Book Haven discussion

Name some horror novels that are so frightening you would recommend sleeping with the lights on after reading them?
Make sure they are the truly frightening ones! :)

I would love to answer this but I don't remember the name of the book. It was about a family that moves into a very evil house. Haunted would be an understatement. There's a psychic medium that tries to help the mother, but the medium has an unfortunate history of spirits following her home. Basically, no one gets a happy ending in this book. What happened to the medium is what got to me the most.

Too bad I can't remember the name. My memory is horrible. :/

I remember Night Shift by Stephen King has some short stories in it that made me sleep with the lights on. I was only 11 or 12 years old though at the time, so that might be why, lol.

The Amityville Horror could it have been this?
I saw the movie, and it sounds similar to what you're describing...

No, in this novel the family didn't get to escape. I *think* the husband dies and the rest of the family basically becomes controlled by the evil spirit(s) inhabiting the house. I remember at least one of the kids are basically turned evil. I think something happens to the neighbor too. There is no happy ending for this book, lol.

The Dark Half! lol It's definitely a creepy book.

No problem. :) Yeah, it's about a guy who discovers he had a twin that died in the womb with him, and his body absorbed it. It becomes his evil split personality. Or something like that. I think I was 9 when I read that, lol. I just remember it being creepy.

I laugh at horror movies all the time, but zombies are the one thing that reeeeeally gets to me. I don't read a lot of horror fiction but I usually don't have any trouble getting to sleep afterward. Then again, I practically grew up on horror movies.

Shaun of the Dead was pretty funny, even though it still managed to scare me. :p

It by Stephen King to me was terrifying. I slept with my light on a few nights after I finished that book.
Have you The Cell yet by Stephen King. It's roughly about Zombies. Pretty creepy!

A Stephen King book about zombies? I can guarantee you that would give me nightmares. lol

BonFire wrote: "A Stephen King book about zombies? I can guarantee you that would give me nightmares. lol"

For some reason, zombies don't frighten me. I find them kind of funny. I think it's because I saw "Night of the living dead"...."brains..." LOL

Gerald's Game by Stephen King

not only creeped me out but managed to turn me off to ever reading Stephen King again.

I read that book when I was probably too young to be reading it. I think I was around 13 or so. But yes, that book is pretty messed up.

I think maybe I was too young as well.

BonFire wrote: "Shaun of the Dead was pretty funny, even though it still managed to scare me. :p"

That movie cracked me up!! I could watch that over and over again!

Eliva: Shaun of the Dead is a fave. I like the special features too =D.

I love Shaun of the Dead! I'm usually not a fan of zombie movies, though.

Ok, a book that's so scary you need to keep the lights on. I've got one better. How about a book that gave me the creeps just by seeing it on the shelf? House of Leaves It's a complicated one but at its core it's about a family that moves into an evil house. What made it worse for me is I started reading it as I was moving into a new house.

Stephen King's books have an odd affect on me. If I'm reading one, I have to leave it in another room when I go to bed. Otherwise, I can't sleep. His son, Joe Hill's book Heart-Shaped Box A Novel did the same thing to me.

i love shaun of the dead too!

Jaimie: Oddly enough words can effect your mind, body and spirit. So having to move a book out of a room to sleep in to get a peaceful rest makes sense. My horror books are not the gory ones with the evil faces [anymore:]. But I get, totally, what you mean about King and his books!

Kenjii - I knew it wasn't that weird when there was a "Friends" episode where Joey talked about putting a King book in the freezer when it scared him too much. LOL!

Ghost Story--Peter Straub
The Shining
The Haunting of Hill House

Steven Belanger
www.stevenbelanger.com

The two scariest books I ever read were Pet Cemetary (we had a young child at the time and the very thought still gives me goosebumps and "Salem's Lot. Both of these books were written by one of the masters, Stephen King.

Wanted to mention that another really excellent book was The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons. I think this was one of her first novels and while it was soo good (King wrote about it in his non fiction book called Danse Macabre)she left the genre writing mainly contemporary fiction.

The Keep by F. Paul Wilson is pretty creepy and chilling.

As a young teen I had that problem, and couldn't read Stephen King until I was in my 20's, but I don't really have that trouble anymore. Now, pretty much everything I read turns into my dreams, but I don't have nightmares anymore. I always manage to do what I thought the hero/heroine should have done to get out of the situation in the first place. I don't have nightmares about zombies, I simply dream of kicking their sorry dead arses!

That being said, some of my favorite horror books (By amazon classification, not so much my own) were The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, Most of Stephen King's books (though I didn't really care for the Cell, it was too similar to the Stand for me.) The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells, Phantom of the Opera (pretty much every version!) and The Omen by David Seltzer because I had a child who was bordering on evil from the day he was born! (Ok, so he was ADHD and when he played with box cutters he thought they worked like scissors and had no concept of the ramification that if they could cut through walls, then imagine what they could do to skin! And do not ask me how he got the box cutters out of the huge tool box on the top shelf in the laundry room. ADHD, man. *SMH*)

I haven't read a lot of the recent horror books, mainly because I like suspenseful horror, with a lot of mystery rather than the ones with a lot of blood and gore.

I like Classic horror which I'd read when I was a kid and are scary enough even now . Bram Stoker's Dracula, William Blatty's The Exorcist, David Seltzer's The Omen (great atmosphere!), Jay Anson's The Amityville Horror, and Don't look back by Daphne du Maurier. These are truly lights on for me.
Recently I read Anne River Siddon's The House Next Door, which was also good.

Hehe Dont know any horrors to suggest but I am just about to read Eeeek :-O

Braum Stokers Dracula is scary. I don't find novels that scary. Simply because I know they are novels. True crime like Buried Secrets scares the hell outah me.

In the same vein, Cary, "Helter Skelter" about Charles Manson and his group was very disturbing and chilling.

Oh yeah I loved that one. Tha'ts what I'm talkin about. Reality is just scarier, and crazier than fiction.

Cary wrote: "Oh yeah I loved that one. Tha'ts what I'm talkin about. Reality is just scarier, and crazier than fiction."

That, unfortunately, is very true.

The Devil On May Street... hands down, the best horror novel I have ever read!

I think the only book that every freaked me out to epic proportions was Misery by Stephen King. I found the The Exorcist lacking in scares.
As a side note, the movie The House On Haunted Hill (The Geoffrey Rush one) nearly did me in. I watched it with my sister and she actually woke up screaming that night.

I just finished re-reading Bram Stoker's Dracula, and I had to have something else going at the same time, since I stopped reading at sundown. lol

I remember a book my friends and I all read when we were about 13 that creeped me out. I don't remember the author, but I think it was called Blood County. We read a lot of John Saul back then, too.

Cheryl wrote: "The Keep by F. Paul Wilson is pretty creepy and chilling."

I'm going to give this one a try, I read "The Tomb" by Wilson and that was pretty good! So I expect good things from The Keep based on your recommendation. Thanks!