Really scary books please.

Books of Blood I found rubbish. A bit high brow but 'In a Glass Darkly' by Sheridan LeFanu is great. I loved 'The Shining' too - Jaws by Peter Bentley is another good film/book read.

And some fairly dark stories in Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected 'Kiss Kiss', 'Switch Bitch' being some collections.

Dead Babies by Martin Amis is depraved and bleak and good.

I will steer clear of Harbour, then. Im really dragging myself through Let the Right One In, just can't seem to like any of it.

Arrrgh. You're right, it is a stupid name hence he has changed it to Joe Hill - sorry, my mistake. Joe Hill, 20th Century Ghosts. I can remember 'Button Boy' being ghastly (in a grim way) and 'Pop Art' being fantastic from that collection to. It really is aces.

I found Dark Matter by Michelle Paver gripping and completely terrifying, much more so than The Woman in Black which also scared me a lot. (But I am a total wuss)

It is called 'Harbour' - it is dreadful.

Ooh yes, 'Let The Right One In' is really rather fun, except for the stupid ending but his other one is crap - have forgotten what it's called. Will google as I don't want anybody to read it thinking it will be good - it is a pile of useless drivel and I only finished reading it because he clearly likes The Smiths!

I didn't like Jo King's novels much but will hunt out the short stories. Oh and is it just me or is Joe King a really daft name? :)

I think I posted on another thread about this a while ago but '20th Century Ghosts' by Joe King ( stay with me ) is a collection of short stories which are nothing short of awesome, and I am very fussy.
I found a copy in the library and was so intrigued by one story in particular - 'Voluntary Commital' - that I couldn't stop thinking about it and got the book out again next time I was in there. When I reread the story I discovered that, at the scariest point in it, someone had ripped out the pages. About five in total.

Maybe it was TOO SCARY FOR THEM ?

See also Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist which I can't get into for the life of me, but which is meant to be wonderous. Also James Herberts the Magic Cottage is great, but not too big on horror.

Every Dead Thing by John Connolly.

I agree with you, Remus I never said it was good - just scary.

The Birthing House is one of the worst books I have ever tried to read. I gave it up in disgust after enduring about five pages of the main character trying to have a wank iirc. Absolute rubbish. Though yes, scary too I suppose!!! :)

Kitten - have you read 'The Talisman' and 'Black House' by Stephen King and Peter Straub? Straub on his own can't write to save his life but he and King seem to work really well together.

House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski. Really really creepy.

The Birthing House - Christopher Ransome
Anything by Joe Donnelly (may be hard to come by but very scary horror stuff)
Seconding Clive Barker, especially Weaveworld.
I like James Herbert too, though he does frequently deserve the Bad Sex award in his writing.

Mo Hayder
agree that Pig island and Tokyo are scariest

Mark billing ham - sleepyhead etc.

I later discovered this is same mark billingHam that writes for kids tv ( maid Marian and her merry men etc). Which is more scary if anything!

The Road by Cormack mcCarthy. That's one scary book.

Erebus by Shaun Hutson is the scariest book I ever read, not sure why, it's pretty typical SH stuff, but it scared the shit out of me!
The only other book that ever scared me even half so much was The Fog, and that's because I was about 8 when I read it and it scared me so much I couldn't sleep :(
I hated Heart Shaped Box and didn't finish it (which is something for me to say)
World War Z is a great book, but isn't particularly scary I don't think (although I never have found zombies all that scary, so others might find it more so than I did)
If you liked The Stand, you would probably like Swan Song by Robert McCammon, they have a fairly similar plot, as if the two authors had the same brief and those were the books they wrote.

Mo Hayder is pretty scary. Not fantasy horror, more very disturbing thrillers. Pig Island and Tokyo were particularly traumatic, as I recall.

I read a pretty dreadful zombie one recently called (I think) 'Feed.' It wasn't scary but somebody on here might like it. It's zombies in the blogging world, essentially. Dreadfully written but quite amusing in places. 'Pride And Prejudice With Zombies' is ace - but it's comedy not horror.

I liked, 'The Passage' a lot but it wasn't scary.

'The Collector' by John Fowles is v scary and creepy and horrible but it's not anything like 'The Shining.'

Stephen King is the only horror writer I like though, so don't know why I'm on here really. I've been v unimpressed by Joe Hill. Quite liked 'The Gargoyle' which is mentioned down-thread but it's not scary. I really dislike 'The Woman In Black' but thought 'The Woman In White' was terrifying.

The Yellow Wallpaper is scary - but it's not horror.

How about some Poe? Or Dracula?