What Is One Of The Scariest Books You've Ever Read? (11/1/20)

[Marc]

In honor of Halloween, pandemics, general political anxiety, etc... What are some of the books that have scared you the most? (No need to limit yourself to the 21st century. Feel free to mention short stories, as well.)

[Bretnie]

Heh, our Moderator pick this month, Fever Dream!

And No Country for Old Men.

I read very little horror, so people probably have much scarier books!

[Robert]

Here’s some:

Roald Dahl’s adult short stories can be genuinely scary, especially Pig and The Ratcatcher.

Guy de Maupassant’s Le Horla is uneasy reading

Gerald Durrell has a horror story in the collection The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium which is guaranteed to make you change the way you look at mirrors.

When I read the fairytale Bluebird, I was scared as well.

Then there’s bits and bobs from novels: the meat farming scene from Jonathan Coe’s what a Carve Up! , the conclusion of Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings, the night scenes in Murakami’s Killing Commendatore, the hotel conference in Roald Dahl’s The Witches. The discovery of the coat in Sarah Waters Fingersmith and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca has a atmosphere of creepiness .

[Xan]

I was an adolescent when I read Hodgson's The House on the Borderland. That did a number on me.

Not sure I remember the effect Campbell's Who Goes There? had on me, but John Carpenter's movie version -- The Thing -- gave me the creepy crawlers, all that happening in the Antarctic. Who you gonna call for assistance? The only thing missing was a knock on the door. In the Antarctic????

[LindaJ^]

I think the scariest book I've ever read, although not in the traditional sense, was It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis.

[Whitney]

The story that did the most to cave in my head, due to content and the age at which I first read it, is I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison.

[Whitney]

LindaJ^ wrote: "I think the scariest book I've ever read, although not in the traditional sense, was It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis."

In retrospect, I should have been more terrified by 1984. I thought it was a little over the top with its depiction of people who could fervently believe contradictory things just because authority told them to. Ah, to be young and naive again.

[Jenny]

The House of Leaves. That book did my head in.