Most chilling books you've read

[BrownJenkin]

What are they? I tend to judge a good scary story by whether I physically shudder after finishing it. That's happened with a few authors, but mostly with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular works like "The Colour Out of Space", about a mysterious alien "colour" which hits Earth as a meteroite and is absorbed into a farmer's well, and "The Whisperer in Darkness", about an isolated scholar who makes contact with malevolent beings in the mountain forestry surrounding his home.

The closest I've got to that shudder recently was when I read Stephen King's novel Revival, about a revivalist preacher whose experiments with electricity and lightning bring him into contact with worlds beyond our own.

TV shows and films, too, if you've got an interesting story about one of those.

[Arachne]

Malleus Maleficarum (a/k/a) The Witches Hammer is a book that was written in the 1400's as a guide for the interrogation and persecution of witches. Since it was believed that the weaker sex was most often the devil's tool, women moreover than men, were the ones who were tortured and/or put to death. This is not to say that men were immune. I shudder to think of those who were tortured and killed due to ignorance. Fact is always scarier than fiction.

(This post was last modified: 02-06-2015, 08:28 PM by Arachne.)

[BrownJenkin]

I love reading about the witchhunts of Europe and America! The only witch-finding guide I'm familiar with is King James' Daemonologie, so I'll have to look up The Witch's Hammer

(This post was last modified: 02-07-2015, 04:04 AM by BrownJenkin.)

[Wildcard]

Stephen King is the only author that has really made me lose myself enough into the story that I find myself nervous.

It, Pet Cemetary and Lisey's Story all took me to places that I have revisited many times since I finished the books.

As to movies, Prince of Darkness (1987) is corny now when I review it, but at the time I first saw it I was seven years old and it scared the living shit out of me.

[BrownJenkin]

I'm reading Pet Semetary at the moment King considers it his scariest book, for personal reasons, I guess, as it deals with family and grief.

John Carpenter's a brilliant director, even if stuff like Prince of Darkness feels corny now

[Aish]

So this probably isn't what you meant when you posted the thread, but the one book I read that literally gave me nightmares was "The Creature From Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin.

[BrownJenkin]

Having looked Griffin up on Wikipedia, which describes him as an anti-scientist writer, who believes a cancer cure is being hidden and has tried to prove the historicity of Noah's Ark, I can see why he might be terrifying

[ColeMacGrath]

Not to go off topic, but if a cancer cure existed, it would be more profitable to keep it from us.

[srijantje]

brothers grimm

[Aish]

Having looked Griffin up on Wikipedia, which describes him as an anti-scientist writer, who believes a cancer cure is being hidden and has tried to prove the historicity of Noah's Ark, I can see why he might be terrifying

I've never looked in to his work beyond that one book, and it was given to me by a friend in a "pass it forward" sort of way. Some of the basics make sense to me, not in a conspiracy theory way (though once you break the ice into conspiracy theories I absolutely see how people get caught up in them, they are horrifying), but because I oppose the U.S. Federal Reserve and IRS on Constitutional principles.

I am a long time fan of Clive Barker's work. "The Great and Secret Show" is deliciously disturbing and stands as one of my all time favorite fantasy/horror books.