Has any book ever literally given you chills?

[CheerfulYank]

For me it's Stephen King's Dead Zone, about a man, Johnny, who wakes up from a coma with psychic powers.

(SPOILERS)

He's working as a tutor for a high school boy later on and he tells his student not to go to the graduation party as the restaurant will burn down. No one believes him, but the boy and about half the class come to an alternate party at the boy's house because they're scared. The rest of the class goes to the restaurant.

Johnny and the boy's father are playing cards while chaperoning the alternative party and a radio announcement interrupts to say that the worst fire in the state's history has broken out at the restaurant, and almost everyone there is dead.

I haven't explained it that well, but for some reason ( and I've read it a few times) I literally get goosebumps at that bit. Every time!

Anyone else have this or just me? :o

Provencal, not Provincial. Stupid autocorrect

fuck me this thread is upsetting enough

never mind the actual books

The Name of the Rose kept me awake at night when I read it as a teenager but perhaps I was just a wimp

More recently I was scared witless by The Black Path by Åsa Larsson - another of the Scandi noir writers, but the tension towards the end of the book was nearly unbearable.

I'm another one who found the Roald Dahl Swan story very unsettling.

American Psycho
The road
Then
Pet Sematary (yes, the bit where the little boy runs towards the road)
and
The Treatment

This Victorian short story for children - terrified me as a child and still does.

"The New Mother" -

weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/creepy-classic-lucy-cliffords-the-new-mother/

Duchess me too. I have a contained panic every time I am in one

No, No Remus I also find the little killer boy in a suit quite ludicrous in Pet Sematary. It's just the bit where he runs towards his death and the father can't stop him.

Ewan McEwan, the comfort of strangers and First love, last rites. Especially the one with the kitten.

This thread is great, it's telling me about all the books I will never want to read ( as I am a wuss ) :)

Woah, Greyhound - just read it in your link.

'the drag of the tail along the floor....'.

Yikes!

Thanks RiverTam, I will look that one up.

Firstchoice - I know! It's a horrific story!

For some reason, one of the aspects of the story that scared me the most was the weird names the children have. Why would a child be called "Turkey" Throughout the story, I wondered if any of the characters were humans or animals / monsters. Why does the new mother have a wooden tail? Eeeek!

Thank you, Franca. :)

Just read the new mother! most odd!

ChasedbyBees Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. The pool story was gross but I found the one about the box you must not look into much scarier. Where people were told not to look in the box (or through a hole in the box - can't remember) and those who did were never the same. But people couldn't resist.

Yes to Cujo. Now I have kids I add that to my never ending list of worries. What if I was trapped in the car with a rabid dog outside? What would I dooooo?!!

A Stephen King short story about a child who turned out to be dead but filled with flies. Never forgotten that one.

Weird how we have all read the babysitter book yet all thought it was some charity shop find or similar. Maybe it came free with a magazine?

Re: the fly filled child story. I don't think I explained it properly. A man stays at a house with a mysterious child who walks about but won't talk to him when he asks her questions. Oh God, I'm not explaining anymore just don't read it.

I've just been reminded of 'The Langloiers' by SK. I thought I had wiped it from my memory, I remember being able to hear that sound as I was reading it.

*Langoliers

Thanks Jiimmy! I don't remember the one about the box. I have a terrible memory on the whole.

I can't remember the fly child - I thought I'd read pretty much everything King has written, so now i feel like I've missed out. Please try to remember more for me!

I not i

I found Room upset me for a good couple of weeks - the bits at the start where the mother and son are prisoners. I think it's the contrast between the horrible precariousness of their position and it actually being a 'happy' childhood. It haunted me for ages.

I don't read Jo Nesbo either. The leopard was horrible.

Second Melmoth the Wanderer

i have mentioned this before on another thread,

as a teen I loved horror/ghost/supernatural stories, still do, but always always for films or books I see the end/scary bit coming a mile off

My ma got me a couple of books, compilations from M&S of all places, one was ghost stories, one was horror. I always look out for them in charity shops and have never seen them.

There was one very short story, not even a whole page really which has always preyed on my mind.

A newly separated woman home alone with her toddler child hears noises, she comes to realise the noises are in the house, and she recalls subtle threats from her ex that somehow he WILL make her sorry for leaving and he will get their son.

She lies there waiting, hearing, panicking that she doesn't know what to do, it's so very dark she cannot see a thing, she is aware of the noises, there is someone sneaking across the landing into her room, she feels a presence, she hears breathing, closer and closer.

In a bid to save herself and get time to escape she slowly slowly reaches for the heavy lamp, stretching as silently as she can she grasps the lamp. she whirls it, crashes it down and makes contact with the intruder

Jubilant she has saved herself and her child she stops dead as she hears a single word from her bedside..... "mummy....."

YIKES!

The Gerald Durrell one is in a short story collection, " The picnic and suchlike Pandemonium" and its the last story. Think it's The Entrance, and it is very scary! I hated American Psycho - just a nasty little book, and I threw it in the recycler. Thought it was just too nasty to leave around. And some of the Lovecraft stories are frightening. Thinking of Brown Jenkin who lives in the walls, scratching. Now that's enough to make you sleep with all the lights on! And the dog!