43 replies to this topic

[THE KID]

For me the scariest book I've ever read is a true story called True Haunting by Edwin Becker. In 1971 Ed and his pregnant wife Marsha buy a two story house. It's so cold in summer that no AC is needed. A Ouija board is in one closet. A woodburning stove is in the basement and smells of burning wood permeates the house. Four or five people died in this house. It's been vacant for 30 years. Two prior tenants went insane. Three of the ghosts were not evil but one was demonic. Furniture would move, keys bent and hidden, phone off the hook, objects floating in air and crashing to the floor, and a bathtub sink stopper coming out everytime and wrapping around the faucet.

At night their cat would hiss at something unseen in the hall and the dog would bark at it. Both the cat and actually two dogs ran away and never came back. One of the prior tenants, Dave, wife ran off in the woods and he had to go find her. Ed jumps the fence to talk with his neighbor who invites him in for some whiskey. He talks to this neighbor and learns more about this family and the tragic events.

When a priest was blessing the house after Ed and Marsha first moved in the brass container filled with holy water the priest was carrying exploded into many pieces. The priest ran off and never came back even after many attempts by Ed to get him back to finish blessing the house. The priest said, "There's nothing more I can do."

Ed was a computer programmer working two jobs and the house was an investment. Wow - it turned into a nightmare but Ed handled everything cooly and collectively thinking analytically like a programmer trying to find an explanation to these weird occurences. Ed has nerves of steel but in his own words he was naive and just wanted to find an answer. I would've run the 100 yard dash in under 10 seconds and never come back. Just seeing it from the outside in pictures and videos makes my hair on my arms stand on end.

I downloaded True Haunting a few weeks ago on my Kindle and read it in two days. I'm re-reading it and getting all of Ed's other books.

If you look on YouTube and see the news reporter's video filmed back in 1971 at the 1 minute and 48 second you will observe the glass door move and something move behind it. Ed said, "I look at this film many times frame by frame and saw this door move.""The film crew actually got some film of the paranormal."

In 1983 my next door apartment neighbor came knocking on my door around 10pm with her two children and she was hysterical! She said she was in bed with the lights out and some evil demon with two red eyes appeared at the foot of her bed. I did my best to calm her down. She calmed down after a while and some relatives came to get her.

Like REH my grandmother use to tell me ghostly stories and one of seeing her deceased husband in the hall. At age 10-11 she got out a Ouija board and had me hold one side. I thought it was a game but soon learned it wasn't. I didn't like it as I thought she was moving the planchette. Don't mess with Ouija boards as they can bring in evil entities and not just long lost loved ones.





A REAL GHOST STORY THAT WILL HAUNT YOU!

"This is the story of a true haunting. It was the first ever filmed and televised by NBC in 1971. A young couple purchases a building that was built and occupied by a single family that refused to relinquish their hold, even after death. Investigated and verified by experts, this residence brought chaos to the lives of those who chose to reside there. Unlike a horror novel, this chronicles what a real ghostly experience would resemble. Long before the laws of disclosure, a young couple winds up in the midst of strange occurrences prior to the term 'paranormal' becoming a common description. Searching for help at time when supernatural events were a taboo subject and being ignored by the Church, sent them into a desperate search for any assistance.

Only a little known organization came to their aid. Author Tom Valentine, brought in a nationally known psychic, Joseph DeLouise, who then asked assistance of an exorcist from England, Reverend William Derl-Davis. Together, they gave their best effort at exorcising the multiple spirits inhabiting the building and disrupting the lives of the living. Events were filmed by NBC, who sent their most prominent Chicago journalist, Carole Simpson, to cover the event.

Follow a young couple with a newborn as they attempt to cope with inexplicable events, experience denial, plead for help from their Church, and step into the world of the paranormal. Understand why ghosts cannot be exorcised and a true example of their strong sense of domain, even after death. Learn what experts and gifted people did in a failed attempt to assist this desperate couple. There is no happy ending, as the young couple suffers emotionally, are physically threatened, have their pets terrorized, and eventually suffer financially by actually "giving" their building away. What was intended as a financial answer to their prayers became, instead, a curse to be abolished.

Learn many of the various manifestations that can be common in haunting. Ghosts can be seen and heard. They can propel objects and interrupt utilities. They can affect your moods and feed off of your emotions. They can appear as solid as you and me. They can react and become hostile if threatened or violated. Most important, as this young couple learned, they can harm you and cannot be removed. This is a firsthand accounting of what a true haunting is like. There are certain subtle occurrences you may find the most frightening, because you just might relate and recognize them. If so, guess what? You may have a ghost!"

If you have a Kindle click the Send Free Sample now. If not, click Read/Look Inside for some free reading.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=2aKrxGjZZBg

Edited by Richard, 25 March 2012 - 03:01 AM.

[Ironhand]

Marching Through Georgia, first book of the Draka series. I regard the series as political science fiction/horror, and as such, the scariest book/series I have ever read, dealing with the victory of a political philosophy that makes Nazi Germany look like a bunch of happy munchkins.

[amster]

Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. No need to believe in the supernatural to be frightened when there are plenty of real monsters among us.

[thedarkman]

The Relic, by Preston/Child. Good scary fun in the bowels of the New York Museum.

Also, The Wendigo, by Algernon Blackwood. Written 100 years ago about a scary hunting trip located just north of where I live. Every time I head up that way to go hunting myself, I can't help but. think of that tale!

[Hawkbrother]

I really got scared when as a young teen I read Edward Bulwer-Lytton's short story "The Haunted and the Haunted" in Bennett Cerf's anthology Famous Ghost Stories, which also contains two other ones scary at the time, Blackwood's " The Willows" and August Derleth and Mark Schorer's "The Return of Andrew Bentley, with its description of the horrid-looking familiar creature. I had not heard of Lovecraft back then -my discovery of him came in college.
I thought The Shining by Stephen King was the scariest of his I read. I was living in a basement apartment at the time and a few nights later, the neighbors cat came and scratched at my door. I remember thinking if that had happened when I was reading The Shining, I might have had a heart attack!
Outside of strictly horror, I'd say Philip Wylie's novel Tomorrow! from the 1950s, about a nuclear attack on the US. Especially because I read it in high school back in the 60s during the days of events like Berlin and the Cuban missile crisis.

[Majere]

Never really been *scared* by a book, but perhaps the most disturbing thing I've ever read was The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. His descriptions of Black Mass made me feel blasphemous just by reading them.

It was such a powerful novel for me that I never watched the movie, because I was so afraid it would shatter the image of the characters I'd built in my head.

I enjoy novels that can touch me in some way, whatever those emotions they stir up may be.

I went back and read The Exorcist again a few years ago. Sadly, it carried little of the weight it once had. Knowing what was in store robbed the book of its potency.

Books for me are no different than drugs are for other people. I spend my life chasing those rare moments, passages that cause me to laugh out loud or break down in tears, scenes that cause the hair on my arms and neck to stand up. Sometimes it seems you'll never find another good book again, and then when you find it, you devour it like a true addict, and hate yourself for doing so once you've finished. Why couldn't I have savored it a little longer, you think, before blaming the author for having not stretched it out by another 100 pages or so.

You should do a thread on which books had the biggest emotional impact on you. That's be a good one.

[Officer Aggro]

The only book I can think of at the moment that freaked me out was Gerald's Game, by Stephen King. It didn't help that I was reading it at night while in a basement where I slept on a vacation years ago.

[Libaax]

No book has really being the scariest for me. The ones that are most scary for me is authors who can build atmosphere so well that it convinces you the horror,monster ,ghost etc will get you.


Edgar Allan Poe is the creepiest i know, his horror stories are so psychological that the better ones they really made me eat my heart and be truly scared.

I vote for these two stories. The Pit and The Pendulum because i truly believed i was stuck in the place of that prisoner and saw the pendulum slowly coming down on me. Not his best story technically but wonderfully creepy. Other best scary is “Pigeons from Hell”.

Not because im REH horror fan but the kind of story that builds slowly and the horror that you dont see and is more terrifying because of that.

Edited by Libaax, 23 March 2012 - 07:33 PM.

[Arcadian]

Blackwood's "The Willows" is the scariest story for me. A fairly normal setting; trapped by the unknowable.

When I was a teenager, I would have said "The Amityville Horror." I think I sometimes read it around the dates that were the chapter headings in the book. I've not read it in decades and have no idea whether I would feel the same.

[docpod]

Scariest book for me is ONE SECOND AFTER by William Fortschen. Terrorist detonate a nuke set off from a SCUD missile from a container ship in the Gulf of Mexico above the atmosphere. The electro-magnetic pulse fries everything electric. No cars work unless they have an old non-electric starter or protected by a Faraday Box. The average city has a week's worth of food. By the end of the week, the old people in nursing homes are dying from dehydration. People then start to die running out of their medication. Heart attacks from out of shape people hauling water. After a month, typhus, flu, and cholera start killing huge swathes of people. A year later, 90% of the population in the U.S. is dead. This novel was based on a congressional report on EMP weapons.

Morgan

Edited by docpod, 24 March 2012 - 02:21 AM.

[Almuric]

Grotto of the Formigans. How did anything this bad get published?

[Dark Mark]

1984 by George Orwell scared me when I first read it as a kid and still does.

[Libaax]

1984 by George Orwell scared me when I first read it as a kid and still does.

Its is a creepy because its not that far of alternate political world. Some countries in the world does control the blebs like the Party did. China,N.Korea for example.

Its messed he predicted neo colonialism things like rich,powerful countries,companies going east,africa to make people work for so little money its like slave labor.

Orwell might not have the best prose of writers i have read but a profound book that makes you think out modern human history and our world today. When you hear about absolute dictators,injustice you think that story was not just creepy fiction, its real world horror.

[Rockamobile]

The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell. It starts out slow but pays off. Its simply one of the best horror novels of all time.

My second choice would be Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

Edited by Rockamobile, 24 March 2012 - 06:06 PM.

[THE KID]

Here's another one that's right up there for being one of the scariest books. If you have a Kindle it's free!





This collection of ghost hunting diaries is a selection from those T. M. Simmons kept during her twenty years of adventures in the paranormal world. As a writer, she felt compelled to keep records of her encounters, and until now, she has only shared these with a few friends and relatives. Encouraged by their interest, and the awe and sometimes apprehension on their faces, she is editing some of the dozens upon dozens of diaries in her files. Volume I contains Down the Ghost Trail, which chronicles the start of T. M. Simmons’ ghost hunting career at the haunted Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Crossing Over explains how she learned to help lost souls cross into The Light. In Midnight Ferry, a late-night phone call sends her into a confrontation with a nasty ghost-witch who meant horrific harm. The other three stories are ones she chose as some of her favorites. She has also included a few definitions of her beliefs and the rules by which anyone whom she allows into her ghost hunting life must abide. These stories are true, and each new volume will be offered as a prelude to the upcoming fictional Dead Man mystery series. Dead Man Talking, which should be available as an ebook within a few days of this first volume, will be a fun, scary romp in the paranormal world. Part of the first chapter is included at the end.

If you have a Kindle click the Send Free Sample now. If not, click Read/Look Inside for some free reading.

Edited by Richard, 25 March 2012 - 03:02 AM.

[THE KID]

Feel a profound sense of dread at the ghostly horrors that scratch at the surface of our world. Discover frightening true accounts of poltergeists, apparitions and malevolent entities, and explore some of England's most fearsome haunted locations with WOLF ('World Oneiric Life Force’), a paranormal research & investigation team. Alongside locations made famous by the likes of TV series 'Most Haunted' are fresh additions to supernatural lore.

The twenty-three stories include:

The Galleries of Justice
Woodchester Mansion
The Station Hotel
The Ancient Ram Inn
The Hellfire Caves
Edinburgh Vaults
The Theatre on the Steps
Middleton Hall
The Pervy Poltergeist

…and more!

Peter Drake did a great job on this book. He also has another book just as good .

These are true stories. Don't mess with Ouija boards.

Feel a profound sense of dread at the supernatural horrors that scratch at the surface of our world. This collection of thirteen true stories casts a dazzling light upon the dark realms of witchcraft and the occult. Read of frightening real-life encounters with apparitions, arcane magic, demons, poltergeists, and possessions. Inside are chronicles of several notorious locations, with unrivalled levels of detail and length. Discover the black magic mysteries of Clapham Wood - marvel at the supernatural phenomenon at Dudley Castle - and shudder with fear at the entities that stalk the corridors at Littledean Hall. An evil eye gazes on Coalhouse Fort - Pendle Hill - Whittington Castle - and Denny Abbey.

[MoeTheBarman]

Some nice recommendations Richard, I've downloaded them (49 pence for Tales of Ghostly Horror:))

I agree with Libaax about authors who can build atmosphere and have to say Howard and Poe do a great job of that.

[THE KID]

Thank you Moe - After reading please give a review. It's nice to read other readers comments.

I rate them all up there but True Haunting by Edwin Becker is the Scariest non-fiction I've ever read! It's on sale for only $2.49 and worth every penny/pence. I'm hoping there's a Part II on True Haunting 40 years later.

Yes - Poe, REH, and Lovecraft are awesome in fiction!

[Libaax]

Some nice recommendations Richard, I've downloaded them (49 pence for Tales of Ghostly Horror:))

I agree with Libaax about authors who can build atmosphere and have to say Howard and Poe do a great job of that.

Frankly they are the two authors i remember thinking it was not wise to read their atmosphere strong stories late at nights, my mind started to play tricks with me and the shadows starting to look creepy,dangerous around when i read those stories.

Edited by Libaax, 26 March 2012 - 08:13 AM.