You know you've read them. Books that either scarred you for life when you read them as a child, or books that should have, but you don't realize it until much later.
Fresh Blood. I read it when I was 9. Single goriest book I have ever read.
Between children eaten by giant snakes, decapitations, electrocutions, machine guns, cossacks, napalm (that even killed a kitten!), piranhas, and priest yanking out people's body parts with a giant cross, it's a wonder I'm as well adjusted as I am.
A quote from the part with the priest:
"He jumped into the water, realized his lungs were gone, and died."
And get this. It was the sequel to my favorite children's book.
So, what are your freak-out stories?
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50,177 / 50,000
Nov 12, 2008 - 19 57
I read the Hangmans Curse, and that was just creepy. It was also amazing though because the main charecters were high schoolers who worked for the FBI along with thier parents. The boy had this one awesome scene where a bully from the school they tranferred to is giving him and his sister a hard time and he does this karate move to get the bully's hand up behind his back then leans down and tells him "Please don't move. If you move your arm will break and that would be bad." or something along those lines. But the freaky part was the spiders being everywhere, and super deadly.
And another one that was about spiders but i don't remeber anything about that but the small children dying. I'm not even sure how I found it.
And one that had leeches. Again the only thing I remember about it is the leeches but it was scary.And there was lots of death.
51,470 / 50,000
Nov 12, 2008 - 21 11
I read In Cold Blood in fifth or sixth grade. I think I had to take a note from my parents to the library to check it out. Totally freaked me out - the idea that people could come into your home and kill you and your family. Ugh. I bet I have nightmares tonight just thinking about it again.
50,476 / 50,000
Nov 12, 2008 - 21 53
So, I haven't read the book but the cartoon version of Watership Down completely traumatized me as a child. In fact, I haven't been able to bring myself to read the book because of this.
50,515 / 50,000
Nov 13, 2008 - 00 44
The Dr. Seuss books. Those ugly illustrations freaked me out then (and still freak me out now!), and I think the doggerel contributed to my continuing hatred of rhyming poetry. And the animated TV specials based on the books? Pure EVIL. ::shudders:: Not even a voice-over by Boris Karloff as the narrator can redeem the Grinch for me.
----------54,202 / 50,000
Nov 13, 2008 - 02 25
Hah. It. But I think it was mostly because... hmm. It was published in two parts here. I was given the first part as a present for my birthday... maybe fifth grade? It's generally not the kind of book I'd have either bought or picked up from the library at the time. Then again, they didn't HAVE the second part at the library, so I didn't get to read the ending until... a year and a half later when I went to visit with a friend who had it.
I don't think it was so much the book itself as the looooooong time between knowing the setup and reading the resolution.
... I probably should get around to finishing In Cold Blood. I tried to read it... back around sixth, seventh grade? And for all my mother's recommendations (and she usually knows what she's talking about when she recommends me a book), I got bored and stopped reading partway through. I just recall that there wasn't enough to keep me going back to opening the book again when I got interrupted. >.> Might have been the translation's fault too, though, I've discovered some translations stink. >.>
----------We all are. Free. To do. Whatever. We will.
7,252 / 50,000
Nov 13, 2008 - 05 32
Stephen King's It had the most scary opening I know, Clowns are evil!!
A German series of not quite novels (more like Pulp-Magazins) called Damona King had a story called The Shark-man, the idea of a human with a Sharks-head growing on one of his shoulders actually scared me. :-)
And then there the famous story The Black Spider, by Gotthelf (might be Germany only) that scared me as a child, don't remember the specifics of that though, I was really young when I read it.
And most of what I read from Poe's work in my youth gave me a chill, I think it's this ever present atmosphere of doom and lurking madness that got to me then.
A quite recent read that actually managed to shock me was Kingsbury's entry to the Man-Kzin wars series of novels.
50,596 / 50,000
Nov 13, 2008 - 08 35
Stephen King's "Nightmares and Dreamscapes". I used to freak out about 'Suffer the Little Children' where the teacher would take each student and brutally kill them and was scared to death to go to school for weeks, especially since our teacher was a nun at the time.
I remember begging my parents to get that book at a book fair. There were others, but that one sticks out in my mind.
----------"Let the months and the years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more." - Kat
60,079 / 50,000
Nov 13, 2008 - 18 56
Through the Looking Glass. Not because of the actual story, but because this jabberwock picture freaked me right out. And still sort of does.
You know, I don't think I ever actually finished that book...
50,082 / 50,000
Nov 13, 2008 - 20 05
My dad bought me this book of Edgar Allen Poe stories for my eighth birthday and they used to give me nightmares especially with the cover it had. Tales of Terror and Suspense it was called. The cover was just greusome, blood everywhere, dark setting. I didn't even have to read the book for it to give me nightmares. I can't seem to find a cover of the book which is such a shame, but I definately won't ever forget it.
----------50,370 / 50,000
Nov 14, 2008 - 03 37
You know, I don't think I ever actually finished that book...
You should, just so then you can say that you did.
I read It when I was 20 and I was still freaked out (didn't help that I watched it when I was like 8, and hadn't fully grasped the concept of people liking to get freaked out for fun).
I didn't really get freaked out by books when I was younger, or if I did maybe that's why I can detatch from some books as I read them (I don't see images when I read, which helps when you have a giant clown eating kiddies). Oh, there was one bit in a T Llew Jones book my mum read to me, called Dial O'r Diwedd. Basically, it was the last book in a series (a series I hadn't read beforehand), based in my home town (kinda), and in one chapter, the evil man who lives in a palace looks out and sees this old woman, an old woman that got burned in a house two chapters earlier. I couldn't sleep that night! It was horrible. But we finished the book, and it rocked. :D
--
----------I could rule the planet, but I decided to write.
I could rule the planet, but I decided to write.
55,916 / 50,000
Nov 14, 2008 - 06 45
WTF.
That's scary to me now.
----------57,532 / 50,000
Nov 14, 2008 - 12 41
The Haunting freaked me right the f- out as a kid. Don`t know why I convinced myself to read it
----------"I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."
Sarah Williams
"All that's left are our own imaginings"
Kezia Spears
50,084 / 50,000
Nov 16, 2008 - 11 35
When I was 7 or 8, I was in the library, waiting for my mother to check out some books, and I was browsing in the adults section. I picked up this book called (I think) The Red Room, and read two pages that have scarred me for life. Basically, there's an all-red room and I don't remember what but really horrible scary things go on there. I have never wanted to find that book and read it as an adult because I'm still too afraid.
I was a precocious reader. It had its drawbacks.
----------You must do the thing you think you cannot do. - Eleanor Roosevelt
53,686 / 50,000
Nov 19, 2008 - 19 12
Taken.
That book freaked. Me. Out. I tried sleeping in the hallway with a wooden sword and nearly wet myself. That book scared me! I went back and read it a week later and it was stupid. I'm still confused about the book, and why it scared me so much, but there you go.
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NaNoWriMo 2008 winner; Invasi|ion. . . . .
62,463 / 50,000
Nov 19, 2008 - 22 48
There were two, and they were of the Goosebumps series.
One was the wierd goop in a can, I think it affected that dummy. And one of the choose your own adventure series, it was a amusement park one. I read one part, freaked out and never read it again. I bet it'd be stupid to read now and wouldn't scare me at all.
----------86,209 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 02 30
When I was maybe six or seven one of the teachers read a picture book to us about this farmer who finds this mysterious creature that is something like a nightmarish racoon. The farmer cuts off the creature's tail and takes it back with him, but the creature comes to the farmer's house at night and attacks him in his sleep. It was sort of implied that the creature killed him.
I always kind of suspected that this teacher was a little demented.
100,491 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 13 30
The story with the weird raccoon is the tailypo storry I think. The animal says, 'GIve me back my tailypo!' and since the man ate it for dinner he had to get it back by splitting him open I think.
----------Past NaNo/Script Efforts: "Thank-You Jean Paul" and "How The Golden Prawn Exploded" and "The Enchanted Beet"
50,063 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 13 31
I read "Christine" by Stephen King when I was pretty young. I think the sex scenes freaked me out more than the scary stuff!
51,767 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 13 39
You know, I honestly don't remember the title, but when I was ten, in fifth grade, my teacher had this horrid habit of reading us...horror stories. To ten-year-old children. Because that's not traumatizing at all. I can't remember the name of the book, nor the actual story, but supposedly the book was made for children. Horror Stories. For children. I don't buy it.
All I remember is that this one particularly story she read involved a scarecrow killing a man and then walking up onto the roof wearing his skin. Or something equally creepy.
Luckily we were allowed to leave the room if the stories scared us too much. I bolted from the room and never went back whenever story time came up again. The thought of a scarecrow wearing a man's skin doesn't quite freak me out so much now (because I love blood, and guts, and everything disgusting that you could imagine), but still. I was easily frightened at ten.
80,250 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 13 40
The Pit and the Pendulum was pretty graphic for me, even though I read alot of norse mythology then, when i could find it.
And as a teen, AZTEC was gruesome-- cannibalism, human sacrifice, incest and being stuck underneath the skin of a dead person drying in the blazing sun.
it's one of the few books i've never reread.
25,143 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 13 41
I started reading Secret Smile by Nicci French when I was thirteen, following the TV adaptation (which scared me a bit - I had nightmares, although I think that was more to do with realising just how scary my favourite actor was when playing a sociopath rather than the plot). I had to leave the book at around chapter twelve, it just freaked me out so much. The idea that somebody you'd trusted could come back and willfully tear your life to pieces by targeting the ones you love terrified me.
50,197 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 13 41
Oh man, I read Shade's Children when I was like 8, and every so often I'd wonder if any adults were left in the world, so I couldn't be left alone for a long time. Plus it's just freaky!
----------Love, Ruby.
51,039 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 13 58
Oh my god, I was freaked out by the dummy Goosebumps too. I think it was the cover as much as the story: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Night-of-the-Living-Dummy/R-L-Stine/e/9...
Aaaaaaaah oh gods, it still scares me. I have a lingering fear of dummies and mannequins thanks to that book.
I also once read a book about a girl who got pulled through a mirror by this other girl from another time or something who wanted her to be her friend. The MC of course wanted to get home, which pissed off the other girl, who had done this at least three times before and axe murdered the girls she brought over because they were more focused on getting home then being her friend. That one made me afraid of my mirror for MONTHS.
I really have to avoid creepy supernatural things, I'm easily freaked by them. Especially when I was younger. Goosebumps weren't often all the scary but I can't imagine what possessed me to read that scary mirror one.
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“Writing a novel is very, very easy. If you’ve ever watched a rabbit run off a cliff in a cartoon and just keep running until it gets to the other side--that’s all you do in a novel. You just have to keep running and not look down.”-Neil Gaiman
51,743 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 14 01
When I was a kid my brother kept checking out "Scary Stories to Read in the Dark" books from the Library. I couldn't even get past the PICTURES. The pen and ink illustrations were just so horrifically macabre, I flinched when I saw the book until I was a teenager!!!
I recently saw the same book on my friends' bookshelf and took a peak (I'm 27 now.)
STILL...F---ING...SCARY!!!
XO
----------"I'm trying to replace my soul with coffee and become immortal"
~Scott Adams
50,052 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 14 09
Oh, man you should! It's my absolute favorite book. And while I'll admit the movie is actually very accurate to the book, it glosses over a lot of stuff and I think it's made creepier by the animation, which isn't Disney-cute or even particularly realistic, and way too dependent on shady colors. The book is brilliant and it has some really nice themes to it.
But I don't blame you. The opening for that movie is just plain bizarre; I didn't see it 'til last year but if I was a lot younger it probably would've scarred me for life.
Though I watched Jaws when I was 5 and, aside from an intense phobia for deep, open water, I turned out okay! :D
----------NaNo '06: A Tale of Peace and Fire (Win)
NaNo '07: The Winding Way (Win)
NaNo '08: The Importance of Asking Why (Win)
And what do I have to show for it? Absolutely nothing but lost sanity!
Totally worth it!
63,820 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 14 10
Books never scared me when I was a kid, even the ones that were supposed to be scary. Movies always scare me a lot more.
----------My deviantART page: x-velvetchains-x.deviantart.com
Traditional portraits, photomanipulation, and prose!
50,028 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 14 10
I read Watership Down in sixth grade and there were some parts that freaked me out, mostly the violent ones. The rabbits getting fumigated in their burrows and going crazy as they died horribly stands out. Trapped and terrified together gives me shivers. Strangely enough I still really liked it. I should reread it and see how I feel now. My friend agrees that the cartoon was really scary. I've decided not to try it.
The book that terrified me when I was a kid was "The Ten Creepiest Creatures in America" The alligator monster in the swamps was creepy but what scared me most was mothman (completely different from the movie except for the glowing red eyes.) He kept being sighted in people's backyards and I was sure he was going to be in my backyard some night.
50,108 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 14 11
I remember an awful horror novel called 'Plasmids', it was a sort of zombie thing, read it when I was about 11 and it kept me awake at night for ages.
50,084 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 14 14
The Lovely Bones.
The rape scene absolutely chilled me. I had to put it down and then come back to it weeks later.
Still very worth reading.
"Tell me you love me...."
----------2007: Nothing's Gonna Change My World - WON
2008: The World According to Chloey Long
50,334 / 50,000
Nov 20, 2008 - 14 17
As far as books as a kid, I don't remember really being freaked out by stuff. I know I should have had issues with the VC Andrews crap I was reading. But somehow all the near-incest stuff didn't bother me. Which kind of grosses me out to even admit now. I did read this one novel, Sister Sister about these twins (I think they have been conjoined at one time) that had psychic abilities that they didn't much use. But then these science people were going to separate them or something and the evil twin used the more powerful nice twin to terrorize them. I don't remember much about it, but I've always been fascinated with twins and I do remember the book.
In early high school, though, I read The Long Walk (by Stephen King as Richard Bachman). It haunted me for weeks. I would just randomly contemplate the sheer insanity of joining a competition like that. It really stuck with me, and when I think about it now, I can still remember exactly how it felt when I realized the penalty for losing the race. It was a total o.o moment. No other way to describe. Another Richard Bachman book that was in the came compilation, was called I think Rage. And it was really good too. I think it would have haunted me as well, if I hadn't read The Long Walk right after it.