Monday, October 31, 2011

Oh, the Horror

The movie poster.

To celebrate Halloween, what is the scariest book you have ever read?

I'll nominate GHOST STORY by Peter Straub and THE OTHER, Tom Tryon
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37 comments:

Loren Eaton said...

I don't know if he would count as the scariest, but I've always enjoyed the short stories of M.R. James. He essentially created the English ghost story, and his output has aged rather well.

8:58 AM
Anonymous said...

For me it's a no brainer and it isn't fiction: HELTER SKELTER by Vincent Bugliosi. I can still remember reading it late at night while Jackie slept and getting totally freaked out by Charlie & the family's doings in Death Valley.

Jeff M.

8:59 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

HELTER SKELTER is THE most scary book ever.
I read that collection fifteen years ago in England when I came across a reissue there. Time to read them again.

9:06 AM
Charles Gramlich said...

I have two. Ghost story is probably number one, but at times it is closely pressed by "The Haunting of HIll House" by Shirley Jackson

9:06 AM
Scott Parker said...

Salem's Lot by Stephen King. It was my first experience with the unique way the word "unspeakable" can be much more gruesome than actually describing what's going on.

9:14 AM
Dana King said...

THE EXORCIST. First I was up late because I couldn't put it down. Then I was up even later because I was afraid to go to sleep.

9:24 AM
Margot Kinberg said...

Patti - Oh, there've been a few, but some of your other commenters have already mentioned them: The Exorcist is one, for sure. So is Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby.

9:29 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Jackson's is certainly the most subtle, classy ghost story--except for possibly TURN OF THE SCREW.
Oh, I remember Salem's Lot very well. I think CUJO scared me even more. Of course, I am afraid of dogs.
I never read THE EXORCIST but the movie would rank as the most frightening i have seen.

9:31 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Ira Levin wrote several of my favorites. A Kiss Before Dying, The Boys from Brazil, The Stepford Wives and the best, Rosemary's Baby.

9:40 AM
le0pard13 said...

I second Scott Parker. Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT remains the only novel that ever gave me a nightmare while reading it.

9:44 AM
Anonymous said...

Yes, A KISS BEFORE DYING was great and he was only 24 when he wrote it. It won (deservedly) the Edgar as Best First Novel and has one of the great shock twists this side of Agatha Christie. Also, the twist comes halfway through the book, not at the end.

Jeff M.

9:45 AM
Bill Crider said...

I'll be the third vote for 'SALEM'S LOT. Great stuff.

10:54 AM
Erik Donald France said...

GHOST STORY and THE OTHER are definitely scary as hell ~

The scariest books I *never* read: a toss up between Sarah Palin's memoirs and Rick Perry's thoughts on life -- evil!

Happy Hallowe'en~~!

11:01 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

I even remember the TV movie of Salem's Lot. David Soul? Have to go look for it.
Those books, Erik, do qualify as horror for sure. As do the Republican plans for the budget.

11:12 AM
Anonymous said...

Yes, it was David Soul. It was OK but nowhere near the book.

I'd add one more: Dan Simmons, SUMMER OF NIGHT.

Jeff M.

11:35 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Now that one is new to me.

11:42 AM
Prashant C. Trikannad said...

THE DEEP by Peter Benchley and THE AMITYVILLE HORROR: A TRUE STORY by Jay Anson. In recent times, HARRY POTTER Books 2 & 3. Yes, those too!

12:29 PM
Yvette said...

I don't read, never have read horror or really scary stuff. What can I say? I'm chicken.

But I'd say that THE BONE COLLECTOR by Jeffrey Deaver and THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES by Preston and Child, were as scary as I go, reading wise. Those two had some terrifying moments.Both these books gave me the creeps.

Also, I'd add my recent first time read of DRACULA by Bram Stoker.

12:39 PM
Sean Patrick Reardon said...

"Salem's Lot" for me too, although "IT" would have been a contender if it came out around the time SL did.

"Burnt Offerings" might have been up there, but I saw the movie first, before reading it. that limo driver scared the...out of me!

12:54 PM
MP said...

Hate to be unoriginal and just add my vote, but it's "Ghost Story" and "'Salem's Lot" for me. Just to throw in a great one that nobody has mentioned, "All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By" by John Farris. And if "Ghost Story" is the only thing you've read by Straub, try "Julia", "If You Could See Me Now", and "Floating Dragon".

1:26 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

I don't read too much horror so GHOST STORY is my only Straub book. Have to branch out.

1:44 PM
Richard R. said...

I don't read a lot of this type, but HARVEST HOME did the trick for me. I started a Stephen King book, don't know which, and put it down after about 30 pages as it gave me the willies. Not any of the big names, and not one made into a film, I don't think. I haven't read most of the others listed here, maybe I should.

2:42 PM
Gerard said...

I think IT was pretty scary when I read it as a kid.

The only recent title I can think of is a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, THE CORN MAIDEN. I could not read about some teen girls kidnapping a retarded teen girl. That story in the McBain edited TRANSGRESSIONS.

3:59 PM
George said...

I'm going to go Old School and say some of the scariest fiction I've ever read (stuff that stays with you for weeks--maybe forever) can be found in Library of America collections of the work of Poe and Lovecraft.

4:30 PM
Dave Zeltserman said...

I don't think I've ever read a horror novel as unnerving as say "Hell of a Woman" or "Savage Night" by Jim Thompson or "Double Indemnity" by James M. Cain (the ending of that is about as creepy as it gets). That said, "The Lottery" (short story) by Shirley Jackson is very creepy, and "The Ruins" by Scott Smith is very painful. There was a time when I read a lot of horror--went through all HP Lovecraft and Poe, and am fond very fond of Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" and Anne Rice's earlier books, but the best horror novel I've read is still Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein--although while very moving, not necessarily scary.

7:10 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

When I read THE LOTTERY in school, I think I was perhaps more shocked than I ever have been since. It's there in a second, the more horrible thing imaginable and presented in such a matter of fact way.
CARETAKER should be up here too, Dave. Truly equal to these.
I AM LEGEND knocked my socks off a few years ago when I finally read it. Just such a desperate tale.

7:20 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

I have read very little Lovecraft and only a few stories and Marie Roget and Rue Morgue from Poe. Still waiting for Todd to show up and flood us with stories we haven't named.

7:21 PM
Anonymous said...

Dave Z - I agree on A HELL OF A WOMAN. What an ending!

I read a lot of Lovecraft in the early and mid-1970's and yes, it was pretty unsettling, especially late at night.

Jeff M.

8:55 PM
Dave Zeltserman said...

Jeff M--Savage Night has an even more unnerving ending.

Patti, thanks about Caretaker, but it's not really scary, is it? Maybe a little creepy.

--Dave

10:23 PM
Cap'n Bob said...

I don't read horror but the book that jolted me at it's climax was Nightmare Alley.

10:45 PM
David Cranmer said...

I love horror books but none have ever scared or unnerved me. Some great picks from the above mentioned though.

6:37 AM
Deb said...

I don't read a lot of really scary stuff, but I remember having to sleep with the lights on for a few days after finishing THE EXORCIST back in my teen years.

7:06 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Wow, David. I can't imagine not being scared. Even at a movie?
I found it scary, Dave. The idea of keeping the hounds of hell at bay your entire life.
I had to sleep with the lights on after watching Twilight Zone. Funny how what scares us if at all differs so much.

7:31 AM
Prashant C. Trikannad said...

I think I've said this before: put off the sound and no horror movie can scare you with the possible exception of THE EXORCIST. Horror books can scare you to the extent you let your imagination run crazy.

8:36 AM
Todd Mason said...

Too late and too busy for a flood, so I'll restrict myself for now to:

When I first read CONJURE WIFE by Fritz Leiber, the pacing up to the key event (not quite a climax, though most lesser writers might've made it so) is so breakneck that I read the result, at the end of its chapter, without fully processing it. A couple of pages later, a had a visceral WHAT!?! reaction.

The two other novels that come to mind that had something of that effect were both slightly "spoiled" by their fine (and slightly variant) film versions, Jackson's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and Robert Bloch's suspense novel PSYCHO. (CONJURE WIFE's best film version, NIGHT OF THE EAGLE/BURN, WITCH, BURN, isn't as powerful, particularly not in portraying the key event, but isn't too shabby, either...script by Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont and George Baxt from the Leiber novel.)

Short fiction with the strongest similar result: "Running Wolf" by Algernon Blackwood, particularly a key event in the middle of the story. Runner up there is another suspense story by Bloch, "Final Performance."

9:59 AM
Randy Johnson said...

I suppose when one reads it matters. Salem's Lot comes to mind. The Other was an amazing book. I'm not sure it really scared me.

Frankenstein and Dracula were read at a comparatively young age. Likely wouldn't bother me now.

4:32 PM
John said...

Several days late with this... I always say AN ANCIENT EVIL by Paul Doherty is the most frightening book I've read in a long time. I read it two or three years ago and as a middle-aged man who is fairly jaded about "spooky scary stuff" I was shocked that this book gave me horrible nightmares. My visceral and subconscious rections had a lot to do with what is done to children in the book.

12:59 PM

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