Name The Scariest Books That You've Ever Read!

[meena_bakkam]

The Exorcist was creepy and scary...but the book that really chilled my spine was "By the pricking of my thumbs" by A. Christie

[SidnayC]

I am a little sissy so even though the book - Beyond the Pass by E.K Hughes was a romance/erotica genre... it still had some very scary elements to it because it was based on some very horrific true events that made me scared to sleep alone in my room.

[Gravy]

I want to bump this.
I see The Shining is mentioned alot...
It was one of the only books to raise the hair on the back of my neck.
But only in a few parts... I can't find books (or movies for that matter) that get to me.
Parts in other books have gotten to me though.
Nightlife by Rob Thurman
Haunted by Kelley Armstrong
But that's all it ever is. Just parts

[ALynnPowers]

I remember loving horror stories when I was a kid... but that just meant something along the lines of Goosebumps. Then I read a Stephen King book and thought it was creepy but not THAT scary. I don't think I have really read any books that I would consider scary. Maybe I am a wuss and avoid those.

[Gravy]

I remember loving horror stories when I was a kid... but that just meant something along the lines of Goosebumps. Then I read a Stephen King book and thought it was creepy but not THAT scary. I don't think I have really read any books that I would consider scary. Maybe I am a wuss and avoid those.

There are parts in books that give me the feeling of being watched.
This is rare and can be parts no one else thinks are creepy.
I love that feeling and wish I could find it more.

[KittyKat]

"It" by Stephen King.....I honestly think it scares me mostly because I have this crazy fear of clowns, but yeah, it creeps me out.

[patrickt]

For me, I think it was "Harvest Home" by Thomas Tryon.

[Mollancholy]

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz terrified me so much when I was younger and still do to this day!

I'm so glad to see this here!

It's been a long, long time since I read anything that genuinely scares me (I've become an avid fan of the genre over the years and I think it's easy to get a little desensitized), which is why I think the Scary Stories series stands out in my mind whenever the subject of scary books comes up. Most of the stories in all three books are pretty tame in retrospect, but there are still a couple - Harold comes to mind - that STILL give me the creeps twenty years later. And the original illustrations by Stephen Gammell are what really do the trick. So incredibly scary, even now! It broke my heart when they re-released the trilogy with new, more "family-friendly" illustrations. New young readers have been robbed!

The first time I read Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, I spent a lot of time reading it along in the dark... and that certainly had its moments. There are also a few of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories that'll give me the wiggins when I'm in the right mood.

[Airam Velarde]

I don't read a lot of scary books but I think Dracula was probably the creepiest one I have read.

[han87]

"It" and "The Shining" definitely freaked me out a fair bit. For some reason though (perhaps finishing it at 2am in the morning?) The Third Gate by Lincoln Child scared me worse than anything else I've read.

[booklvr62]

Ahh the month with the most fun Holiday again[Halloween]. I just discovered this book[collection of short stories] on another site and it sounds like a fun/creepy Halloween read so I immediately put it on reserve at my library.
After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones

[Mschneider75]

Salem's Lot. Weird and strange things kept happening every time I opened that book! I felt like pulling a Joey on Friends and sticking it in the freezer. Freaked me out just picking it up.

[moderntimes]

I think that Stephen King's most frightening book is still "Pet Sematary" -- that sequence when the old neighbor and the doc are headed to the burial grounds and "something" is smashing thru the woods?

But the most frightening book I've ever read is Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian". By far.

Now I myself have been a horror and suspense fan for my whole life and I've written some pretty scary short stories myself, but when I first read Blood Meridian, I had to actually put the book down at times, due to the horror described. And as a grown adult man, I actually had nightmares from that book.

Whomever else here has read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy? Because if you haven't, and you like scary, try it. And you really cannot judge the most scary book till you've dipped into that horror.

[mangofree]

House of Leaves terrified me. I read it during a hurricane when we had lost power and I had a lot of trouble being in the darkness and not feeling like the walls were closing in on me.

[ipekbunsal]

La Ligne Noir by Jean-Christophe Grangé and it was not that scary.