# Books that scared you so bad you pooped your pants >:D



## sinisterbug

Sorry if there's been a thread about this. I didn't see it within the first few pages.

There's only been one book to _actually_ scare me to the core. Other books have held me in suspense, but so has Harry Potter - obviously not the horror genre.

Anyway, the book that I'm talking about is called The House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Anyone read it? What are some other books that have truly terrified you guys?


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## RAXL

Del James' book, The Language of Fear. It's only a book of short stories, but The Nerve still scares me.:voorhees::ninja:


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## Fester

Stephen King's It. But I was working 13 hour night shifts by myself many years ago when I read it. That was a mistake.


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## halfcracked

The Necronomicon.
I read it after having read 4-5 of Lovecraft's books.

Oh & I was in an old Victorian on the East side of providence...

And it was 3am

And something down the street was wailing like nothing I've heard before or since.


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## Nancj

Stephen King's It. I read it years ago also. But it still gives me the creeps.


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## turtle2778

The Beast Within by Edward Levy. I read it when i was about 15 and have had nightmares about the book off and on for most of my life since. Here's a brief overview of some of the story i found on amazon maybe it will strike a cord in you to read it or maybe if you are smart you will stay the hell away from it. 

The scene opens in some past time. Say, sixty years ago, but in the rural area where the beginning of the story takes place, it might as well be six hundred years ago. A woman has been trapped in a loveless, arranged marriage with a Christian fundamentalist who makes Pat Robertson look like a godless heathen. A traveling Bible salesman (yes! Really!) shows up at the door, and you've all heard this joke a thousand times. Well, at least until the farmer catches them and chains the Bible salesman in his basement for years, treating him like an animal, until he actually becomes one. Levy sets the two men up against one another, one devolving, the other already devolved. These fifty pages (the fifty, of course, the filmmakers decided to cut out first) are some of the best writing in any eighties horror novel I've read (and I've read hundreds of them). 

In any case, after the fundamentalist's death (by natural causes), the beast finally has a chance to escape. Now, we all know he's oversexed, and you know how sailors are after they've been on a ship for a year? Well, this guy's been in the basement a lot longer, and when you've had to eat off the floor (with a rather unsavory menu) for a long time, you tend to lose some of the social graces. Let's just say his escape and subsequent actions are not pretty, but they do produce a son, Michael MacCleary. All well and good. At least, until Michael reaches adolescence and becomes daddy's boy...

The Beast Within was the first novel I read where the setup took longer than the actual action, and I couldn't care less. After that first fifty-page whack to the head, Levy uses Carolyn (Michael's mother)'s pregnancy and Michael's early years solely to build suspense, taking up well over half the book's full length, and he does so wonderfully. By the time you get to Michael's teen years, the book would have to fall off a cliff to be bad. And it never does (certainly not to the "we had a few thousand extra in the special effects budget" way the film does). Levy takes the setup and delivers a climax that, well, let's say if the rest of the book were plausible, the climax would be the most plausible way to resolve things. But you suspended disbelief when you realized the first part of the book was going to be based on a bad joke, right? You should have. If you did, The Beast Within is one of the most rip-roaring horror novel rides you are ever likely to take. Sits on the short shelf, with Russo's Living Things, Trachtman's Disturb Not the Dream, King's Pet Sematary, and a very few other novels as one of the best horror novels of the eighties. It's an old, and very overused cliché. But really, you don't want to finish this one late on a dark and stormy night.


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## Hellrazor

The Shining kept me up for many nights when I read it the first time. I was too young to understand that it was only "cabin fever" so the idea of it scared the pants off of me. Reading it, knowing the underlying meaning, is find now.


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## RoxyBlue

Stephen King's "It". of course. I only read the first 40 pages or so before I put it down for good and all.

Also "The Wind in the Willows" - something creepy about the animal illustrations. Probably just a kid thing, but I never liked even looking at the books.


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## Beth

"Amityville Horror" I read it as a teen and I had nightmares for years.


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## Spooky1

Stephen Kings "Salems Lot", I was a teenager when I read it. I read one night till dawn (waiting for the sun to rise before I went to sleep).


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## Nancj

I love this thread I'm always looking for a good horror book to read, now I can use this thread as a reference, great idea sinisterbug!
I called my local library to see if they had The Beast Within by Edward Levy sounds wierd and creepy, thanx for the review turtle! can't wait to read it!!


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## Haunted Bayou

The Exorcist. I read it when I was a teenager, and it had me scared for years. 
My Dad was up late reading it and realized he was the only person up. He turned on every light on his way to bed. LOL!

It gave my husband nightmares when he read it. 

I still get the "possession" nightmare now and then. That sux! Thank you for that Mr. Blatty....thanks oh so much!


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## Tyler

Hells Gate, its a book about Bobby Mackeys haunted club, and it will freak you out. Thats one freaky place, I just drove past it and it was creepy. Very disturbing book.


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## skeletonowl

I'm currently reading The Shining and while I don't find it too creepy last night I had a dream about it and I woke up shaking! I couldn't leave my room to take a shower in the morning without jumping at things I started imagining from that dream. It feels good now that I got scared!


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## Eldritch_Horror

King's 'Pet Semetary' did me in when I read it. I read it as a kid at bedtime each night. I got to the part where the doctor was getting the visits from the dead jogger (Pascal?) and walked with him through the woods. He'd wake up in the morning with mud and pine needles in his sheets at the foot of his bed.

One morning I woke up with pine needles at the foot of my bed and put the book down. To this day, I don't know if someone was screwing with me, or if it was just coincidence.


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## Haunted Bayou

LOL EH that sounds like a family member having fun with you. It is soooo something my sister-in-law would do! 

Darkfall by Dean Koontz had me looking around the room. Shouldn't read late at night I guess. LOL!


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## STOLLOWEEN

Pet Semetary would have to be mine also...I remember reading the book when it was published...I was in college...when Dr. Creed takes his first walk through the woods to the Pet Semetary...the fog, the noises, the deadfall...had to shut the book and put it away for a while because I couldn't bring myself to read any further....good stuff


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## debbie5

Steven King must be a master at torturing out minds..LOL. When I was a teen, I read just about everything he wrote. My favorite of his (while it's not scary) is Apt Pupil....a short story. It blew my mind in that I suddenly realized the possibility of someone evil living _next door_, as well as the possibility of how a kid can totally screw with an **adult**.

While not "scary' per se, there was some short story I read..I think it's by the guy who wrote Call Of The Wild...it's called How to Light a Fire (or something like that) that was just amazing. A guy gets warned not to go out in Alaska in the winter..he goes out anyway....ends up dying. It's just so well written...


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## Scary Godmother

Haunted Bayou said:


> Darkfall by Dean Koontz had me looking around the room. Shouldn't read late at night I guess. LOL!


I'm with you on that one HB! I was reading that book years ago when I was nine months pregnant. I was so engrossed in the suspense and my husband happened to come into the room, I didn't even notice him until he spoke, I nearly broke my water and dropped my son right there! LOL


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## scareme

A sex education book. I just knew my parents wouldn't do that, so how the crap did I get here?


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## Don Givens

Sex education book? Was that the one that always began with "see Dick run. Run, run, run"?


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## Scary Godmother

Actually, since you mentioned the sex education book...it reminds me that the scariest book I ever read was "What To Expect When You're Expecting"! Lots of scary stuff in there!:laugheton:


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## RoxyBlue

Book of Revelations - now there's a scary book:googly:


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## debbie5

I read my health insurance contract once. 
Like any human being can fully understand it.........


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## Sinister

Although, _IT_, by Stephen King is my favorite Horror novel of all-time, I would say _Pet Semetary_, was also the book that gave me that chill up my spine and gave me a sense of unease. That book just drips with pure evil. King himself has said a time or two, that it's the most disturbing thing he has written and oft times wish he hadn't.


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## Hanke's_Haunt

*How about "The Shining"?*

The Shining was one book that I actually threw across the room during a particularly intense part. Of course, I eventually creeped back over to it and kept reading, but it still rates as one of the scariest ones I've ever read.


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## DTRobers

Perhaps I am jaded but I have never had a violent fear reaction to anything that I have read. The printed page can evoke feelings of disquiet or disgust, but I think that the "startle" response is pretty much limited to movies or live haunts. That does not stop some writers from trying - overusing exclamation marks and staccato sentences -but the effect is at best anemic. If I shout "boo" in your ear unexpectedly you will jump. If I write "BOO!!!" you will shrug or yawn.


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## Pumpkin5

:undecidekin:Hhhmmmm....I think it all depends on how vivid your imagination is and how well your reading comprehension is. I always say, the book is 10 times better than any movie you will ever see. I will say, there are a few exceptions to that rule, I did like the movie rendition of _To Kill a Mockingbird_ equally as well as the book and I thought _What Lies Beneath_ was a good movie interpretation. Hey Peeps, remind me...were there others???


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## spinwitch

"The Man Who Would Be King"--the movie version was deeper and more involved than the book (which was actually a short story). I've read that John Huston thought about the film about 20 years before making it.


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## matrixmom

Hanke's_Haunt said:


> The Shining was one book that I actually threw across the room during a particularly intense part. Of course, I eventually creeped back over to it and kept reading, but it still rates as one of the scariest ones I've ever read.


Ha!! Me too, I was an early teen when it came out and remember the book cover was like a mirror. I had to leave it in brothers room, couldn't stand to have it mine gleaming at me in the dark!!


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## Lizzyborden

I can't say a book has ever scared me quite that much!  probably the only time I can say I got a bit grossed out by a book was when Michonne exacted her revenge on The Governor in The Walking Dead novel The Fall of the Governor Part One.


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