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Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 16242
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| Posted: 31 October 2025 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | 1
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It's Hallowe'en... We've discussed in previous years scary movies, but I don't recall literature being discussed. To that end, what is the scariest short story or novel you've read? Is there, even, a story that has managed to scare you at all?
Feel free to mention up to three stories if you can't decide on the most scary.
I recall getting creeped out reading Blatty's The Exorcist at night. Bag of Bones by Stephen King towards the end give me a few chills. As a very young child there were a few ghost and vampire short stories that scared me -- the only one I remember the name of is The Croglin Vampire -- which it turns out is more properly called The Vampire of Croglin Grange and is more folklore than literature.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 31 October 2025 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | 2
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In Steven King’s THE STAND there is a sequence wherein one of the characters has to escape Manhattan by walking out thru the Holland Tunnel. The power is out and the tunnel is jammed with cars full of dead people. Freaked me out.
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Brian Miller
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 July 2004
Location: United States
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| Posted: 31 October 2025 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | 3
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SALEM’S LOT by King.
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Brandon Frye
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 November 2004
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| Posted: 31 October 2025 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | 4
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Stephen King's Pet Sematary was horrifying. No film version has even come close to matching the book. Some descriptions just can't be translated to the screen very well.
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Shaun Barry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 December 2008
Location: United States
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| Posted: 31 October 2025 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | 5
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When I was only 5, PETER PARKER SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #6 featuring Morbius was the eeriest comic book I'd ever read (at least at that young age), I probably skimmed through that every day through Halloween season of '77. It more than likely jump-started my love of vampire lore.
Stephen King was of course ubiquitous for any kid growing up in the '70s & '80s, so put in another vote from me for PET SEMATARY. Maybe the fastest read I ever had during my teen years, and nothing else I've read of King's has come close in terms of sheer goosebump-inducing terror.
As an adult, the existential dread of Poe's THE RAVEN becomes more profound and unsettling with each passing year.
Edited by Shaun Barry on 31 October 2025 at 4:08pm
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Dave Kopperman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 December 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3802
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| Posted: 31 October 2025 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | 6
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King is definitely near the top of my favorite writers, though most of his stuff doesn't 'scare me' scare me. The flying leeches in It are up there, and the extended sequence at the end of Dark Tower: The Waste Lands where they're seeing the full extent of the ecological devastation from the relative safety of the monorail is most definitely fffffFFREAKY, if not outright horrifying.
I think the most unsettling thing I've ever read are Al Columbia's Biologic Show comics. Just deeply disturbing without a clear idea as to why. I lent them to a major horror aficionado friend of mine and after he took a look at them he called to tell me in all seriousness to take them back, since he didn't even want them in the house.
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Doug Centers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 February 2014
Location: United States
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| Posted: 31 October 2025 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | 7
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I read THE AMYTIVILLE HORROR when I was in my late teens, it really got me a couple of times. The whole idea of the story being based on "a true story", also contributed to my mind wandering off to dark places while reading.
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Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 16242
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| Posted: 31 October 2025 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | 8
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I think that may be the key, Doug -- the stuff that has scared me has been less about what is actually on the page but what it does in unlocking doors in the imagination to disturbing things.
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Evan S. Kurtz
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Joined: 04 July 2022
Location: Canada
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| Posted: 31 October 2025 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | 9
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Pretty sure it was the latest climate change report.
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Peter Hicks
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2004
Location: Canada
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| Posted: 31 October 2025 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | 10
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Sooo much Stephen King comes to mind. Probably the worst was in “Big Driver” where a serial rapist/killer shoves a victim who isn’t quite dead yet into a storm water pipe where he places all his victims. She has to crawl the length of the pipe through rotted corpses of other women to make sure she exits the pipe where he will not see. I remember finishing this novella, staring into space, and saying out loud “That was really fucked up.”
Honourable mention to how Michael Crichton wrote the death of Dennis Nedry in the book Jurassic Park. (The movie death was the kid-safe version).
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Steven Myers
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Joined: 10 June 2004
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| Posted: 01 November 2025 at 12:52am | IP Logged | 11
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Lots of scary books I've enjoyed, including much of Stephen King and John Byrne's Whipping Boy, but I can't say I was really scared while reading since I was in grade school and read a book about "real" ghost stories.
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Dave Kopperman
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| Posted: 01 November 2025 at 3:10am | IP Logged | 12
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One stupid thing that got me as an adult was one of those books about “actual” haunted houses. A specific description of a haunting where the narrator relates having seen an angry, disembodied red face floating several feet above the landing on the main staircase, shouting silently. That one still gets in my brain when I have to go downstairs in the middle of a cold and windy winter’s night. I go past the landing quickly.
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