Which books really scare you?

[Michelle]

Now or when you were younger.. are there any books that have really scared you.. to the extent of not wanting to switch the light off, or lying there thinking about it?

For me, the only 2 were The Amityville Horror and The Shining.

[Stuart]

I guess the only book that scared me that much was Stephen King's IT. I read that when I was quite young and it got to me in a way that few books have since. I suppose it was because it was about kids my age.

[Andibody]

The Silence of the Lambs did it for me. Not much for the scary books, films etc. :scared:

[Debbie]

Anything by Edgar Allen Poe does it for me!

Debbie

[DaveG]

Funny that, i've never yet found a book to scare me, enthral yes, but never scare, i used to have as bedtime reading the Pan series of short horror shories as a junior school kid :)

[Kell]

I feel I'm missing something here. I don't think I remember ever being scared by something I read in a book. And here's me a big horror fan too. I get engaged in the plot & involved with the characters - i even worry about what's going to happen to them, but I've never been frightened.

Same with films.

There must be something wrong with me - I think it's down to watching Hammer Horror films at an early age & having it drummed into me that it's not real - it's only ketpchup, not blood - & I think I must have applied the same rationale to books. :(

[Mamacita]

The one book I read that scared the snot out of me was Stephen King's "Thinner". He wrote it under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman (I think that was the name.)

It creeped me out so bad that I've never picked up another of his books except his non-fiction "On Writing". Then I tried my hand at writing some not so warm and fuzzy stuff. He has an exercise in the back of the book where he sets up a premise and asks the reader to finish it.

I actually enjoyed letting my darker side out to play for a bit. :mrgreen:

[Angel]

For me it was always James Herbert - especially The Fog, and (I forget it's title) the one about spiders! Having an inborne absolute fear of these nasty creatures, it scared the c**p out of me, I could never read that one again :catsick:

[lovesreading06]

Not that there were scary of anything but Harry Potters gave me nightmares.

[Karen]

I don't think I've ever been scared by a book or at least I can't remember ever having been scared by something that I've read. I would love to read a book that had the power to scare me though.

[Janet]

I've never read a scary book - I don't do horror.

Sometimes talk of blood makes me queasy - or even feel faint so I have to read it slowly (imagination is a powerful thing!) but it doesn't actually scare me.

[Mia]

The Shining is the only book I've read that made me nervous about turning out the light. :hide:

[happyanddandy]

'Cujo' by Stephen King and 'Misery' both had me wide awake for a long time after reading them :smile2:

[JudyB]

Most recently Eleven Terrible Months left me sleeping with the light on:lol:

[Echo]

There have been two, that I can remember:

Monster by Jonathan Kellerman...scary and completely insane people.
Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist...that Shining Man scares the hell out of me, and I still read it every Halloween!

[fireball]

Echo wrote:Monster by Jonathan Kellerman...scary and completely insane people. Good call there Echo.;)

Well in all honesty I HAVE to say that the book that sacred me shihttp://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/forum/images/smilies/censored.gif never mind witless, thoroughly, was of all people A Canadian.!

It was his FIRST published work and it was and STILL is.. A STONKER.!
and it's this...
:

http://www.specialx.net/gallery/album01

A thriller and and half, a grand piece of Canadian history thrown in for good measure, and rollicking damn brillo read...Then Michael Slade IS your man.

Someone is lobing the heads of people and sticking them on Canadian's icon, yes you guessed it...Totem Poles, for ALL to see, and doesn't look like stoping soon.

Can Robert DeClercq and his team stop this horror before it strikes again?.....YOU WONT BELIEVE THE ENDING, It REALLY W I L L SCARE YOU SHIhttp://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/forum/images/smilies/censored.gifless .

ps
Sorry the cover's not in great shape it's my own copy which I photo copied on my printer and put onto image shack. http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/forum/images/smilies/redface.gif

[Laramie]

I don't really get scared, just involved and worried about the characters, but there are 2 (well, a book and a trilogy) that scared me.

My Swordhand Is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick is the first.
I was reading it in the bath and I literally could not put it down (that doesn't happen to me often!) and I was sat in the cold water til about 11 o'clock :lol: And then when I was getting out, I was actually sorta scared to open the door :lol:

The other is Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorson, the Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix, which I've read loads of times and still creeps me out. And it's weird; whenever I read it, if I go to sleep before I've finished it I see this dark shape looming over me when I close my eyes :s freepy. Then it goes away as soon as I've finished the book.

[The Green Fairy]

A few (well, very many, actually) years ago I read a few Dennis Wheatley books including 'The Devil Rides Out' and 'The Haunting of Toby Jugg' and I recall being too terrified to move from my chair!

[Louiseog]

This (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silver-Crown-Robert-C-OBrien/dp/1903015081/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200236985&sr=8-1), this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Marianne-Dreams-Faber-Childrens-Classics/dp/0571202128/ref=pd_sim_b?ie=UTF8&qid=1200236985&sr=8-1) and this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Treatment-Mo-Hayder/dp/0553816993/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200237096&sr=1-2).
Two are from childhood and still haunt me, the third just pushed all my fear buttons!

[lovesreading06]

Most recently Eleven Terrible Months left me sleeping with the light on:lol:

Is that really scary.

[Michelle]

Laura, it's not scary in the traditional way, it's just rather creepy because it's realistic, and you feel it could happen to anyone. It seems to get to you without you realising.. until you go to turn out the light, or walk into the bathroom!

I like this thread, I'm adding to my wishlist! :)

[JudyB]

Laura, it's not scary in the traditional way, it's just rather creepy


I agree Michelle - you're fine reading it but then remember things like the man on all fours on the ceiling and then you're spooked. Plus something fell on its own in my daughter's room while reading it and that spooked me a bit.

[Nici76]

it's just rather creepy because it's realistic, and you feel it could happen to anyone.

Plus something fell on its own in my daughter's room while reading it and that spooked me a bit.

I sooooo have to read this book!

[Renniemist]

A few (well, very many, actually) years ago I read a few Dennis Wheatley books including 'The Devil Rides Out' and 'The Haunting of Toby Jugg' and I recall being too terrified to move from my chair!


I remember reading those. Very scary!

'The Shining' is another that scared me.:hide:

[fireball]

judy, pray, what was Spiderman doing in on the ceiling in the first place anyway.!!?

Hate bl**dy spiders me. http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/steelclaw32/theboss.gif

[JudyB]

Very funny Fireball :lol:

[fireball]

Well, it's my birthday to-day and I'm being oddly frivolous.!http://www.bookclubforum.co.uk/forum/images/smilies/eek2.gif

I'm fifty something and I should be :weeping: or throwing a :hissyfit:
instead am enjoying a nice cup of coffee, with a ritz craker as a chaser, talk about living life in the fast lane.! :lol::lol:

[Icecream]

Fireball is that pic really necessary?:)

I have ben scared by a few books, but I am not sure I can remember the titles, apart form one or two Harry potter books the first time I read them. I am just far too sensitive, as you can see.

[fireball]

AHHHH, but Icecream, it GOT your attention...didn't it, I just could have said Michale Slade's Headhunter, and none would have been the wiser, whereas showing the FIRST British paperback edition (Star Paperback) version was a slightly watered down version of the original one, which really WAS EEEEWWWW!

[Icecream]

Yeah but you'll give me nightmares posting things like that:cry2:

[Michelle]

I agree - fireball, can you please just post a link, so that people can take a look if they wish. Thanks.

[fireball]

I tell you what, if I posted my ugly mush you'd spew right all over your comp. screen 'cause I've a puss that REALLY would give you nightmares, apart from giving a statue a bad headache and ol' nick the horrors. :lol: And then some.

So chin up :friends0: take your pet goldfish for a walk or your pet mongoose for a spin. ;)

[Michelle]

I've changed it to a link, fireball - if it's going to give someone nightmares, it's not really appropriate, is it?

[Icecream]

Sorry Fireball. I guess a person so sensitive as me with my imagination should not be let out in public!:)

[fireball]

Icecream, hey no harm no foul, it was never my intention to give any one the horrors, either you are anyone.
So is it ok now then.? I've given and addy to another place I'm a member off and Eric (the boss) kindly put the picture there for me, along with the other pics of the original version of Headhunter.
s.

[Michelle]

That's fine, thanks.

[kateleopald]

Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. True story from Sierra Leone. Horrific for illustrating just what humans are capable of doing to eachother (with the added twist that these are children committing attrocities).

[FishAndChips]

Oh I saw that in the shops when it came out and meant to get it. I might add it to the wish list.

[amthysteyes2]

Cinderella and other assorted fairy tales.

[NiceguyEddie]

Anything by Danielle Steele. :lol:

[michael]

I actually stopped reading one of his (on-line) because I knew (thought I knew?) what was going to happen next. Google him to be scared...

[kitty_kitty]

A few (well, very many, actually) years ago I read a few Dennis Wheatley books including 'The Devil Rides Out' and 'The Haunting of Toby Jugg' and I recall being too terrified to move from my chair!

I love his books!!!

[happyanddandy]

Anything by Danielle Steele. :lol:


Ha ha - but... have you really read any? :mrgreen:

[fireball]

What is it about women.!? Odd question one might ask...on the otherhand one when it comes to writing books....STAND WAAAAY back.!

When on one of my sojourns to London back in the blo**y wild and mad eighties, made the "wild" sixties look like an afternoon tea with you aged great aunt;! well, not being of the wild kind, well at least not in public anyway,! one thing kept me (un)steady was a play based...
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/4442/womaninblack1tq4.jpg

http://www.thewomaninblack.com/

on a book which was also made into a TV film from ITV, and shown on a Christmas Eve.(how appropriate eh.?) With Adrian Rawlins, Bernard Hepton, David Daker, Pauline Moran, David Ryall (year:1988.)
:
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/3883/thewomaninblackhd9.png


The book itself....Is a very short read, about 160 pages.
:
http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/2955/thewomaninblackbookon2.jpg



Well we ALL hate draughts don't we?, I know I certainly DO, and yet....(damn it I somtimes feel like a moth), why am I attracted to the flame?....IT BURNS.

Women as a rule, are, so were told, are a stabilising affect, whether on blokes are just in times of whatever ails, well Thatcher proved THAT hoary old tale a fallacy..didn't she?; so does THAT woman.

It begins simple enough...Eel Marsh house stands alone, surveying the windswept salt marshes beyond Nine Lives Causeway. Once, Mrs Alice Drablow lived here as a recluse. Now, Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor with a London firm, is summoned to attend her funeral, unaware of the tragic and terrible secrets which lie behind the house's shuttered windows.
It is not until he glimpses a young woman with a wasted face, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a sense of profound unease begins to creep over him and take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk about the woman in black or what happens whenever she is seen.

And Kipps has to stay on in the lonely house, sorting out Mrs. Drablow's papers, when the mist begins to enshroud both it and its surrounding graveyard and the high tide cuts it off from the world beyond. An that's only the start of things...TO COME
The book didn't as such (Which books really scare you?) as I told which book did THAT. This book chilled me to my marrow that's all.

AND IT WILL, YOU ..

The Woman in Black is...about Vengeance nasty things those, vengeance. As Mz. Hill says The point about The Woman In Black is that revenge can never be good, can never succeed ultimately, will never pay. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay.’ Justice is one thing, revenge is very different. I also believe that after experiencing great distress or grief, a terrible life-experience, a person must eventually – though it may take a long time – leave it to rest and move on. The ghost in THE WOMAN IN BLACK goes on and on wreaking revenge on the innocent for what has happened to her, even after death. She has never let go, can never move on. As she could not in life, so she cannot after life.



In plain English that means....SHE STILL THERE...WAITING FOR....
Y O U.

[Michelle]

Although I enjoyed The Woman In Black, I didn't find it particularly scary.

[Laramie]

The Ragwitch by Garth Nix totally freaked me out, can't remember if I was actually scared but it was VERY creepy.

This is more being disgusted, but most of the Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Dahl (and the others) make me go EEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

[kitty_kitty]

Although I enjoyed The Woman In Black, I didn't find it particularly scary.

Neither did I, I did not even find it chilling

[wiccibat]

I just read my son's copy of 'I am legend' while a great book, don't read it on your own at night, then try to get the cat back in from outside. I should've left her to the vampires!

[Oblomov]

If we accept that a book does not have to be that good in order to scare one, then The Amityville Horror takes the top spot for me. I do not rate it highly in terms of quality, but it is easy to imagine oneself going through the experiences of the family in the book. Jodie the Pig still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

[Spooncat]

If we accept that a book does not have to be that good in order to scare one, then The Amityville Horror takes the top spot for me. I do not rate it highly in terms of quality, but it is easy to imagine oneself going through the experiences of the family in the book. Jodie the Pig still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Got to agree with that one - I was so scared that I wouldn't even have the book on my bookcase in my bedroom at night! ( I was 19 at the time!) :mrgreen:

[Oblomov]

Got to agree with that one - I was so scared that I wouldn't even have the book on my bookcase in my bedroom at night! ( I was 19 at the time!) :mrgreen: Remember the sequence towards the end where the invisible pig's hoofed feet can be felt scuttling across the bed? Brrrr!

[Spooncat]

Remember the sequence towards the end where the invisible pig's hoofed feet can be felt scuttling across the bed? Brrrr!


Eek yes - and the beedy red eyes at the window! :lurker:

[kitty_kitty]

If we accept that a book does not have to be that good in order to scare one, then The Amityville Horror takes the top spot for me. I do not rate it highly in terms of quality, but it is easy to imagine oneself going through the experiences of the family in the book. Jodie the Pig still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I found Jodie the Pig disturbing and nothing really affects me

[Oblomov]

Eek yes - and the beedy red eyes at the window! :lurker: That sequence was far more effective in the book than in the film. In the book, it is the dad, standing in the garden near the car, that sees the apparition of the pig behind his daughter at the upstairs bedroom window. In the movie, it is the mother, as she goes to close the bedroom window from the inside.

[Kylie]

In the book, it is the dad, standing in the garden near the car, that sees the apparition of the pig behind his daughter at the upstairs bedroom window.

He can see a pig through an upstairs window when he's downstairs? It must either be a very large pig or it can fly! :10_confused: Either way, sounds scary :eek2:

[Oblomov]

He can see a pig through an upstairs window when he's downstairs? It must either be a very large pig! I cannot recall the exact sequence of events, but on the night in question, the dad would have gone downstairs to the car parked in the drive from where he can see his little daughter's bedroom window upstairs. As he looks up, he sees his daughter quietly standing at the window staring at him but behind her, he sees the apparition of a huge pig also staring at him.