Scary books…
US residents - I’m jealous. You guys start everything way before us Brits. Across the pond, Halloween is in full swing… and while the shops are starting to fill with witches’ hats and fake fangs over here, no one’s really paying attention yet.
However, I am a huge Halloween fan, and so I’m getting into the spirit early. I found this Halloween-inspired article about scary books, and I thought I’d do my own. So here, in ascending order, are my all time, top five scariest books. Check one out this Halloween!
5. 1984 by George Orwell
Scary because you can almost see it happening. Scary because of what it signifies. Scary because of the “your back’s about to snap” line. Scary, scary, scary!
4. Jekyll and Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
People don’t realise just how scary this book is, I don’t think. This, I reckon, is possibly the greatest book ever written… and I live in its (implied) setting, so it comes alive for me all the time, on dark, foggy autumn evenings. If you can walk down Edinburgh’s Fleshmarket Close on a quiet night in the dark, allow this book to cross your mind and not shudder, then you’re not normal!
3. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
I am not normally into crime novels, but this is an absolutely brilliant book. It’s become one of my all-time favourites… but it’s still absolutely terrifying. I read it in one sitting of about three hours. The film is top class as well.
2. Dracula by Bram Stoker
I only read this for the first time last year - I’ve been meaning to for years. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect it to creep me out as much as it did! People let their children read this book!?
1. The Signalman by Charles Dickens
Not really a book - actually a short story. I had to read this in high school and it scared the bejeezus out of me for weeks. I really did have nightmares. Terrifying!
I seriously want to hear YOUR top five scariest books!
Tags: advice for young writers, publishing, resources for young writers, scariest books, young poets
October 19th, 2008 at 7:55 am
ooh that’s a good one…here’s mine:
The Lord Of The Flies (William Golding) - the power of evil unfettered is almost as scary as the ability of ‘the system’ to dismiss it as child’s play
The Dark (James Herbert) - hard to pinpoint just why this book is so scary, it kind of weaves images which are sinister enough in themselves but taken together create an atmosphere of absolute malice and terror…yummy
Cabal (Clive Barker) - twisted, erotic, fantastical, fantastic; like The Hobbit on cheap acid
The House Of Lost Souls (FH Cottam) - far from the greatest novel ever written, but some of the scenes in here are as chilling as they get…you’ll never listen to Fairport Convention in the same way again!
The Secret Of Crickley Hall (James Herbert) - take the number one horror cliché, a haunted house, and push it to the nth degree…horrifying and depressing and the same time
October 19th, 2008 at 8:14 am
[...] admin wrote an interesting post today onScary booksâ?¦Here’s a quick excerptNot really a book - actually a short story. I had to read this in high school and it scared the bejeezus out of me for weeks. I really did have nightmares. Terrifying! I seriously want to hear YOUR top five scariest books! … [...]
October 19th, 2008 at 8:33 am
[...] admin wrote an interesting post today onScary booksâ?¦Here’s a quick excerptHowever, I am a huge Halloween fan, and so I’m getting into the spirit early. I found this Halloween-inspired article about scary books, and I thought I’d do my own. So here, in ascending order, are my all time, top five scariest books. … [...]
October 19th, 2008 at 8:48 am
[...] admin wrote an interesting post today onScary booksâ?¦Here’s a quick excerptI found this Halloween-inspired article about scary books, and I thought I’d do my own. So here, in ascending order, are my all time, top five scariest books. Check one out this Halloween! 5. 1984 by George Orwell … [...]
October 19th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Perhaps it’s just me but books really don’t scare me. I read The Exorcist at school (it was getting passed around the playground at the time) but I didn’t buy into the book. I’ve read a few horror books since like The Rats but they don’t reach me. I could name a couple of films that gave me nightmares – literally – but even there I seem to be able to distance myself from the action – it’s not real, it’s an entertainment. That said, I would agree that Nineteen Eighty-Four is scary in the same way that most dystopias are (I just think it’s the most well-known) in that we’re usually looking at something one or two steps off from where we are now – that could be us in our lifetime.
October 19th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Ms Enid Blyton, is perhaps the scariest Horror author one has read. Even now, as i gaze over from one’s table about which to and fro the pookas, ghosts, wraiths, daemons and collective diabolical dark forces which haunt one’s mind as a reader and afficianado of the parapsychological genre — into the bookcase housing djinn and genie between the covers on the pages constructed by - not only Englands finest writer of flagitious intellectual fiction - but most of the finest authors to have communed with the unseen - their covers concealed in sturdy matt black card blessed by various priests and shaman, to protect one’s inner equilibrium from any malignant spiritual residue one is in danger of being affected by, just reading the titles; especially Five Go Off In A Caravan.
Just recalling the narrative from the fifth book in this deliciously crafted series of wickedness and abomination brings a chill to my bones, as i sit in my tungen cloak, protected by various ogham charms and holy relics draped about one’s person in the specific dress code as outlined in the Syriac, Book of Protection.
Those who have read this masterpiece, will recall the holidaying at the caravan site and our favourite set of jolly decent ciphers for that perculiarly innocent Englishness that is but a myth, Ann, Dick, George, Julian and Timmy, super, really great kids who never have bad thoughts, and if they do, realising the eroor of their ways, immediately apologise, bake a cake, work harder at brownies helping OAP’s across the road, in between stumbling into international rings of mystery and intrique, before vanquishing what evil Blyton deliciously concots as the premier dominatrix figure of top end, deep, deeply rewarding fiction from which our fine and noble majesty, the inner Segais, swirls around the central characters - in this very pertinent penta book in her Five series.
And as one’s eyes find the bravery to face the object on my book-case, carefully guarding the gates within to the pool of one’s magic circle below the hot spot glow of vatic light where the sun of s/he descends and inhabits the inner voices vying to perform upon the page in one’s practice of ventriliquising the dead, a vague spume in milky form is conujured as i cast my mind back, back, back to the fateful first rememberance of the chimpanzee, Pongo — who our goody two shoes jolly decent fivo’s, find when they meet Nobby, Pongo’s owner, connected to a circus in which we unwittingly find ourselves the centre of intrique and evil intent, from Nobby’s uncle Tiger Dan and his friend, Lou.
No, no i cannot return, only gulp back uisce beatha to dampen and repell the tremors and black cloud Ms Blyton’s daemonic force impells towards i as a helpless thrall dedicated to bringing a posthumous award from her majesty, to the hopefully soon to be Duchess Enid Blyton, and if possible the full swathe upon the list, every single title in the book, so Blyton’s greatness can be acknowledged for the first time for what it is, simply the most super and criminally unawarded queen of Horror. hurrah!!
grá agus síocháin
October 19th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
[...] However, I am a huge Halloween fan, and so I’m getting into the spirit early. I found this Halloween -inspired article about scary books, and I thought I’d do my own. So here, in ascending order, are my all time, top five scariest books. …[Continue Reading] [...]
October 19th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
i’m with jim on this one. 1984 is scary because of its prescience but proper scary books
for me these are the type of books that make you want to carve your own eyes out with the horror of what you’re reading. the things you buy in airports. the literary equivalent of the shopping channel. but not that good.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Jim — you’ve obviously got better control over your imagination than I have! I find books much scarier than films a lot of the time.
Simon — Sounds like a good list, though I’ve only read Lord of the Flies…
Swiss — now that’s a whole other kind of scary. Have you read any Ian Rankin? He’s the master of “pull my eyes out, this is just too bad” fiction.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
see that’s the problem. i’ve met ian rankin a couple of times and he’s a lovely guy. wouldn’t read his books tho. think i read a rebus once and quickly realised why i didn’t. didn’t hate it just didn’t like it
i feel a bit guilty about naming names as obviously some people like them and the author, one would hope, has put some degree of effort into them. but in that spirit, and any critical discourse aside, subjectively, books that have poisened my very being in recent memory would include
the stornoway way by kevin macneil. not because it was a bad book per se but because i was living there and it was just too much!
some crap ass book probably ending in -icon by neal stephenson. i’d been recommended him by various people with a lot of enthusiasm saying you like all that history of science, you’ll love this, it’s great. but it wasn’t. oh no. aside from basic issues, like total lack of plot, being so boring it could’ve made me reach with rage, to the point that t, more than once, found me throwing it about shouting wanker! wanker! wanker! no ,what it really failed on was that it wasn’t as interesting as the period or the people it set itself in. a shocker.
but the worst book i’ve read in recent years, and it wasn’t even fiction, was mediated by thomas de zengotita, a book so awful i think we’ve actually kept it somewhere so that t can threaten me with it. everything, absolutely everything you could love to hate about media studies types all condensed into one slim volume. so bad that the last time i attempted to read it i ended up jumping up and down on the ferry we were on unable to throw it overboard as it would insult the fish
scary books tho. i think you’re proabably right that books are scarier than films, all in all. but i think also that at the end of the day, even allowing for the suspension of belief, they’re fiction. for truly awful things you really only have to open the door. so my scariest books (and apologies i can’t remember the titles)
something about the rwandan genocide - could be either romeo dallaire’s or linda melvern’s
some bio of andrei chikatilo, the russian serial killer guy - normally i wouldn’t these but whatever one i read was very matter of fact and all the more horrific for it
the holocaust by martin gilbert. this is the type of book that’ll make you lose faith in humanity
into that darkness by gitta sereny. is a bio of franz stangl, just an ordinary guy, exterminating, at least, a couple of million jews. the truly horrifying thing about this is the ordinariness, the ease with which people are involved or at least complicit with extraordinary horror
October 20th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Not read a great deal of scary books (Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft is about it), but I’ll list a few anyway…
‘The Rats in the Walls’ by Lovecraft, is pretty terrifying, and, if I remember rightly, ‘The Colour Out Of Space’ was pretty creepy too, although perhaps not ’scary’ as such. ‘Herbert West-Reanimator’ is hilarious, but similarly creepy.
King stuff, hmm… ‘Survivor Type’, ‘The Jaunt’, and ‘Apt Pupil’ are all wonderfully horrific short stories. Oh, and ‘The Shining’, etc.
A horror book that has scared me more than any is, er, ‘Night of the Living Dummy’ by R.L. Stine. Yes, frickin’ Goosebumps. I blame that book for exacerbating my fear of ventriloquist’s dummies and for the worst nightmare I ever had. Scary shit.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
what’s the deal with ventriloquists’ dummies? and clowns? when she was wee my daughter was petrified of these. probably still is
i thought of another one where, i think, the film is better than the book. still non-fiction tho. diving bell and the butterfly. locked in syndrome. you wouldn’t want that. no, no, no
October 20th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Swiss - I don’t deny Ian’s probably lovely. I’ve spotted him at events and actually nearly walked right into him in the street on Friday night… he seems human enough. He just writes by-numbers fiction… and I guess, living in Edinburgh, I have similar feelings about the Rebus books as you had about the Stornoway Way. Seeing my town - and even my country - deliberately manipulated into an ill-researched (quote from Fleshmarket Close: “her accent was Midlands, Yorkshire maybe” - since when was Yorkshire in the flippin’ Midlands?!), American-reader-friendly setting is hard to stomach!
But yes, you’re right - truth is often scarier than fiction. It’s a cliche, but it’s true.
& I have no idea about dummies, though they are sinister looking… and Chris - I also had nightmares as a result of reading the Goosebumps books FAR too young!
October 21st, 2008 at 12:44 am
i’ll expound somewhat on the western isles thing at some point!
i was never that bothered about the edinburgh/rebus thing. anything that got the town away from that fecking student/festival/tattoo and later irvine welsh bollocks (now there is someone i’m prepared to be ambivalent about!)
when rankin was a student, not that long before me, there was none of this edinburgh literary city shenanigans we have now. you had to really look for it. i think rankin played his part in shaping that, and that’s no bad thing. anything labelled tartan noir tho, you have to be suspicious!
and i can’t not mention that other iain, banks or m. another lovely fellow. but his books! had a mate who was really into him so read everything until about 2002. didn’t like a word of it. and that’s before his sci-fi which i couldn’t read a word of
at the end of the day tho i think of the pair of them a wee bit like jk rowling. sure i don’t like their books but at least they’re getting people reading. it’s impossible for me to imagine that someone who’s into rankin isn’t going to read stevenson and from there spark, which is only to the good. and even if they don’t at least if they’re reading they’re not watching x-factor
October 21st, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I have to say I am also confused about the Irvine Welsh hype too. I suppose he wrote one OK book which got turned into a majorly successful film and it just spiralled from there. Lucky!
I have read Banks’ “Whit” and “The Wasp Factory.” The former was interesting, if odd… the latter was fairly gruelling to read. I had to read it for a Uni course, but it was hard going! I’ve never looked into his sci-fi, though.
Haha! Once in a lecture my tutor started laying into Harry Potter, and this little goth girl stood up in front of everyone and yelled “at least it gets people reading!” That is not a good justification for people reading rubbish pulp fiction!! Rankin is a special case - I think he will plant an interest in people’s heads because he name-drops Scottish writers all the time… he’s basically an advertisement for RLS, so that’s good. But JK has no such excuse. She’s got the kids of the nation reading often-plagiarised fantasy pulp fic… I for one am not going to award that with gratitude!
(But as you say, in a world where X Factor and Big Brother reign supreme, what can you do?!)
October 21st, 2008 at 4:37 pm
i like salem’s lot by stephen king. :) and it. and he wrote a short story (i forget its title), which took place in a call of cthulu lovecraft type of place, as well.
October 22nd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
nope, i’m going to stay firm in my support for the jk. and go on the wee goth girl, bless her. i stick by my she gets people reading position and by people i mean children. i can’t read a word of her stuff but then again, as i point out to all those adults who encourage me to do so, i am not a child, so it’s not that surprising to me.
secondly, she opened the door to lots of others, sure it could be that it’s plagiarised and pulp but, as above, and it keeps people in jobs
thirdly, she’s a finger in the eye to all those fuckwits and dail mail readers (hmmm, isn’t that a tautology?) who say single parents don’t achieve anything. plus i’m liking her visibility with charities in the same vein. a soap box issue you ask? why yes it is! lol
lastly, i’m a sucker for reading to kids. and while rowling’s books may be bollocks they’re bollocks that the kids enjoy. so would i rather be reading enid blyton or tolkien (dear god no)
and a last quick story. crap books? get a fire! a mate of mine has a flat with a real fire. currently we’re working our way through the lord of the rings as firelighters. as we both know the books far too well it’s a total joy. gandalf off on one. burn his ass! i’d totally recommend it
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Dracula is indeed scary!
While I spent half a year in London I read it on the tube to and from work and one night, I had a terrible nightmare involving the Count. I never picked the book up again although I have quite a fascination with vampires… (NOT Twilight though).
October 24th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Kouji - I reckon anything by Stephen King could make this list. He is the master of scary!
xA - I have also had Dracula nightmares - you are not alone!!
Swiss - You love JK and hate JRR, I love JRR and hate JK. Methinks we are at stalemate!