In case you couldn’t tell from our yearly costume showcase, the Writer’s Relief staff really, really loves Halloween. With the 31st just around the corner, we’re having fun around the office creeping each other (and ourselves!) out with spooky stories and books.
If you’re looking for something nice and scary to read over the next few weeks, check out some of these picks from the staff, guaranteed to raise the hair on the back of your neck and make you check under the bed before you go to sleep at night.
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QUESTION: What is the creepiest thing YOU’VE ever read?
“It” by Stephen King. When I read it, I was only a little older than the characters in the book who are terrorized by the entity that sometimes takes the form of a evil clown.
Later in life when my husband joined the Shriner’s Clowns, I had to grit my teeth every time the guys got in costume.
Something Wicked this way comes by Ray Bradbury. The book still gives me the creeps. I saw the movie too.
About 20 years or so, I read Anne Rice’s “The Witching Hour”, That did give me the creeps. Now comes
Linda Costello and her character Kate Burkholder, and her Amish mysteries. They are violent and keeps you awake on the darkest of nights!!
Years ago, I read Communion,a true story by Whitley Strieber. It’s the scariest book I’ve ever read; mainly because I’d dreamed a similar experience as the one he described. Rather than being so scary I couldn’t put it down, it was so scary I had to put it down. I could only read a few pages at a time.
“The Ruins” by Scott Smith. It’s the only book that’s ever made me sob in desperation.
When I was in junior high school, I read “The Gray Aliens” by J Hunter Holly and I remember being scared sleepless. The book is out of print, but I’d love to track it down to read it again. As an adult, I have to agree about Stephen King’s “It”.
The scariest story I have read is as yet an unpublished short story, Burning, Burning,Burning. It is a black all consuming story about mother earth drying to dust and the raging wildfire which consumes a mountain and a city. Gives me goose bumps when I read it.
The creepiest, scariest thing that I ever read? Easy! The news.
The creepiest book I ever read would have to be STEPHEN KINGS’CHRISTINE.
The Exorcist! An intense read for sure.
The Hypnoglyph still causes me to shiver. I read it years ago in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine. I don’t remember who the author was, but the premise was to get Earth men to some alien planet to reinvigorate the species by mating with the women on that planet. The slow process was so effective and as a reader I could feel myself becoming entrapped.
THE SNAKE by John Steinbeck, and here’s what makes it even more creepy: it’s a true story.
Wow, this one is easy! It’s a story from one of my all time favorite horror anthologies. A story about smokey the bear, and man is he psychotic! A mad twist of creepy, funny and wow. The book was called horror light, or maybe it was blood light…I don’t remember, really.
Come Closer by Sara Gran
The Laughing Corpse by Laurell K. Hamilton. Before everything she wrote became serial romances, she knew how to bring on the creep factor. Couldn’t sleep for week!
The Giant of Hampton Bays by Paul Anobile. Just in time for Halloween! check it out on short-storyme.com.
Scariest thing I have read recently is “Miriam” by Truman Capote. Deeply unsettling. Second place would go to almost any short story by Paul Bowles.
“The Other”
“Haunted” by Chuck Palahniuk. No, it’s not about ghosts. But you’ll wish that it was.
For me it has to be Stephen King’s “IT” and “PET CEMETARY”. These two just freaked me out and put me off horror’s forever. They love to run the movies over Halloween and my husband insists on watching them. I would rather set my hair on fire and put it out with a sledge hammer!
Book of Blood II by Clive Barker. I think of the stories, Dread creeps me out the most.
What a great list! I’d have to say the short story “Harry” by Rosemary Timperley, which appears in Roald Dahl’s haunting collection, “The Book of Ghost Stories.” You will never see a rose-bush the same way again.
One of the creepiest stories I ever read is, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I read it in a high school literature class, and those kids and psychological thrill factor stayed with me for years. I re-read it as an adult thinking it wouldn’t have the same impact. I was wrong.
Aside from that one, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is high up there for me. I had seen the movie/s through the years but never actually read the book until a couple of years ago. Far more creep and scare factor than the movies.
“The Rats in the Walls”, by H. P. Lovecraft. It was my first Lovecraft story, and it set me off searching for everything else he ever wrote.
–Leslie <