OT: Scariest novel you remember

Rusty

Rusty

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For me it was The Wolfen by Whitley Streiber. Kept seeing things move out of the corner of my eye for a long time after I finished the book,
 
The Shining is the first book I can remember reading that kept me awake with fear after turning the lights out.

--Josh
 
Pet Semetary. I started that one on a Thurday, one day before the rest of my family went on a camping trip (I had to work). I got to the part where the protagonist (can't remember his name), followed the ghost to the Indian burial ground in a dream, then woke up to find his feet covered with dirt and pine needles. Laid in bed covered to the neck eyeballing the shadows for a good half hour that night.
 
The classics such as anything by Poe or Abbot and Costello Meet the Wolfman come to mind, but I just read Michael Chriton's Prey on my last trip. Terrifying if you are concerned about our wonderful ability to invent things we have no idea of how to use responsibly. In this case, well...I don't want to ruin it for you.
 
Don't have a 'scariest book'.

My own dreams were more frightening than most fiction.






munk
 
You should have written them down for us munk...
 
Rusty said:
For me it was The Wolfen by Whitley Streiber. Kept seeing things move out of the corner of my eye for a long time after I finished the book,
Click to expand...
Yup. When I lived in SoCal and had to leave the house about 5:00 a.m. to get to work at 6:00 a.m. I was damned near afraid to walk under the very dark carport to get to my car!!!!:eek:
Like Rusty I was that way for months!:rolleyes: The book was a helluva lot more scary than the movie!:eek: :eek:
And the helluva it was that I was around 37 when I read the book.:o
One of my co-workers read it on my recommendation and cussed me for months afterwards.
It affected him the same way.:D
 
I think I would also have to go with "The Shining".

I would say that "It" also by Stephen King, was also scary but the ending was just plain goofy.
 
The US TAX Code...

Oh, a novel; well that would have been The Amityville Horror. The book itself wasn't all that great, but I read it during a heavy thunderstorm and the upstairs neighbors were moving furniture around at all the right moments.

n2s

p.s. then there was that time I read Jaws while fishing in my uncle's old boat in the caribbean (his 35' wooden fishman look too much like the boat in the movie). I also read Destination Disaster while enroute from Miami to London -but that is nonfiction review of airline disasters - so it doesn't count. :D
 
Pet Semetary was good, but I read "It" in my dorm room at university until I was falling asleep I was sooo tired... which put it in my subconcious. When my humidier woke me up going "drip drip drip", I slept with the light on for the rest of the night... LOL! Yup, the ending was goofy.
 
When I lived in an apartment I'd measure how good a scary movie or book was by counting the weapons by my armchair at the ending. If I had a gunto katana, an AR-15, a shotgun and about 9 pistols in or next to the chair, well, I don't remember going over a dozen, max.
 
For me it was a book called 'Nam'. A collection of firsthand accounts of soldiers.

I had nightmares after reading that.
 
I've read thousands of books over the years and don't recall one that really scared me. But the movie "The Ghost and the Darkness" really affected me. I had nightmares about lions for a long time after that.

Regards,
Bill
 
The printed word has never kept me awake nor caused nightmares but one and only one book ever sent chills through me, and I'm talking about reading outdoors in the bright sunlight at around 9:30 on a Saturday morning......."The Hot Zone"....specifically the vivid description of the first victim as he tried to fly to the hospital in Africa!

Larry S.
 
First scary book really stands out as

"At The Mountains of Madness" and then "The Dark Brotherhood" both by Lovecraft
 
AOE4 said:
I've read thousands of books over the years and don't recall one that really scared me. But the movie "The Ghost and the Darkness" really affected me. I had nightmares about lions for a long time after that.

Regards,
Bill
Click to expand...

I read "the man eaters of tsavo" in college and when I saw the first .000004 picoseconds of the first trailer for it, I stood up in the theater ad yelled " the man eaters of tsavo!!!!"

Did you read a novel adapted from the movie or did they reprint the original and change the name ?

I loved that story. Man eaters roam that area to this day.


Scariest book? DiMaio's Forensic Pathology or DiMaio's Gunshot wounds.
Fun books. When I quit that business, I sold the books, i didnt want my nieces or nephews to even open those books.

Never open those books , boys.
 
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