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.

IT is still the only book that has ever made me jump.

Pet Semetary really, really creeped me out as a teen. I keep thinking I want to reread it as an adult, but actually I think now I have children I would find it awful - which also happened with Cujo.

I have just read the plot of Gerald's game and parts of it seem very different to what I recall. How strange.

I used to read and reread a book by James Herbert I think. The cottage?

IT. I'm with you OP.
I read it too young and then saw the movie on TV.

I have a huge fear of clowns and even pictures of three balloons together bring me out in a cold sweat. I'm giving myself the willies just thinking about it. And the shivers.

I remember reading Salem's Lot as a young teen and being very scared indeed.

SK writes some really, really dodgy stuff like Gerald's Game - it's like he has this really sick stuff that every now and again he just writes to get it out of his head. There's a short story about a doctor who is shipwrecked with a load of heroin and starts amputating parts of his body to eat

The Wheatstone Pond by Robert Westall. Actually marketed as a YA - scared the absolute crap out of me. Also the Stones of Muncaster Cathedral (the title story of a collection of short stories by Robert Westall).

Oh god that muncaster cathedral one-just had to google it to make sure it was what I remembered! Horrible story, really scary. I also read it as a teenager.

Woman in black is horrid and the MR James ghost stories are terrifying, I can't read them at all now!

Thanks, TheEyes, I've just had Melmoth the Wanderer delivered to my Kindle

Haunted is the only book of James Heberts that I found scary. Though it's been a while since I read it.

Agreeing with Pet Sematary [sic] It's really quite thought provoking actually. And, of course, Woman in Black. The TV versions don't come close.

M R James Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to you, My Lad.

I liked IT very much, but the silly ending (involving the insect) put me off it and made it much less scary.

Read I.T. when I was 15, it shit me up.
The only thing that's scared me since is The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, just because it could happen in a flash

I think I should get some of these King and Koontz books to read, I get so bored of novels!

I read The Amityville Horror when I was about 11 or 12. The blurb made it out to be factual so I totally believed it. I couldn't put it down, then I didn't sleep for about a week afterwards.

Another vote for House of Leaves. Twice I've tried to read it and twice I've had to stop about quarter of the way in.

The short story is, 'Survivor Type' and is my v favourite King short story.

I didn't find, 'Pet Sematary' scary at all; I thought it was really, really silly. The Stand is King's scariest, imho.

Mo Hayder- pig island brilliant but shit me up
Anything by graham masterton particularly hymn,ritual,mirror and family portrait.

It's the bit in The Handmaid's Tale where they just stop women getting money out of the ATM that's so frightening. I kept £20 in a margarine tub all the way through university, even when I didn't have any other money, just in case.

The Turn of the Screw properly gives me the willies as far as supernatural scares are c

Concerned. There's just such a feeling of evil about it.

Just remembered, 'The Woman In White.' That is scary, because it was so easy to have a woman declared insane. Terrifying.

I'm amazed. I came on to post about a book I read about 30 years ago which I thought nobody would ever have heard of, only to find 2 MNers were also disturbed by it.

Let's Go Play at the Adams. Babysitter is tortured and killed in a horrible way by group of kids.

Shocking.

Oh yes, the Yellow Wallpaper is good read.

Im not keen on a lot of stephen kings. Find them a bit 'wordy' sometimes but i do love his short stories. Theres one about a guy who ends up with eyes on the ends of his fingers that always made me feel a bit 'itchy'.

Theres one though which still always terrifies me. I have to have all the doors locked when i read it. I like being scared but this one gets me every time. Its about a guy who buys a painting at a yard sale of a strange man with a fast car. As he drives across country with the painting it changes to show that the stranger is following him!! I wont give the ending away but the finale always gives me the heebie-jeebies.....

Right, im off to check that the front door is locked

Yes, yes to The Yellow Wallpaper. What a story.