OT: Scariest novel you remember

heehee.

Poe, Lovecraft, and Barker have all written a few shorts that made my hair stand on end. and the poem "out out!" by Robert Frost.

The book "Ominous parallels" scared the poo outta me. I was ready to pack fer Canada or parts more remote.

Keith
 
Rusty, I saw the heading and I though, Wolfen no doubt. Then I open it and that is your pick too. That one got to me some how and I am a horror fan, very jaded to scary stuff. That one got me on some primitive brain reaction that I can't describe.
 
"It" got me too. I was reading it back in the army in '86 or '87, sitting in a blacked-out armored personnel carrier on a field exercise with just a dim little dome light over my head. The rest of the interior was completely in shadow. My buddy went out to have a smoke about a half hour or so before, I forgot that he'd left, and I didn't hear him come back. All of a sudden, from over my shoulder came, "Any good?" I screamed, jumped up, nailed my head on the buttoned down hatch, and fell on the floor. My buddy almost peed himself laughing. Man, almost twenty years ago and I remember it like yesterday.
 
I just finished Bram Stoker's Dracula. An enlightening and fun trip back to late Victorian sensibilities and language - with some very scary and chilling moments. Also, the central character, Jonathan Harker, carried as his personal weapon of choice, a Gurka khukri. Which he ultimately used to dispatch the evil and un-dead vampire - as you just might guess. I recommend the Norton Critical Edition - full of fascinating foot notes, essays, citicism, and trivia. Good fun!
I tried to read this novel when I was a kid and became intrigued with the Dracula myth. I probably got through 2 chapters. It is much better reading now.
;)
 
If I could diverge this thread for a moment- to scary dreams....when I was very little, 3 or so, I'd dream about falling. Naturally, you scream like hell on the way down, your heart hits your forehead, and you wake in a pool of sweat.

Somewhere around 5, I figured out you really didn't die. So, in the dream, I'd climb a cliff and jump off. I'd wake, go back to sleep, and jump off something else; there was a great tower for jumping... Eventually, jumping/falling dreams just faded away.

>>>>>>>>>

There is one good thing scary fiction can do for me- if it allows me to 'believe'; in ghosts particularly, my hair stands on end and some lights come on in the munk brain. Now, I spent a lot of time in my twenties drinking to excess just so those friggen lights would not come on!!!

When they come on I get the horrible feeling I'm in touch with something I'd rather not be in touch with. I'm actually afraid of some 'network'. Yeah, I know, I'm a silly guy but what can you do?

I don't want the ghosts or bad things to find me. Im forty eight years old and still believe there are things on this planet we don't know about.

Oh well, I'm better off than a friend's wife- she believes in 'monsters'.

I'll have to read, or reread Wolfen and see if it scares me.


munk
 
Dang, that is some chilling sh17, fiction or not. Guess it's Ted's tomb

squeeze.jpg


I may hafta steer clear of caves for a while. Nerthus reveals little of her secrets...

Keith
 
Mr.BadExample said:
I just read THIS and it scared the bejeezus outta me.
The Journal of Ted the Caver:
http://www.gigdig.com/~ted/
Click to expand...
I scanned through it really fast, can't stand tight places anymore.:grumpy: :(
Just the description of Floyd's Tomb disturbed me, let alone the pic of it I clicked on that Keith posted above!:eek:
 
There are things in this world, I believe, that science cannot, and will never be able to, explain. They are the cause of mankinds nightmares, or maybe the results of them. Writers such as Steven King, and others, may have tapped into these things.
 
I really like King's short stories, but I've never got into the full length novels. He does have a great grasp of the deep dark things in our half-forgotten animal brains. My favorites were "Survivor Type" about the guy trapped on the desert island (Skeleton Crew) and "The Long Walk" from the Bachman Books. The first time I read The Long Walk I was so surprised that I threw the book down the first time that... well, if you've read it you know. Both are survival stories of a sort.

Okay, i've got to page 5 of the cave story and I'm already spooked. I'll try to leave it and resume in the morning :D
 
Holy cow, Mr. BadExample! that little caving story had my hair standing on end. Fiction or not, it was a creepy tale. I really get a kick out of journal told horror tales. The first person perspective makes them feel more real to me. There is a niffty little werewolf short story called "The Cell" that does a good job of telling the tale of one man's journy into lycanthropy.

Jake
 
Yeah, the "Ted the Caver" journals were based on a short story called "The Fear of Darkness" and played off as real, they got to me too. Especially since the power went out this morning, so I was showering by candlelight waiting for Psycho to come get me!!
 
Most of my "scary" moments with books was when I was a kid. I remember reading "It" on a treestand when I was 6th or 7th grade. (Yes, I still read on the treestand. :D ) When it turned to dusk, I did not want to come down.

"The Keep" was another one that scared the poo poo outta me when I was a kid.
 
Ted's Cave Story was absolutely terrifying. I don't mean the monster stuff, that was just good horror story fun, but the description of squeezing through that tight passage made me sweat and I started having spasm in my legs as if I was trying to kick my way out of there. I had to get up and walk around the backyard for a couple of minutes to regain my composure before I resumed reading.

I know it wasn't meant to be humorous, but the image of the monster pulling the rope while Ted and B were scrambling up it as fast as they could go made me laugh. It was comic relief that I really needed after that verbally induced claustrophobia attack.
 
"The Keep"

God I hope my copy is thrown away or buried under twenty years of stuff from the last move. I don't remember anything about it and it took a long time to forget what I don't want to remember. ( OK I remember the tower on the paperback cover. )

As an aside, Pala really does believe he survived a close encounter with a Yeti. If nothing in five years as an Indian Gurkha scared him half as badly, I'd have no problem accepting that.

There is a "malignant presence" either outside or inside of us that I don't want to experience any more of than I already have. And I've already experienced doing a strip search of a six-week old baby on a mortuary table.

DIJ, you've had more experience with the dead than I have, so it's no wonder to me you are so "comic" as a result ( just a guess ).
 
Rusty,
Everybody I worked with, from the secretary to the Sheriff's department people, they all had a sense of humor that was turned on and kept on at work.

It was a kind of emotional shield, I guess. I tried to do it, but I couldnt.
4 months of suicide, murder and mangling car wrecks and I was crying at dinner cause I couldnt get the sights and smells out of my head.
That was 8 years ago and I still have nighmares occasionally.

Yeah, I try to keep laughing, I think it's the best thing a man can do.
The alternative is too awful for me to think about.
 
Agreed.

I'd drink to that, but for some reason I got to where when I started, I couldn't stop. The State then had about 130 social workers, and hired 130 new social workers every 13 months. That was after 5 & 1/2 years of doing it - five times longer than the average.
 
I believe it. High turnover rate is only to be expected.
It is a terrible thing, reality.

The thing about that work is, it HAS to be done.
To catch killers and see justice done, to detect contagia before it spreads, to keep even worse things from happening,etc...

This "cause" helps those people do their jobs. Personally, however, is just a little too much for me.
The average autopsy is far more brutal than any murder. One is forced to see a human, albeit a dead one, as a piece of evidence that must be "deconstructed."

IT is a terrible thing and you NEVER know who will be able to deal with it and who will not until you are there in person. It has nothing to do with toughness. It has to do with the ability to accept it as natural and proper, I suppose.

A good horror story does still scare me, but after growing up as a chronic nose bleeder (surgery fixed that) then working as a ME field agent, then 8 years in martial arts, Jason, Aliens, freddy kruger and Michael only get me excited about good training opportunities!

I do wish they would make some good scary movies again. The last dracula was really action adventure. I like "blade", but I would like to see a good scary movie sometime.
Anybody have any suggestions?
 
I just watched a creepy movie called "May" about a messed up girl and the doll that talks to her... very creepy, scary in a Silence of the Lambs way.
I'll try to find a paperback of The Keep. The movie was good but the effects were wanting.
 
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