Can books be scary?

[Watcha gunna doo]

Not having a firm grasp of language probably makes it more difficult.

Nerd detected

 

[BFoe]

What about something by JG Ballard? Too weird?

 

[PinkFlammingo]

These books gave me the heebee jeebees as a kid:

I remember those. Only read the first one

 

[Fzubek]

Of course... is this a real question?

 

[BEER]

These books gave me the heebee jeebees as a kid:

I got salty when they swapped to "lighter" illustrations for future publications. Half the nightmare fuel of those stories were the creepy atmospheric illustrations.

 

[Simian Raticus]

Books are immersive because you have to build the world using your own mind's eye.

No two people will visualise what's described in exactly the same way.

So yeah, books can be scary if you're an avid reader who gets absorbed in a story.

 

[ssBaldy]

Try Dean Koontz. Less fantasy stuff, more creepiness than King. I remember trying to read his book about a dude with heart transplant and I didnt finish it because I was creeped out and disgusted.

 

[TankAbbott4Eva]

IT scared the fucking shit out of me, read the first two chapters and had shocking nightmares, never read any more (I was 25 at the time)

 

[Deleted member 575587]

No unless you're 12 or below

 

[Headkicktoleg]

A few of the King short stories are scary IMO. I specifically remember one with a little monkey with chimes and another where some kids are on a raft in a lake. Also the short Yellow Wallpaper is pretty scary, it's about a woman on 'house rest' and her decent into madness.

 

[Badger67]

Never been terrified while reading any book so ima go with whoever gets scared is a wuss.

 

[Chad R. Thundercock]

I got salty when they swapped to "lighter" illustrations for future publications. Half the nightmare fuel of those stories were the creepy atmospheric illustrations.

Yeah, it was the illustrations that made the series scary as hell for me. I've definitely had nightmares from the haunting images.

George Carlin was right. The pussification of this country is getting worse by the decade.

 

[Danger Dave]

if you read a book or listen to an audio book and scream out in terror you are probably gonna get the cops called on you.

 

[tonysmasseuse]

The only book i've ever regretted reading - because of the effect it had on me - was Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho.
Don't think it was terror exactly, more a feeling of being contaminated.
For the same reason i put off seeing the movie, for years. When i finally did, it was a huge relief - not only is the movie so much better, but the humour (quite absent in the book) that Bale brought to the table helped to undo the lingering negativity from the graphic details in the book.

 

[Xianders]

Dracula by Bram Stoker. The book is a classic of the genre. It is necessary to read it. At the moment, I read a lot, as I am learning to write books. I want to be a writer. To do this, I also buy superpuper. This helps me a lot.

 

[sissypunch]

 

[PubliusVentidius]

HP Lovecraft

I have read a bunch of Lovecraft's short stories and didn't find them that scary, except maybe ''The Temple'', although I think it was more evocative and suspenseful rather than scary, that was also my favorite Lovecraft story.
The only time Lovecraft gave me something resembling a jump scare was when I read how he named his cat in ''The Rats in the Walls'', it was so out of nowhere lol.

 

[Excelsior]

The only book that scared me, like actually terrified me, was The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. It probably got to me because it's non-fiction. It details mankind's first encounter with the Ebola virus and just how unprepared we were for anything like it.

 

[THEfightsAREfixed]

you have to get to the point where you are reading and its like directly projecting an image into your mind and you're not saying the words in your head, at that point when immersed you can have all types of emotional reactions like a great movie, this makes me want to get back into reading novels

 

[Thrawn33]

As a kid living less than 15 miles from the Fermi 2 Nuclear Power Plant this scared the shit out of me.