# Books that Freaked You Out as a Kid



## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

I don't know how the topic came up, but some friends and I were talking about books that scared the pants off of us as kids.  

Mine were "Wise Child" by Monica Furlong (I had to put it in my closet and shut the door and then leave my room and shut the door and go down into the living room and turn on all the lights) and "House on Hackman's Hill" by Joan Lowery Nixon (which I won in a contest and then was very upset that I won in a contest because I knew I'd never be brave enough to read it again).  

How about you?  And have you gone back to see if they still hold up?


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## Coral Moore (Nov 29, 2009)

Stephen King's _IT_. Put me off clowns and storm drains for *years*. I still don't like clowns. I haven't read it in a while, but his books usually stand up pretty well for me, so I imagine it would.


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

Oooo!  *shiver*  Good answer!


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## cheriereich (Feb 12, 2011)

Stephen King's _The Mist_. Right after I read it, I didn't want to be out in fog at all. Fog is still a bit creepy.


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## Neil Ostroff (Mar 25, 2011)

Salem's Lot still gives me nightmares all these years later. Creepy.


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## John A. A. Logan (Jan 25, 2012)

Salem's Lot for me too...
But much more so, The Shining, when I read it aged about 14


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## Steven Stickler (Feb 1, 2012)

You're all going to think I'm a wimp, but...._Where the Wild Things Are_ gave me the creeps when I was young. No idea why. Keep in mind this was when I was about five.


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

Steven Stickler said:


> You're all going to think I'm a wimp, but...._Where the Wild Things Are_ gave me the creeps when I was young. No idea why. Keep in mind this was when I was about five.


So color me crazy, but The Cat in the Hat was a little creepy to me as a wee one (probably three or four). DON'T JUDGE ME. It was those crazy Thing 1 & Thing 2 running around and destroying everything and nothing looked like it should have and was the mom ever going to come back or would they all be eaten by the pink... Shel Silverstein, too... Oh goll. I had forgotten. FLASHBACKS! FLASHBACKS! *twitch*


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## LilianaHart (Jun 20, 2011)

I read The House of Thunder by Dean Koontz when I was a freshman in high school. Scared the heck out of me. I had nightmares.


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## Jorja Tabu (Feb 6, 2012)

Aiyeee! Dean Koontz's _Lightening_, with the creepy blondes and the ew, yuck yuck yuck... I was probably twelve for that one.

And then _The Long Walk_, (King as Bachman), _Animal Farm, Brave New World, Jacob Have I Loved_... Every single one of those really messed with my middle-school brain.


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## planet_janet (Feb 23, 2010)

Stephen King's _Pet Semetary_ terrified me.


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## Harry Shannon (Jul 30, 2010)

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (I'm giving away my age)

Richard Matheson's I Am Legend

Short story collections by Ambrose Bierce, Saki, Roald Dahl and John Collier. Stuff like that.


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## Jorja Tabu (Feb 6, 2012)

Good call, Roald Dahl gives me the shivers even today (but I adore his work anyway).


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## Martin OHearn (Feb 9, 2012)

The book itself more than the story: a paperback horror anthology, _The Unhumans_, used Goya's _Saturn Devouring His Children_ for the cover. Eww!


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

I wish I could remember everything I read then. The book I remember that freaked me out, not necessarily in a scared me type, just freaked me out was "The Tin Drum" first published in 1959. That one was quite, um... disturbing. I think I was 10 or 11. 

The other one was also a german book by a german author, I think they called it "The changed face" or "The Gifted Face" in english, by Konsalik. It was about people that lost their faces from injury and it creeped me the heck out. 

As a teenager it was "IT" and "Pet Cemetary" by King. And "Misery", which I thought was a good idea to give my mom to read as an introduction to King  .


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## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

I also found the Cat in the Hat creepy.  

I cant remember the name of the book that most upset me.  I was about 10 when I read it, and it was about a brother and sister - pre-teens, I think - whose parents go away for some reason and leave them in their grandmother's care.

Then she dies, and they are left to the mercy of the welfare system, homeless, lost etc.  

I remember there was a scene where they find her body and her bare, dead, yellow feet are described with great clarity. It was a very grim book, and I read it while I was all alone at night. I did not finish it, it was so upsetting.


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## Debbie Bennett (Mar 25, 2011)

Steven Stickler said:


> You're all going to think I'm a wimp, but...._Where the Wild Things Are_ gave me the creeps when I was young. No idea why. Keep in mind this was when I was about five.


I saw this on DVD a while back (never having read the book) and thought it was so weird it was scary!

One that terrified me as a child was Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr. The film was rubbish as they lost the scary element of the stones-with-eyes but I remember a black & white tv series (yes, I'm that old) that was really scary.


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## Straker (Oct 1, 2010)

_*Deliverance*_. Read it when I was about 12 or 13. Not a good age for that one.


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## Jan Strnad (May 27, 2010)

_The Cat in the Hat_ freaked me out as a kid. I found it very disturbing that something could enter your life and create such chaos. _Alice in Wonderland_ bothered me because nothing made any sense. I guess I was (and still am) kind of an order freak.

In my teen years Matheson's _I Am Legend_ became my favorite scary book, and as an adult, King's _Pet Sematary_ freaked me out.


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## Aris Whittier (Sep 21, 2010)

Dean Knootz *The Bad Place*...that book messed me up 

Where the *Wild Things Are* also freaked me out...I NEVER read the book to my kids and we didn't watch the movie.


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## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

...and then of course there's "Struwwelpeter". I spent a lot of time with this book when I was very young - before I could read, even. Scared me silly. It's a horrid book.

All about children who do naughty things and get their "just reward". Like the little boy who sucked his thumb:










And the little girl who loved her red shoes and danced in them. At least her cats mourned her after she was dead:


















On the other hand, I also spent ages looking at images by Hieronymus Bosch at the same age, and I loved those, even though they were scary too.


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## Leslie (Apr 7, 2008)

The Little Match Girl which was one of the stories in Grimm's Fairy Tales.


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## donnamshields (Mar 6, 2012)

Stephen King's _Christine_. Put me off from classic cars for a while. Thought for sure my mom's Ford Falcon would lock me inside forever, lol.


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## Grace Elliot (Mar 14, 2011)

I dont know if this counts as being 'freaked out' but I was hugely distressed by Orwell's "Animal Farm" as a child.
My father read it as a bedtime story (I know!) but what I didnt know was that he intended to edit the upsetting bits out. One afternoon I picked the book up and couldnt resist reading on for myself...i was absolutely devasted when bad things happened to Boxer and the other animals and was inconsolable by the time Dad discovered what had happened and took the book away - but by then the damage was done


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

Grace Elliot said:


> I dont know if this counts as being 'freaked out' but I was hugely distressed by Orwell's "Animal Farm" as a child.
> My father read it as a bedtime story (I know!) but what I didnt know was that he intended to edit the upsetting bits out. One afternoon I picked the book up and couldnt resist reading on for myself...i was absolutely devasted when bad things happened to Boxer and the other animals and was inconsolable by the time Dad discovered what had happened and took the book away - but by then the damage was done


That'll learn ya to stop being precocious.


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## EStoops (Oct 24, 2011)

I'll second "Christine" -- my family always treated cars as though they were pets. I was TERRIFIED that I'd somehow, by accident, create "Christine" no matter how nice, kind, and careful I was. I knew it was rather irrational. Still, part of me, today, is glad that the car most in question and I were in an accident so that it couldn't become that way.

The rather larger part of me is still righteously P.O.ed that my car got run over and I couldn't fix it. Because I absolutely loved driving that car.


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## planet_janet (Feb 23, 2010)

Masha du Toit said:


> I cant remember the name of the book that most upset me. I was about 10 when I read it, and it was about a brother and sister - pre-teens, I think - whose parents go away for some reason and leave them in their grandmother's care.
> 
> Then she dies, and they are left to the mercy of the welfare system, homeless, lost etc.
> 
> I remember there was a scene where they find her body and her bare, dead, yellow feet are described with great clarity. It was a very grim book, and I read it while I was all alone at night. I did not finish it, it was so upsetting.


I remember this book! I thought about this book recently and it's been driving me nuts that I can't remember the title. Didn't the girl's name begin with a W? Winnie? Windy? Something like that? Anyway, if it's the same book I'm thinking of, there were a couple of books written after it and I devoured them all.


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## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

planet_janet said:


> I remember this book! I thought about this book recently and it's been driving me nuts that I can't remember the title. Didn't the girl's name begin with a W? Winnie? Windy? Something like that? Anyway, if it's the same book I'm thinking of, there were a couple of books written after it and I devoured them all.


Very possibly!
I'm sure if I read it when I was a little bit older I would have loved it. Certainly made a big impact on me. Now I'm very intrigued and want to track it down, along with it's sequels...

Google for "yellow feet" ? "Dead granny?"


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## jemima_pett (Feb 13, 2012)

I'm really amazed you all read Steven King as kids!  I can't read him at all.  I can't do horror.  I still have the heebie-jeebies about a short story that was in a collection of sci-fi stories - the title Tales of Mystery and Imagination floats into my mind from absolutely nowhere.  There was one called "You'll wonder where the yellow went" (which was the jingle for a toothpaste at the time) and although I've blocked most of it now, I know it involved a cauldron full of gleaming gold liquid.  I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was pretty scary when I was young.  I didnt recognise the tv adaptation of it at all though.  But generally speaking I stayed away from scary books!


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## Leslie (Apr 7, 2008)

Masha du Toit said:


> Very possibly!
> I'm sure if I read it when I was a little bit older I would have loved it. Certainly made a big impact on me. Now I'm very intrigued and want to track it down, along with it's sequels...
> 
> Google for "yellow feet" ? "Dead granny?"


There is a website somewhere (but of course, I don't remember the URL) where you can go and put in fragments of information about a story and the folks there will come back with info and the name...we had a thread on it here, way back when. Maybe someone else remembers? Sorry, I know I am not being terribly helpful!

L


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## planet_janet (Feb 23, 2010)

Leslie said:


> There is a website somewhere (but of course, I don't remember the URL) where you can go and put in fragments of information about a story and the folks there will come back with info and the name...we had a thread on it here, way back when. Maybe someone else remembers? Sorry, I know I am not being terribly helpful!
> 
> L


Oh, wow! I would LOVE to know what the URL for this site is!


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## 4eyesbooks (Jan 9, 2012)

The story of Hansel and Gretel freaked me out.  The thought of someone putting kids in an oven to eat them up....yikes!


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## yomamma (Feb 10, 2011)

I read a book called The Dollhouse Murders when I was a kid and it scared the PANTS off of me. It was about a little girl who found a dollhouse in the attic after her family moved into a house, and every night, the dolls in the dollhouse would start acting out the murder of the previous tenants. 

It totally wigged me out. Though in retrospect, it sounds tame.


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

See, I liked being scared when I read.  I was reading Stephen King in the 6th grade.

But there are stories that thrilled me or left me, in some way, sort of shaken and they included:
1.  The Birds (The short story from which came the movie)
2.  Flowers for Algernon (I read and re-read this one because I could not believe the ending)


...and I swear I had three in my mind when I started writing this, but the last one now completely eludes me.


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## Thalia the Muse (Jan 20, 2010)

I loved being scared as a kid! Until it was time to go to bed, then it stopped being so fun ... 

One book that scared me terribly was A Candle in Her Room, about an evil doll that brings misfortune on several generations of a family. I'd love to read that one again! I read The Shining when I was around 13, and I couldn't go to the bathroom at night for WEEKS after that. And there was a short story about malevolent shadows that freaked me out, and also the Ray Bradbury story about mail-order mushrooms, and the story "Wendigo's Child" about a boy who brings home a mummified creature of some kind and puts it in the basement ...


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## Thalia the Muse (Jan 20, 2010)

P.S. -- The Little Match Girl isn't from Grimms. It's by Hans Christian Anderson, who specialized in causing mental trauma -- check out The Little Fir Tree as well, and the real ending of The Little Mermaid.


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## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

Thalia the Muse said:


> P.S. -- The Little Match Girl isn't from Grimms. It's by Hans Christian Anderson, who specialized in causing mental trauma -- check out The Little Fir Tree as well, and the real ending of The Little Mermaid.


Yep it's Anderson. I disliked Anderson when I was a child and - actually - I still dislike most of his stories. They have a horrid cloying moralism to them. The Little Mermaid and the Little Match Girl both leave a bad taste in my mouth. I dont mean to offend those who love them though, I know many people like those stories.


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## Labrynth (Dec 31, 2009)

Pet Semetary is one creepy ass book.

The first Child's Play movie creeps me out too.


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## Cege Smith (Dec 11, 2011)

I was reading Stephen King at a pretty early age too (5th or 6th grade), but the paranormal stuff has never quite given me the creeps the way stories I read that highlight our vast ability to be cruel to one another.  Hence, the book that freaked me out: Flowers in the Attic.


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## Elizabeth Black (Apr 8, 2011)

"Sybil", because when I was in my early teens my mother wouldn't let me read it. That of course made me want it even more. LOL I heard so much about it that by the time I finally read it a few years later it made quite an impression on me.


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## Alton Bock (Mar 13, 2012)

From the comments so far, I think the consensus is to avoid Stephen King at a young age! 

As for me, I loved "James and the Giant Peach" so I thought "The Witches" would be a good choice. That was a mistake. I had nightmares from that one.


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## Nell Gavin (Jul 3, 2010)

Steven Stickler said:


> You're all going to think I'm a wimp, but...._Where the Wild Things Are_ gave me the creeps when I was young. No idea why. Keep in mind this was when I was about five.


When I was in the Dallas area, there was a guy who had his entire body tattooed with Wild Things.


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## Coral Moore (Nov 29, 2009)

cheriereich said:


> Stephen King's _The Mist_. Right after I read it, I didn't want to be out in fog at all. Fog is still a bit creepy.


_The Mist_ was also creepy. It seemed like the year I read it we had fog every morning too! I'd be out at the bus stop in the fog completely freaked out.


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

jillmyles said:


> I read a book called The Dollhouse Murders when I was a kid and it scared the PANTS off of me. It was about a little girl who found a dollhouse in the attic after her family moved into a house, and every night, the dolls in the dollhouse would start acting out the murder of the previous tenants.
> 
> It totally wigged me out. Though in retrospect, it sounds tame.


OMG! I READ THAT BOOK!!! I remember thinking it was going to be this fun little book about a dollhouse that came to life... Man... I repressed that memory...


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## jnau (May 4, 2011)

This post made me laugh loudly - I remember reading my brother's Stephen King books when I was only 10 or 11. They all used to scare the scrap out of me but I read them anyway. I think _It_ kept me from sleeping for many nights. But I also remember reading _Flowers in the Attic_ and being creeped out. My mother had no idea. Luckily I am much wiser and pretty much know if something is appropriate for my own children who are 9 and 12.


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## Eliza Baum (Jul 16, 2011)

KateDanley said:


> OMG! I READ THAT BOOK!!! I remember thinking it was going to be this fun little book about a dollhouse that came to life... Man... I repressed that memory...


I had this exact same reaction! Hehe. I'd forgotten all about this one, too. Great book, and really creepy.

I remember reading this one when I was 10-11 and being really freaked out:



I can't _believe_ they've changed the cover art, though. I'm positive the original Edward Gorey artwork added to the creepiness.


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

Eliza Baum said:


> I had this exact same reaction! Hehe. I'd forgotten all about this one, too. Great book, and really creepy.
> 
> I remember reading this one when I was 10-11 and being really freaked out:
> 
> ...


WHA----? I just read the cover blurb. OHMYGOD BLROh!ARPT*R(H WHAT IS GOING ON!?!? I have never even heard of this series, and it must be popular because there are a ton of them, but OHMYGOD.


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## Eliza Baum (Jul 16, 2011)

KateDanley said:


> WHA----? I just read the cover blurb. OHMYGOD BLROh!ARPT*R(H WHAT IS GOING ON!?!? I have never even heard of this series, and it must be popular because there are a ton of them, but OHMYGOD.


I know! I didn't realize until college that there were other books in this series, either, until I saw an Edward Gorey cover on a discount table and was surprised to learn it went with the one I had. I snapped up a bunch of them pretty fast after that. It's been ages since I read them, but they were great.


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## Mary Reed McCall (Feb 24, 2012)

I remember reading *The Amityville Horror  * when I was a pre-teen...the whole book freaked me out - but especially the scene where the little chairs start rocking on their own. I had a little rocking chair in my bedroom, and though I NEVER read books like that before bed, my vivid imagination would start my rocking chair rocking in the dark, when I was trying to go to sleep.

Then again, I was the kind of kid who, when I was about 8, wore my teddy bear draped over my neck while I slept and scratched a little cross into the wood of my bedpost to protect me from vampires, because I was in the habit of watching *Dark Shadows  * (and a local Saturday afternoon program called "Monster Movie Matinee"), LOL


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## Ria MacAlister (Mar 16, 2012)

I LOVED Stephen King until I read _The Stand._ While a fantastic book, I could not read it past 6 p.m. or else I would never get to sleep *eek*

But the absolute worst freak-out book I read as a kid was _Flowers In The Attic_ by V.C. Andrews. SHUDDER


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## HJHampson (Mar 17, 2012)

_Dracula_... for some reason we had to read itin primary school when I must have been about 9 or 10 and it scared the hell out of me. When I was younger than that we also had to watch _Watership Down_. I don't know what my teachers were thinking! Both masterpieces of literature, mind!


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## jwest (Nov 14, 2011)

I had to read The Fall of The House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe in school, and I can tell you that book freaked me out! 

And The Stand by Stephen King...still one of my favorites


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## KarlaGomez (Mar 16, 2012)

I don't remember the title of the book, but it took place in a swamp. A girl was trying to save her family...I think. Purple and black cover...
It wasn't necessarily scary, but it definitely ...stood out to me in a strange yet good way.


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## Matthew Lee Adams (Feb 19, 2012)

Probably a number of the ones by Stephen King, "The Shining" and the stories in "Night Shift" come to mind.  Especially "One For The Road" which introduced the aftermath of Salem's Lot before King later expanded the idea into its own book.


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## brianjanuary (Oct 18, 2011)

I remember reading a string of those "stranger than fiction" kind of books (ghosts, UFO's, monsters) that really freaked out my gullible little mind. Years later I did some investigating and it turned out all the stories were either urban myths or easily explained away!


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## KirstenM (Feb 2, 2011)

Lord of the Flies! 

I used to read in bed at night. So it was late and I got to the scene where Piggy gets pushed off the cliff and his brains are dashed on the rocks . . . ew ew ew


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## Shaun Eyles (Mar 25, 2012)

A few others have mentioned Stephen Kind, but so will I.

IT freaked my out a little when I first read it. I grew up in the country and there were areas where they had wooden foot bridges crossing creeks and rivers.

For a while after reading IT, I felt extremely anxious whenever I walked across one of those wooden foot bridges.


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

brianjanuary said:


> I remember reading a string of those "stranger than fiction" kind of books (ghosts, UFO's, monsters) that really freaked out my gullible little mind. Years later I did some investigating and it turned out all the stories were either urban myths or easily explained away!


I think our library had those same books! I remember one about seances and there was a creepy looking photograph of a couple that spoke with the dead - a tall, severe looking woman and her short, intense husband. They were both VERY serious about not taking ghosts lightly. The caption read something like, "These are trained professionals! Do not attempt to contact ghosts on your own! Danger! Danger!" So, of course my friend and I went out and got an ouija board.


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## SSantore (Jun 28, 2011)

As a young teenager, I read a book that scared the pants off of me.     I think the author was Shirley Jackson.  I can't remember the exact title.  Something about a house on a hill.  Anyone know what I'm talking about?


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## Ghostwalker117 (Mar 26, 2012)

The book that freaked me out as a kid was the Scary Stories to tell in the Dark series by Alvin Schwartz. sure some of the stories were light horror, but the deep ghost stories stuck with you and made you cringe your bed at the ripe old age of five.


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## Klip (Mar 7, 2011)

Ghostwalker117 said:


> The book that freaked me out as a kid was the Scary Stories to tell in the Dark series by Alvin Schwartz. sure some of the stories were light horror, but the deep ghost stories stuck with you and made you cringe your bed at the ripe old age of five.


...that made me giggle , thanks. Needed that.


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## tinytoy (Jun 15, 2011)

Ghostwalker117 said:


> The book that freaked me out as a kid was the Scary Stories to tell in the Dark series by Alvin Schwartz. sure some of the stories were light horror, but the deep ghost stories stuck with you and made you cringe your bed at the ripe old age of five.


These were very popular when I was in elementary school. The illustrations were so creepy.

Just do a Google Image search for "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" ... **creepy!**


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## Eliza Baum (Jul 16, 2011)

tinytoy said:


> These were very popular when I was in elementary school. The illustrations were so creepy.
> 
> Just do a Google Image search for "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" ... **creepy!**


Yeah, it was the illustrations that got me. The stories wouldn't have been as creepy without them.

My mom had some books in this series that always scared me as a kid, too...and yet I couldn't stop reading!


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## mainahgal (Mar 26, 2012)

Definitely, Of Mice and Men. This disturbed me greatly.


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## Matthew Lee Adams (Feb 19, 2012)

SSantore said:


> As a young teenager, I read a book that scared the pants off of me.  I think the author was Shirley Jackson. I can't remember the exact title. Something about a house on a hill. Anyone know what I'm talking about?


Well, you pretty much got it!

It's Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House"

Stephen King has said that book highly influenced what he set out to do with the Overlook Hotel in "The Shining"


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

I was a real wuss as a little kid.  I used to cry myself to sleep after reading the BFG because I was scared that one of the bad giants would come and catch me.

The real worst, though, was this book I was given among a box of other old books by a neighbour, called Super Ghosts by a guy called Mark Ronson.  It's out of print now.  It wasn't the book, which was a collection of true life ghost tales, but the back cover.  There was this kind of demon thing looking in a window and it scared the c&&p out of me, to the point where I wouldn't even take the book out of the bookcase.  I still don't like it now.  Seems like there's always a line that can be crossed, even with book covers.  Kind of like the time I went to elementary school Halloween party wearing a gimp mask (I was a teacher).  

Chris Ward


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