What Books Scared You?

Photo by Oxana Melis on Unsplash

As we graze the leftover Halloween candy and put off taking down decorations, I thought we could talk about the stories that really scared us. I was not a horror reader growing up. With the exception of, I think, The Haunted Mask, I didn't read a ton of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books like other kids my age. I was too chicken! So the stories that scared me the most were ones that lured me into a false sense of security—like Roald Dahl.

Roald Dahl’s stories seemed quaint from the outside—with titles like James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The BFG—but within the pages were a carnival of wonderful oddities and—occasionally—horrors. I think Dahl informed my tastes moving forward because the books that continued to draw me in were ones that weren’t marketed as straight horror, but had scary/horror elements, like the Hellboy comics by Mike Mignola and the Lucifer comics written by Mike Carey.

Perhaps the genre blending of these stories was a way of easing myself into the dark, foreboding waters of pure horror, until I was finally ready and willing to watch movies like 28 Days Later, read comics like Steve Niles’ 30 Days of Night and his Criminal Macabre series, and novels like I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, a post-apocalyptic vampire story—which is still one of my favorite books.

Matheson’s novels and short stories tapped into the psychological and spiritual troubles of individuals. His stories were haunting and sometimes disturbing, but underneath each of them was a deep interest in and compassion for human beings. The scariest thing about I Am Legend is not the vampires, but the profound loneliness felt by the main character, who seems to be the last human being on earth.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke was another book that made me confront the existential threats to humanity in a way that I hadn't before.

But I think the first book that really, truly scared me was American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. It is meant to be satire, but I couldn't help but feel like the characters in that book really existed somewhere. And I remember reading somewhere that Ellis would meet Wall Street guys who unironically loved Patrick Bateman, the book’s titular psycho killer. It tapped into this demonic presence in America's capitalist culture that was deeply unsettling. And to this day, I'm not sure if another book has surpassed the spine-chilling effect it had on me.

What are the books that scared you the most? Tell me in the comments.