Writing that frightened/disturbed you?

[Sci-2]

Can be anything - fiction, non-fiction, horror or just a passage in a larger work.

Two books that definitely freaked me out were Hyperion and It.

The Shrike freaked me out as it was very well presented as this alien and disturbing force. It was just unbelievably good at reaching into some very primal fear, though I read it in 8th grade so not sure what I'd think about it now.

Probably some other stuff I'll have to recall.

[Mr. E]

I like H.P. Lovecraft, but the kinds of horror, specifically, the really get to me is the personal, psychological type--and body horror. Body horror gets to me.

So there's a bunch of Stephen King stuff that's really given me jitters:

Dreamcatcher is one. There also a short story where a guy drinks a beer that basically turns him in a slug...more disturbing than it sounds. Then there 'N', where a guy goes insane trying to keep a Cthulu clone from entering our dimension.

Anything like that, basically, including GRRM's "The Pear-Shaped Man."

EDIT: Oooh, thought of another King one: The Tommyknockers, where a bunch of townspeople basically slow turn into aliens in the most disturbing, nauseating way possible.

[Ormond]

I tend not to be frightened by the imagery in most "horror" novels, just grossed out.

I was quite disturbed by George R. Stewart's post-apocalyptic novel Earth Abides, but I read it back when I was in junior high school.

I remember being quite scared at points by Antonia Fraser's Quiet as a Nun, the first written in her Jemima Shore mystery series. That sort of thing is more frightening for me than "horror."

[Grack21]

*insert joke about Outlander here*

[kcf]

As a teen, some of King's books - mostly It and Tommyknockers as mentioned above.

In my current life - conservative non-fiction. OK, I'd have to actually read that sort of thing for it to be true.

As a parent, any realistically portrayed violence towards children. That's about as horrifying as it comes and I refuse to read such things as a result.

[Contrarius]

Yeah, I'm with the violence towards children bit -- and I'm not even a parent. It was reaaaaaaaaally hard to read the rape scene in The Lovely Bones, for instance.

One of the first stories I remember reading that bothered me, way back in the Stone Age, was "Fever Dream" by Ray Bradbury. Verrrrrry effective.

[Migey]

The repeated gratuitous rape in Pillars of the Earth sorta disturbed me after the first three times. Twilight kinda disturbed me cause it got so much praise and when i read it it was... well, the less said the better.

One of the Malazan books had some rather odd bondage rape (i think it was the seventh) which kinda disturbed me as well.

And for some reason i always feel kinda disturbed any time in Wheel of Time where we see the Damane with Sul'Dam.

[brook]

Flat Diane by Daniel Abraham disturbed me more than I would have predicted that a story without any graphic scenes could.

We need to talk about Kevin also really got to me, I read it at the same time as I began having real issues with my oldest son (not Kevin level thankfully, but more than just usual childhood problems too) and the questions about how the mother herself influenced Kevin's behaviour was a bit of a gut blow at the time.

I have no idea what made me think that American Psycho would be a good choice to read for someone with a phobia of rats but that bloody book gave me nightmares for months. It probably wouldn't have been as bad if I hadn't forced myself to finish it but it was good enough that I didn't want to put it down.

[Tears of Lys]

I tend not to be frightened by the imagery in most "horror" novels, just grossed out.

I was quite disturbed by George R. Stewart's post-apocalyptic novel Earth Abides, but I read it back when I was in junior high school.

I remember being quite scared at points by Antonia Fraser's Quiet as a Nun, the first written in her Jemima Shore mystery series. That sort of thing is more frightening for me than "horror."

This sort of sounds familiar to me. I'm going to have to go read a review of it to jog my memory a little more.

ETA: The final minutes of the third episode, aired on 18th April 1978, are still regarded as one of the most chilling moments on British television, noteworthy because the series was transmitted before the traditional 9pm 'watershed', the demarcation line in British television scheduling between family-friendly and adults-only viewing. In the scene, Jemima Shore goes into the Tower alone at nighttime. As she climbs into the attic, she encounters the faceless Black Nun sitting in a rocking chair. Jemima screams as the Black Nun advances towards her, bringing the episode to an end. The scene was ranked 63rd in Channel 4's Top 100 Scary Moments list.^[1]

^{Oooh! I'm going to have to see if I can find this!}

[wolverine]

I am a big time pussy when it comes to scary movies but books almost never scare me. There is stuff that disturbs me though. Some of the scenes with total psychopathic/sociopathic killers and tortures in books are really disturbing. For example the scenes of Roose Bolton's Bastard are really hard to read sometimes.

I guess any of the really sick shit that people do to other people is the most disturbing stuff to read for me.

[Grack21]

Oh, non-fiction too.

102 Minutes shook me up so badly I couldn't sleep for a few days.

[Roose Seal]

One of the creepiest stories I've ever read was a short story in an old issue of Weird Tales called The Underbody by Alison V Harding iirc. It's about a ..person..thing, living in the ground who grabs children who pass by and makes them disappear... The story is not explicit at all but it's all the more unsettling because of all the things that are implied.

Pet Semetary did creep me quite a lot the first time I read it, especially the scenes with the Wendigo(?). I re-read it again a couple years ago though and some parts are indeed quite creepy but the final act feels dated and a little corny.

Lovecraft can be quite good at disturbing stuff when he doesn't get lost in endless paragraphs of pseudo-science. One of the creepiest passages is when he describes the giant albino penguins in At the mountains of Madness.. Next to the overwrought descriptions of the Elder ones, the penguins are perfectly understated and ghastly.

I gotta say the Reek chapters in DwD were pretty damn disturbing.

[Lord of the Night]

The novellas Accursed Eternity, Sanctus and Fateweaver in the Black Library novel Architect of Fate disturbed me, chiefly because of their endings and the element of forever that plays into them. People understate forever a lot, but when you really think about what forever means, its pretty damn disturbing.

Accursed Eternity: Its revealed at the end that the Accursed Eternity, a ghost ship, is trapped in time as are all of the characters within the story. They are doomed to repeat the events of the story forever, each time only one slight thing changes as time is mercurial. The character Korydon, a Star Dragons Space Marine who was left behind on the ship and has become a ghost, believes that one day one of those changes will be something he can use to escape his own fate and break the cycle. Unlikely.

Sanctus: Again time is involved. The Relictors Space Marines find the star-prophet Astreus and it is revealed he is a mutant, and his power is causing a time loop. Astreus stalls the Relictors Sergeant long enough that the time loop kicks in, putting the story back to the start. They'll be trapped in that forever.

Fateweaver: At the end the White Consuls Epistolary (Psyker) Cyrus Aurelius traps the Daemon Kairos Fateweaver aboard his ship the Aethon. He knows what this will do to his ship, its heavily implied that it will become the Accursed Eternity, as it hurdles through time into the past. He tells Fateweaver that the reason he could no longer see the future, only the past, is because the past is now his eternal future. Unfortunately it means that he and his entire crew are trapped as well, doomed forever as the ghosts witnessed in Accursed Eternity.

LotN

[The Warlock of Qarth]

The novellas Accursed Eternity, Sanctus and Fateweaver in the Black Library novel Architect of Fate disturbed me, chiefly because of their endings and the element of forever that plays into them. People understate forever a lot, but when you really think about what forever means, its pretty damn disturbing.

Stephen King's short story " The Haunt" is quite horriffic in that regard as well.

"Longer than you think, dad! It's longer than you think!"

[Francis Buck]

I can't say I was ever particularly frightened by a book...although that likely comes more from the fact that I simply haven't read enough that would be classified as "horror". I've always meant to check some more of it out, but I just never think of it.

Actually I take that back. I read House of Leaves in my senior year, and I remember the day I bought it, I was reading the beginning of it that night alone in my bedroom, and it definitely kinda freaked me out when it started getting into the descriptions of the house itself.

Just plain old disturbing though? Too many to count...American Psycho was definitely disturbing, although by the end of it I almost felt desensitized, since the violence just became so over the top and crazy (in a good way though, it's one of my favorite books). Again from Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero got seriously disturbing towards the end, as did the sequel (can't remember the title), again both awesome books though. All of RIchard Mogan's Takeshi Kovacs novels have at least one really disturbing torture sequence (the one from the second book sticks out in my head particularly, where there's literally a machine designed for torturing someone for hours without actually killing them).

[Nearly Headless Ned]

Reading Lolita at the moment and have had to take a pause because the narrator is freaking me out a little. Decided I wanted something light and fluffy and ended up reading Hannibal by Thomas Harris. Never read a Dr Lector book whilst eating a pork sandwich.

[Mosi Wanostracht]

Nineteen Eighty Four and All Quiet on the Western Front - two of my absolute favourite books and tomes I consider works of complete genuine genius, but the matter-of-fact way they just state the horror of either the society or war is chilling. It's so real and you can taste the hopeless apathy in Nineteen Eighty Four and the horror of war in AQotWF. There are so many moments that are horrific yet related in a very stark and unembellished way. Not sure I explained that right!

The book I've read most recently that disturbed me was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini - and that was horrible because I suspect thousands of women are actually living the lives described in the book today all over the world.

[deleted01]

The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan. It was just fucked-up and creepy. I have now shunned him forever, especially after the bore-fest that was Enduring Love.

Currently listening to Lolita; loving it despite never having listened to a book before, but it's definitely disturbing.

Oh and Stephen Leather is such a weird author. His books are like under £1 on Kindle, and he's actually a decent writer, but The Basement was just weird on a whole different level.

[Sci-2]

Oh, I should add Blood Meridian to the mix.

[Ormond]

This sort of sounds familiar to me. I'm going to have to go read a review of it to jog my memory a little more.

ETA: The final minutes of the third episode, aired on 18th April 1978, are still regarded as one of the most chilling moments on British television, noteworthy because the series was transmitted before the traditional 9pm 'watershed', the demarcation line in British television scheduling between family-friendly and adults-only viewing. In the scene, Jemima Shore goes into the Tower alone at nighttime. As she climbs into the attic, she encounters the faceless Black Nun sitting in a rocking chair. Jemima screams as the Black Nun advances towards her, bringing the episode to an end. The scene was ranked 63rd in Channel 4's Top 100 Scary Moments list.^[1]

^{Oooh! I'm going to have to see if I can find this!}

Interesting! I have only read the book and didn't even know it had been made into a TV show. Glad it translated well to the small screen. :)