Scariest Book?

Irish Al

So the Stephen King thread got me thinking...whats the scariest book you've read??

Seems like It is the one most SK fans seem to be in favour of...so I must pick it up

But what about the rest of you??

Hitch-Hiker

Where's the Stephen King thread? I was gonna say The Shining anyway.

jmuth

I just finished IT about a month ago. One of the craziest books I've read. I wonder if he was on one of his cocaine benges when he wrote about Beverly having sex with all of the boys at the same time to keep their minds clear.

MayDay10

It depends on what scares you really.

Brony

how can a book be scary?

dunkman

Brony wrote:

how can a book be scary?

JonnyPistachio

it wasnt so scary, but the creepiest/suspenseful book i've read is "Intensity" by dean Koontz. I've never liked any of his other books though.

lephty

One of my favorite memories is my 4th grade teacher reading the class Poe's Tell Tale Heart. She had the lights dim and the class was dead silent focused on her. When the murderer admits to the detective, my teacher screams "I did it!" and scared the life out of the class! Totally awesome

dimitrispearljam

dunkman wrote:

Brony wrote:

how can a book be scary?

mysticweed

The Shining actually made me scream out loud. Aside from the cheesy redrum, it is up there with the scariest shit ever written - imo

Irish Al

Hitch-Hiker wrote:

Where's the Stephen King thread? I was gonna say The Shining anyway.

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=127709&p=2894427&hilit=stephen+king#p2894427

So basically bar Mick Hucknell, Stephen King is the scariest writer out there, alongside Poe

MayDay10 wrote:

It depends on what scares you really.

Well movies dont, but books have a way of dragging you in, cause its all in your own mind.

oona left

"The Stand" scared me the most.

I think this was due in large part to the plausibility of the premise. A virus that wipes out over 99.4% (give or take) of the world's population? What do those left do to survive?

MayDay10

Irish Al wrote:

Hitch-Hiker wrote:

Where's the Stephen King thread? I was gonna say The Shining anyway.

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=127709&p=2894427&hilit=stephen+king#p2894427

So basically bar Mick Hucknell, Stephen King is the scariest writer out there, alongside Poe

MayDay10 wrote:

It depends on what scares you really.

Well movies dont, but books have a way of dragging you in, cause its all in your own mind.

I meant it in context of books. When my mom read Salem's Lot, she put newspapers all over the windows because she was so creeped out by (Daniel?) Glick. With me, vampires dont really do it for me. Like what was said above, I thought The Stand was scary/disturbing because the plausibility of the first half of the book.

Enkidu

I just read IT for the first time and it was so scary I couldn't read it right before bed. That sequence with the kid and the clown in the gutter - creepy.

One of the scariest non fiction books I read was In Cold Blood. I didn't sleep for weeks.

MayDay10

Enkidu wrote:

I just read IT for the first time and it was so scary I couldn't read it right before bed. That sequence with the kid and the clown in the gutter - creepy.

One of the scariest non fiction books I read was In Cold Blood. I didn't sleep for weeks.

those flying leetch things were pretty f-ed up.

One Song Glory

Another vote for "The Shining" I suppose. I don't read a whole lot of horror/thriller-type novels.

Although Mark Z. Danielewski's "House of Leaves" has been under my skin for months now. Not really the kind of book that scares you...but it's definitely disturbing. And I think it makes everyone a bit paranoid while they're reading it. It's an incredibly interactive book so it has a very calculated effect on the reader.

Heineken Helen

ooohh... I've read a lot of the books above but I think maybe the one that chilled me the most was 'host' by Peter James, or 'alchemist', both chilling stuff. If ya like King or Koontz, he's quite similar (his old stuff anyway)

g under p

For some reason the book Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and the 1945 black and white movie made it even worse.



Also in Junior High this one scared me in what it took to have the thought process of being a white person then disguising yourself as being a black person then traveling the South in 1959. I mean traveling Mississippi, Lousiana, Alabama and Georgia on a Greyhound bus. The experiences of hate he went through and at my young age i put myself in his shoes and I was straight up terrrified because this story was real. :shock:

Peace

skippybrew

Most recently, I read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. Zombies are overdone these days, but this book actually nails it pretty well. It's set in some future (without giving actual dates) with the premise that "World War Z" has taken place and the world in the process of rebuilding itself. The entire book is composed of "interviews" with survivors and what they went through. The zombies themselves are almost secondary to the human element, which is what makes it so creepy. It touches on all different aspects that could be similar to any war (which makes it somehow realistic), it just happens that the enemy are the undead... Even if you're not a zombie enthusiast, it's a pretty good and creepy read.

unlost dogs

I read "It" in college and freaked myself out to the point that I had to stop reading it in bed at night. I could only read it in the quad in the middle of the day with 1,000 other people around. I never liked clowns, and of course now my office is right upstairs from the hospital's child life people, including, of course, the friggin' clowns. I run into them all the time and immediately think of that scene in the gutter that a poster above mentioned.

The other Stephen King that scared the shit out of me was "Pet Sematary." My bedroom was at the top of the stairs in my family's house, and I recall being terrified reading the passage about the dead kid slogging up the stairs. Nowadays I have that image every time I hear "Footsteps" which really isn't what Eddie and the boys intended, but there you go.

Who Princess

g under p wrote:

Also in Junior High this one scared me in what it took to have the thought process of being a white person then disguising yourself as being a black person then traveling the South in 1959. I mean traveling Mississippi, Lousiana, Alabama and Georgia on a Greyhound bus. The experiences of hate he went through and at my young age i put myself in his shoes and I was straight up terrrified because this story was real. :shock:

Peace

I was friends with his daughter in grade school and junior high. Spent a lot of time at their house. Very nice family.

I don't read a lot of fiction but several years ago I read a book about Ted Bundy called The Only Living Witness. It was so disturbing that I would sometimes put it aside for several days before I could continue reading.

bernmodi

Tolstoy's novel the death of Ivan Ilyich. Not really a thriller, but the way he describes the process of dying is quite disturbing.

DinghyDog

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Byrnzie

g under p wrote:

Also in Junior High this one scared me in what it took to have the thought process of being a white person then disguising yourself as being a black person then traveling the South in 1959. I mean traveling Mississippi, Lousiana, Alabama and Georgia on a Greyhound bus. The experiences of hate he went through and at my young age i put myself in his shoes and I was straight up terrrified because this story was real. :shock:

Peace

I've not heard of this one before.

Byrnzie

bernmodi wrote:

Tolstoy's novel the death of Ivan Ilyich. Not really a thriller, but the way he describes the process of dying is quite disturbing.

Have you seen the movie 'Ivans XTC'? It's based on 'The death of Ivan Ilyich'. It's an amazing film.

Got a hard hard head

Stephen King's It did actually scare me quite badly. It's not easy sleeping after reading about an evil entitiy, masquerading as a clown, that lives in the drains....

I think if I'd heard someone say the words "they float" in the dead of night, I wouldn't be here today!

Who Princess

Byrnzie wrote:

g under p wrote:

Also in Junior High this one scared me in what it took to have the thought process of being a white person then disguising yourself as being a black person then traveling the South in 1959. I mean traveling Mississippi, Lousiana, Alabama and Georgia on a Greyhound bus. The experiences of hate he went through and at my young age i put myself in his shoes and I was straight up terrrified because this story was real. :shock:

Peace

I've not heard of this one before.

I'm surprised but maybe it's not well known outside the U.S. It raised quite a stir when it was published and is still frequently read. It's a good read for understanding the extent of legal discrimination during the Jim Crow era. Often assigned reading for high school students who are now pretty far removed from those times.

It's not his only book but it's the one he's known for. As I said above, I knew the Griffin family when I was young and I liked them a lot. If his daughter hadn't told me he wrote the book, I would never have known he was somebody "famous."

rrivers

I always think of a scene in "Gerald's Game" where the woman handcuffed to the bed wakes up and there is someone standing in the corner. I can remember exactly where I was when I read it and it's still creepy all these years later.

unlost dogs

Anyone remember the book that King wrote with an introduction talking about how powerfully you can create a state of fear through literature? There was a segment that addressed the "dear reader" who was reading in bed and asked the reader to imagine a cold hand coming from under the bed and grabbing their ankle.

Do you know, to this day I am acutely uncomfortable going to sleep without at least a sheet over my ankles. Ever since I read that line.

:shock:

small town beck

rrivers wrote:

I always think of a scene in "Gerald's Game" where the woman handcuffed to the bed wakes up and there is someone standing in the corner. I can remember exactly where I was when I read it and it's still creepy all these years later.

Me too.

I've always found it the scariest because that could really happen. I mean the clown coming out of the sewer isn't very apt to happen but letting your husband handcuff you to the bed and he has a heart attack could...creeped me out.

JaneNY

Enkidu wrote:

One of the scariest non fiction books I read was In Cold Blood. I didn't sleep for weeks.

I just read that recently, and I read a few chapters in bed each night before I went to sleep. Fascinating and creepy but it didn't keep me awake.

The worst for me was when I was 12 or so, and read a few choice pages of The Exorcist with my friends. I slept with the overhead light on in my bedroom for at least a week.