Whats the first book that seriously scared you?
 

For me it was the Omen. Salems Lot did it for my husband.

#2 pencil's book burning thread triggered this memory.

Pet Sematary.

I don't generally ready scary books. I ready a Stephen King short story collection, and there were a couple scary stories in that. One about a kid having to take care of some old lady relative who was a witch.

I don't remember. But I do remember being seriously creeped out by the evilness in Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was so good at making the bad seem Bad.

The first one I can remember the title for is Stranger With my Face - Lois Duncan (who also wrote I know What You Did Last Summer which I also read). I was 12. There's a part where she looks in the mirror and it's not her face looking back (I think her reflection is smiling) and it terrified me.

Prior to that was a book called something like The House of the Four Winds, but not the one I can see on Amazon. I asked my Mum, "What does severed mean?" and when Mum asked the context replied something like, "Looked up to see the blood dripping from a newly severed head" she took the book away from me. I got it back in the end, but the part that scared me wasn't the decapitation, it was the malevolent servants and the secret twin.

As a teen, The Shining terrified me. I've always been more scared by the dark inside houses rather than outside. The Shining scared me so much I held it away from me to turn the pages because I was physically scared of the book. Fantastic.

ETA (after reading Cloud) LOTR did scare me - but it was a good scariness. Fog on the Barrow Downs was wonderfully creepy.

Stephen Kings books never really scared me, just like a lot of horror movies dont - even though Alien freaked me out to no end.

Lasher Part of a series of Anne Rice books. Not really that scary, but living alone in an old apartment, drinking beer and reading all night did the trick.

I love scary books and movies but I can't think of any that physically scared me, especially not those which are quite impossible to be true (hauntings, etc.) I do remember being thrilled with books that grabbed me in a suspenseful way: I knew it was just a book but I could be gripped by the intensity and the mystery. One that comes to mind from my childhood is Mystery of the Witches Bridge.

Well, I was dating a crazy wiccan bitch* at the time and there was a lot of weird stuff happening... and and and, i'm a wuss.

Not saying there is any connection between those words other than the person they describe. she was wiccan. she was batshit crazy. she was a bitch. she was great in bed so those things were temporarily acceptable.

As a little kid I was really scared by the book-form of Alien the movie. Somewhere in the book, maybe as a teaser on the first page or maybe on the back book cover, was a graphic description of how the alien layed an egg in the guy's stomach. It scared me so much that I never read the book, even though I checked it out of the school library at least twice.

First book otherwise that really gave me a chill was The Hot Zone, by Preston. The idea of an outbreak of ebola is very scary.

The Exorcist when I was about 13 or 14. I was afraid to go to the basement after dark for about six months.

The Talisman kept me up for awhile when I read it in the fifth grade, but now I don't really remember anything scary about that book.

Are you sure it wasn't The Penisman? That might keep you up for awhile in fifth grade even if it wasn't scary.

hmmm, hard to say.

Wow - either I read it years after it was published or you are a lot younger than I thought.

Some short story in a Hitchcock anthology about a guy who slit throats and hid in a wax museum.

I can't think of a specific book--I'm not really into horror fiction. But I became interested in ancient Egyptian stuff at an early age. I was never bothered by any of the mummy stuff. One time, though, I must have been 8 or so, I was reading something about the seven ancient wonders of the world. It was talking about the Colossus of Rhodes, and it referred to a king... it said something like, "Built in the reign of King Ptolemy I, the colossus stood in the harbor . . . . etc." I didn't realize that was a Roman numeral and not the word "I." So I interpreted as, the colossus wrote this sentence(!) and was explaining how he stood in the harbor during the reign of King Ptolemy. EEEEewwwwwwwwww it just creeped me out to no end. I still remember it.

It.

Harlan Ellison - "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" freaked me out and depressed me for days.

Ellison can be really depressing, the story you mention Sheldon has to be one of the most disturbing. I would say Harlan Ellison can be scarier to me than Stephen King.

God, when he described what the computer's thoughts were like in his head, like blinding-bright neon being etched directly into his brain with acid, or something. Amazing writing, describing sensory perceptions that don't exist in reality.

A Clockwork Orange.

I read it in high school, just picked it off the shelf for fun, and have no idea how they allowed it into the high school library of a private, Catholic all-girl school. Scared the crap out of me, on many levels.

Also, The Handmaid's Tale.

I don't usually read horror fiction. Some of the speculative/sci-fi stuff is scarier, IMO, than anything Stephen King could write.

Was that the British version, or the American version with the last chapter deleted?

The Cask of Amontillado. Weeeeeee-hooo!

:reaper:

The Exorcist, which I read around the time the movie came out, since I was too young to get into the movie, which means I was about 11.

I had gotten in trouble in Catholic school in 4th grade for reading The Ratman's Notebooks (book Willard was based on) during class. I was easily bored by the teach and so spent more time reading books I would hide in my desk. Catholic school 4th grade was essentially a repeat of what I had done in 2nd and 3rd grade in public school in another state, so I had a lot of spare time on my hands. Willard, though, was more icky than scary.

Sphere by Michael Crichton.

When I was a kid, my dad travelled a lot. We were living in South America at the time, so my access to books in English was rather limited. Dad used to pick up novels as he stopped in airports here and there, and then pass them along to me -- so I ended up reading books like Jurassic Park and Sphere at the age of nine because they were all I could get my hands on.

Anyway, Sphere scared me badly enough that when I was done reading for the night, I would put the book in the freezer so that nothing could manifest out of it while I was sleeping. I had heard about little kids getting trapped in the fridge, so I guess I thought that any evil creatures that manifested would not only be trapped but would also freeze to death.

ETA: I just glanced at the bookburning thread and am amused to find that several people seem to have hated this same book.

The Tell-tale Heart.... He was staring at me I tell you! His EVIL EYE!! I had to do it!


Oh oh, and the Masque of the Red Death... *shiver*

Yup, that's proper scared! I piled things on top of The Shining for exactly the same reason. I remember one of the things that creeped me out most - Danny looking at the hose, feeling uneasy, and the hose falling off. Why? It's never explained. And technically nothing happens. That's real-world creepiness.
You read it at the right age :)

OH, I love reading The Tell-tale Heart. Good one!

I didnt hate it, but I do remember feeling a bit ambiguous about the ending. Still, Im pretty easy on most Sci Fi.

It makes me mad that so many people read that book. It was so worthless and we all wasted our time on it.

The Shining. I was probably 14 and my parents didn't really want me to read it, so I'd read it in the basement, so I had enough reaction time if they came down the stairs. I remember sitting there reading it in silence and the phone rang and I jumped. We had one of those rotary dial phones that had an actual bell in it when it rang. It was right next to me and scared the crap outta me.

Clive Barker "The great and secret show" not so much scary as distrubing as an author he's very weird