What's the scariest book you've ever read?

[Thurlow]

I'm currently reading IT and I didn't think it was particularly scary, maybe because I know what it's about because it's just one of those stories you know without reading/seeing it - but when I walked over a bridge over a stream today and thought "ooooh, this would be exactly the place Pennywise would hide if he lived in this town..." So it must be scaring me somehow!

Of course, it could just be the memory of Cujo, which I remember as the single most terrifying thing I've ever read at the time.

Also, Mo Hayder's first two Caffrey novels, Birdman and The Treatment, but they're probably more violent than scary. Though The Treatment was set less than half a mile from where I lived at the time I read it, which really didn't help much.

The Haunting of Hill House.

Pet sematary. Threw it down the stairs the first time I tried to read it. Tried again fifteen years later and my heart was pounding and I was in a cold sweat throughout.

Dracula. Shit me up good and proper when I was 18

House of Leaves gave me such bad nightmares I never did finish it.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris is the only book that actually made me jump.

Pet Semetary here too - fucking awful, i could never read it now - i read it when i wa a teenager, enjoyed it but couldn't turn the page when it got to the bit where the little boy got run over by a truck :(

Dracula didn't scare me, i just thought it was really sad

The shining is probably the scariest.

Closely followed by Rose Madder.

I didnt find red dragon scary at all.

Agree - pet cemetary - still couldn't read it

Or 'the fog' - but I was about 12 when I read it so very impressionable

Probably 'the woman in black' I was v disappointed with the film tbh. And not 'scary' as such but extremely shocking - 'The boy in the striped pajamas' I really didn't see the ending coming!

Flesh and Blood by Graham Masterton. Horrible. But great.

I was going to say the ones you mention op-
Cujo
The treatment
Birdman

Brilliant all of them.

I'm easily spooked so avoid anything scary. However, a few months ago I decided to read a Sherlock Holmes novel so got The Hound of the Baskervilles from the library. Terrifying! I couldn't even get out of bed in the night to go to the loo in case a mad evil hound chased me and after 2 nights of no sleep I had to swig some piriton syrup to knock me out. I won't be reading anything scary again.

A true crime book called Fatal Vision terrified me many years ago

The girl on the landing. Horrible.

Stephen King's The Stand, because it all starts with a genetically fiddled with flu.

I'm not easily scared by books tbh, but my sister lent me an awful trash horror book once about a babysitter being killed by the children she was looking after and it frightened me beyond belief. I couldn't finish it and I still had nightmares about it for weeks. Horrible.

Skin by Mo Hayder - gave me the creeps and I made the mistake of always reading just before bed time!

Mo Hayder's just grim all around, isn't she? I got quite freaked out what I was pregnant and kept smelling odd things in the house, it reminded me too much of The Treatment

I saw The Woman in Black on stage and it frightened the absolute bejeesus out of me!

But then telly's much scarier than books, I think - I don't watch horror movies at all, I found things like The Fall creepy beyond words and checked all my doors and windows before going to bed - but stories of monsters just don't do it. I keep reading bits in It about giant eyeballs falling out of fortune cookies and blood spurting out of the drain and thinking "meh". But then I do remember one Stephen King, I think it must have been Needful Things because I haven't read many books by him, where someone had all their nails pulled off and that properly freaked me out.

The Road.

Coma and Brain by Robin Cook are very disturbing but I was terrified reading The Shining and Haunted by James Herbert. I am reading Misery at the moment and i think that will haunt me for years to come.

All of Stephen King,James Herbert and Dean Koontz's are wonderfully scary.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. What the actual fuck was going on? Soo creepy ... I'm not easily scared by books, but that when gave me a few restless nights.

The Darkest Corner Elizabeth HAynes

The Exorcist terrified me almost as much a the film did.

I've read The Shining and Pet Semetary, didn't find them very scary.

Misery was a bit freaky, but I wasn't scared as such. The film was crap though IMO, didn't capture the psychopathic nature of the female character at all. And as for The Shining, that film was laughably crap!

I've just finished James Herbert Ghosts of Crickley Hall which I didn't find especially scary but the ending did disturb me a bit.

I'm going to have to try some of the others mentioned because I would quite like to find a book that properly scares me