Be Excellent To Each Other

Anyone out there read a book that has unnerved them so much they've been unable to stop thinking about it and have consequently had lurid nightmares?

For me it has to be Margaret Atwood's 'Oryx & Crake', which was so chilling and despairing, and so obscene in parts, that I felt physically nauseous. I don't precisely regret reading the book, as it was incredibly well done and very thought provoking, but at the same time I never want to see it again. And if a film or TV adaptation is proposed I'll run to the hills.

For those who have not read it, Oryx & Crake is set in the not-too-distant future where genetically modified livestock provide the bulk of our food, resulting in hideous nightmare creatures like great big spherical chickens with fifty wings and legs and one beak. (Cue Alan Partridge quotes.) Entertainment has become completely morally debased with more snuff films than you could shake a YouTube at and what passes as a technocratic civilisation increasingly lives in compounds. Enter one boy with a terrifying destiny to do something horrible, beautiful, much needed and totally evil.

It's relentlessly straight-faced, no real hysterics. It's basically the Brave New World of our age. (Another book that shocked me a bit when I first read it.) The writing is so deadly-beautiful that it was utterly compelling, and yet I felt sick to the soul when I finished it, and somewhat sick in body too.

Ugh. As a result, I meticulously avoid Margaret Atwood's work even when assured it is ace-best. Handmaid's Tale, for example. Keeping away from that!

Anyone else got any that make the list of, "Aww man!" novels that reduce you to a gibbering wreck? Children's books and fact-books allowed also.

Wouldn't mind reading that.

"Dear Shrink" by Helen Cresswell had a description of an old woman dying on a staircase (with some children upstairs who would therefore have to step over the body to get downstairs) that gave me several nightmares as a kid.

Also, the bit in "The World According to Garp" by John Irving where is so grim that it's very tempting to skip that chapter altogether when re-reading the book. Except by the time you remember what's going to happen, enough has happened that you can't help but do exactly that - remember it. Obviously it's too late by then.

Salems Lot absolutely, totally, completely unnerved me. To the point that I've never seen the film, which apparently does a good job as well.

There a number of definite moments in books that have utterly creeped me out.

A vaguely remembered ending to a Shaun Hutson book where

The bit in Carpe Jugulum where the vampires go to Escrow

I used to read Point Horror has a kid. None of it was horrifying, although I recall my school library having a seriously fucking ridiculous policy where years 7 and 8 couldn't take out Point Horror or Point Crime books because they were 'too scary', but they didn't prevent you from reading them while IN the library itself.

Sadly no good horror books come to mind. I read Carpe Diem about the kid with XP, which was OK, but ended up confusing me rather than scaring me.

The Wasp Factory. The bit where it explains the event which sent Franks brother mental.

*shudder* I feel ill thinking about it now.

If we're talking Banks, The Bridge always makes me very uneasy.

Also, what's the one where they're stuck in the decaying castle playing games with no rules? That also freaks me out.

The children's book "the chicken gave it to me", by Anne Fine, where some aliens come to Earth and replace all the chickens in the chicken sheds with people to eat, completely fucked me up as a child and still gives me the horrors today.

Less embarassingly, chapters 17 and 18 of "Evolution" by Stephen Baxter really make up for the awfulness of the rest of the book, and are horrifying. The idea that humanity could easily completely collapse isn't one I think we believe in strongly as a society, and this brings it home quite vividly. Then hassome of us evolve into tiny little mole people. Grrrnnngh.

Actually, Excession freaked me out, what with the Excession turning up, doing nothing, and then just leaving again. Strangely unnerving. The Bridge brings me glee, oddly.

I have had recurring nightmares from childhood about the great glass elevator going up, down, sideways, diagonally etc.

Still bothers me a bit.

Mimi. You have just unlocked two childhood book-oriented traumas for me. Aargh.

One is the Great Glass Elevator... Vernicious Squids, or something? The illustrations sort of scared me.

The other... I'd be amazed if anyone knew this. A kids' book from the 80s. I only remember a giant pig-tailed redhead girl floating in space, who eats whatever craft the main characters in. I think it was some kind of 'Ordinary kids get swept up in space adventure' book. Again, it was the illustration that freaked me out, as I recall. Massive braces...

'Bone Song' by John Meaney; the idea of a city's power being provided by the trapped souls of the dead, kept in excruciating pain as some kind of penance was a bit icky. Also, I think it was in 'Context' by the same author, the holding cells that were essentially a giant spherical disembodied stomach, that dissolved prisoners alive... The descriptions of the pulsating walls of meat were rather unsettling.

Vermicious Knids! The bit where they form themselves into the words 'GET OUT'.

I think it was 'pernicious knids'

True, though I felt that as a whole the book was a bit pedestrian, and given the interesting subject matter could have been a lot, lot better.

Oh God, not the knids. It's no wonder we haven't colonised space with children's literature like this.

Nah, 'vermicious'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermicious_knid

Willy Wonka scared the shit out of me. Still does.

Yeah, it disappointed me; 'To Hold Infinity' absolutely blew me away.

Aaarghh, what was that book I read a few years ago, where these people crashed on a planet made of metal which burned their skin, and it turned out they were inside another sphere, or something?

I read a book that's quite old now (late 70's, maybe) billed as the 'first truly modern ghost story' which had a bit where one of the (female) paranormal investigators looking in a mirror, getting possessed and then, er, violating herself with the blunt end of a bottle of coke.
They killed a chap in that book with an electric harpoon.
Anyone know what it was called?

Little tip, Alton Towers... not for you...

I used to read Stephen King books from when I was about 12, Pet Cemetery scared me quite a bit but then I read Geralds Gamewhen I was about 13......It was the last Stephen King I read. I have no idea what the librarian was thinking!

It was awful to read, yet compelling, which unnerved me a lot at the time and probably scarred me for life.

I read Random Acts of Heroic Love over the winter, which is a depressing time of year anyway but I thought that book was heart breaking, I don't think I could read it again for a while.

Martin Amis' Dead Babies

Also, the book Craig had to read at uni. Short book about sex, eggs and the licking of eyeballs, and some kind of bull-fight. I can't remember all that much of it, it was quite disturbing. The Wasp Factory was a bit creepy, also.

The Handmaid's Tale isn't too bad, certainly not as bad as you've just described Oryx and Crake as being (and my PARENTS have both read it and loved it... so there). And there are film adaptions of it.

I can't think of any books that make me shake and shiver, though.

Oooh! I just rented that from the library, got 15 pages in and gave up. It really didn't agree with me - either the writing style or the power station idea just grated a bit. Odd, as that sort of thing is my thing, usually.

Read a book years go called "Daemon" that was desperately unpleasant. Can't remember the writer. It was about a rich guy who invited his 13 illegitimate children to his evil skyscraper and had daemons eat them in exchange for eternal life, or some such. There was a scene with a guy strapping a drill on his todge and raping a woman to death. Nice stuff.

It does improve! The first chapter or so is very, very ham-fisted scene-setting.

I remember a book that scared me as a child about a small creature that some hunter tried to shoot, unfortunatly the hunter only shot off it's tail then he ate it. The creature then started stalking the hunter in his woodland shack. It could speak and started scratching about the place mumbling the rhyme "tailipo, tailipo, all I want is my tailipo." After a few pages I can't remember, the tailipo dives at the hunter, then I remember a woodland scene with the caption "Tailipo tailipo now I,ve got my tailipo." Implying the hunter had been eviscerated and the tail extraced. It shit me up as a child.

You mean 'The Tailypo'? My nan had that, it bloody terrified me.

Fucking wierd wasn't it. I want to read it again, or do I because I still sometimes remember how scared I was as a child and I, oddly, don't want to ruin that.

http://www.amazon.com/Tailypo-Ghost-Story-Clarion-Books/dp/0395300843

There it be

Thanks man. If I ever have kids I am going to frighten the life out of them. Even seeing it's little yellow eyes on the cover brought back a memory.

I also remember being a bit wierded out by the Tripods books as a kid. It was just the odd acceptance of something clearly oppressive that I found strange. As an adult I have come to accept this. Just like in the Tripod books. Oh dear.

Oh yes. It took me a long time to get my other half to read any more Iain Banks, as she was convinced they'd all be as nasty as that.

The Wasp Factory is nearly my favourite book ever. But I gave it to my current GF to read and she didn't like the animal brutalty, particularly the rabbits, She admitted it was beautifully written though.

While we are on books I remember not being scared but slightly disturbed by Rebbecah's World.

The only book I've ever read that made me shiver, and always chills me even though I know it inside out, is Nineteen Eighty-Four. Horrifying for several reasons, most of all the bare naked truth of it.

1984. I know what you mean. There hasn't been a decade pass where something from that book hasn't appeared.

Excellent - I'll give it another go then. Thanks!

Two from childhood spring to mind.

First is Teeny Tiny and the Witch Woman, which was mainly scary for the illustrations. All dark and scratchy and brrrrrrrr.

The other I'm not sure about. I think it was a story in a kids' horror collection - maybe one of the Pan ones? The basic story is that some teenage kid is really scared of dying. He's scared of just about everything that might kill him, from food to cars to nighttime intruders. So the devil comes along and says that in return for his immortal soul he'll guarantee that the kid will live to be at least eighty. So the kid accepts and starts living a normal, fear-free life again. Unfortunately, he gets a bit too cocky and doesn't look both ways when crossing the road one day and get hits by a car. He wakes up lying down in a small, dark space. He realises that he's in a coffin, under the ground. "But you said I'd live until I was eighty!" he cries out. And the voice of the devil comes back saying, "You will. Oh, you will." That really shit me up when I was a kid and has always stayed with me. I'd love to know what the story was and where I can find it again.

Oh! And I've thought of another one! The really big one, that I guess I blocked out.

When I was a kid I read "This House Is Haunted", which is the "true" story of the Enfield poltergeist. It had photos in it and everything. I wasn't sure whether or not to really believe it - erring, I think, on the side of scepticism - but it shit me up anyway. I was terrified of poltergeists for many, many years. Even in my twenties I still made sure to read any Fortean Times articles about polts in the daylight hours. I'm not bad now, but a good story about flying plates and being thrown out of bed can still make me uneasy.

I'm not sure it's worth it!



Go read 'Spares' by Michael Marshall Smith instead.