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?

I think Bumblepuppy was a lonely little ghost dog. Originally the children were frightened of him? Those Armada ghost books were good in a creepy way for rather woosy kids like me!

Agent I had just come here to mention I Am David. I still can't think of it without getting a bit teary.

Was bumblepuppy the one with the sickly child, Martin, whose dog went out to find him friends and bring them back? Until the dog dies. And one night Martin is alone in bed and hears a scratch at the door, and the stench of death.

Martin had visitors.

Not me but my sister, we had the Brambley Hedge Seasons books and in one of them (Autumn I think) one of the little animals got lost - she cried every time we read it!

I couldn't look at the drawing of grandma Josephine in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, when she gets really, really old. Not ever.

Yanbu

I read Mr muddles meddles as a child and bought it for my daughter. That book is bloody weird and not like I remembered at all.

Ooh, I had a book of ghost/scary stories when I was younger.

One of the stories was about a boy who found an egg, he takes it home and it hatches into an owl with the face of a woman/hag. It slowly sends him crazy/ more owl like...there is a bit where they are both eating raw mice giblets hunched over his bed. I can't find it now or remember how it ended but it scared me senseless and I hated opening my wardrobe in the dark!

I hate threads like this.

I have now been compelled to order the first 5 Armada Ghost Books from Amazon - and will report back on Bumblepuppy!

Grinny definitely - my brother and I had an audio version too read by Andy Crane which was absolutely terrifying! We can still quote large sections of it

And the sequel to grinny, 'remember me'. She eats foil FFS.

I used to always choose ghost stories when we went to the library. I loved curling up in bed and getting a bit scared! I seem to recall reading a lot of Joan Aiken ones.

We did Children of the Dust for GCSE English in 1994 and I re-read my battered old copy at least every couple of years. I do love a bit of dystopian fiction. I'm making a list of all the other ones people have mentioned!

I absolutely adore the Dark is Rising sequence, and really looking forward to letting my daughter read my old books.

Marianne Dreams was quite scary but I really enjoyed it and it took me years to remember the name and track down a copy again.

There were parts in the Snow Spider trilogy that were a bit scary and horrible - I remember being quite horrified by some of the goings on in the stories from the Mabinogion - particularly the part where all King Matholwch's horses have their lips, tails, eyelids and ears cut off by someone.

The Dunkirk Crossing - too sad to bear.

Marianne Dreams - spooky.

Charlotte Sometimes - oh god, what if I get stuck in the middle of time travel?

Lord of the Flies - dear lord, that gave me nightmares.

House of Stairs by William Sleator - very strange sci-fi type book about a group of orphaned teenagers who find themselves in a house full of just stairs. It's very odd and disturbed me deeply for some reason.

Grinny was awful, and the Demon Headmaster.
I can't talk though; I encouraged my dd to read the Woman in White when she was twelve. She seems alright.
Have a look into Jean Webster books, she is widely known for Daddy Long Legs, but she was an amazing woman.
We also had the select poetry for children.

This seems like the perfect thread to call for help from children's book detectives in helping me find out the names of two books I read as a child that really spooked me. I can't remember the titles or authors of either.

The first was a picture book I read when I was quite young (mid-80s) that was (IIRC) about a child walking home alone in the dark (!). I think it was a girl and she had a short name like Lila, although this could be totally wrong. Anyway the theme of the book was that on every page spread she passed things that looked scary at night to a child. So a car looked it it had face and tree branches looked like spooky fingers etc. One was a street with lampposts on both sides that looked like teeth. I think the child then went back in daytime or with a parent and saw that everything was normal and rational. It might have been European...

The other was an adult or young adult book, perhaps a short story, maybe from the 70s/80s. A man is alone in a room (writing?) with a bare bulb (there was an illustration of this, perhaps the front cover). A moth comes in and is batting itself against the bulb and this happens repeatedly over time, while the man thinks he is going mad. Then something really horrible happens, like he wakes up as a moth (no, it wasn't Kafka!) or the moth goes in his mouth or something. Eech. It's given me a thing about moths and maybe I've blanked out the worst of it!

I'm sorry my recollections are a bit vague, which is probably why I've had no luck googling them, but would love to be able to look them up!

Lord of the Flies is not a children's book. I read it on holiday at 14 and it ruined the whole holiday

So glad this thread has reminded me about Alan Garner and other ace authors. I love Cynthia Voigt but wasn't upset by her.

Little Mermaid, Matchgirl, Tin Soldier I found very sad too. Was the Red Shoes by HCA too, or the Grimm Brothers? Girl wears red shoes to church on Sunday, is punished for her vanity as they get stuck to her feet and start dancing. Exhausted and despairing she takes an axe and chops off her feet

Among the dystopian YA novels no one has mentioned Children of Morrow. And another where they all lived under glass bubbles. The Cold War has a lot to answer for.

A lot of YA books I read also seemed to feature industrial accidents, which I have an utter horror of as a result.

Script for Adam's Ark - Idontsee - looks as though it was a play, not a novel, maybe that's why you couldn't find it before.

For me The Silver Crown (Robert O'Brien) was fairly creepy as was Andra (Louise Lawrence).
I do remember one, possibly a short, with a character called Lettice, and there were definitely ghosts, but don't think it was the Nicholas Fisk one mentioned above - any chance it sounds vaguely familiar to anyone else?

Pretty much off of Oscar Wilde's children's stories.

Summer of My German Soldier.

The Little Match Girl is completely disturbing. Just horrible.

I loved Weirdstone of Brisingamen though. Really adore that book.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken,,,the bit where the wolves are hunting the girls stuck in the broken down train.....

I feel lucky that I never read some of the books listed here when I was younger.. they sound horrible!

It did remind me of one book I read though, which I can't remember the name of. It was in the early 00s and probably part of a set (which doesn't help). All I can remember of it was a girl who lived with her mother, and they had a portrait of the grandmother on the wall. IIRC as the book went on, the picture became gradually more sinister and more terrifying, and the illustration by the end was very frightening! Naturally when I try to google it all I can find is The Picture of Dorian Grey, which it most definitely is not!

In the unlikely circumstance that someone recognises the book, from a primary school perhaps, it would make my dreams come true.

Came here to say Marianne Dreams and I see it's already been mentioned. I still get an uneasy feeling when I think about that book. I think its the creepy rocks

I really liked the astral projection one but couldn't remember the name of it or who wrote it, just that it was set in Albuquerque.

Allstoppedup I had that book it was chilling christmas tales I think I was petrified by the boy who turns into the owl. I bought a copy on eBay a few years ago and reread but had to give it away I was still scared! Noone else I have met has ever read it but I was scared of every noise outside in case it was the megowl thing trying to get me

I loved the wolves of willoughby chase. Re read it at Christmas along with the Christmas bits in chalet school and Anne of Green gables and The Lord of the Rings, all are an essential part of my Christmas prep!

Anyway back to the topic, I remember being deeply traumatised by some classic fairy tales - one where the baddy is punished by being put in a barrel full of nails and dragged through the streets (I think it describd her screaming and her blood pouring out the holes in the barrel), one where a mother in law eats a young girls seven babies and the girl gets the blame and has to sew a cooat that cuts her hands really badly and no one believes her for years that she didn't kill them, the original little mermaid (what a fucking depressing story!) and the little match girl, also at the back of the north wind by macdonald, who had written one of my all time favourite books, the princess and the goblin (which makes at the back of the north wind even more of a betrayal!) it's about a lovely little boy who lives such a. Shit, harsh life that he dies in agony and noone cares