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Original poster

What was the scariest/most chilling book you read as a child?

208 replies

VintageGardenia · 08/09/2009 19:42

And did you love it or hate it?

My ds is 11 and doesn't like reading scary books one bit - I hated them too when I was a child, I still do really. But the book that scared me most as a child was called Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr, I can remember every bit of it and it still gives me the creeps to pass a tall boulder.

Just wondering what other chilling books there were.

OP posts:
cyteen · 09/09/2009 21:56

beanieb The Farthest-Away Mountain is one of my very favourite books EVER I used to get it out of the library pretty much every week. Bought myself a new copy a few years ago and it is just as brilliant as I remember. Love the moaning gargoyles, 'ahhhhhhhhh!' and Drackamag.

Was also a big Look and Read fan. Dark Towers was fantastic, not that I can remember anything about it now.

drlove8 · 09/09/2009 21:59

most scary book i read as child was big sisters diary! - actually still think its the scariest book ive ever read !

bran · 09/09/2009 22:00

There was a terrifying Roald Dahl about a husband and wife. The wife liked to leave plenty of time for trips and the husband used to like to delay her because he know it wound her up. He came to a sticky end and it bothered me for ages. But by the time I found myself married to a permanantly late-running DH, I'd stopped having nightmares about the husband's sticky end and found a lot of sympathy for the wife in the story.

Original poster
VintageGardenia · 09/09/2009 22:05

Not exacty a frightening read but just a startling image on the controlling husband thing (seemed quite a feature of RD) I remember another one where the husband had trained the wife to respond to a whistle that only she could hear. I often think of that image, deeply unpleasant.

OP posts:
moosemama · 09/09/2009 22:07

I definitely found The Owl Service disturbing, also Z for Zacharia (although I think I was too young for it when I read it).

When I was a lot younger I was really upset by a Ladybird book called 'Mick the Disobedient Puppy'. I was truly terrified our house would catch fire and we would all perish because my Mum wouldn't let me have a dog to save us like Mick did in the story!

peanut08 · 09/09/2009 22:37

Haven't read the whole thread so apologies if anyone's already mentioned it but I was terrified of the book of the children's programme Chocky (nightmares and everything) and the littlest vampire storis .
Also at about 6 or 7 we had to read these books and they scared the crap out of me especially Dancing ann and the green gruff grackle which no one else seems to remember

sheepgomeep · 09/09/2009 22:58

the growlygus.. the book you mentionedabout the nuclear fallout was by Louise Lawrence and it was in a collection of short stories written by her. Arggh I can't think of the title but I loved it. In fact I thought she was a brilliant author anyway.

There was one she wrote which was set in Wales and (I can only remember a snippet) and basically these men dissapeared into a door in the mountain and their dog sat and waited and waited for them but they never returned. I cried loads over that.

I remember Brother in the land too

sheepgomeep · 09/09/2009 23:00

I remember the owl service, I've actually got the book

beanieb · 09/09/2009 23:01

"The Farthest-Away Mountain is one of my very favourite books EVER"

oh me too . infact I couldn't remember what it was called for years and then I googled it, bought it and devoured it as an adult.

naturopath · 09/09/2009 23:03

Grinny
The Demon Headmaster
When the Wind Blows

and a collection of ghost stories that included one about a boy's dog that went and dug up a grave and brought a bit of the other dead boy's body (shudder) and one about someone driving late at night to an inn and kept seeing something in the road that seemed to change sides whenever he looked at it, so that he didn;t know how to avoid crashing into it - I think it was a stagecoach that he crashed into but the people where already dead and were ghosts ..

Please tell me if you recognise that - I have always wanted to remember what those stories were (not that I ever want to read them again - they scared me to death) - why on earth did I re-read them thousands of times??!

beanieb · 09/09/2009 23:03

peanut08 - I remember Chocky. By the writer of 'day of the triffids'.

MoominMymbleandMy · 09/09/2009 23:05

The Gerald Durrell short story about something coming out of the mirror is The Entrance from The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium and I agree, it's very creepy. I'm glad I read it as a teenager not a child!

I thought Paperhouse was very true to the spirit of the book and I can just vaguely remember a 1970s TV adaptation of Marianne Dreams - I can still see the boulders with eyes waiting outside.

sheepgomeep · 09/09/2009 23:11

Does anyone remember a book called 'The Dolls house' It was an American story

From what I can remember two young girls get to stay with thier Grandmother in thier school Holidays. The gm still lives in the house where she grew up but there is a big secret about the house and it turns out her parents were murdered there years before and her young brother (the girls dad) was the only survivor (gm was out at the time)

Anyway these girls find an old dolls house in the attic ehich is an EXACT replica of the house and every night the dolls inside the house reenact the murder, trying to tell the girls who killed them and why!

I read it when I was nine, and it still scares me now. I found the book years ago in a charity shop, its in the house somewhere but don't know where.

tothesea · 09/09/2009 23:12

Ahhh! It was Chocky I was thinking of - I could have sworn the voice was called Enoch how bizarre. Makes total sense as we did quite a few of his books in school. Another mystery solved by Mumsnet!
The Girl in a Swing by Richard Adams I found very unsettling and dark but I would have been a bit older by then, maybe 12

peanut08 · 09/09/2009 23:14

beanieb, Yep here it is I remember the programme better though the opening credits and music were really creepy.

beanieb · 09/09/2009 23:18

sheepgomeep - I wonder, did they make a tv film of that? It rings a bell but I don't think I read the book. Is there a lake involved? or a river?

ravenAK · 09/09/2009 23:30

Tothesea, I remember a horrible story about an imaginary friend called 'Enoch', maybe that's where you're remembering it from?

Can't remember the author - hang on...

ravenAK · 09/09/2009 23:34

Robert Bloch!

SolidGoldBrass · 10/09/2009 00:06

The Owl Service is just uneasy-making when you are a kid because it's incomprehensible until you a) hit adolescence and b) actually read a bit of welsh mythology. Basically it's a prolonged (very 70s) riff on sexuality and class prejudice.
Oh, and if anyone can explain the end of Red Shift to me I would be grateful. Only 30 fucking years of having no fucking idea what happened as the last few pages are in fucking code!

SolidGoldBrass · 10/09/2009 00:11

Naturopath: I think the story about crashing into something that's pn the wrong side of the road is The House Of The Nightmare. Which scared several shades out of me when I was a kid too.
Grinny was another bad one: read bits of it in the bookshop and had nightmares, never read the whole thing, couldn't bear to.
Mind you, aged 11 on holiday, spent too much time dipping into the Pan Books of Horror Stories on sale in the cafe nearby (I used to read the shortest ones so I could finish them before the shopkeeper yelled at me to put the book down and get lost - which of course meant they were the worst sucker-punch ones of the whole books).

WhingeBobShitPants · 10/09/2009 00:27

The Amazing Mr Blunden

scared the living shit out of me

Ozziegirly · 10/09/2009 02:47

Paperhouse was one of the scariest films I saw as a child - but weirdly I saw it again a couple of years ago and found it really moving, especially at the end.

As a child I was also scared by Z for Zachariah and another apocalyse one called On the Beach.

Also I watched a children's series called Moondial which was scary but also really good.

spinspinsugar · 10/09/2009 02:50

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

thumbwitch · 10/09/2009 02:54

The Fog.
I shouldn't have read it; nor The Rats either - I was only about 10 I think and far too young to cope properly. I couldn't get out of bed properly for ages after in case there were rats under my bed waiting to attack me, pull me under the bed and eat me from the middle out.
Ugh.
I still have an almost phobic reaction to rats.

kreecherlivesupstairs · 10/09/2009 08:51

Misty comics were brilliant, we used to have that and Bunty (the hairstyles of the four mary's were a bit scary) delivered. When we were back in the uK over the summer, dd found my old Misty annuals and now scares herself witless at them. They are pretty pathetic TBH, but then I'm 45 and she's 8. DD was terrified by the witches. Roald Dahl had too much imagination, six months after she scared herself into such a frenzy that she couldn't sleep, she happily re read it.