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?

feelingploppy

Thanks for helping me out with the mystery book but due to a great Wikipaedia page on dystopian fiction I have found the one I read back in about 1988 (just before your suggestion was published).

It was called Empty World by John Christopher and I've never met anyone else who has read it.

This thread has got me inspired to dig out some great teen fiction, old and new.

The creepy ,strange,Playing Beatie Bow!

Plague dogs so bad and upsetting for me aswell!

Mrsminiver The Silver Sword is set in WW2. Amazing book, I loved it although it was very upsetting. I rarely cry at books but my god, I cried my eyes out when I finished it. I read it at school in either year 7 or 8, I'm surprised they read it to you in year 3, that's very young! I think too young to appreciate how good it is actually. I need to get the book and read it again.

There's a book I read when I was about 10 that really freaked me out but I can't remember what it was called or who it was by. I read it in the late 90s and I think it was published around the same time. It was about a girl, whose name I think was Emma, who went to stay in a mansion with distant relatives in the summer holiday. I can't remember the story exactly but she found a doll and it was an exact replica of a girl who had fallen out of a window and died there but nobody spoke about it. She was trying to find out about this girl and at the end she was found dead having fallen out of the window holding onto another doll who was an exact replica of her. I can't remember the story that well now but I remember it really freaked me out. I wish I could remember what it was called.

Well, this thread's inspired me to delve back in my mind (and my bookshelves) to my other faves ....those Victorian Stories with a Moral? I think that the moral was= know your place in life, live in grinding poverty and get your reward in Heaven ?

So I've remembered a little book I found on a great aunt's bookcase once, presented to her for Good Attendance at Sunday School. It was called City Sparrows and it was an absolute tear jerker. These 2 brothers, orphans, starving in a cold, cold garret in the East End of London one Christmas, out of food or clothes or heat or hope..( I vividly remember looking up the word 'garret' in our big dictionary. Anyway the littly bro., predictably dies, but not before his big bruvver goes begging for food or sticks to make a fire to keep him warm :(
And then the big bruvver dies, but that's ok, cos they're both now bright stars in God's Firmament (another new word). Loved it and cried every time I read it

I've just found another Tearjerker on our shelves. This was found in a secondhand bookshop years ago in Ludlow and is a Classic of its genre. It's called Froggy's Little Brother, again set in the East End(?wot is it with london's east end, chosen just because 'everyone' is supposed to know of it, perhaps)? This book was presented to Alfred Blood for Regular Attendance, Good Conduct and Progress in School Work during the year1908 I wonder if Alfred copped it in the Great War?

I'm going to read it tonight.

Thanks to the pp who reminded me of the horrifying details of 'Bumblepuppy' - I did ask...

Has anyone said Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War?

Or The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, where the protagonist wakes up in hospital with amnesia, gradually realises that all the other children on the ward have terminal illnesses, and discovers that he too is dying, and his amnesia is the result of an experiment to see if he'll live longer if he doesn't know he has terminal cancer?

Or the utterly terrifying The Scarecrows by Robert Westall, where the boy, furious that his widowed mother has remarried, accidentally calls up the spurts of a triple suicide/murder who possess scarecrows who move across the field towards the house? This is a novel that makes a turnip field scary, for god's sake!

DH says that he's still haunted by The Outsiders, which he hadn't read since he was 10...

Oh God I'd forgotten The Bumblebee Flies Anyway! We were actively encouraged to read Robert Cormier aged about 11/12 - his work is so freaky!

I remember the name of the book Tarka the Otter, mentioned above, but I don't remember the story (probably blocked it out ).

The book that most freaked me out when I was in primary school was The The Fear of Samuel Walton. It freaked me out for years. There was a ghost/spirit in the book that would do a knock knock knock when it was around. At the time there were bushes outside my bedroom window that would brush against it sometimes - sounding like a knock knock . I spread the fear by giving the book to my sister (who I shared the bedroom with) to read .

There is a little excerpt here www.rogerjgreen.net/books-fear.html

"There were many strange stories about the Stone at the top of the hill. The old people said their parents had seen all sorts of boggarts and ghosts around it, and some said they had even seen the Devil up there. But no one believed these stories any more, no one except a young boy, Samuel Walton. Sam had seen the face on the Stone, a face alive with power and evil.

He found himself watching the stone as it stood dark on the hill.

He was sure the Stone and the evil face were watching him and plotting something. Sam began to realize that he was now being hunted by the stone and by the Monster that came off the Stone. But no one believed him. No one understood what lay behind the fear of Samuel Walton . . ."

Just realised from that website that there seems to be a follow up book which I hadn't known about, The Lengthening Shadow. (as well as other scary books by the same author). I might be just about brave enough now to look for it and read it. Maybe.

Following.

The Cat In The Hat, when he trashes the house.

Oh, I thought that was the most terrible thing when I was a child. The mess! It made me quite upset.

Robinsheugh by Eileen Dunlop... The heroine goes back in time to the 17th century, at first it's all lovely but then it turns out there's something very dark going on.

I had a book of ghost stories called The Phantom Roundabout or something like that, one of which involved a ghost wearing a long white nightgown with a dark shadow where her heart had been taken out. Eek!

Cointreau, that cat distressed me too. He cleaned the pink with a dress. The state of the dress was horrendous. It was all too Tiswas for me.

Another vote for the tunnel scene in Weirdstone, and the stones in Marianne Dreams. I adored Dark is Rising but don't remember finding it scary.

When I was very tiny, my favouritepicture book was Little Turtle's Big Adventure. There's a page in there which is all black with two little eyes - a boy puts the turtle in his pocket. "It was dark in there. Little Turtle was frightened." Apparently I used to make my mum skip past that page because I didn't like it.

We have an old family copy of Dracula which has a piece of brown paper stuck extremely firmly over the front cover because the picture gave my father the willies when he was a child! The content terrified me as a child, but it's not exactly a children's book.

Why? Why have I read this thread? Now i feel disturbed for the rest of the day. Can i add a special mention for John Wyndham's Consider her Ways? Pregnant woman is trapped on stranded spaceship, eventually goes mad, eats the other passengers to keep baby alive.
Mind you, if any of your DCs are reading Charlie Higson's The Fear, they'll be having this discussion in 20years.

Pandora 37 that story about the girl and the life like doll sounds familiar to me too, but like you I can't remember what it was called.

Wolves of willoughby chase - thank you! That was annoying me for the first five pages.

Skallagrigg for me after years reading about fairly violent moles in Duncton Wood.

Actually, there are bits in The Wind in the Willows I still find disturbing, especially the part where Mole gets lost in the forest and is 'chivvied' by things he can't see.

Can anyone help me with a book I read when I was about 10 i.e. in 1974? It was about some kids who discovered an ancient tribe living on an island in Kew Gardens. The kids went in at night & got ferried over to the island. That's all I remember but I've been trying to find it ever since.

Yes to the happy prince.

The tinder box also freaked me out - the dogs with eyes as big as saucers, and waterwheels etc.

And that but in the witches, where the girl is trapped in her parents painting and gradually grows older and dies. Still makes me shiver sometimes, especially of I see a painting with a small person and a house etc, as described in the book.

As a teen I used to read all the 'point horror' series. Some of them really scared me at the time, but I can't remember the titles now.

FDB - don't know that one, but have you tried asking the question on on Abe Books BookSleuth section? You might find someone there knows the name.

Another one for the Weirdstone/tunnelling episode. Re-read recently (after reading Garner's recent third part of the trilogy). Felt writing was really clunky & dialogue awful - but STILL TERRIFYING!

I was terrified by one of the Enid Blyton "Chimney Corner Stories" where a wet umbrella is put into a sink to drain and comes upstairs to terrorise the family (or something along those lines).

"Dark is Rising" - LOVED those books! I can remember:

When the dark comes rising, six shall turn it back
Three from the circle, three from the track
Wood, bronze, iron, water, fire, stone
Five shall return and one go alone

Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long
Wood from the burning, stone out of song
Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw
Six stones the circle and the grail gone before

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of the old
Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea
All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree

And I still have a 100% belief that humanity will succumb to some John Wyndham-like disaster thanks to reading all of his books as a child.

Remembered another verse!

When light from the lost land shall return
Six sleepers shall ride, six signs shall burn
And where the midsummer tree grows tall
By Pendragon’s sword, the Dark shall fall

And as for Ursula K. Le Guin. Loved the Earthsea series. What spooked me out was “The Tombs of Atuan” when the two ancient people had a trunk containing their own jeweled baby clothes – they were the deposed and exiled infant prince and princess.