list a book that made u think twice about shutting ur eyes at night... may it be stephen king, anne rice ,or a story u heard years ago. :) what book haunts you or gives you the creeps. It doesnt have to be ghost or goules.. just anything that has haunted you, after you have already put the book down.

Message edited by its author, Nov 10, 2009, 10:11am.

For me, it wasn't a book, but a short story I read in either The New Yorker or Atlantic Magazine. I can't remember the title or author (too scared, I guess), but it was about a man who was a body double for a middle eastern leader. There were no ghosts or anything supernatural, but the horror of the man's life kept me awake for a week, and I still get freaked out when I remember it.

lol, there was a story when i was little of talking dolls that scarred me for life. lol

it was an r.l stines book and i still get creeped out thinking about it. :) :p

I just recently read The Strain by Guillermo del Toro that was a bit disturbing - there were some moments I was like " come on, come on, get out of there" lol..

It's always been ghosts that scare me. When I was a kid I went through a horror phase and took a book about ghosts and ghouls out of the library. It was non-fiction, like those DK books or something, and it was full of ghost stories, myths, and info about ghost-hunting. I don't know if the 'factual' nature of it made a big impact, but some of those stories kept me awake at night. I still remember some, and they still creep me out. There was one about a woman whose body had been sealed in a bed, and her ghoul would devour the men who slept in it. I also read that dogs and cats can see ghosts, and even now I still feel safer with a dog or cat in the room.

There were quite a few collections that scared me too - there was a great one with Gaelic ghost stories, and another with a story about a school toilet haunted by a student who had been murdered there by a teacher. The students at my own school used to say that our bathrooms were haunted, which didn't help at all.

I read that thing about dogs and cats too. I also read that if you look between a cat's ears when they're staring intensely at nothing, you'll see a ghost! It hasn't worked for me so far, but I keep trying.

The Exorcist by William Blatty. Read it while living alone. I slept on the couch while reading it.

You think a couch protects against demonic possession? ;-)

I was young! Just couldn't bring myself to walk to the bedroom.

My couch has magical powers. It can call to me from miles away.

lmao! hahaha yea im not fazed by vampires and witches and gouls.. the only thing that really gets to me is demons and things of that nature. i agree, a couch is a fine fortress of safety. lol

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, the book before Silence of the Lambs, was really creepy. A twisted serial killer who had a terrible upbringing. Humans are the scariest of all.

Maybe not necessarily scary in a spooky "horror" way, but Richard Preston's books on Bioterrorism, The Demon in the Freezer and The Cobra Event, have probably given me more nightmares than any book I've ever read. Talk about scary.

I don't remember any book ever really scaring me (or movie for that matter), but the ones that get me the most are where people are starting to lose their sanity---or perception based. Ever since I was little, I've known that perception is individual based--so no one ever sees the same thing, and when it starts to slip out of line of what everyone else sees, that's when it gets good and freaky.

I read all of Stephen King's books w/o any adverse effects....until Christine. It makes no sense that a haunted car creeped me out and gave me nightmares...nothing else previously had bothered me. Haven't read King since.

I used to read a lot of Stephen King when I was younger, and they were kind of enjoyably scary. But nothing too bad. Song of Kali by
Dan Simmons was creepy.

The one book that has actually disturbed though me is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Not scary, but just downright unpleasant in places.

I second The Exorcist. I couldn't even touch it after dark.

I've never really read a Fiction book that bothered me, no matter what genre. I don't like to read true accounts of ghost stories or serial killers because they are just way too disturbing.