To ask what's the scariest/creepiest thing you've read?

[ChickenTikkaTellMeWhatsWrong]

I love anything to do with creepiness and I know there have been a few threads about the creepiest things that have happened, but I want to know what are the creepiest, scariest thing you've read.

I always remember when I was in year 6 I read a book called 'In a dark dark room' and there was one story about a girl with a green ribbon around her neck and she meets someone called Alfred. They get married and she never takes the ribbon off her neck and never tells Alfred why, until they're both old and she tells Alfred to untie the ribbon and her head fell off.
That story used to freak me out, but I constantly read it whenever I could and I always think of about it and still remember how I felt when I first read it.

I was also reading short scary stories not so long ago and this one freaked me out...

“I begin tucking him into bed and he tells me, “Daddy, check for monsters under my bed.” I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, under the bed, staring back at me quivering and whispering, “Daddy, there’s somebody on my bed.””

Anyone else?.....

Iago that story sounds a bit like one I read years ago, where there's a killer on the loose, the woman gets home, closes her door with such relief, then somebody behind her gives a little cough! Think it may have been by Ray Bradbury.

I was 11 when I read The Rats and Lair too. Couldn’t read them now I’m an adult. Some scenes I remember now and I feel a bit sick. Early Herbert is fantastic - he studied exactly what the genre needed and how to make it relevant to an audience that was hungry for more graphic content. His ad and marketing background helped keep the prose spare and didn’t fanny about with much backstory or description (except for the stark details of a large number of rats attacking a dog or a baby.....).

I have been scared by many of these books but my most scary one ever was Wild Swans. The description of her life in the Cultural Revolution and what happened to her parents is absolutely terrifying as it really happened. An evil man manipulated a whole society into madness.

Oh, didn’t answer the question, sorry!
Early Ramsey Campbell is incredibly creepy. There’s one about a boy whose parents are arguing on a picnic in some woods and they just...well, who knows what happens to them, but I can’t see a moss-covered picnic table now without a little shudder!

OhCaptain I was just coming on the say 'The Smiling Man'. The thought of someone with wide eyes and a big smile gives me the jeebies.

@Bezalelle any chance you can direct me to the thread. Living near Savernake forest, means curiosity is going to get the better of me and I will freak myself out about it 😂😂

@rediswhereitsat It's called 'The Entrance' (Gerald Durrell) and it terrified the life out of me the one time I read it. I've read nothing that has frightened me as much.

Never mind! That's proper scary though

I've always found mysteries quite scary. Like when people literally vanish without a trace.

I find the story of Elisa Lam quite creepy. Mainly because of the strange CCTV footage.

allthatsinteresting.com/elisa-lam-death

I remember having the heebs at Salem's Lot in the hot summer too!

One we read at school, a short story about a woman who is going to a house, her house, on the other side of a valley and she knows there's a monstery creepy psycho around. Can't remember how, but she realises who it is, and that if he knows she's home, she'll be next. So she turns all the lights off and THAT'S how she gets got. Because he was watching the house, she turned the lights on, realised and turned them off again. So he knew she knew it was him somehow.

Sounds banal now but it was the ta-da lights moment that was really freaky.

Anything where someone speaks in a voice not their own has me blithering behind the sofa.

I thought Dark Matter was crap though! Nothing happened in it.

BookMeOnTheSudExpress I remember that one from school too. I don’t remember it creeping me out at the time but then I was probably paying my usual amount of attention. There was one it that same anthology I did find quite creepy though. It was a man I think, who stayed in a four poster bed in a creepy guest house. He wakes up in the night to see the canopy moving down towards him. Due to my usual level of attention I can’t remember what it was called. How I got an A is beyond me.

I also found The Pit And The Pendulum quite creepy. again, it’s that theme of something coming down towards you you just can’t stop I guess.

OP I remember the green ribbon/Jenny story too! Agree it freaked me out so much ..

One creepy things MN thread a few years back someone told a story about getting up in the middle of the night and seeing a demon type thing eating out of the fruit bowl at the bottom.of the stairs. Creeped me right out. Not sure where the original post is!

Does anyone have a link to the digital spy cabin thread?

Amityville Horror was based on the tales of the Lutz family who claimed that the house was haunted/possessed. They later admitted that most of the story was a hoax.
However, the original crime committed in the house was very real. Butch Defeo murdered his entire family in the house including his parents and siblings. The Lutz's capitalised on a very real tragedy, and Amityville Horror was born.

I used to work in a very old village that had lots of history. There were some original houses in the very centre that were absolutely tiny, you had to stoop to go through the front door, my friend lived in one of them for a short while. She said she didn't feel great as soon as she moved in, but thought it was because it was so dark and claustrophobic. But one night she woke up and she swears there was a gargoyle type creature stood at the bottom of the bed, she had this intense fear and dread, she moved out within a few days she was absolutely terrified! Every time I see those houses it makes me shudder.

The Search and Rescue/staircases stories are really well done. I also likes Candle Cove.

I remember this story really creeping me out when I read it a few years ago:
creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/My_Dead_Girlfriend_Keeps_Messaging_Me_on_Facebook

Oh Whistle and I’ll come to you by M R James is THE creepiest ghost story there is

One of my favourite creepy pasta stories is about a guy who works in an office, and is counting down the hours to the end of his shift with dread.

You wonder why he is dreading it so much, and then he begins to narrate the things his co-workers are about to say or do just before they do them. It has a supernatural feel but is narrated in a way that seems fed up.

His co workers invite him out for drinks, but he declines - says he’s got some more work to do.
His co workers pile into the lift and tell him theyll see him tomorrow, to which he doesn’t reply.

I think they can’t actually hear him, or they don’t respond - he says no matter what he does, if he tries to drag them out of the elevator, scream at them not to go, throw things etc. They always get in, and the lift breaks, sending them all hurtling down the lift shaft and he hears their screams as they plummet to their deaths.

And then the day restarts, and he counts down the hours, until exactly X time, when they invite him to join them and he says he can’t, and he has to listen to it over again.

The most chilling line I think was him wondering if they only way to get it all to stop is to accept the invitation and get in the lift with them....

The scariest thing I’ve ever read is Huxley s brave new world. Read it a lot over the past 25 years or so, every-time I reread it something else seems to have become a reality!

As a teen I read lots of Stephen king (I think the word is obsessed). Pet Semetary was the first proper horror book I read (big step up from Enid Blyton), I was both frightened to death and hooked on the way a book could make your mind run an internal film in your head beyond anything you had ever experienced in real life, both reflecting and embellishing the words typed on the page.

*The Wikipedia entry for Philip Davies MP

@HopeClearwater golly, just read it. It is indeed terrifying that such people exist and, indeed, have some power in this country*

The fact he's engaged to Esther McVey just puts the top hat on it

*'There's somebody on my bed'
*
Well that just shit me and the husband right up.

Oh Whistle and I’ll come to you by M R James is THE creepiest ghost story there is

Yes, I’ve never looked at a basketful of laundry the same since I read that! 😂

I love the odd subthreads on reddit but the one that always sticks with me is the non creepy one. I think it may be an ask reddit “what’s the scariest thing that’s happened to you in real life”

The one is where a guy explains how he was nearly kidnapped by his teacher when he was 10/11. She told him they were going on a special trip and he wasn’t to tell his parents and he had to secretly pack etc- I think the teacher was found out.

Another is where someone fell into a 20foot storm drain but managed to hand on the sides and pull himself out in slippery mud after 40mins, while contemplating the 12 hours before the morning shift would realise he was missing.

Ask Reddit’s are a guilty pleasure.

The Signalman, by Charles Dickens.

I can't even remember the story, just my fear... I have a phobia like fear of ghosts, and it was at its worst in my teenage years- I mostly manage to avoid ghost stories etc. However we had to study The Signal man for GCSE, and the teacher showed us the film. I was cowering at the back, shaking with my hands over my face- teacher had no idea until she put the lights in the end (and realised it wasn't teenage girl hysteria, but actual fear).