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

[ElektraLOL]

For me it's got to be The Shining. It's way scarier than the book! Especially the bit with the Dog Man 😨

Bag of Bones by Stephen King. Couldn’t sleep for weeks afterwards and still hate thinking about it years later.

I was too scared to read Woman in Black but listened to the audiobook and it was terrifying.

I've also read IT - which was the scene they wouldn't recreate? 🤔

The Fog James Herbert. I couldn’t read it actually. Too spooky for me.

IT is scary in places but the amount of waffling King does about the history of Derry is so unnecessary imo!

How could I have forgotten The Haunting of Hill House?

Probaly the Pan horror books I used to get from the adult library at 10 but there's not a lot now. I'm a bit of a hard hearted old hag

The Long Walk by Stephen King under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. (The Bachman Books.)
Not scary as such, but very, very disturbing.
I read it as a teen and bought a copy of The Bachman Books to re-read when I was much older. It still freaks me. A very simple basis to the story but really unsettling.

The Lurker.

I don't know who wrote it but I took it to the charity shop right after I finished.couldnt even have it in the house.

The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley

The Exorcist, admittedly I was 12 and really shouldn't have read it so young. My mum also had a book about the paranormal, I remember reading the Spontaneous Human Combustion chapter avidly even though I was terrified

Oh Jesus, The Hot Zone! I'd forgotten that one..although it didn't terrify me the premise is horrific.

Oh, and there was a short story in a collection of writings by Gerald Durrell called Fillets of Plaice. The last one in the book, absolutely hair raising. About a dead person in a mirror or something.

OMG IT IS TERRIFYING! I was going to post that exact same short story. I can’t remember what it’s called and it’s very short but absolutely the scariest thing I’ve ever read. Gerald Durrell wrote so many lovely books and that is just horrifying!

Agree about Salem’s lot. I read it as a teenager then again in my twenties and was absolutely paralysed with fear at being in the house by myself. It is the bit when the vampire child knocks on his friend’s window that did it for me...

Ok - I read a book as a child and I have no idea what it was called - was an older child’s book and I “borrowed” it when he was out.

It was a collection of short stories and this particular story had a line in it

“First I cut off your arms and legs and then..”

I blanked the rest out and it terrified me - would love to know what it is now though!!!!

Pinkarsedfly, The Haunting of Hill House is so good. Such a strange, claustrophobic book. That scene where they come across the group having a picnic in the woods is chilling. Shirley Jackson was a genius, that miniseries on Netflix wasn’t a patch on the book.

Have you seen Geralds game the film? It’s on Netflix at the moment. One of the creepiest films I’ve seen in a while...not scary just unsettling.

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver is terrifying - about someone working in the Arctic somewhere during the long dark nights and a ghost that keeps getting closer to the cabin- it chilled me to the bone.

Pet Semetary was also incredibly disturbing, I read it while pregnant and massively regretted it! Another vote here for Salems Lot too - really creepy.

The only book I've actually had to close and put down until the morning was a Julie Myerson book about children living by themselves. There's one bit which is just terrifying, and you know something dreadful is going to happen to them, and I couldn't take it!

I don't tend to read scary things though, as I don't particularly enjoy being scared.

I have read a lot of Stephen King though, and most of it was manageable (I really like The Stand, for example).
I doubt I could read the likes of Pet Sematary, It, etc now though. I can't even remember the premise/setting of Salem's Lot. I would never pick up anything by Koontz or James Herbert, in not daft! I'd never read American Psycho either, because I don't think I'd stomach it.

AgentCooper superb, isn’t it?

Try her short story, ‘The Lottery’ and the novel ‘We Have Always Lived In The Castle’. Both creepy.

A book about the Yorkshire ripper, absolutely terrifying. I was in bed reading and I was the only one in the house, I could feel my heartbeat in my ears.

Transgressions by Sarah Dunant gave me the creeps.

The Dark by James Herbert scared the bejeezus out of me when it was doing the rounds in my early teens.

American Pyscho for me too. I had to keep taking breaks from it as the horror was so draining.

I second Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

Pet Cemetary or The Shining for me too I think.