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?

Shunning! riskit I think I love you a little bit! I spent all last night googling the megowl but to no avail!

Glad it wasn't just me who found it creepy and disturbing!

My phone auto corrected my excitable ahhhhh to shunning apparently...

Moonlight thank you! I was beginning to think I imagined it

Loved grimmms fairy tales! I was a gruesome child. Also like Alan garner. I remember reading the devil by the sea by Nina bawden when I was about 11 which really disturbed me though! A strange little girl oddly indifferent to a child killer.....

ImperialBlether Could it have been The Witch Doll rather than The Wooden Doll. Set in Pembrokeshire in a house near the cliffs. Really sinister and scary.

And yes, it's the same book as Candle in her Room. It was re published as The Witch Doll by Scholastic.

Well I asked my sister and together we managed to figure out enough terms to google the first book I mentioned above: 'Lily takes a walk'. So tempted to order a copy now!

Somebody else has mentioned 'The Silver Crown'. That book really freaked me out! A girl wakes up one morning, finds all her family have disappeared and that she's being hunted by baddies. It was all my fears written down in a book, very disturbing.

Also 'The silver sword' which I think was probably set post ww1. It was read to us by our teacher in year 3 and I hated it so much I didn't even want to go to school until it was finished. I mostly sat there trying very hard not to listen to it.

Allegrogirl - that book is "Plague 99" by Jean Ure.

I just don't know what I could have been doing in my childhood. Had anyone asked I would have said I read loads but I really can't recall ANY of these books you are all talking about (thank goodness)! I think I must have have gone straight from Enid Blyton to Flowers in the Attic!

Walkabout

Watership Down

Midwitch Cuckoos

Tarka the otter

I am David-the bit where the dog dies

Snow kitten

I remember the wooden doll one . Called dido, definitely and really evil. Is it the witch doll? I'm going to find it for dd.

kelpeed That story is called simply 'The Wolf and the Seven Kids'. I actually used to quite like that one as a child

There was a book I read as a 9 or 10 year old about a cat who has some kittens quite early on and then the rest of the book is about what happened to the kittens after the mother abandoned them. I know there were definitely one or two who died tragically. I remember weeping absolute buckets when I read it! No idea what it was called, possibly 'Abandoned'?

Come Back Lucy (Pamela Sykes) frightened the life out of me, as did lots of short stories by various authors. The Exorcism of Amy was really scary.

Lots of Joan Aiken stories were very scary--A Touch of Chill had some creepy ones.

Grinny by Robert Fisk, about the great-aunt who turns out to be an alien. Sounds comical but is actually very creepy in parts.

The Little Mermaid and the Little Match Girl, both really depressing as someone else said.

I have a vague recollection of a story about a little dog that starts of in a lovely hours with lovely owners and then for some reason it all goes horribly wrong and he ends up being abused and in a circus I think, can't remember the end but I didn't like that story.

The one that really haunted me though and still does is The Red Shoes, the girl can't stop dancing when she puts them on and can't get them off and eventually goes to a woodcutter who chops her feet off and the shoes dance away with her feet in them. I can still see the illustration of the shoes with feet in them dancing off, ugh.

I liked the Brothers Grimm, I read somewhere recently that the original tales were even grimmer!

Hours should read house, damn autocorrect.

Role Dahl books are more disturbing to me now as an adult than they were as a child. I get the cynical humor in them now.

I just watched "The Witches" last night. The movie is weirder as an adult that it ever was to me as a child.

Another vote for Marianne Dreams, they serialised it and it was just as spooky as the book!

The book which left the biggest impression on me as a child was Strewelpeter which they made into a stage play Shockheaded Peter. It was a collection of moral stories designed to frighten little children so they would be good

Little Johnny Head in Air, walks offf the pier and floats away
Harriette and the matches, ends up a pile of smouldering cinders
Augustus who refused to eat his dinner and turned into a stick man

I had frequent nightmares, even now it makes my skin creep!

Adams ark.
It was about an autistic boy who could talk to animals.His father was a research scientist who experimented on animals....his pet cat let him know where all her kittens had went..theres scene where he breaks into the lab...shudders it was all just terrible.
read it at 8/9 as I was keen reader.....genuinely traumatised.Almost as bad as watching boxer being driven to the glue factory in the animated version of animal farm.
Pig heart boy left a lasting impression as well. lifelesson people are cruel.

The farthing wood books were full of death and misery but I strangely didn't find them as traumatising.

I adored Watership down and all the irish fairytales though...

I'm reading Grimm's Fairy Tales at the moment - have to say they haven't fucked me up so far, except perhaps by the sheer bizarreness of many. I do remember that spiky barrel one though, essentially evil person gets told as a story exactly of what they've done, somehow forgets they've done it, then when asked how they would punish said person replies with a hideous torture-death that is metered out accordingly. It's featured more than once.

I came on to say Marianne Dreams. The Earldelving chapter in Weirdstone also made me really claustrophobic but I love the book. The Moon of Gomrath didn't stay with me as much but there's a chapter about a dark mist with red eyes that really scared me.

There was a Crystal Tipps and Alastair book I had with a distant picture of Alastair staring out of a house on one page that I really didn't like.

kelpeed I also disliked The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids most of the fairy tales we had. I used to get nightmares about wolves until my DM drew a picture that sorted it for me and then they were my friends.

I'm going to get half of these out of the library if they're still there!

The Whitby Witches trilogy, scared me when I read them ages 53 and 3/4!