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 😨

I read The Exorcist when the movie came out. I would have been 11 or 12 and much too young for it. I slept with a prayer book tucked inside my pyjamas for weeks - just for protection against passing devils.

Several people have mentioned The Shining as their scariest book and I agree it is terrifying as is the sequel Doctor Sleep which features the grown up Danny battling against one of King’s worst ever villains.

Missparple that book ruined a good year of my life when I was about 8! A boy used it for show and tell. I couldn't sleep alone or go to the toilet alone!

The Turn of the Screw for scares - properly terrifying!

The Last Children, Z for Zachariah and When the Wind Blows all scared me shitless as a pre-teen in an existential nuclear angst kind of way.

MissParple You are so right - I had that book and it was terrifying - I remember regularly being unable to sleep after reading it.

In fact I blame that book and the film Watcher in the Woods (Disney family film my arse) for my dislike of any scary films now at all.

Bram Stokers Dracula. Game me nightmares

Patricia Cornwalls first book, Post Mortem scared me, wheras Stephen Kings book don't. I just finished Carrie and thought it was rubbish.

Does anyone have any scary witchcraft based recommendations please?

Postmortem was good but I tried one of her other books later and I couldn't carry on with it because it was so badly written. I couldn't believe the same person wrote it!

When I was in Infants there was a book on the classroom shelves about horrible accidents that had happened to children like one boy who had a terrible incident with a combine harvester. It was hypnotically awful and I have no idea what the school was thinking.

Another one saying Dark Matter by Michelle Paver. I read it in my friendly living room on a sunny day but was still too scared to even leave my chair at one point.

Also, parts of The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters really scared me!

As a teenager, Salem's Lot scared the bejeezus out of me. I love Stephen King but was not troubled by it when I read it recently. MR James, on the other hand, was terrifiying then and is terrifying now.

The Uninvited: The True Story of Ripperston Farm by Clive Harold

Creeped me out as a teenager. One of those true-life paranormal cases about a farm that experienced a very odd year. Strange lights in the sky, figures being seen across a field who looked like they were wearing silver. Dreams of being taken aboard a UFO. The dog chasing off after a mysterious figure and later having to be put down due to becoming disturbed amd never settling afterwards. That sort of thing.

Just the thought of living at an isolated farm with all that going on, did itfor me.

I Remember You by Yrsa Sigudardottir

I'm not a scandi-fiction fan at all but a friend raved about it and it is very 'read it with the lights on and your back against the wall' stuff.

Strong recommendation from me.

I had to put Pet Sematary, Christine and It in the wardrobe before I went to bed

The Cat Jumps by Elizabeth Bowen is sinister.
I’ve just read The Wall by John Lanchester and it’s not frightening like a ghost story but it’s a chilling tale set in the future.

I avoid scary books. I think it was reading Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde when I was 11 or 12 that did it. It scared the bejesus out of me and I had to sleep with the light on for ages.

Pig Island by Mo Hayder terrified the bejaysus out of me.

These are quite old, and perhaps out of print, now. I read them in my teens and they started me on reading a lot of horror stories/books.They are still quite vivid in my memory - have re-read them actually, and they are the more subtle, believable (ie a feeling that it could actually happen) style of horror.They are rather understated but quite elegantly written.
Tom Tryon (was a successful actor who got sick of acting and tried his hand at writing): "The Other" and "Harvest Home."
Fred Mustard Stewart Stewart:"The Mephisto Waltz."
All three were made into pretty good, but perhaps dated, movies.

Both writers wrote excellent books in other genres.

I just read the haunting of hill house and didn’t find it that scary. I watched the series on Netflix which I think made my expectations go up- ie I thought it would gesture the ‘bent neck lady’

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Quite scary especially since you know from the first page that it cannot have a nice ending

We need to talk about Kevin - not a horror but very disturbing as you realise that something horrible is going to happen but you don't know what
Also + 1 for the Yellow wallpaper short story someone linked to earlier.

Also terrified by 'Grinny' (Penelope Lively?) as a kid.

The treatment by Martha Stevens – it tells the story of the Cincinnati radiation tests in the 60s which resulted in many people dying horrible deaths. the subjects were terminal cancer patients but in reasonable health and nutrition and were not told what it was for – Cold War experiments to see how much radiation a serviceman or woman could take before being incapacitated – they were just told " this may help with the pain". the patients were working poor like my parents and aunts and uncles who could not afford private health care but were not otherwise indigent. 60% were black and the remainder were white. for the first few years no consent forms were given to the patients and when they were, they were inadequate to say the least as the patients weren't told this treatment could kill you. they were irradiated for an hour and given huge doses of gamma rays – some died within weeks some within days and all died horribly. afterwards they were not allowed pain relief or antiemetic drugs because this would have interfered with the experiment. the case that has stayed with me most was a lady who was frightened so when she saw the machine she panicked. Instead of being reassured and told she need not have the treatment, she was taken to another part of the hospital and given enough ECTs so that she didn't know whether it was Christmas, Easter or pancake Tuesday. Then unconscious, she was taken back and irradiated. It is beyond me how anybody could be so wicked. Martha Stevens English professor at the University of Cincinnati, found out about the experiments and started digging – the more she dug the more frightened she got. At that stage she only managed to get the tests stopped, not investigated. In 1994 Clinton's government began investigating and the families of the subjects, who Martha Stevens had identified, brought a class action against the hospital, the university and the doctors. Although they won their case it was a Pyrrhic victory because the sums offered in compensation were inadequate and the memorial to the subjects of the experiments was initially showing just their initials – they got that stopped but the memorial was placed in an out of the way corner of the hospital. The doctors had to pay compensation but otherwise were unaffected, going on to have illustrious careers. Well I wouldn't want them treating me. Assassins in white coats indeed!

Agree re 'Under the Skin' by Michel Faber. Nothing like what I was expecting at all!
'We Need to Talk Abour Kevin' by Lionel Shriver. Sucker punch indeed
'Rosemary's Baby' Ira Levin

I grew up on the Usborne Supernatural books, Hamlyn Book of Horror and Armada Ghost books then graduated onto James Herbert, Stephen King and Shaun Hutson 😂

Grinny was by Nicholas Fisk. I didn’t read any of his other books after that, though I had previously read A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of Hair.