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What's the most frightening piece of written fiction?

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Odoul

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I love horror movies, ever since I was a kid.

I used to think books and written works couldn't really be scary. Obviously that's bullshit.

It can be a whole story or a specific piece.

Dracula. The entire first part of the novel. When Jonathon first arrives to the castle. Slowly realizing just how deep the shit he's in. Dracula running down the wall like a lizard. The three brides. The baby in the sack and what happens to it's mom. The local people knowing Jonathon is there and doing nothing about. I was truly shocked just how creeped out a hundred year old book was able to make me. The feeling of being completly and utterly alone and helpless in a foreign land came through loud and clear.

Suffer the Little Children. A teacher is seeing faces in her students that nobody else is able to see. Stories about being to able to see something dreadfully wrong with the world and everyone thinking you're crazy hits something deep inside me. The way Stephen King describes the children revealing themselves damn near made my skin jump off my head/neck.
 
I don't know if you would call it frightening, but Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack probably bothered and disturbed me more than any other book I've read.
 
I can recommend some short stories. Read them in a quiet place.

HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness gets quite creepy about halfway in. There are at least two good (but unfortunately abridged) audiobook versions on YouTube. It's probably best to read the full version first.

Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream isn't good for direct scares so much as its slow-building sense of oppressive menace.

The macabre ending of Stephen King's Ladyfingers has stuck with me.

HP Lovecraft is the master of this stuff, by the way. He's very good at developing atmosphere and using language to evoke unnamable horrors, and a big part of it is the matter-of-factness of the way he addresses the reader. It's hard to describe, but his writings seem halfway between a journalist's field report and a confession from a friend who knows you won't believe his story but is compelled to tell you anyway. You can't go wrong with a big Lovecraft omnibus like this one. Or you can find just about anything he's written online, in text and ebook formats, with a Google search (supposedly all or most of it is legal).
 
The Jaunt (Stephen King) is a pretty great creepy short story, although it's probably not 'most frightening' ever.
 
Monocle said:
I can recommend some short stories. Read them in a quiet place.

HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness gets quite creepy about halfway in. There are at least two good (but unfortunately abridged) audiobook versions on YouTube. It's probably best to read the full version first.
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Eh, MoM is one of the weaker Lovecraft stories for me, and definitely not too scary. It suffers from the massive exposition dump partway through that just reads like he had all these cool ideas and he wanted to get them out so he dropped an appendix in the middle of his story.
 
I have no mouth and I must scream from Harlan Ellison

At the Mountains of Madness, the Mound and the Case of Charles Dexter Ward from H. P. Lovecraft. I also enjoyed the Crawling Chaos but that is more sad and disturbing than frightening
 
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I haven't read a ton of horror fiction, but parts of House of Leaves got me good. Shadow over Innsmouth was the creepiest of lovecraft imo. Finally,the written version of LotR's balin's tomb scene in Moria was pretty frightening.
 
What was that book with the short stories with the INSANELY good (and creepy as fuck) artwork?

This was from my middle school days...
 
A few days ago I read a Shrek fanfic where Donkey murders Shrek's wife and kids, and Shrek retaliates by hanging Donkey from his balls and ripping off his limbs.
 
Odoul said:
Dracula. The entire first part of the novel. When Jonathon first arrives to the castle. Slowly realizing just how deep the shit he's in. Dracula running down the wall like a lizard. The three brides. The baby in the sack and what happens to it's mom. The local people knowing Jonathon is there and doing nothing about. I was truly shocked just how creeped out a hundred year old book was able to make me. The feeling of being completly and utterly alone and helpless in a foreign land came through loud and clear.
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I've tried reading Dracula a couple of times, but I just can't deal with it. It's probably one of the most mindnumbingly boring books I've ever tried reading, as nothing, absolutely nothing, of interest happens during the first half of the book. And when I reach the midway point of the book I'm so bored of it I can't be arsed to read on. It's just horribly paced as far as I'm concerned.

Monocle said:
HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness gets quite creepy about halfway in. There are at least two good (but unfortunately abridged) audiobook versions on YouTube. It's probably best to read the full version first.
Click to expand...

I love Lovecraft, but I never found AtMoM to be all that great. My two fave stories from Lovecraft would probably be The Rats in the Walls and The Dunwich Horror.
 
Guevara said:
House of Leaves
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I honestly dont get why people find this frightening , it was pretty intersting but wasnt scary at all. Decent read , but id rather just read the navidson record and nothing else really interested me in there personally.

Lovecraft stories are creepy as shit.

Color out of space , mountains of madness etc , so many are so good and short reads mostly.
Dream quest of uknown kaddath is just crazy
 
Combichristoffersen said:
I love Lovecraft, but I never found AtMoM to be all that great. My two fave stories from Lovecraft would probably be The Rats in the Walls and The Dunwich Horror.
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My favorite Lovecraft is probably The Case of Charles Dexter Ward or The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (although Kadath does drag on a bit too long), but the scariest Lovecraft is probably The Color Out of Space or The Dunwich Horror, although both of them are more creepy then nightmare-inducing.
 
Cormac McCarthy's The Road - Some people hate his writing style. I enjoy it. There is one REALLY terrifying part.

Choose Your Own Adventure Books - Terrifying as a kid. The science fiction ones can have awful endings, where you are doomed in some lonely room or infinite pain scenario. I like the ones by R.A. Montgomery.

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness - Psychological horror. Really depressing near the end. You feel dread at what is going to happen (heard Spec Ops The Line is based on this similar to Apocalypse Now).
 
The Technomancer said:
My favorite Lovecraft is probably The Case of Charles Dexter Ward or The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (although Kadath does drag on a bit too long), but the scariest Lovecraft is probably The Color Out of Space or The Dunwich Horror, although both of them are more creepy then nightmare-inducing.
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Being creepy is what lovecraft does , and GD was he good at it
 
Dave Inc. said:
If you can find it, get the old print with the original artwork by Stephen Gammell (thanks, Amazon). The stories are pretty forgettable but the artwork will haunt you for the rest of your life.
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Which is mainly why I want it lol.

I did like a few of the stories though.
 
Combichristoffersen said:
I love Lovecraft, but I never found AtMoM to be all that great. My two fave stories from Lovecraft would probably be The Rats in the Walls and The Dunwich Horror.
Click to expand...
I'm biased because At the Mountains of Madness was the first Lovecraft story I ever read, but for me it was a completely engrossing experience. I love all of the detail. It gives the story a sense of realism that suits its premise as a report on an expedition gone terribly wrong.

Parallacs said:
Cormac McCarthy's The Road - Some people hate his writing style. I enjoy it. There is one REALLY terrifying part.
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I know just which part you mean. It's a bleak book. Well worth the read, though.
 
The Technomancer said:
My favorite Lovecraft is probably The Case of Charles Dexter Ward or The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (although Kadath does drag on a bit too long), but the scariest Lovecraft is probably The Color Out of Space or The Dunwich Horror, although both of them are more creepy then nightmare-inducing.
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The Colour Out of Space and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward are both great, but I could never get into Kadath or the rest of the Dreamlands cycle. Lovecraft was a great horror author, but as a fantasy author I find him to be mediocre at best.

Monocle said:
I'm biased because At the Mountains of Madness was the first Lovecraft story I ever read, but for me it was a completely engrossing experience. I love all of the detail. It gives the story a sense of realism that suits its premise as a report on an expedition gone terribly wrong.
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Yeah, I think the first Lovecraft story you read will always remain a favourite. Like how I still love The Call of Cthulhu even though it admittedly isn't among his best work.

Edit: Come to think of it, Pickman's Model is another great Lovecraft story.
 
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