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Scariest Book you ever read


PantherDave
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William Shatner ... an autobiography :D

 

 

 

Okay seriously ... The Necroscope by Brian Lumley ( it's roughly a 12 book series ... good stuff if you like the vampire genre )

 

 

 

Snap! Dude I didn't think anyone else ever read that book. I didn't know it was a series. Is the rest of the series as good as the first book? Man I loved that book. The whole sitting on graves and talking to the dead was sick. And that dude who could get the secrets out of corpses by ripping them apart. Awesome.

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Now, was Straub's "Ghost Story" the same as the movie that came out in the early 80's, the one with the four old farts called the Chowder Society? Because I thought that movie was really scary, so I might want to check out the book too.

 

 

Yes, the book was 10 times scarier. Highly recommended.

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I have never really found any book actually scary, but for truly amazing and creative horror/fantasy fiction, nothing compares to House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Very strange and difficult read though. Not to be undertaken lightly.

 

This is a good review.

 

Amazon page. Excerpts from reader reviews I found amusing:

 

Some of you have doubted whether this is horror. If horror to you is simply a loon running around Texas wearing his mom's underwear, then don't bother reading this book - it will do nothing for you. If, on the other hand, it is about taking the norm and making it alien, disturbing, messing with your head until you have to take an aspirin to get through another chapter, then read it.

_______

 

An astute reader can come to gauge a writer through what he produces. And if this is so for "House of Leaves, then Mark Danielewski is a swirling mixture of the mad and the magnificent. This book is unlike any other that I have ever read -- hard and surreal, strange and magnificent......

 

The kind of terror and horror in "House of Leaves" are not the kind you read in hack horror books, where something transforms or a nasty thing leaps out of the shadows and eviscerates screaming extras. It's a creeping, subtle thing, like oil dripping over the surface of a pond. It's like a hallucination, surreal and continually shifting, where the laws of physics don't apply.

 

You have to work at this book, though. I really liked it.

 

Edit to add: Bret Easton Ellis' blurb on it was pretty good:

 

"A great novel, it renders most other fiction meaningless. One can imagine Thomas Pynchon, J.G. Ballard, Stephen King and David Foster Wallace bowing at Danielewski's feet, choking with astonishment, surprise, laughter, awe."

 

Have it but haven't put forth the effort to read it yet. For those who don't have it, check it out in the bookstore sometime. The way the text is put together is really odd.

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Amityville Horror - hands down. Particularly since they claimed it was true.

 

 

yeah would have to throw that one in too. The part with the flies had me flinching for days :D Which also reminds me of Poltergeist. Cheesey movie pretty scary darn book. Again because of the "true story" aspect

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Snap! Dude I didn't think anyone else ever read that book. I didn't know it was a series. Is the rest of the series as good as the first book? Man I loved that book. The whole sitting on graves and talking to the dead was sick. And that dude who could get the secrets out of corpses by ripping them apart. Awesome.

 

 

 

Yep, I read'em all. And IMO each book gets better. Once the series switches to a different lead character, my interest waned. But there are many books to sift through before you'll get to that point. Just check out Amazon.com for a list of books in the series.

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Salem's Lot was the scariest of King's books. Chriton's Jurassic Park also kept me on edge.

 

 

Pet Cemetery & Salem's Lot. I was staying at a friends house when I was reading Salem's Lot. I had just read the part where he talks about the fact that he (the vampire) can't come in unless he is invited, and this branch starts knocking against the bedroom window. To this day I can't tell you how long I froze. King is an absolute magician as an author. I would love to spend the day talking with him, the things that go on inside his mind have to be fascinating.

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A lot of Stephen King on here.

 

 

 

One of the best horror books i've read was Misery. The movie was great but the book is 10 times better and you really do get scared of annie.

 

 

 

Also Cujo is a strong #2

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I haven't read any Stephen King as of yet (although I'd love to) and I'm sure one of his books would take my top spot, but the scariest book I've ever read (or at least started reading) was Communion

 

I read about 30-40 pages when I was about 16 or so. I got so scared that I had to put the book down. I didn't sleep all that night (or the next) and I couldn't stop staring at my closet door. I returned it to the library the next day. It's about the author's (and his family's/friends') alien abduction experiences at his summer cabin in the woods. I don't recall ever being so scared at anything. Not even when I first saw Linda Blair's head do a 360 in the Excercist when I was 5.

 

Here's a link to movie (IMDB) staring Christopher Walken.

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I'm a big Lovecraft guy as well - "The Lurking Fear" was the first Lovecraft I read and it was pretty crazy; other good ones are "The Rats in the Walls" and "The Colour Out of Space", but his best is probably the novella "At the Mountains of Madness" which is sort of a sequel to a Poe story.

 

The colour out of space was crazy. Lovecraft is awesome. I cant help thinking how people reacted to that kind of fiction back when it was written.

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At the time I read it (7 years old) Dracula was the scariest book I had read, during my teenage years it was a tie between several of the Lovecraft tales, now it's probably Pet Cemetary (My younger son is just past Gage's age).

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American Psycho - Not necessarily scary but f'd up, damn book gave me nightmares

 

Good call - it wasn't the violence and blood that got to me, it was the utter emptiness of the lives of the characters. "Reservations.....I need reservations....."

 

:shudder:

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I spent my early teen years on Stephen King's books. I finished the Shining one night around 2am. I can vividly recall deciding to watch a 3 stooges marathon that night rather than try to go to sleep. Nobody creates a creepy scene like King. The "batteries" in Tommyknockers, the clown in It...I think I gave up on King for a long time once Firestarter came out. Too many books coming out too fast at that point.

 

With a nod to Squeege...nobody's mentioned Carrie yet. :D

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Good call - it wasn't the violence and blood that got to me, it was the utter emptiness of the lives of the characters. "Reservations.....I need reservations....."

 

:shudder:

 

Is it bad that everytime I see a nail gun I want to drive it through my assistants head. :D

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