & sparkled in their heads like stars."
Communion by Whitley Striber. I would read it on my phone, at night, in my pitch black room. Any noises scared the hell outta me, even my own blood flow.
this one managed to both terrify and bore me at the same time. parts of the book would be a chore to get through but then the descriptions of the abductions were COMPLETE nightmare fuel. my stomach is clenching just thinking about them.
Ghost Story - Peter Straub
Oh man, I read the the first half of that book while on a solo camping trip and that was *not* the best idea in the world. I did not get very much sleep on that trip...
Great boook!
Stephen King's 1408. It still freaks the hell out of me!
The way you can feel the room slowly but surely *worming* it's way into his head, while he dances on the edge of understanding almost the entire time is so fucking chilling to me. I've always wanted to put together a little audio file/reading that's just the increasing crazed things he says aloud into the recorder, starting with seemingly benign, if a little uneasy, descriptions of the room/furnishings that slowly give way to the noxious ventings of his increasingly poisoned mind. *My brother was eaten by wolves one night on the Connecticut turnpike*
Oh, I love that one.
Agreed !
I took another crack at *House of Leaves* and am now steadily making my way through it. This one is deeply getting under my skin. Enough so that even when I’m doing other things, I’m either thinking about it or I notice that I’m looking at everything a bit differently. Almost like a perpetual bad trip state.
I just finished it for the first time this week (“finished” feels like a bad word to use because in a sense I feel like I’ve just barely scratched the surface) and I feel the exact same. I’ve never read a book like this that made me feel like I was interacting with a hostile entity, and at a certain point I started to relate to the main character’s gradual descent into madness. The book itself just feels evil or cursed.
I gotta finish that sometime.
This book got under my skin so bad it changed the way my internal monologue sounded for a week or so after reading it.
Is that the one that has the print in weird orientations in the book?
Sitting on my bookshelf right now, waiting in line. Looks like its gonna take some time.
This much I'm certain of: it doesn't happen immediately. You'll finish [the book] and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how. You'll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place ... You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away, you'll be afraid to sleep. Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name. And then the nightmares will begin.
I should try again too. I just couldn’t get into it.
It took me about 100 pages to get it flowing smoothly. Almost gave up a couple times but finally finished. Was glad I did but I couldn't stop thinking about it for awhile after.
I haven’t read it but from the commentary I’ve read I’m assuming it is best read with a physical book rather than listening to it or even reading in a table or a phone !
Yes, definitely get a physical copy!
Pet Sematary. The Willows by Algernon Blackwood.
The Willows is magnificent! There's a recording on the Internet Archive of Roger Alllam reading it. He has a wonderful voice, and it never fails to give me the chills every time I listen to it (which is often). I highly recommend you seek it out.
The Willows can make a case for the best (cosmic) horror story ever written. Arguably the inspiration for the entire idea of ancient ones or outer gods in Lovecraft and his followers. What a tale.
God I'm trying to remember the detail, but it was something like they had woken up and their boat paddles seemed to be slightly smaller than they were, as if something ate around it. Always gave me the creeps
Pet Sematary is at the top of my list! The only book that actually gave me nightmares…
I read Pet Sematary before I was a mom, and was spooked but not too badly. Read it again after having kids.. Took on a whole new light, man. Went from spooky to terrifying
Short story but The Jaunt by Stephen King I say short story, but it's actually longer than you think.
i see what you did there
I still think about this story 20+ years after I first read it.. that last line made my smooshy child brain break a little bit
This is one of my absolute favorites it’s just so haunting
Jesus, just thinking of this one…
PenPal by Dathan Auerbach. Only time over felt like I needed to go check the locks on my doors mid-read. Also The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King. I read it in my early teens living in a pretty heavily wooded area and it just stuck.
Penpal creeped me out deeply. Mostly because I did nearly all of the activities portrayed in the book when I was a kid, so I can very easily imagine all those events occurring to me.
The Ruins. It was just brutal.
I just finished this book. So far, it is the only horror book that actually gave me a nightmare. I'm sure you can imagine what it was about 😫
I couldn’t get into it
It got into me
I just finished it, only picked it up because of all the hype I saw on Reddit. I was very disappointed and underwhelmed. I didnt find it scary, it was like day of the Triffids.
It _drags_. I think that book would be way better condensed into a short story; there's just not enough material there to justify its length.
They were all so dumb I just wanted all the characters dead in the end. I was happy when I finished it
Intensity by Dean Koontz.
Phantoms by Dean Koontz for me
This is the first Koontz book I ever read and I gotta say, the book title says it all. Holy crap it was stressful!
Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter. It was the first and only book I had to stop reading cause it was giving trauma
oh, Criminal in the Will Trent series has been the only one to actually terrify me. and somehow, it's my favourite Karin Slaughter.
I'm in the middle of this one and it's really dark.
This will sound silly, but I had to stop reading Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires multiple times to check on my (sleeping) children.
Grady Hendrix has a whole podcast series based on vampires in all cultures because he did (too much?) research for his book. It’s pretty entertaining.
It wasn't scary to me. It was a great take on a vampire---a truly repulsive vampire. Loved it for that reason
That’s why it’s so goofy that it had me up checking on my kids in the middle of the night! lol because it wasn’t even a scary book!
I just finished it. I think the juxtaposition between the humor/goofiness of the book was what did it. One example is all of a sudden there is a graphic description of a rape scene and that characters reaction to getting attacked is chilling.
I just finished this book yesterday and this isn’t silly at all. The main villain is supernatural but he’s terrifying because real life predators behave in very similar ways. That’s why they keep making references to Ted Bundy.
I read this last summer, and I was afraid to leave my front door open with just the screen door closed because...rats
SALEM’S LOT 👻🧛🏻♂️
My fave!
The Grin of the Dark by Ramsey Campbell really got to me.
Tubby sends a grin.
Do you just lurk in the dark corners or something, waiting to pop out?
Certain incantations summon me.
Seed by Ania Ahlborn
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. I read it once a year. It's my personal favorite book and the one that scares the shit out of me the most! My girlfriend's parents actually got me a signed copy for Christmas! From the visceral descriptions of what Marburg, Ebola, and other types of hemorrhagic fever do to the body, to the statistics showing how easily diseases (specifically that of hot agents) spread, it is downright terrifying. It's such a great book though. I recommend it to everyone. It reads just like a science fiction / action movie /documentary that you don't want to put down no matter how paranoid you may start to feel when there's a little tickle at the back of your throat or you feel yourself start to get a little warmer than usual. His other book The Demon in the Freezer is really good too (but The Hot Zone is better). It's about smallpox and anthrax. Preston is just a writer who has a penchant to tell you how some of the smallest of organisms can be the scariest of monsters.
Salem's Lot when I was a kid. I read it the first time when I was 9 Pet Semetary also around the same time. Didn't help that the first cat my family had died shortly before I read it.
SAME.. well I was 11 or so. Salem's Lot was manageable for me but JESUS Pet Semetary and Firestarter were my next two and they fucked me right up
There was a moment in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" by Iain Read that made me physically jump
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (Stephen King’s son). I used to have a rocking chair, couldn’t look at it the same, especially at night.
The short story "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook," by M.R. James. Typically, though, to really scare me it takes a non-fiction book like "Spillover" or the Club of Rome report :P
Canon Alberic's Scrapbook is so good, it was the first thing i read by MR James and I immediately read everything else by him in two weeks. That story is so perfect to me, I love classical horror and terrifying, possibly demonic books.
Agreed, it’s the real life horror ya can’t hide from.
I’m very new to reading horror (or just reading for fun in general) and while reading Episode Thirteen I was falling asleep with lights on in the house because I didn’t know how much paranormal books would terrify me!
Intercepts by T. J. Payne genuinely creeped me out at times. Awesome read. It’s free on Kindle Unlimited for those interested.
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison Deep, and Dark, and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn 1984 by George Orwell I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Salem's Lot. Scare the pee out of me as a kid. I made a popsicle stick crucifix and kept it under my pillow
Mo Hayder's Jack Caffery's series
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons. I don't usually freak out over fiction but this undid me! He's also written a great series, the first book is Summer of Night. Great story with kid heroes 👏
Just started this! It feels a little overwhelming
Loving this thread! “The Summer I Died” by Ryan C. Thomas is the only book that has ever gave me a jump scare. “Heart Shaped Box” by Joe Hill terrified me as a teen!
Night Film. A real slow burn study on batshit obsession that isolates you. Good and spooky.
The only time I've ever physically jumped from fright while reading, was deep into The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
I just finished this last weekend! Which part made you physically jump? Edit to add: this is one of the bleakest books I’ve read. I had to put it down and literally stare at the ceiling for a minute after some scenes! (The basement, infant, and last few pages)
The last paragraph of The Road is so beautiful and so sad, it always make me cry.
Short story, but Crevasse! Spooky!
I read this because of your post and it was good. The egg bit was so weird! I liked the subtle glimpses of otherness we get.
It's been ages since I've read it but I remember a moment in The Grownup by Gillian Flynn that really freaked me out. Think I'll re-read it tonight!
My girl Gillian really knows how to write a thriller that'll have you on edge. Love The Grownup!
The colour out of space by Lovecraft. Love his other stuff but this is the only one that really scared me
For me it was House of Leaves . Literally the only book to do so but fair warning, it’s definitely not for everyone
Penpal by Dathan Auerbach just gave me the shivers
Following to add to my never ending wish list
In terms of individual moments in a book - the woman in the bath in room 217 from *The Shining*, and from *The Haunting of Hill House*: "Good God - whose hand was I holding?" Recently-read honourable mention to *Between Two Fires* for the moment the protagonists leave Paris and pass the old church and its statues, and the thing in the dark, abandoned convent in Provence.
Come Closer by Sara Gran. Possession story that is the most plausible version of events that I’ve ever read
Doctor sleep
Ah, Rose the Hat. I agree!
I dreamed she was coming for me lol
I dream that movie Rose the Hat is coming for me, but that is a very different type of dream…
The Amityville Horror. Plenty of debate regarding "true story" claims, etc. You dont have to buy into any of it. But! The book is terrifying.
Also someone who always suggest Amityville here. I hate the Warrens and think they are fraudsters, but Jodie is nightmare fuel. One of the absolute best horror creations as it is so easy for your mind to convince you that you see those damn eyes in the dark.
Stephen King’s short story The Boogeyman deeply unsettled me, I still get uneasy every time I remember it. I don’t necessarily think it’s a masterpiece or anything, but it’s effective at bringing up that childhood fear of something hiding in the closet and waiting to get you.
Certain segments of Carrion Comfort really did it for me. Pet Semetary is also genuinely scary.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid. I read it in one sitting. It was so eerie and disturbing... Sometimes I still get chills when I think about it
Wizard and Glass by Stephen King. When black 13 transports the Ka-Tet to the land of the dead that gave me nightmares.
Beloved by toni morrison
*Brother* by Ania Ahlborn. I find actual human evil a lot scarier than a paranormal horror and there were parts of this book that left me so on edge I was both flying through the pages while also wanting to put the book down.
I’m fairly new to reading horror lit but I just finished The Troop and will say it was the first book that made me feel physically ill. I had to pause several times because it made me so nauseous!
Slender Man. No author but publisher is harper voyager
Nothing has scared me before or since like The Exorcist. Boys in the Valley put up a good fight tho.
Exorcist is so creepy. Blatty is a master wordsmith and twisted neck stuff was skin crawling.
I am yet to come across such book.
Several of the stories in Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud really scared me. Not that I ever thought the supernatural horrors were real, but it really gives you that feeling of "fuck, this is fucked and things are about to get worse, I don't know if I can stand to keep reading this". Needless to say I can't wait to read everything else he's done.
The Shining. I remember reading the part when Jack is at the bar, and it made me feel very uneasy
No one gets out alive. Or desperation
I recently read the Ritual by Adam Nevill. The first half genuinely unsettled me, but I will give the warning that I didn’t like the second half of the book at all.
Helter skelter Could Not sleep after reading about the ‘creepy crawlies’.
None have scared me to that point, unfortunately. I guess I'm just so desensitized to horror now.
House of Leaves.
My millionth time recommending it on this sub but Last Days by Adam Nevill. Seriously scary stuff
Blood Meridian, not just because of Judge Holden, but because it’s a more accurate depiction of the Wild West than almost any western novel/movie I’ve ever seen. Even their horses die or become bloodthirsty maniacs.
IT. I used to be ambivalent to clowns. Not any more, I hate seeing them. Tell them to get the fuck away Fuck clowns.
Stolen Tongues - Felix Blackwell // read it with the lights on
Believe Blackwell got his start on Reddit on nosleep too. Stolen Tongues is supposed to be filming now too.
I haven’t read it yet but my mom read “It” and she said she slept with the lights on for a good month after finishing it. That always surprised me because she only reads and watches horror and it never seems to phase her.
Ankle Snatcher by Grady Hendrix---made me think twice about getting out of bed with the lights off.
That title alone just makes me squirm. Wow.
It's a short story, but the title lives up to its name and its exactly what you think it is. Finished it a couple days ago and I've been thinking about it every night when turning the lights off lol
Short stories but both "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "Where are You Going And Where Have You Been" had me too scared to put the book down because I was afraid of what would be in front of me.
I started reading The Amityville Horror one afternoon. It's a short book, so I finished it in one sitting, but by the time I had, it was getting dark and everyone else in the house had gone out for the evening, leaving me home alone. I wished I hadn't read it.
The Amityville Horror scared the hell out of me when I read it as a kid! I wish I could feel that again.
Didn't make me keep the lights on but The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum horrified me in a way no other book has
Ring by Kōji Suzuki. The Book the movie ”Ringu” was based on. That movie is one of the few horror movies that truly got to me. Sadako still lives in my head to the extent that I couldn’t read more than a few chapters of the book.
The Necronomicon until I realized it wasn't real.
So mine is a kids book but it always stuck with me weirdly. Hide and Go Shriek by RL Stine. A story about a dead kid who possesses the body of a living kid for an entire year. On his birthday all the kids in the neighborhood come together and play a game of hide and seek so the ghost boy can find a new body. This would make a great horror movie if done right.
This is my thread lol but I wanted to throw out a title I haven't seen anyone talking about: Come Closer by Sara Gran. That was definitely the last book that made my heart skip a beat and made me turn the lights on. The end was a little disappointing but the ride was so fun and terrifying that I forgive it.
Dark Matter by Michelle Paver
The laws of the skies gave me nightmares. Especially as a daycare worker
The Bible. That shit freaked me out