to still be freaked out by some books from my childhood

[babyfedleaning]

Following on from the thread about children's tv programmes from our youth, it got me thinking about the books I used to love that unnerved me. Several of them got made into tv programmes but loads didn't. In particular I remember The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner where all the ramblers in the countryside are baddies! And A Parcel of Patterns about the plague. Anyone got any more?

Velocity1 - the book in which faces can be viewed both ways up may be OHO by Rex Whistler.

Ohhh, the Power of Google! Don't you just love it?

Inspired by this thread I've tracked down a half-remembered poem from years ago. I'm (gulp) 55 now and this book was in the holiday home we rented each year, so 40-45 yrs ago? I was b.sure it was about kidnap and cannibalism, and so, in fact, it was..

The book is called'Select Poetry for Children' ( arranged by J.Payne(apt surname, that) and the particular poem is 'The True Story of Webspinner'. Have yourselves a read but ffs don'tread it to your children

Actually, I'm going to read some more. First glance shows that there might be others I'd really not read

Let me know what you think..

Ilovehamabeads was it The Devil's Children? Those books freaked me out, society collapsed and adults were driven mad by machines.

Yes to the tunnel scene in Weirdstone, that was the first thing that popped into my head too. It's stayed with me for 20 years.

the book with the wooden doll is this one-
www.librarything.com/work/1300487
called a candle in her room. though I'm sure it had a different title when I read it- I was terrified by it and the book itself (I mean the actual object) held an awful fascination- because I knew how scary it was inside.

Moondial was super creepy.

I read a really disturbing version of the children of Lir (Irish myth that has several main versions in its textual history) where the children are abused physically and emotionally by their stepmother and their father "won't" see it and then when she turns them into swans they are continually injured on the harsh, cold Irish sea and it described their wings bleeding and them saving each other from dying and then a bit where they swim on a lake near their home and watch their father with sad eyes that gave me bad dreams for years

Dapplegrey thats it!! Thank You so much, it's been annoying me for years that I couldn't remember what it was called. You can maybe understand why it worried me as a child, some of the faces are a bit sinister

Another vote for Marianne Dreams - frankly I'm astonished it's only had two mentions, it freaked me out for years!

The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams about the dogs that escaped an animal testing facility after being horribly experimented on.

And on a similar vein Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NiMH. Both awesome books with very dark themes.

Wow yes Robert Cormier - those were all a bit odd (there's one called Fade I think which I was really creeped out by - I'm sure I remember there being some kind of dodgy sexual scene between a brother and sister that he main character witnesses in that one? Whatever it was, I was really weirded out by it.) I was so terrified by a short story I read in a book of ghost stories (about a girl who is possessed by an evil ghost through a mirror I think?) that I didn't let myself read ghost stories for years. I was a bit of a sensitive child and teenager actually - unfortunately the first scary thing I let myself watch after that was Twin Peaks at age 14. Was that a mistake! I was gibbering with fear after the "Bob" episode and could hardly turn on the TV for weeks.

Still don't watch horror films - and I can't even read a MN woo thread after 9pm.

Mind you, an even more sensitive childhood friend of mine had to be taken home in hysterics after watching the famous Paul Daniels Halloween stunt where he pretended he'd died live on air. Was there something about the 80s which meant that people thought it was absolutely fine to scare kids out of their tree? Hmmm.

Margaret Mahy's book "The Haunting" really scared me, but I had to act nonchalant or my cousin would really tease me. She was hard as nails!
Also a book called "Adam's Common" which was fab - a sort of time slip thriller.
And possibly the most disturbing was a short story about a woman who bought an old photo of her house and there is a creepy looking woman in the photo and each day she has moved closer to the house!!!!

Oh, fellow feeling with the other people who only have to think of the underground sequences in The Weirdstone of Brusingamen to feel sick with claustrophobia! The bit where they have to go around a hairpin bend and Colin is an inch taller than Susan and gets stuck, or all the bits where they have to swim underwater in a flooded tunnel...

Has anyone read an Armada collection of ghost stories aimed at, say 10-12 year olds (just called something generic like The Armada Book of Ghost Stories) which included stories called The Demon Schoolmaster, The Peg Doll and - most horribly - The Ghosts of Nisos Trikkeri? That one was about a family with a seagoing boat who put in to a supposedly uninhabited island in a storm and are attacked by the ghosts of dead sailors. Or there was another story about a country lane haunted by a spaniel and a coffin with a lily on the lid? Eek.

Or another collection of short stories called something generic like 'International Stories for Girls' which had one nasty psychological thriller about a girl hiding alone in a Swiss chalet with a man who turns out to have murdered her neighbour circling the outside, looking in the windows, suspecting she's there...?

I remember having several of the Armada Ghost story books - my favourite was a story called Bumblepuppy.

Noel Streatfeild's "A Vicarage Childhood" really upset me - her childhood was really grim, with what amounted to emotional abuse from the mother. But the worst bit was when her older cousin was home on leave from WWI and she finally persuades him to tell her the truth about what it is like. And he does and then says "and the worst thing is - I have to go back there." that stayed with me for years.

Shallishanti -- yes, that's it! Thank you so much. I thought it had a different title when I read it too.

KatieKaye - that really upset me too.

Yes to the tunnel scene in Weirdstone of Brisingamen, the most claustrophobic thing I have ever read. Great book though.

I think the one about astral projection and twins was 'Stranger with my face' by Lois Duncan, me and my best friend read all of her books obsessively as children!

Definitely 'The Dark is rising' - so eerie, but brilliant.

princess was the Nicholas Fisk one 'Trillions'? Such a great author, very disturbing storylines though!

Ooh, stantonlacy, Lois Duncan was brilliant! Very creepy too. The Twisted Window even had a scary cover!

TheEagle she so was, wasn't she?! Have just been trawling Amazon for all of her books, loved 'The eyes of Karen Connors' but it looks like it's out of print now - shocking.

I really must re read all of those Alan Garner ones, now - have got a box set in DS's room (age 7) and am now concerned he'll end up traumatised at an early age!

Katie, say something about 'Bumblepuppy'? -slight, eerie bell ringing in my head now...

Yes to A Vicarage Childhood, though I only read it as an adult, and The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy. I still find the bit where Aslan is killed in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe deeply unnerving, especially for some reason when the Witch calls for him to be shaved before she kills him.

And I hated the barrow-wight in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Did anyone else read Monica Dickens' Follyfoot books as a child? They had lots of brutal animal cruelty, but the bit that remains with me us when the horse-mad schoolgirl heroine is given a dead horse's hoof wrapped in newspaper by her bullies.

The astral projection one was Stranger with my Face by Lois Duncan. She also wrote I know what you did last summer.

Was anyone else spooked by The Demon Headmaster?

This thread has brought back some creepy memories!

I was freaked out by Children of the Dust, When the Wind Blows, Stranger With My Face (I'd forgotten that one! Super creepy), The Trillions, The Chrysalids... anything involving nuclear war terrified me throughout my childhood.

I got a bit hysterical about the Paul Daniels trick too, which is funny as I don't get scared by horror films etc now at all, I love them (except The Descent which made me realise I am claustrophobic)!

Yes yes to grinny and the armada ghost stories.

I used to get the encyclopaedia of murder out of the library and read it under my duvet with a torch. Wtaf?

A book called "Thomas" which was part of a series called "The Deptford Mice". Nasty torture scenes which scared the shit out of me.

The Deptford Mice was such a dark series! Haven't thought about those in years!

I'm going to have scary dreams tonight I think (despite being far too old for all of that )