Has a horror novel ever actually scared you?

[VanVeleca]

I can't imagine myself ever finding a literature piece scary. Like, it's just words on a page. Whenever there are some accompanying images I find myself a little spooked but, otherwise, nothing

I do like it, but I've never been able to understand people who say they were scared while reading a certain horror book, the most I got was a feeling of disgust from overly detailed gory scenes or just plain terrible scenarios (Such as pretty much everything in Guts by Chuck Pahlaniuk)

Have you ever gotten legitimately scared from reading something, with no images or music to accompany it?

[ErrantVultureNG]

Not a novel but the short story "1408" was a good read. The room is way more aggressive than it is in the movie.

[BoiledMilkz]

The script for WALL.E

[switzrr]

The first time I was scared by a book without pictures as a kid was when I read Goosebumps: The Tower of Terror by R. L. Stine. Nothing involving a spooky monster or anything; merely the protagonists suddenly being unable to remember their parents' names or what they looked like - my introduction to psychological horror

[ZombieGhost]

Stephen King.

And he is really deep in that horror part..

[Hitman80010]

Now this isn’t a horror novel, but I played TCOAAL and holy shit that was disturbing and very weird. You got a sexual relationship between a brother and a sister cannibalization of their own parents and hunting down of other victims. I’m never playing that again and since I just turned 18 I may want to stop playing stuff that may look at childish or has a fandom that looks very you know what

[ethanblair]

At 12/21/23 05:30 PM, VanVeleca wrote: Have you ever gotten legitimately scared from reading something, with no images or music to accompany it?

Well... Not A Horror Novel Persay But A Book By Jason Shiga Seems Like A Light Hearted Book On The Surface But By The End It Gets Really Dark Its Fair To Say Yes A Novel Err Comic Has Scared Me

[ethanblair]

At 12/27/23 12:30 AM, Hitman80010 wrote: Now this isn’t a horror novel, but I played TCOAAL and holy shit that was disturbing and very weird. You got a sexual relationship between a brother and a sister cannibalization of their own parents and hunting down of other victims. I’m never playing that again and since I just turned 18 I may want to stop playing stuff that may look at childish or has a fandom that looks very you know what

I Know It Looks Very Horrific On The Surface But Should You Look Past The Darker Aspects Its Quite A Decent Puzzle Horror Game I Seen Way Worse In Fiction So Its Not Effective Towards Me

[Underwhirl]

When I was a child “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” by Alvin Schwartz scared the fuck outta me. I’m not sure if there’s any book that’s truly scared me as an adult, but “Let the Right One In” by John Lindqvist is maybe the most disturbing that I’ve read.

[Underwhirl]

At 12/27/23 12:30 AM, Hitman80010 wrote: Now this isn’t a horror novel, but I played TCOAAL and holy shit that was disturbing and very weird. You got a sexual relationship between a brother and a sister cannibalization of their own parents and hunting down of other victims. I’m never playing that again and since I just turned 18 I may want to stop playing stuff that may look at childish or has a fandom that looks very you know what

At first I thought the art for that game was neat, but the incest shit & weird fan base has made it a hard pass for me.

[Thetageist]

Not a novel, but I once read through a couple examples of good Creepypasta/online horror fiction that were listed on a writing website. I can’t remember a lot about them now, but I remember the feeling haunting me.

One of them had the word “Gourmet” in the title and was, if I recall, about someone’s family being infected with giant maggots that would ask the narrator to feed them more and more and eventually burst out from their bodies or something like that. It was a really effective slow burn that disturbed me.

The other one was called “The Memetic Symbol”, and it was about this symbol that would propagate itself across all forms of text and I think replace people’s facial features? I don’t remember what else it did, but the story ended with just a special character pasted in that was supposed to be that symbol. I remember that it made me paranoid for a bit.

[FalenDemo5]

I kinda got scared from reading a beginning of a Polish novek "Zwierz" by Piotr Kościelny, due to the fact that the first chapter starts with main character telling that when he was young he killed a cat while he was 7... and also a child while he was 11. That scared me on a personal level.

[Waterina]

No.

[AlfaFranek]

I think only people with a lot of imagination could say horror books are horror books, because of the ability to visualize in head the descriptions. For other people it might just be a thriller.

[Quippic8]

Personally, no. Although, I have been disgusted when people talk about human anatomy in detail around me. If something like that comes up in a book, I just skip a couple lines and carry on.

[AmazingArsonist]

The Thing on the Doorstep in recent memory is the only book I've found really scary, won't spoil but the themes and what happens to the victim in that story honestly scare me more than any monster Lovecraft has written about. Though I'm still working my way though his works so maybe something else will come up.

[wpzkx]

At 12/21/23 05:30 PM, VanVeleca wrote: I can't imagine myself ever finding a literature piece scary. Like, it's just words on a page. Whenever there are some accompanying images I find myself a little spooked but, otherwise, nothing

I do like it, but I've never been able to understand people who say they were scared while reading a certain horror book, the most I got was a feeling of disgust from overly detailed gory scenes or just plain terrible scenarios (Such as pretty much everything in Guts by Chuck Pahlaniuk)

Have you ever gotten legitimately scared from reading something, with no images or music to accompany it?

ive gotten scared from pencil of doom by andy griffiths but not frankenstein,

i think it is difficult to acheive scaryness in books, maybe creepiness would be easier

[EvilComix17]

Not a horror novel, but the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel left me disturb and probably made my depression worse than it had to be.

[evasdf]

even though its a manga ive been reading uzumaki recently and thats been unnerving but stuff like dracula (especially the passage about the demeter) and some of the slower moments of the book in the beginning when jonathan is walking around the castle and uncovering stuff was scary.