Got halfway through it and stopped. Too scary.

The movie was good.

I despised Halliday and Resnick when I took my first two semesters of calculus-based physics. Absolutely intractable writing style, and problems that stumped more than one graduate-level physics student at their comps.

Of course, I then went on to get a degree in physics. Serway, and later Purcell, got me through that; I still find Halliday and Resnick terrifying. Jackson's "Classical Electrodynamics" runs a close second.

sneaked up on!

Did you ever get a cat?

It's titled Doctor Sleep and it's pretty good.

The Shining was a scary book, too!

His horror goes to the mind, not just the nerves.

If you like audiobooks try horrorbabble on youtube.

Journey to Ixtlan maybe? Some 40+ years ago. Didn't finish it because it freaked me out.

he was great at building atmosphere, but I've always had a hard time actually finding him scary.

I think it's mostly that the kind of things he found upsetting (human's place in a vast, uncaring cosmos, miscegenation/foreigners, etc.) don't bother me that much.

King is a master at horror stuff.

The scariest thing about this book is that it was a major bestseller.

Mistress of Horror Ann Coulter deserves an Honorable Mention, but I have never personally read any of her books.

I finished it about 2 AM. Didn't sleep that night.

I love scary but that book really took it to another level!

Revelations. Plagues, trumpets, locusts, blood drinking.

I was going to pick the Bible because I'm scared that people will keep believing it.

And not in a good way.

Before the movie came out...

non-fiction, of course.

I think of how Zinn described packing the poor slaves/souls in the ship's hold to make money.

The book is "Reach for Tomorrow" by Arthur C. Clarke. Science fiction, which I don't usually read.

The story is "A Walk in the Dark."

The suspense builds and builds......Clarke is a master.

I recommend it highly!

...and still remember the horror that ending aroused in me...

I was looking it over again after I got the book out.........and well, let's just say I didn't look at the ending.

to see the Exorcist in junior high. I think the Exorcist was back a couple years after it's release when I saw it. Thinking that book was a true story had me freaked, but I kept reading!

Alone, in our family room, cuddled up in the Lazy Boy chair.

I stopped reading stephen king after that.

I guess I'm more afraid about deranged people than any other horror.

Apt Pupil, Night Shift, a few others.

Vincent Bugliosi. I was alone in the house, a teen - reading the part where they claimed they would break into houses quietly to just creep around and then leave.

I read that when I was in college. Some really creepy stuff!

It was incredibly terrifying.

I decided to read through the comments before posting but I didn't think anyone else would mention it

I had to put the book down for a few days half-way through, it scared me so bad! I think I was in my early 20's and 40 yrs later, I wouldn't read it again!

But, I couldn't stop. I read it in college, probably 1976. I lived in a house with all girls who rented bedrooms and shared the living room, kitchen and bathrooms. While reading this book (which was always at night), I would lock my bedroom door and when I needed to go to the bathroom, I would rush there and lock that door. Not typical behavior in that house any other time. As if a locked door would have stopped "The Family".

by the same author It made me use the bible for research, of all things!

had to go pee about a dozen times while reading it in one night.

The Stand was creepy, but 'Salem's Lot (get the apostrophes right PLEASE ) was...skin crawling.

That, or Graveyard Shift, from the Night Shift collection.

I dont care if its a hoax or not.
Scary!

and the original movie was good too.

A knock on the door late at night scared me so much I called the Police. It turned out to be a teenager trick or treating, he was just sent home and told not to do this again so late.

I was just a kid when I saw it in the theater but after it was over, I went outside and

Really depressing...

The book. I never saw the movie and never will. I read that book probably too young and I’ve never gotten over it. Also The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. That story traumatized me for about a month afterward.

At night.

They all scared the ever-loving shit out of me!

1) "The Mind Parasites"

2) "The Exorcist"

...in the book you get much more of a sense of how much Carrie is losing her shit after the prom prank. I also love that the book is less than 250 pages and yet it is packed with detail.

I still get chills whenever I remember it.

In college, whenever I had trouble sleeping, I'd open that book and before I'd finish the first page, I would be dozing.........

Just the opposite of your reaction. It just struck me as funny!

Post apocalyptic/survival novel. Science fiction, - but could happen any number of ways.

I read it in 96 while housing challenged and still have the paperback.

But I completely forget the details.

Also-as a trivia-that was the name of the HOG (Harley Owners Group) roadrace bike.
I'm a ex-roadracer. Never cared for Harley choppers etc but that bike was flat out badass.

Still has a few images under "Lucifers Hammer" but it was pre-internet days.

Something bit eerie about the little habits and adapted lifestyles

...a time-travel story with a really nightmarish ending...

for horror. I am especially fond of "The Stand"

But the book that freaked me the hell out was "Alien" -the 1979 novelization of the movie by Allen Dean Foster. It was pretty much a typical scary book until I read the scene
where the Facehugger's blood almost ruptures the Nostrum's hull. I don't know why that scared me so deeply, but it did. I had to put the book down and breathe for a while.

100%.

The cover image itself, of a lone dead honeybee, is itself quite chilling.

used to stop in front of our house on occasion. I checked out a book called North Carolina Ghost Stories. While my Mom went to the nearby grocery store and my older brother was at his after school job, I started reading it. I was by myself and after reading the first few stories, I began to feel great fear, so much so that I ran across the street to my friend's house in hopes of getting those stories out of my mind. Unfortunately, no one was home. I recall standing there feeling very freaked out and I refused to go back in the house until mom came home.

If you want just about all of Stephen King's books wrapped up into one and work well into each other that is your book.

I call "The Dark Tower" series the Stephen King Bible.

One of the first horror books I ever read, before I read all the King ones.

The sequel The Guardian was equally freaky.

The Other by Thomas Tryon was also scary but in a different way.

other's have since, but that still stands out in my mind.

"Salem's Lot" - in the same genre - was a close second.

I never forgot that line.

The Count only shows up sporadically throughout the book, but it's really creepy when he does. The effect on readers a hundred plus years ago must have been intense.

I used to be able to handle clowns, after reading this book I fucking hate them.
Pennywise was a fucking monster.
I got goosebumps just now thinking of that book.
I won't read it again

I was up nursing my second son in a house in the woods in Martha's Vineyard. Not a good choice of reading material, alone at night.
That said, I remember "On the Beach" being very scary when I was a teen. Well, even still.

Dean Koontz's Doorway To December was unsettling too.

Tommyknockers was scary when I read it as a teen.

And if anyone wants to read a quick, disturbing YA book, Unwind by Shusterman is pretty damned dark (i couldnt put it down..lol)

Unsettling ghost/witch story that shows the depths of human depravity.

Salem’s Lot
The Lottery

The text was far better than any radio or movie version.

but the most gut wrenching was Once is not Enough. OMG!!! I was in shock for days afterwards.

... is nothing compared to the evil of organized human beings

Man's inhumanity to man seems to have no limits to its depravity.

It was a novel, and I was stationed in San Antonio with the AF nurse corps. 1976-77.

It was late at night, and I decided to stay up and finish the book. I really don't remember much about it, except the bit about the silver thread connecting your soul to your body, and that you'd never be able to get back if the thread broke. The moment I finished the book, I wished I had not stayed up to do so. I double checked all the locks on the doors and windows in my apartment, and made both my cats stay in my bedroom with me.

Audrey Rose was pretty creepy, too.

Not a fan of horror books or flicks.

I was 16 or 17 the first time I read it. Had to put the book down so I could (literally) run across the house and jump in bed with my Mom.😄
IIRC, it was the part with the clock that broke me.

Non-fiction has to be "In Cold Blood" or "Helter Skelter." I was way too young to read those, too, but my parents did not monitor or care what I read, as long as I was reading something. I was the same way with my kids.

The only book that ever gave me nightmares.

made me jump one windy day reading all by myself.

Read it one night staying up really late. I think I was 13 or 14. I finished it and was weirded out. Opened the door to my bedroom and down the length of our ranch house there was a little bit of the front room (which we never used except Christmas) and a firefly lit up. I'd seen the commercials for the movie with the pig eyes lighting up outside their window. I froze. Literally froze. Stood there for what had to be an hour.

In professional work, Jackson's "Classical Electrodynamics." Arfken's "Mathematical Methods for Physicists" is hot on its heels.

In mass-market, "Pet Sematary" is far and away the one that sends chills up my spine. I love King's work in general, but I was actually moved to pen him a letter many years ago to relate how much that novel terrified me. -shivers-

Pet Sematary did it for me.

Back in the back of my yard .... (which is nearly 2 acres) .... it's all wooded, and in the woods there's a pile of old branches where we sometimes throw the collected sticks and branches that fall off the trees occasionally .... we've adopted the phrase "just throw it back in the Pet Sematary" when doing spring yard cleanup.