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Original poster

What was the scariest/most chilling book you read as a child?

208 replies

VintageGardenia · 08/09/2009 19:42

And did you love it or hate it?

My ds is 11 and doesn't like reading scary books one bit - I hated them too when I was a child, I still do really. But the book that scared me most as a child was called Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr, I can remember every bit of it and it still gives me the creeps to pass a tall boulder.

Just wondering what other chilling books there were.

OP posts:
colditz · 09/09/2009 12:45

Grinny
H p Lovecraft - The colours

Original poster
VintageGardenia · 09/09/2009 12:45

x'd you there Cies!

OP posts:
Original poster
VintageGardenia · 09/09/2009 12:43

Yes I remember begging for an adult library ticket too! The children's section was tiny in our library - and we were in a city. Remember they used to take out the slip and put it in your ticket, the number of times I watched them do that, then stamp the return date. Funny I hadn't thought of e.g. Sherlock Holmes being unsuitable, but of course all those murders... I loved all those too, Wyndham & A. Christie, all the Waugh and Mitford books, anything that came in an old Penguin jacket because my father collected the first editions.

Oddly the only thing I really remember vividly about Flowers in the Attic - apart from the general plot - was the tar in Cathy's hair & the brother weeing on it . It was a great hand-around at school, that one.

OP posts:
WinkyWinkola · 09/09/2009 12:43

This scared me witless. I read it when I was about 7. Very foolish

Cies · 09/09/2009 12:41

yyy flowers in the attic - when the crazy grandmother poured tar on the girl's hair. Freaky book.

And earlier on, The Witches by Roald Dahl was scary.

ilovemydogandmrobama · 09/09/2009 12:35

Flowers in the Attic....

LadyGlencoraPalliser · 09/09/2009 12:33

VG - I lived in a small village so my only access to new books was the small rack of Armada paperbacks in the newsagent and an annual visit to the big town 40 miles away which had a proper bookshop. Once I had read through the tiny children's section in the village bookshop, I was on my own - persuaded the librarian to give me an adult ticket aged 8 or 9.
This had two consequences. I was reading totally unsuitable stuff like The Day of the Triffids age nine (also Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, the Brontes, Austen, Orwell, Huxley etc!)
and I have spent the past 12 years since becoming a parent catching up on hundreds of children's books that I never read first time round. Which is great!

Original poster
VintageGardenia · 09/09/2009 12:20

It's odd, how you came across stuff in those days, it was really by lurking in secondhand bookshops and getting surprises at Christmas. My ds1 gets to know about books via the internet, publicity stunts in bookshops, etc. If he'd a book he adored like Marianne Dreams there's no way he would miss the fact that it had a sequel.

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GooseyLoosey · 09/09/2009 12:09

I didn't read it, but remember seeing the cover of Carrie (Stephen King)in the 70s and I couldn't sleep as I was so scared by it.

LadyGlencoraPalliser · 09/09/2009 12:04

I loved Misty. I didn't come across Marianne Dreams until someone recommended it on here last year and I bought it for DD (who still hasn't read it!) I found it quite spooky and would have loved it at age 10/11.

SolidGoldBrass · 09/09/2009 11:57

Yet another vote for Marianne Dreams - apparently the author was a child psychologist hence the very good understanding of how children of that age feel. Did anyone see the film adaptatin, Paperhouse? That was interesting because it wasn't a page by page adaptation but it did bring out the kind of muddled adolescent-awakening-sexuality that's underlying in the book (no, not with snogging scenes, far more low-level).
I remember being very frightened by the first of the Armada Ghost Books, particularly School for the Unspeakable and House of the Nightmare - and reading HP Lovecraft's SHadow Over Innsmouth at about 9 and being petrified of the mutant dust. But I was another of these ghost-story-obsessed kids.
Ooh, who remembers Misty comic?

funwithfondue · 09/09/2009 11:50

Sorry, just googled, and the book was by Alexander Dumas - there's been loads of film versions though.

funwithfondue · 09/09/2009 11:48

The Man In The Iron Mask.

An old film version of it I saw on TV - I must have been quite young, and the idea of having an iron mask clamped onto me for evermore (and being locked up in a tower) haunted me for years.
The man died in the end by strangulation from his own beard. I still find it chilling at 30!

Original poster
VintageGardenia · 09/09/2009 00:09

Thinking of rats, actually the 1984 scene in room 101, the idea of that contraption, urgh!

Have a rather long list now of books I will never read, though am intrigued by Children of Dust.

OP posts:
MermaidSpam · 09/09/2009 00:01

Loved Point Horror - especially The Beach House

Jas · 08/09/2009 23:28

Just read the thread.....The Owl Service is one of my childhood books I have kept to pass on to my children. I don't remember it at all, but now I will re-read it before giving it to dd1 (10)

Jas · 08/09/2009 23:24

I had nightmares about The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe for years.....being turned to stone.

I read lots of James Herbert/Steven King at 14 -18 and couldn't finish The Rats - in fact I still haven't and I will be 40 this week!

They are the only two books that have truly scared me.

pooexplosions · 08/09/2009 23:22

I loved Children of the dust, I re-read it recently and it was still brilliant. Also liked B for Butterfly, plague 99 and the sequel...I think I was a dark child, I must have been about 10 reading those?

Empty world was way scarier though, the disease was a rapid aging thingy and the descriptions of small children turning into old people in hours was chilling....

ruddynorah · 08/09/2009 23:18

i ploughed my through most of the Point Horror series and found the first '13 tales of horror' the most chilling. loved them

twirlymum · 08/09/2009 23:18

The Cement Garden. I must have read it when I was about ten, God knows where I got it from!

LentilsRMe · 08/09/2009 23:13

Some rudimentary googling tells me that this was actually The Promise by Robert Westall.

Well - it was a long time ago!

LentilsRMe · 08/09/2009 23:09

Valerie by Robert Weston (I think) about boy's girlfriend who died and came back as a ghost to sap his life force.

CHOCOLATEPEANUT · 08/09/2009 22:58

Jaws Peter Benchley on the beach at Bournemouth in 1977. I rememeber my mum saying "Are you not going for a paddle?" and I had to go for a walk on the pier I was so freaked out!!

MoominMymbleandMy · 08/09/2009 22:54

An Enemy at Green Knowe and The Owl Service, I think.

I loved Marianne Dreams and Charlotte Sometimes but I don't remember being scared by them.

Midnight is a Place is by Joan Aiken and there are children working in a carpet factory. The hero asks why they don't use machines because it's very dangerous and gets the reply "Childer's cheaper."

pinkthechaffinch · 08/09/2009 22:28

The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy by Penelope
Lively is even scarier that Thomas Kempe.

Children of the dust is brilliant too!

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