The Shining question

I'll go with Pet Sematary in the books and The Shining in the movies.

I agree with Cyl there was a creepiness to Pet Cemetery. It was a place you could imagine, the highway - the dead animals and then the boy... it was haunting. But The Shining took me to an unimaginable world - well, not exactly, as I did imagine it very well as King painted it :). I found The Shining dark and much more frightening than Pet Cemetery.

The shining without a doubt! And the movie is amazing but, the story is kind of different, I preffer the book, it gets stuck in your mind for a long time. And the 2nd part"Dr. Sleep" it's the perfect ending for the whole story, I absolutely love both.

I have not read Pet Sematary, but I've read The Shining. I thought "The Shining" was very literary, and when Wendy heard the same sounds in the hotel, very scary. And the movie, which did not follow the book 100%, was excellent. I saw it twice in Chicago when it first came out.

I found Pet Sematary the scarier of the two. As a parent, two of my worst fears are the death of one of my children or something happening to them to make them... less than normal, I guess you could say. Pet Sematary perfectly evokes both those fears. Plus, it's very well written. Nicely paced, not too wordy (King's biggest flaw, in my opinion) and it doesn't pull its punches when it comes to the end.

As far as movies, no contest: The Shining. I never read Pet Semetary, only halfway watched the movie, & I remember Church,the cat, being my favorite part. I just foundnothing really all that scary about Pet Semetary, & this is coming from a girl who hates horror films.

Pet Sementary was scary until the last chapters, in my opinion it became so unrealistic that It didn't scary me anymore. But the Shining explored the fear and the insanity of a drunk man, it went deep inside the fears of happy normal people you think it would never be capable of killing. So in my opinion The Shining was scarier.

I find Pet Sematary scarier and deeper. There's something about old Indian burial grounds and raising the dead... and the question it raises, "If you could, will you bring a loved one back?"

I loved The Shining as a movie... the book puts me to sleep like a lullaby. hahaha

Neither really scared me, maybe one or two moments, but not enough for me to feel like I couldn't sleep right after I finished them. Guess literature has a harder time to terrify me compared to movies and even then it's rare. Also it made me laugh with the guy in the dog costume and the topiary scenes.

The Shining is fascinating, but Pet Semetary is creepier.

The Shining is scarier by far, whereas Pet Semetary is more a look at death and how to cope with it, (or not cope with it) as it turns out. Both books are well worth the read!

Most definitely Pet Semetary. To this day, any time I hear the name "Gage", I get chills. Loved The Shining but it didn't effect me like Pet Semetary!

No way in hell would I ever read Pet Cemetery, (or cujo) but I read the Shining and it was so good! I want to read Dr. Sleep really bad also!

Never read Pet Sematary so I have no way to compare the two...

Pet Sematary, hands down. The Wendigo, the whole cannibal zombies thing, the scary, unknown things in the forest... the fact little Gage... well, I'll leave it at that. It's all deliciously horrifying.

The Shining was scary too, but it didn't hit me quite like Pet Sematary did.

The Shining. That book and the movie, wow, I will never forget either one! Completely and perfectly intense!

If we are talking about the novels only, then Pet Sematary (especially if you have children, it resonates).

For me it's definitely The Shining. That book terrified me on so many levels. I absolutely loved it though. Still one of my favourite King books. And the sequel was also amazing. Pet Sematary freaked me out too. There were moments when I lay in bed at night reading it and would be too scared to get up to go to the toilet! Or would hear a noise and freak out. Lol. But The Shining was like a long drawn out and painful kind of terror. I found myself skimming ahead so I knew it was safe to continue and would go back and STILL be scared even though I knew vaguely what was coming.

The Shining.
I read this book because I wanted to watch the movie with some friends. I found them SO different, and I far prefer the book. I read and saw "Pet Semetary" as well, and it was creepy, but not as well-done as "The Shining".

Pet Semetary, because you know that somehow someone will survive in 'The Shining.' Pet Semetary is more mysterious. (It's so hard trying not to spell it Cemetary!)

The Shining was okay, but not really scary. Pet Semetery showed that King wasn't really interested in DISTURBING anyone, by choice. The scariest part is the story about the guy who brought back his son, and the son then told things about the neighbors he couldn't know, and he seemed mentally damaged. That makes the reader dread what might happen to the little kid when HE comes back--"If THAT was the event setting up the ending, what's coming?" And the answer was a little kid with a knife.

The Shining because of the idea of an awakening of evil to live and breath again in complete isolation in a snowstorm wilderness. I enjoyed the legendary native flavor of "the ground is sour" in Pet Semetary but the whole concept of The Shining is so much more frightening to me.

Pet Semetary for sure.

Pet Semetary, for sure. Haven't we all whispered the words "I wish (insert loved one's name here) were here right now"? But,do we ever stop to wonder how they would return to us? Of course Mr. King not only asks the questions of our private musings and nightmares, he answers them as well. The movie is almost comedic, but the book. Ahhhhh, the book! When our hero's wife returns to him ... it still haunts me.

I don't think The Shining is that scary. It didn't give me sleepless nights. On the other hand Pet Cemetary has some disturbing ideas floating about in it, and there are a few lines at the end of the book that gave me a genuine shiver.

I haven't read Pet Sematary, but I recently read The Shining, and I honestly didn't find it very scary at all. I found it a little eerie in places, but the only scene which I genuinely found to be worthy of the label "horror" is the scene where Danny crawls into the pipe. I guess different people have different triggers when it comes to being scared.

I read Pet Sematary while my son was 2 years old, and the graphic portrayal of Gage was so frightening that I burnt the book in our woodstove! I have re-read it once over the years, but it is my least favorite SK novel to this day!

They're both horrifying to different degrees. Shining is about seclusion in a creepy haunted site, which make the characters feel hopeless. Pet Semetary is about a man losing pieces of his sanity to bring back his lost child, but in the end he lose everyone close to him. The discussion about death itself was a scary topic, which we have to face regularly in our life.

The Shining to me is much more about psychological turmoil and horror, not to mention how truly dark and twisted a family's relationship can get when they're forced into such close proximity with each other. The Shining is also about suspense and development to the most agonizing degree. Pet Sematary, on the other hand, I do find more immediately frightening, whether it's the corpse of Victor Pascow warning Louis Creed about the Micmac burial ground, the death and resurrection of Gage (dead children give me the serious willies), or even the cat coming back to life. I always find myself so frustrated that Louis never learns the true lesson of letting the dead stay dead -- he has to fool around with sorcery that was never meant for him. King is channeling H.P. Lovecraft in a huge way with this particular novel, and it does give me a nasty, crawling feeling each time I read. Not as much as It, mind you -- there are some scenes in that tome that are truly horrifying, and maybe that's the reason the good adaptation hasn't been made.

I'd say Pet Semetary was scarier then The Shining for the books.

shining...... danny and redrum

Pet Sematary... but only because your loved ones coming back from the dead all evil and hoimicidal is only marginally creepier than your loved ones turning evil and homicidal because they were manipulated by ghosts.

The Shining of course! Imagine yourself being in a hotel that size and your spouse going psycho.

The Shining. No contest.

I couldn't pick up Pet Cemetery for a long while. Really, really disturbing. King does it well. The Shining would be my favorite of the two. But there are so very different from one another it's hard to compare.

The Shining far and away. I thought Pet Sematary was one of his weaker books and The Shining one of his best. Something about a haunted house bothers me to the core.

Pet Semetary for me, I think mainly because I had a dog die whilst I was reading it. It became a bit too colse to home and made it that bit creepier for me.

The Shining was the scarier of the 2, but The Stand gave me nightmares

that's a difficult choise...but I think I'll go with Pet cemetery...it's one of the most disturbing book I've read, along with The lord of the flies and 1984. I'm not saying it stands equally with those two, but it disturbes me the same.

The Shindig

Tough call,
There is more mystery to The Shining. With Pet Semetary you could forecast what was going to happen, but King's ending to that book is much better. I give the edge to Shining but not by very much.

The Shining for sure! When Danny was stuck in the tunnel under the snow and something was coming over to him, then reached its hand out of the tunnel when he barely escaped it?? Or the woman in the bathtub in room 237?? For me, there's no question about it - Shining will always trump Pet Semetary :)

Pet Cemetery, also would have to say that IT is scarier, at least for me. Clowns, spider things, gives me the creeps just think about it! Or Salem's Lot!

the shining; but dr sleep was not a worthy sequel

I agree as a book Shining is tremendously scary, although I do not think that Pet Semetary was that weak a book as some have suggested. As a movie, Pet Semetary scores more than Shining. Jack Nicholson was great...but the movie coming from a director of that standing was a letdown after the book...especially Halloran and Danny's mom were caricatures in the movie.

I thought Pet Semetary (movie) was terrible but the book was good. The Shining (book) was a lot more scarier than the movie but that's only because my imagination came up with scarier images. The movie was still good though. And I like that the movie is different than the book. But I even enjoyed the tv miniseries as well.

I think having something very normal like a pet scare you, I think Pet Semetary is scarier.

I prefer pet semetary..

Pet cemetary

Pet Sematary for me. Chilling from the very start.