What's the scariest book you've ever read?

Just reading reviews and discussions of Let's Go Play at the Adams last night made me feel sick with fear. I am clearly a wimp of the highest order.

It
The film is almost as horrifying too.

Just added lets go play at the Adams to my amazon basket, never heard of it ...

Amytiville horror

By reason of insanity - read it when I was 16 had nightmares for days, now read it every few years, only book I have ever read more than once. It was banned in some usa states when it first came out (or at least that's what my dad told me !)

The ones that came to my mind have been mentioned on this thread but it can't do any harm to vote for them again:

The terrifying short story by Gerald Durrell in the Picnic & Suchlike Pandemonium collection

The Woman in Black

I also found The Little Stranger very unsettling.

What most recently scared me to the point of losing sleep wasn't a ghost or horror story, but monstrous creatures in Perdido Street Station. I may start a thread on fictional monsters now

I'm approx halfway through Melmoth the Wanderer and am really enjoying it. Thought I'd mention, thank again for the recommendation, and bump up the thread!

Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti. It's a collection of short stories, and is described as "in the style of Edgar Allen Poe". I'm not a fan of Poe, not scary, just annoying.

However, I couldn't finish the Ligotti. I was half way through the third story when I realised I was so scared I couldn't continue.

DH read it first, and handed it to me saying it was alright; dd got hold of it and thought it was pretty boring. I just couldn't take it. It was the atmosphere of brooding menace the author conjured up. No, too terrified to read the whole of it.

However, DH loved Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill and said it the scariest book he'd read since he was a teen. I enjoyed it, but it didn't scare me at all. Not even a little bit.

No accounting for folk, is there?

I remember The Monkey's Paw. It grants you wishes doesn't it? I listened to that on the radio a while ago. Very chilling.

Another SK one - The Long Walk. I read it when I was a young teen and something about it just terrified me.

The one that's stayed with me for 40 years is 'The Monkey's Paw' by W.W. Jacobs. Not a book, a short story. Salem's Lot also scared me, and parts of It, and parts of The Shining. Stephen King lost me when he started going for graphic nastiness rather than horror, though his recent offerings of Under the Dome and 11/22/63 are better, though not horror novels at all, really.

Chapter 27 now... getting freaky

I read all the mentioned SK books as a teenager and still break out into a sweat at the memory.

I also loved James Herbert as a teen. The Rats terrified me so much that, even now - 35 years later, I still have to check the exits in a cinema, just in case The Rats come!

I read one that was aimed at teens recently. It was called 172 Hours and it was about three teenagers who win a trip to the moon with NASA, who have held the competition to disguise the real reason they are going back, mining something that is in short supply on Earth.

But something strange is up there, something they have known about since the moon landings in the 60's, and it's been waiting for us to go back.

It really wasn't scary at the time but last night DS was looking at the full moon and it gave me the creeps thinking something might be up there looking back at him. I love it when a book can do that weeks after I've read it.

marissab - some of Roald Dahl's came to my mind too actually. I think yours is called Royal Jelly; there's another I found horrible called (I think) Piggy.

I found Woman In Black very shocking but only slightly scary. It bothered me for a few days after. Sheridan LeFanu's In A Glass Darkly has some brilliant spooky stories in it... and of course Poe's collection The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Stories. A lot of those are nasty. I read The Shining but it didn't massively freak me.

I'm too chicken to read many of those mentioned, but I might try the Durrell one. Amityville Horror the film still terrifies me so there's no way I'm going near that!

When I was a teen (about 40 years ago) there was a whole series of Pan Books of Horror Stories. I can still remember some of the stories to this day. They seem to be out of print now-probably banned for being too disturbing

Best thing about it is the very slow build.

just started reading pet sem... on chapter 7. not scary yet

Dracula also. I have never had an actual nightmare about a book ever before, and I've read/seen some scary shit.

Faezy did you like Lasting Damage? The multiple endings and the just plain weird plot annoyed me so much I gave my copy away.

That's it HarderToKidnap thank you!. Just asked my dad if he could get Pet Semetary from the library next time he was in town and turns out he took it out a few days ago, what are the chances! He didn't finish it as wasn't impressed so has passed it on to me.

Definitely SK's Pet Semetary (that is the title, not a typo!!)