Books that made you afraid

BlackMoth

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I don't know if I was exactly scared - more unsettled perhaps - but I adore Laura Purcell's "The Silent Companions". It's probably more Gothic than horror, but it really stuck with me.
 
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redpbass

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Four times that I remember.

First: From a collection of scary stories my older sister brought home. I must have been about eight years old. A horrible creatures runs up and jumps on a man's back, digging its claws/hands into him, and it can't be removed. I don't remember much other than that, but the sheer randomness of the event horrified me, and I'm sure I had nightmares about it for weeks after I read it.

Second: This was one of those collections of scary stories in a thin little volume, marketed at middle schoolers. I was fine with most of the stories, but there was one in particular that completely freaked me out. It was about a guy with roaches in his apartment, so he bought a gecko, which he let loose so it could eat them. It got so big eating roaches, it ended up eating him. As far as his landlord and the police were concerned, he had just vanished.

Third: This was, again, another collection of stories, one of those 'true' strange story collections, written in a nonfiction format. Spontaneous Human Combustion...I'll leave it at that. Brrr

Fourth: Believe it or not, Jurassic Park. No, not the scenes where characters are running for their lives or any of that...just the way the dinosaurs behaved. In particular that early scene where the little girl is attacked by a procomsognathus on a beach was terrifying for me for the fact that such a small thing could be so freaking dangerous, and the way in which it was dangerous. Jurassic Park 3 (I think) included a scene clearly inspired by that, but it didn't quite catch the terror of it for me. The other early scene with the baby was pretty bad too.

I've read plenty of horror, tons of Stephen King, but none of them really scare me. Some may creep me out a bit if I set the stage for it (strategic lights off, wait until it's dark outside, etc), but for the most part I find them interesting, like an adventure book. What gets to me seems to be an otherwise innocent person being in the wrong place at the wrong time abruptly becoming the target of something they know nothing about for reasons they don't know and can't find out. Yeah, out of everything I've read, these four are what got to me.
 
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Busy_Sample

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I've never been able to read, Stephen King's 'It.' Just seeing the scary clown on the cover creeps me out and thinking its lurking in the sewer. Errr I'll pass. I read Pet Semetary and that was enough. That man can write some scariness when he wants.

Speaking of him though, does it seem to anyone else like he just kinda stopped being a good writer when he got in his accident? I think I read all of his books except It before his accident, but since then, they just don't feel, well, good anymore.
 

TJPriceWrites

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"No One Gets Out Alive," by Adam L.G. Nevill.

I'm like you, Mark, if you're still reading this thread. "Poltergeist" scared the bejesus out of me as a kid, and "Blair Witch" is still one of the most frightening movies I've ever seen. Most books are chilling, even thrilling, but I've yet to find one that genuinely disturbed me like Nevill's.

In addition, Ania Ahlborn's work is fast-paced, and she has an adroit command of language that I found to be uniquely frightening. "Seed" by her comes to mind, as well as "The Devil Crept In."
 
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MR. MACABRE

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If any BOOK ever scared me, it was probably the EXORCIST. I read it not long after the movie came out, which I was not allowed to see because I wasn't old enough(14) and we were catholic. But I'm not catholic anymore(I'm an atheist) and after seeing it a few years later, I liked the book better. Why is that almost always the truth, most film versions of horror stories don't live up to our expectations? Can anyone think of a book that was not as good as the movie version of it. Better yet, what horror novel or short-story would you love to see made into a movie?
 

Angela

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I remember reading Stephen King's The Shining in the bathtub, and being so frightened that I had to get out, get dried off in a hurry and go to a part of the house where other people were. I think it was the scene where Danny thinks the topiary is moving.
My husband and I love King, and we had The Shining miniseries that King remade. My youngest daughter came in and saw the scene where the green lady was in the tub, and for a couple of months afterward, she would not go to the bathroom by herself. Once my oldest daughter went with her, waited until she was in the middle of peeing and screamed, "The green lady!" and ran out of the bathroom. My poor child tried to run out of the bathroom with her pants around her ankles. We did finally get her over that, and now she's a huge horror fan herself. However, the kids issued payback. One day they DEMOLISHED that DVD. šŸ˜‚
 
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TCMaynard

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I was introduced to movies and tv shows before I really got into books. I was a kid when Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark were hitting their stride.
I think the first book that truly unnerved me was Pet Sematary, and that was an adult! I had watched the movie as a kid, which gave me nightmares, of course. But the book was a good read even afterwards. That damn scene...with-you-know-who in the walls...
 

Ink-Soul

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I haven't read many horror stories (I'm guilty of not having read any Stephen King other than the first volume of The Dark Tower, which isn't horror), but I'm trying to change that. Until today, I can't say a book has scared me. Some books, like the great We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, were unsettling, though I can't say they scared me.
 

Janine R

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Silence of the Lambs
I couldn't sleep after reading it and wanted to hide in the closet.
 

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I was attacked by a dog when I was three; had to have the back of my head pretty well stitched up. I'm not afraid of dogs or anything, and I thought I'd pretty much completely gotten over it.

Then I read Cujo by Stephen King when I was...ten? Maybe eleven? And I had nightmares for the next five or six years. It wasn't just 'scary dog' - in fact, I'd watched the MOVIE Cujo and had no trouble at all. It was, I think, the sections from the dog's perspective as he went mad from the disease that made it more horrifying and slipped past the fact that I'd otherwise dealt with the attack pretty well.

Movies are great for scary visuals. But the narration of a book can make things VISCERAL in a way that movies don't usually match.
 

mschenk2016

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Never been scared by a book. I'm a big horror fan so maybe I'm desensitized. I love H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, but those are more creepy, not really scary.
 

dickson

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Like many others posting in this thread, I react differently to print than to films; the reaction to print being less visceral.

At age twelve, however, I read The Colour out of Space for the first time, and the ending gave me a jolt, when the otherworldly thing that had poisoned the landscape attempts to leave Earth, but a small part of it falls back. Lovecraft did a good job suggesting, without coming right out with it, that the evil which left behind the blasted heath would never stop if it did not return to space. I suppose it was being blindsided at the very end with the idea that the entire world was at risk that did it for me.
 
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williemeikle

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It tends to be ghost stories that get me, and the main one that had me getting up to put on the lights was Naomi's Room by Jonathan Aycliffe. It's bloody terrifying.
 

Madzianta

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None, but after reading books with gore scenes I get headaches.