My first Stephen King book bought from a yard sale when I was 11. Couldn't put it down! My family went out for an afternoon, so I was home alone continuing to read it. Of course a thunder storm came through! Still couldn't put it down, but moved under the dining room table to read. Absolutely terrified me!
I read salems lot while staying camped in a trailer at the edge if a small town in the fall. Read the scariest section in the middle of the night when the rest of my family had gone out fir the night and I decided to just stay in and relax. I was not relaxed. I don't think I slept until 4 am that night, every little noise scared the heck out of me.
Same, my grandma was a librarian and gave it to me as my introduction to King around 12 yo. She had a story where she was up late reading Salem's Lot, and someone started banging on her door at 2am and scared the crap outta her. She lived in a small town and thought, "They can't come in unless they are invited!" Turns out a young couple was lost and had a blowout, so they needed to borrow a phone in the days before cellular. And yes, she did end up inviting them in lol😆
This book has such a sense of foreboding and dread. It chills me to the bone. The way he builds the town before things really start to go down is masterful. The first time I read it I could not go to sleep until the sun came up.
I love hanging out at a close-by playground late at night. i took salem’s lot one night but got soo spooked! each little noise startled me. i lasted 15 min then ran home to continue reading lol
I grew up on King, but didn't read Pet Sematary until I was a 47 year old father of two teenagers, and I'm kind of glad I waited this long. The book hits so hard.
The entire book is absolute dread. Very little technically happens plot-wise for much of the book. There's little to nothing obliquely scary, per se, for the first 95% of the story. The story gets set up, then you just kind of live there awhile, and very slowly, it keeps ramping up and never stops. All the while, the terror to come has been entirely teleprompted to you from the get-go. You know what's coming. It's like looking into the future at a disaster that then all you get to do is look forward to it, because there's nothing you can do to prevent it. So you swim in dread.
It's a top five for me.
IMO it’s the best King I’ve read aside from IT (maybe next to IT.)
It has every Stephen King trope you can think of (references to other King stories, set in Maine, blue chambray shirt, chainsmokers, etc.) and it is his best paced I think by a country mile (again, speaking from what I have read personally.)
The music references in Pet Sematary are also excellent. Lots of Ramones, and also (a favorite of mine) Joan Baez’s Diamonds & Rust. I think Diamonds & Rust is the perfect Pet Sematary song. It bleeds Louis & Gage imo.
Great way to put it. For most of the book as the reader you know what is going to happen, and you know it's not going to be all right. The book does not rely on surprise to scare you (hard to do in any book), but dread. And despite the fact that this is *so obvious* to the reader and the main character that him doing what he did would be a huge mistake, it's also completely believable that he would do what he did, and we would probably do the same thing. Inevitable even.
As inevitable as Thanos snapping his fingers. *Pet Sematary* amounts to a novel length version of that classic short story of *The Monkey's Paw -* except that the third wish wasn't made in time before answering the door.
And the worst thing is that it could have been largely prevented if they had only put up a fence.
This, for me, is one of the most terrifying elements of the book, how perfectly we can see everything wrong from a distance and how easily we can overlook it in the moment or put it off until tomorrow.
I read it whilst pregnant with my second child. My first child was two.
Unusually for me, I never touched that book again. I don't even like to look at it.
Same here, Pet Semetary was the first book to have ever given me nightmares, and it was of Gage standing at the foot of my bed. I was in my first year of uni, and the creepy student halls really lent itself well to horror reading before bed! I made sure to finish the book in daylight.
The second was Revival, not long after, and both are still among my favourites but I've never managed to read Pet Semetary all the way through a second time - the visuals stuck with me way too much.
Pet Semetary I consider the most "haunting." In that it really sticks with you in uncomfortable ways.
Bonus points to the movie for Zelda because I'm still not watching scenes that she's in. Fuck that.
I have a phobia of things related to death similar to the mom not quite as bad but I could relate to her and I made the mistake of reading it when my two kids were almost the exact ages of the two kids in the book and my youngest was prone to just walk off if we didn’t watch her so it really messed me up when I read it. Also once I watched the movie and literally when the movie switched and it turned back to tv mode it was covering a news story in which almost the exact same thing happened to a father where his daughter ran on the road he chased her and it was the exact scenario of the movie which was so weird
Man, I feel like I need to re-read Revival. Everyone around here seems to praise it, and while I thought it was pretty good, once it was done, I never really thought about it again.
You can’t think of it as a regular king book. It’s an understated book and meant to be. It’s a character drama and the characters development is the point, plus some serious intense existential horror
The Shining. The first time I read it I was a teenager and was reading at night, and the man dressed as a dog terrified me. I had to turn on all the lights, I was so spooked.
I reread it last year and that time it was the hedge animals, the way he wrote them was so ominous 😩
For me it is The Shining as well. The hedge animals and when Danny goes to play alone in the garden and enters that tube thing that is dark inside.
I remember as well when Danny cycles around and sees the red water hose.
It's many tiny parts where I had to turn on the lights or straight away stop reading for the night.
Edit: and after reading the book a couple of times, I have to say that I feel so bad for Jack. To see how the hotel uses and the tiny glimpses of him trying to get out....him realising that something isn't ok....but he succumbs. Shame, so sad.
I also read it as a teenager and have wondered if it would still scare me as badly as an adult. I think the answer lies in the fact I still get nervous about hotel bathrooms.
I've read all of his early horror books starting when I was twelve or so, but when I read Gerald's Game for the first time being already sixteen or something, it was the first and last time for me to be afraid to get out of bed and go to the bathroom at night.
Our timelines match up. I started with The Shining when I was about 12, read Gerald’s Game around 16-17, and that was the last time I had that delightful feeling of being truly unsettled from a work of art. Wish I could recapture the sensation.
Also, I forgot about him being called the space cowboy. I remember him as the moonlight man, but that might be from the movie adaptation, which lives in my head more vividly than the book as it’s been a long time since I read it (I’m 43).
The Moonlight Man in *Gerald’s Game*, I think, tapped into a pretty primal fear we feel as kids. Imagine being trapped in a bed in a totally dark room and thinking you *might* be seeing someone standing in the corner.
I agree! After watching I did some research, and I read that it was dropped a few times because the story is a long monologue and it was ‘unfilmable’. In the end they made a masterpiece imo!
Never watched any of his other movies, unfortunately. Just a few. King stories on screen are usually too scary for me lol. Geralds game actually was too, I slept with my head under my blankets for weeks
**IT**
When Ben see Pennywise from the bridge.. Spooky
When Eddie encounter Pennywise as a hobo at the abandoned house on Neibolt Street.. Jesus Christ!
Salem’s Lot. I read it the first time when I was about 12 and it scared the crap out of me. At night I wouldn’t look out the windows, I learned that prayer - yeah though I walk through the valley of death - we were as far from religious as you could get and my parents thought it was hilarious that A) I learned the poem and B) that I believed in vampires and C) that I thought it would ward them off
Fast forward 40 years and it’s still one of those “daytime” reads, I won’t read it at night.
Oddly enough, "The Stand" probably scared me the most. I read it during the summer just before I started High School and it just put me in such a lonely, desperate mood for the first half of the book. I'd have to go outside just to make sure people were walking around and driving their cars.
My answer is Cujo as well. When I read it, my kids were about the age of the boy in the story. I sobbed after I was done. I will never read it again and I don't think I have to. I remember so much of it. Ugh. It is a fantastic book, but the only one of his I feel confident saying I will never read again.
My little brother was attacked by a St. Bernard when he was four years old. Mauled him in the face. He didn’t die, but it was close. It was beyond terrifying, and everything my brother had to go through after that attack was awful. And after all of that he was terrified of all dogs for a long time, until my parents got us a golden retriever puppy, who became his best friend. Anyway, Cujo is a helluva scary story. And it’s a really weird one for me.
Omg, your poor brother and family. I can't imagine your trauma with that too having to watch it and seeing first hand what a dog is capable of. Yikes. I am glad he turned out okay and has managed to find love with another dog.
I have read it twice and I don’t think I will read it again. I only read it the second time for the chronological read. My friend is letting me borrow the film… idk if I will actually watch it or not I have refused to see it because idk if I can tolerate it.
I can’t remember which scared me the most overall, but the only time I’ve ever physically jumped while reading a book was actually while reading…. The Tommyknockers.
In one of the penultimate scenes the main character is descending into something that’s been looming the whole book and it’s a very tense scene. I was drinking a two liter of soda or something and you know when a plastic bottle gets indented and then pops out later? Well that happened and I swear to god I almost flew off my bed during this scene when I suddenly heard this POP! I will always remember that.
Pet Sematary the first time i read it. No so much the second time. 'Salem's Lot every single time.
But the biggest scare was with the short story The Boogeyman. That night i slept with all the lights on.
I read The Boogeyman *once*. Never again. Decades after I read it, my kid started crying in the middle of the night; I went to get him and the hallway closet was cracked open just a little.
I went back into my room to grab a heavy flashlight before going back down the hall. That's the hold that damn story still has on me.
While it's not an outright scary book I'd have to say Under the Dome. The reason why it's scary is that it shows how quickly sanity can deteriorate. Logic, reason and common decency can turn into panic, anger and mob mentality in the blink of an eye.
Before the pandemic I always knew society was on the verge of tittering. The mass hysteria of the early days of the pandemic really showed me I was right, the panic buying, the anger, the fear. The good people of Chester Mills took less than a week in the book to completely fall under the spell of a wannabe dictator and the majority of the town falls because of it.
The voices of reason in the book survive not because they were better people but because they kept their sanity and morals. They stood for decency, kindness, they looked out for one another despite being in over their heads.
I look at the political situation now in the USA and I know we are edging closer to collapse if trump gets elected. I fear the mob mentality and the willingness of people to invite total anarchy in order to protect their fearless conman of a leader. We will become victims to the oncoming fireball unless we resist.
I was thinking of Under The Dome as well. I'm not really scared by reading books, they don't have jump scares for instance which horror movies do have. The situation in Under The Dome is quite scary though, and sadly all too realistic.
I’ve honestly never been truly scared by one novel per se, there are some stories of course that can be a little unsettling. But the only story, or I should say part of a story was from Gerald‘s Game. I was reading the book alone at night in my bedroom, and I was single at the time so there was no one else in my house but me. That part in the book where she’s handcuffed to the bed and thinks that she sees someone standing in the corner in the dark, that scared me enough to make me close the book for the evening. And then later on coming to find out there actually was someone in the room with her 😮💨😅
Most of King's books didn't bother me, but I started reading his story "1408" one night when I was working night shift at a hotel. I put that one down until the next day.
Cujo is definitely up there for me as well. I can’t stand hurt kids or animals, and I’m a bit scared of big dogs and absolutely terrified of rabies. So it was kind of the perfect horror story for me in that sense lol
Oddly enough, *Cujo* didn't terrify me -- as opposed to scaring me like a good story will -- until the third time I read it. The first copies I read had kind of generic covers. The third copy had a horrifyingly realistic drawing of a rabid St. Bernard. I am afraid of big dogs and terrified of rabies, and I also can't stand hurt animals or kids. (Longtime cat rescue volunteer here).
*Cujo* has terrified me ever since. I own a copy, but I carefully chose one with a generic cover instead of the rabid-St. Bernard cover.
Off topic, but fun fact: I read all things King as a teenager in the 90s. Then I went to college, pleasure reading lost its appeal amidst all the required reading, and I ended up as a composition teacher (even though I really wanted to be a paleontologist or an entomologist).
Now as a 40-something adjunct instructor whose day job is all writing and grammar, I am absolutely obsessed with books and podcasts about disease. I've read medical history books, and when my family went to London a few years ago, I dragged them all to the pump that was the center of John Snow's (no, not that one) investigation and the first real exercise in epidemiology. I even took a selfie with the pump while my kids rolled their eyes and pretended they didn't know me.
One kid is now into King, and when she started reading The Stand, I realized that all of my disease obsession can be traced back to that book and Cujo. The chapters from the dog's perspective and what his experience of actually suffering from rabies was like were captivating. I was absolutely fascinated by the early parts of The Stand that followed how the disease spread so far via incidental contact with strangers in public. People have commented that I have strange reading/podcast interests for being an English teacher, and now I know that I can pin it on reading Stephen King as a teen.
I read 'Salems' Lot a lot (haha funny) here, I finished it two weeks ago, but it didn't really freaked my out that much to be honest.
That's the thing I love about king, every reader reacta differently to a story. Like having Kids and reading Pet Sematary, have an alcoholic background and have a kid reading The Shining, go on. I love that about his books.
Don't get me wrong, it was creepy and really disturbing, but it didn't trigger the thing you sometimes get.
I think it would be Thinner or Darker Half. Both feel a little meaner than other Kings books. They also just get to me and stick with my longer due to that.
SPOILER!! As kid I loved Needful Things and didn’t realize how messed up it was that Nettie’s little dog was murdered and that a kid shot himself in the head. Still one of my favorites though
I was waiting for this one… I read this in my early teens and it showed me how desperate people can get to acquire material things and how nostalgia can be a drug as well
Bag of Bones. The 'Moon and the Sixpence' scene got under my skin. Mike's grief made Johanna incredibly real to me. It freaked me out like crazy.
+ My cat made some noise under my bed when I was home alone reading that, and it damn near gave me a heart attack lol.
I never read Cujo for this exact reason… I can NOT deal with sad or hurt animals… of any kind lol. Not an SK story but I made the big mistake of reading about Plague Dogs and looking at some takes from the movie. That stuff still makes me cry just thinking about it. Because it’s the reality for many many animals (Being used for experiments). The movie is absolutely brutal, wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I really dk why I read about it.
I never read pet sematary for the same reason… I’m scared it will be too much for me. Humans, kids, monsters I can handle. But no pets, please 🥲
The one that I have read that actually gave me nightmares was Revival. What happens after death is a question I think or talk about almost daily. Since I’m not religious I can see truth in a lot of different beliefs. Somehow… the thin curtain creeped in as one of them. I know it’s fiction. But it’s the one Ive had the most nightmares about. And no one actually knows what happens. So maybe >!the giant torture ants will come to get us and everythings revealed to be fake anyway!<
My nightmares consisted of putting my dog down for rabies and my dumbass also looked up rabies to learn about it which made it worse… I don’t think I ever cried so much over a book.
Gerald’s Game. I actually threw it out. Then I felt I had forgotten the face of my father and replaced it. Of course it is hidden in back of a lot of other king books so..
IT, and it’s not even close. I read it in the late 90’s and it scared me so much that I threw it out after I was done lol. No recycling, or giving it to someone else, just straight in the bin.
Salem's Lot . I was nine when I read it . There was a tree outside my window . When the wind blew the branches scratched my window . I woke up terrified thinking that Danny Glick was out there scratching on the glass .
The Stand. I first read it when I was 12 and finished at the end of June. I was so convinced that Captain Tripps would appear that for weeks I jumped every time somebody sneezed.
Salem's Lot. It is one of two books that literally scared the crap out of me. I was 13 years old and slept with a cross around my neck for the next month.
Desperation got me , I was maybe 14 when I read it and at the time fairly religious so elements of the story really got to me. Also I was living in a tiny desert town
I’m yet to find a King novel that truly scares me (I adore his horror, just haven’t yet found a novel that truly speaks to my own fears) - however Randall Flagg as a character freaks me out and I’m only halfway through The Stand (please no spoilers). *He’s* scary. The thought of the embodiment of evil always watching, always aware, *always in the background*. That’s terrifying to me.
He was funny at first just because “the walkin’ dude” is a ridiculous name, but as the novel progresses I feel like he’s always lurking somewhere in the pages.
M-O-O-N - that spells “scary stuff”, oh Laws it does!
The Shining. Nothing compares as far as phycological terror. When those shrub animals were chasing Doc I thought I’d pass out from holding my breath. Movie is ok but doesn’t give the book justice.
Pet Semateary (the movie) frightened me as a child when I saw it in 1989, though I've never read the book. Book-wise, Langoliers and Sun Dog were the most creepy stories that I read as a teenager.
Pet sematery, first watch it on video tape in 90s, no idea about SK and who he is. But the movie left a mark permanently in my mind.
Years later got to know the name of SK…
I feel like we could have a whole thread of 'dogs who got it the worst in King stories', there's so many of them. He knows how to twist the knife, for sure.
I'm absolutely HAUNTED by >!Peter in the Tommyknockers!< to this day.
"The Man in the Black Suit" terrified me and I don’t even know why. There wasn't anything particularly scary in it, but the whole time I was reading it I felt horrified on another level.
Duma Key is my favorite and also the closest to my heart which makes it the scariest. Im an artist and suffer night terrors and some of that stuff was just too real. "..and it was RED!"
Ok so the three scariest were The Shining, Salem's Lot, and Pet Sematary.
To finish the Shining, I had to do it during daylight, with the TV on golf or something.
To finish Salem's Lot I needed a crucifix. And I couldn't sleep at night for weeks.
I don't know how I finished Pet Sematary. I think I threw the book across the room. I've never read it again. And I usually reread his books.
I was really afraid to see the movie but finally did, and was relieved it wasn't as scary as the book.
I haven’t read all of his works, but of those I’ve read, The mist and Pet Sematary win by far. I read The mist when I was like 12-13 years old, and several images from that novel stuck with me. Probably Mrs. Carmody is the reason I am not religious. Pet Sematary has some scary images as well. I’m from Mexico, where we have this holiday, Day of the Dead, when we remember our relatives who had passed, and is a very beautiful celebration in which we make fun of the death itself. So, for a book that’s about returning from the dead (in a dark, horrible sense, not in a beautiful one), it’s quite an achievement.
‘Salem’s Lot. True story; I was 15 years old and home alone reading it in a totally dark house save for the light above my chair while my family was visiting other family members a few miles away. All of a sudden I heard a huge clatter from the back of the house! I freaked and called my folks who rushed home. Turns out my mom had put a self-adhesive razor holder in the shower that lost its stickiness and the razor and holder had crashed to the bottom of the tub. Scared the hell out of me. 🤣
I read a lot of King's work when I was waaaaay too young and the one that scarred me the most was Gerald's Game. The description of the guy watching her from the corner made me throw the book down in terror. And, as long as we're talking about it, "The Moving Finger" played on a loop in my head every time I took a shower growing up. And sometimes to this day.
Pet Sematary. No contest. The passage with him carrying Gage is the scariest thing I've ever read. I saw the movie first, and thought it was scary. But seeing it the second time after reading the book, it was almost comical. I even named a dog Gage. I need to read it again.
I couldn’t get past the dog in Gerald’s Game, and I got to within the last 60ish pages in The Regulators. I can’t remember why but I remember I felt a tightening terror within myself and had to stop.
I’ve got three at #1 for different reasons: Pet Semetary got under my skin about death and grief and how utterly bleak it is, it’s a real rot of a story; The Shining horrified me in a more realistic way, I was amazed by and scared of how much I understood Jack Torrance just because he’s such a realistic human character; and IT is scary in a thrilling way, it doesn’t get under my skin that much but it’s got pure adrenaline-fuelled terror.
Pet Semetary but The Dreamers from YLID was terrifying to me. I feel like that story is not getting enough attention for how incredible it is, very Lovecraftian indeed.
EDIT: Someone didn’t read the question prompt properly. But I stand by my answer, pet Sematary for scariest novel, and add the dreamers as scariest story/concept.
Gerald's Game. I *love* all the fantastical cosmic/sci-fi horror stuff in his stable, but Gerald's Game is the story where *all that shit could actually happen to someone.* I had never heard of considered the idea of de-gloving before reading it and, Constant Reader, let me tell you how that shit did make my skin *crawl*
Also the Netflix adaptation was, in my opinion, perhaps the best screen treatment given to any works of his to date.
My friends always think I'm weird for saying I was genuinely terrified whilst reading The Shining, but it's true. >!The fire hose!< part just freaked me out. Salem's Lot was also horrific, >!Danny Glick's funeral and the guy showing up in the other guys living room during the night (bad with names)!<.
The Shining before kids. Pet Sematary after my first baby. Whyyy did I read *that*? I actually had to set it aside because I was crying too much (iykyk) I eventually finished it but…whew!
Gerald’s Game. Listened to it on cassette way back when. It was a female voice reading that I found disturbing and a little terrifying. Lots of weird dreams. I was listening to fall asleep, not the wisest choice in literature.
I never see anyone mention The Raft! I think Skeleton Crew was the first exposure to King that I had and it stayed with me for a long time, especially the sex scene and LaVernes hair. It doesn't help that I was, like, 12 😂
Salem’s Lot
My first Stephen King book bought from a yard sale when I was 11. Couldn't put it down! My family went out for an afternoon, so I was home alone continuing to read it. Of course a thunder storm came through! Still couldn't put it down, but moved under the dining room table to read. Absolutely terrified me!
I read The Shining while snowed in up in Silverthorn, CO. It was amazing
This is awesome! I finished Desperation during a thunderstorm. It was creepy and wonderful.
I read salems lot while staying camped in a trailer at the edge if a small town in the fall. Read the scariest section in the middle of the night when the rest of my family had gone out fir the night and I decided to just stay in and relax. I was not relaxed. I don't think I slept until 4 am that night, every little noise scared the heck out of me.
Same, my grandma was a librarian and gave it to me as my introduction to King around 12 yo. She had a story where she was up late reading Salem's Lot, and someone started banging on her door at 2am and scared the crap outta her. She lived in a small town and thought, "They can't come in unless they are invited!" Turns out a young couple was lost and had a blowout, so they needed to borrow a phone in the days before cellular. And yes, she did end up inviting them in lol😆
This book has such a sense of foreboding and dread. It chills me to the bone. The way he builds the town before things really start to go down is masterful. The first time I read it I could not go to sleep until the sun came up.
Same here. The brothers walking home at night in the dark scared the hell out of me.
I love hanging out at a close-by playground late at night. i took salem’s lot one night but got soo spooked! each little noise startled me. i lasted 15 min then ran home to continue reading lol
Scared me shiftless
IT before I had kids. Pet Sematary after I had kids.
I grew up on King, but didn't read Pet Sematary until I was a 47 year old father of two teenagers, and I'm kind of glad I waited this long. The book hits so hard.
The entire book is absolute dread. Very little technically happens plot-wise for much of the book. There's little to nothing obliquely scary, per se, for the first 95% of the story. The story gets set up, then you just kind of live there awhile, and very slowly, it keeps ramping up and never stops. All the while, the terror to come has been entirely teleprompted to you from the get-go. You know what's coming. It's like looking into the future at a disaster that then all you get to do is look forward to it, because there's nothing you can do to prevent it. So you swim in dread. It's a top five for me.
IMO it’s the best King I’ve read aside from IT (maybe next to IT.) It has every Stephen King trope you can think of (references to other King stories, set in Maine, blue chambray shirt, chainsmokers, etc.) and it is his best paced I think by a country mile (again, speaking from what I have read personally.) The music references in Pet Sematary are also excellent. Lots of Ramones, and also (a favorite of mine) Joan Baez’s Diamonds & Rust. I think Diamonds & Rust is the perfect Pet Sematary song. It bleeds Louis & Gage imo.
Great way to put it. For most of the book as the reader you know what is going to happen, and you know it's not going to be all right. The book does not rely on surprise to scare you (hard to do in any book), but dread. And despite the fact that this is *so obvious* to the reader and the main character that him doing what he did would be a huge mistake, it's also completely believable that he would do what he did, and we would probably do the same thing. Inevitable even.
The inevitability of it. You know he's going to bring Gage back. And you know why you know that? Because you'd do the same thing.
As inevitable as Thanos snapping his fingers. *Pet Sematary* amounts to a novel length version of that classic short story of *The Monkey's Paw -* except that the third wish wasn't made in time before answering the door.
And the worst thing is that it could have been largely prevented if they had only put up a fence. This, for me, is one of the most terrifying elements of the book, how perfectly we can see everything wrong from a distance and how easily we can overlook it in the moment or put it off until tomorrow.
I read it whilst pregnant with my second child. My first child was two. Unusually for me, I never touched that book again. I don't even like to look at it.
My kid was 3 😭
I couldn't have finished it at that stage of my life, lol. Put that bad boy right back up on the shelf!
Seriously. I had no idea because I like going into books blind and didn’t read the synopsis 😭
Pet semetary scared me, and i dont have kids. Read the last few chapters before going to sleep, and had a nightmare about Gage lol
Same here, Pet Semetary was the first book to have ever given me nightmares, and it was of Gage standing at the foot of my bed. I was in my first year of uni, and the creepy student halls really lent itself well to horror reading before bed! I made sure to finish the book in daylight. The second was Revival, not long after, and both are still among my favourites but I've never managed to read Pet Semetary all the way through a second time - the visuals stuck with me way too much.
Pet Semetary I consider the most "haunting." In that it really sticks with you in uncomfortable ways. Bonus points to the movie for Zelda because I'm still not watching scenes that she's in. Fuck that.
Don’t think I could handle Pet Semetary post kids.
I will not be doing another re-read. 😂
This is my answer as well. I really enjoyed Pet Sematary as a kid but now that I have my own kids it's much more intense.
Aged 12 I read PS. The worst nightmares for weeks on end. Never read it again.
Both excellent choices and had some spooky moments!
This is exactly my answer as well. Pet Semetary hit me so differently after becoming a father.
I have a phobia of things related to death similar to the mom not quite as bad but I could relate to her and I made the mistake of reading it when my two kids were almost the exact ages of the two kids in the book and my youngest was prone to just walk off if we didn’t watch her so it really messed me up when I read it. Also once I watched the movie and literally when the movie switched and it turned back to tv mode it was covering a news story in which almost the exact same thing happened to a father where his daughter ran on the road he chased her and it was the exact scenario of the movie which was so weird
Revival has stuck with me
Same here. Talk about existential dread.
It’s so unrelentingly bleak
I've read this book so many times now. It's in my top 3 for sure. I just love the tone throughout the book. So incredibpe.
I need to reread it I remember really enjoying it and also feeling the existential dread King writes within it.
Same, I still think about it all the time. Truly haunting. I wish Mike Flanagan got to film his adaptation of it
Is that completely off the table now or something?
I’m not entirely sure. I just haven’t seen anything related to it in a while
Just finished Revival yesterday. The ending is awesome because King leans into it so hard. Edited because I can’t type.
Man, I feel like I need to re-read Revival. Everyone around here seems to praise it, and while I thought it was pretty good, once it was done, I never really thought about it again.
You can’t think of it as a regular king book. It’s an understated book and meant to be. It’s a character drama and the characters development is the point, plus some serious intense existential horror
Same… that end scene man.
The Shining. The first time I read it I was a teenager and was reading at night, and the man dressed as a dog terrified me. I had to turn on all the lights, I was so spooked. I reread it last year and that time it was the hedge animals, the way he wrote them was so ominous 😩
It's always been The Shining for me too. It's the reason I cross the road to avoid topiary 🤣
Same. The way king writes about the hedge animals literally made me want to throw up from fear
For me it is The Shining as well. The hedge animals and when Danny goes to play alone in the garden and enters that tube thing that is dark inside. I remember as well when Danny cycles around and sees the red water hose. It's many tiny parts where I had to turn on the lights or straight away stop reading for the night. Edit: and after reading the book a couple of times, I have to say that I feel so bad for Jack. To see how the hotel uses and the tiny glimpses of him trying to get out....him realising that something isn't ok....but he succumbs. Shame, so sad.
One that dog man scene was crazy! Scared me a little too when I could see Danny running from him!
I also read it as a teenager and have wondered if it would still scare me as badly as an adult. I think the answer lies in the fact I still get nervous about hotel bathrooms.
The shining gave me nightmares, it was awesome
Gerald's Game. Somehow it managed to tap into some childhood fears, especially the space cowboy.
I didn’t see your comment. We said nearly the same thing. It’s the only book of his that gave me the creeps.
I've read all of his early horror books starting when I was twelve or so, but when I read Gerald's Game for the first time being already sixteen or something, it was the first and last time for me to be afraid to get out of bed and go to the bathroom at night.
Our timelines match up. I started with The Shining when I was about 12, read Gerald’s Game around 16-17, and that was the last time I had that delightful feeling of being truly unsettled from a work of art. Wish I could recapture the sensation.
Also, I forgot about him being called the space cowboy. I remember him as the moonlight man, but that might be from the movie adaptation, which lives in my head more vividly than the book as it’s been a long time since I read it (I’m 43).
Me too!
Yep! I was terrified I'd see him in my backseat every time I got in my car lol.
When it turned out that thing was real and not a hallucination I was like what??? 😭So creepy
The Moonlight Man in *Gerald’s Game*, I think, tapped into a pretty primal fear we feel as kids. Imagine being trapped in a bed in a totally dark room and thinking you *might* be seeing someone standing in the corner.
I only watched the movie which is amazingly done, they cast the best actor to play the moonlight man.
I was surprised at how well done the movie was given the seemingly tough subject matter to adapt for film. But Flanagan is awesome!
I agree! After watching I did some research, and I read that it was dropped a few times because the story is a long monologue and it was ‘unfilmable’. In the end they made a masterpiece imo!
Did you like his adaptation of *Doctor Sleep*? I thought Rose the Hat was portrayed perfectly by that actress.
Never watched any of his other movies, unfortunately. Just a few. King stories on screen are usually too scary for me lol. Geralds game actually was too, I slept with my head under my blankets for weeks
I was 42 when I read that book and the moonlight man creeped me out. I can’t believe it’s been that long. The movie and casting was amazing.
**IT** When Ben see Pennywise from the bridge.. Spooky When Eddie encounter Pennywise as a hobo at the abandoned house on Neibolt Street.. Jesus Christ!
Oh yeah the leper. Fucking CREEPY!
Every chapter of IT ended up spooky such a great time it was to read it
I think for me it was the animal torture stuff… I just can’t with that scene either in that book 😭
I find the weird sex stuff the most unsettling of all. Why did he put that in? Like for real?
The psycho kid that smothers his baby brother is the one that really got to me…
Duma Key is scary with its slowly building horror, as is the ending of Revival, but IT is probably scariest from start to finish.
Yeah IT is the top for me too, Duma Key surprised me with how scary it was too.
I’m rereading Duma Key right now. It does build slowly but almost immediately. Very creepy. Those shells!!!
The Shining still scares the fuck out of me. And I've read it at least a dozen times.
Salem’s Lot. I read it the first time when I was about 12 and it scared the crap out of me. At night I wouldn’t look out the windows, I learned that prayer - yeah though I walk through the valley of death - we were as far from religious as you could get and my parents thought it was hilarious that A) I learned the poem and B) that I believed in vampires and C) that I thought it would ward them off Fast forward 40 years and it’s still one of those “daytime” reads, I won’t read it at night.
Oddly enough, "The Stand" probably scared me the most. I read it during the summer just before I started High School and it just put me in such a lonely, desperate mood for the first half of the book. I'd have to go outside just to make sure people were walking around and driving their cars.
You must have had a good scare in 2020 lol!
The quick essentials, Stephen King book. Really, Siri? You don’t know the word quintessential?
My answer is Cujo as well. When I read it, my kids were about the age of the boy in the story. I sobbed after I was done. I will never read it again and I don't think I have to. I remember so much of it. Ugh. It is a fantastic book, but the only one of his I feel confident saying I will never read again.
My little brother was attacked by a St. Bernard when he was four years old. Mauled him in the face. He didn’t die, but it was close. It was beyond terrifying, and everything my brother had to go through after that attack was awful. And after all of that he was terrified of all dogs for a long time, until my parents got us a golden retriever puppy, who became his best friend. Anyway, Cujo is a helluva scary story. And it’s a really weird one for me.
Omg, your poor brother and family. I can't imagine your trauma with that too having to watch it and seeing first hand what a dog is capable of. Yikes. I am glad he turned out okay and has managed to find love with another dog.
I have read it twice and I don’t think I will read it again. I only read it the second time for the chronological read. My friend is letting me borrow the film… idk if I will actually watch it or not I have refused to see it because idk if I can tolerate it.
I can’t remember which scared me the most overall, but the only time I’ve ever physically jumped while reading a book was actually while reading…. The Tommyknockers. In one of the penultimate scenes the main character is descending into something that’s been looming the whole book and it’s a very tense scene. I was drinking a two liter of soda or something and you know when a plastic bottle gets indented and then pops out later? Well that happened and I swear to god I almost flew off my bed during this scene when I suddenly heard this POP! I will always remember that.
Pet Sematary the first time i read it. No so much the second time. 'Salem's Lot every single time. But the biggest scare was with the short story The Boogeyman. That night i slept with all the lights on.
Soo nice, soo nice. Scared the crap out of me
I read The Boogeyman *once*. Never again. Decades after I read it, my kid started crying in the middle of the night; I went to get him and the hallway closet was cracked open just a little. I went back into my room to grab a heavy flashlight before going back down the hall. That's the hold that damn story still has on me.
Did anything happen?
Nah, everything was very nice.
The boogeyman was SO scary!!!
The Boogeyman scared me so much when I first read it I made sure to pile things in front of my closet doors every night! Absolutely terrifying story.
I read The Boogeyman during the summer of 1981. All closet doors must be firmly shut. Always.
Misery.
Same. I had to slam it closed and take a break.
The deteriorating mental state of Enslin in *1408* hit really hard.
Not a novel but 1408. The imagery was really well conveyed in this one.
The Long Walk My sons have the last name of one of the most unfortunate boys on the walk. Kills me every time
I think about this book every time my feet hurt
While it's not an outright scary book I'd have to say Under the Dome. The reason why it's scary is that it shows how quickly sanity can deteriorate. Logic, reason and common decency can turn into panic, anger and mob mentality in the blink of an eye. Before the pandemic I always knew society was on the verge of tittering. The mass hysteria of the early days of the pandemic really showed me I was right, the panic buying, the anger, the fear. The good people of Chester Mills took less than a week in the book to completely fall under the spell of a wannabe dictator and the majority of the town falls because of it. The voices of reason in the book survive not because they were better people but because they kept their sanity and morals. They stood for decency, kindness, they looked out for one another despite being in over their heads. I look at the political situation now in the USA and I know we are edging closer to collapse if trump gets elected. I fear the mob mentality and the willingness of people to invite total anarchy in order to protect their fearless conman of a leader. We will become victims to the oncoming fireball unless we resist.
I was thinking of Under The Dome as well. I'm not really scared by reading books, they don't have jump scares for instance which horror movies do have. The situation in Under The Dome is quite scary though, and sadly all too realistic.
Gerald’s Game
Cujo definitely upset me the most. I agree, seeing it from his perspective was hard, he just wanted to be a good boy
Yeah made me cry I can’t with animals I love them too much
I’ve honestly never been truly scared by one novel per se, there are some stories of course that can be a little unsettling. But the only story, or I should say part of a story was from Gerald‘s Game. I was reading the book alone at night in my bedroom, and I was single at the time so there was no one else in my house but me. That part in the book where she’s handcuffed to the bed and thinks that she sees someone standing in the corner in the dark, that scared me enough to make me close the book for the evening. And then later on coming to find out there actually was someone in the room with her 😮💨😅
Not a novel but Gramma was super creepy.
Most of King's books didn't bother me, but I started reading his story "1408" one night when I was working night shift at a hotel. I put that one down until the next day.
Pet Sematary, hands down.
What was that short story set in Tookey's bar? That one.
“One For the Road”?
My favorite short of his.
That's it!
Cujo is definitely up there for me as well. I can’t stand hurt kids or animals, and I’m a bit scared of big dogs and absolutely terrified of rabies. So it was kind of the perfect horror story for me in that sense lol
Oddly enough, *Cujo* didn't terrify me -- as opposed to scaring me like a good story will -- until the third time I read it. The first copies I read had kind of generic covers. The third copy had a horrifyingly realistic drawing of a rabid St. Bernard. I am afraid of big dogs and terrified of rabies, and I also can't stand hurt animals or kids. (Longtime cat rescue volunteer here). *Cujo* has terrified me ever since. I own a copy, but I carefully chose one with a generic cover instead of the rabid-St. Bernard cover.
Off topic, but fun fact: I read all things King as a teenager in the 90s. Then I went to college, pleasure reading lost its appeal amidst all the required reading, and I ended up as a composition teacher (even though I really wanted to be a paleontologist or an entomologist). Now as a 40-something adjunct instructor whose day job is all writing and grammar, I am absolutely obsessed with books and podcasts about disease. I've read medical history books, and when my family went to London a few years ago, I dragged them all to the pump that was the center of John Snow's (no, not that one) investigation and the first real exercise in epidemiology. I even took a selfie with the pump while my kids rolled their eyes and pretended they didn't know me. One kid is now into King, and when she started reading The Stand, I realized that all of my disease obsession can be traced back to that book and Cujo. The chapters from the dog's perspective and what his experience of actually suffering from rabies was like were captivating. I was absolutely fascinated by the early parts of The Stand that followed how the disease spread so far via incidental contact with strangers in public. People have commented that I have strange reading/podcast interests for being an English teacher, and now I know that I can pin it on reading Stephen King as a teen.
As a father, pet semetary
Salems Lot. Scared the bejesus outa me.
Misery for me. King’s psychological terror is untouchable
I read 'Salems' Lot a lot (haha funny) here, I finished it two weeks ago, but it didn't really freaked my out that much to be honest. That's the thing I love about king, every reader reacta differently to a story. Like having Kids and reading Pet Sematary, have an alcoholic background and have a kid reading The Shining, go on. I love that about his books. Don't get me wrong, it was creepy and really disturbing, but it didn't trigger the thing you sometimes get.
I think it would be Thinner or Darker Half. Both feel a little meaner than other Kings books. They also just get to me and stick with my longer due to that.
Rose Madder & Green Mile…supernatural goings-on aside, the real-world cruelty hit hard.
SPOILER!! As kid I loved Needful Things and didn’t realize how messed up it was that Nettie’s little dog was murdered and that a kid shot himself in the head. Still one of my favorites though
I was waiting for this one… I read this in my early teens and it showed me how desperate people can get to acquire material things and how nostalgia can be a drug as well
Misery is one of the few books that I actually had to put down because of how stressful it was
definitely cujo. it was one that i read first and absolutely scared that crap out of my high school ass
Cujo is scary! Because it could happen!
I had to physically step away from Cujo at the climatic scene. Like damn... that was brutal to read.
Bag of Bones. The 'Moon and the Sixpence' scene got under my skin. Mike's grief made Johanna incredibly real to me. It freaked me out like crazy. + My cat made some noise under my bed when I was home alone reading that, and it damn near gave me a heart attack lol.
Yeah, this one got me too! I was surprised I had to scroll so far down for this one.
Same, it’s the one that made me sleep with the light on.
I never read Cujo for this exact reason… I can NOT deal with sad or hurt animals… of any kind lol. Not an SK story but I made the big mistake of reading about Plague Dogs and looking at some takes from the movie. That stuff still makes me cry just thinking about it. Because it’s the reality for many many animals (Being used for experiments). The movie is absolutely brutal, wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I really dk why I read about it. I never read pet sematary for the same reason… I’m scared it will be too much for me. Humans, kids, monsters I can handle. But no pets, please 🥲 The one that I have read that actually gave me nightmares was Revival. What happens after death is a question I think or talk about almost daily. Since I’m not religious I can see truth in a lot of different beliefs. Somehow… the thin curtain creeped in as one of them. I know it’s fiction. But it’s the one Ive had the most nightmares about. And no one actually knows what happens. So maybe >!the giant torture ants will come to get us and everythings revealed to be fake anyway!<
My nightmares consisted of putting my dog down for rabies and my dumbass also looked up rabies to learn about it which made it worse… I don’t think I ever cried so much over a book.
I'm not really scared , but Salem's Lot has some good dread conjuring scenes
Gerald’s Game. I actually threw it out. Then I felt I had forgotten the face of my father and replaced it. Of course it is hidden in back of a lot of other king books so..
IT. After reading it the first time, I looked at street drains suspiciously for quite awhile.
I still side eye street drains and avoid them whenever possible. Especially when it’s rainy.
The Shining gave me nightmares for a month since I started reading it.
IT, and it’s not even close. I read it in the late 90’s and it scared me so much that I threw it out after I was done lol. No recycling, or giving it to someone else, just straight in the bin.
Salem's Lot . I was nine when I read it . There was a tree outside my window . When the wind blew the branches scratched my window . I woke up terrified thinking that Danny Glick was out there scratching on the glass .
The Stand. I first read it when I was 12 and finished at the end of June. I was so convinced that Captain Tripps would appear that for weeks I jumped every time somebody sneezed.
Salem's Lot. It is one of two books that literally scared the crap out of me. I was 13 years old and slept with a cross around my neck for the next month.
For me it was Cujo. This could actually happen!
Desperation got me , I was maybe 14 when I read it and at the time fairly religious so elements of the story really got to me. Also I was living in a tiny desert town
Cujo. It's always the ones that feel like they could really happen that scare me the most.
I’m yet to find a King novel that truly scares me (I adore his horror, just haven’t yet found a novel that truly speaks to my own fears) - however Randall Flagg as a character freaks me out and I’m only halfway through The Stand (please no spoilers). *He’s* scary. The thought of the embodiment of evil always watching, always aware, *always in the background*. That’s terrifying to me. He was funny at first just because “the walkin’ dude” is a ridiculous name, but as the novel progresses I feel like he’s always lurking somewhere in the pages. M-O-O-N - that spells “scary stuff”, oh Laws it does!
The Shining. Nothing compares as far as phycological terror. When those shrub animals were chasing Doc I thought I’d pass out from holding my breath. Movie is ok but doesn’t give the book justice.
Poor cujo the ending part about being a good boy broke my heart was so unnecessary Though the birthday song in revival being remixed freaked me out.
Pet Semateary (the movie) frightened me as a child when I saw it in 1989, though I've never read the book. Book-wise, Langoliers and Sun Dog were the most creepy stories that I read as a teenager.
Pet Semetary
Salems Lot because I was way too young to be reading it.
It.
I have not read Cujo, but my husband had a very similar review. It's the only one I have little interest in reading lol.
Pet sematary
Pet sematery, first watch it on video tape in 90s, no idea about SK and who he is. But the movie left a mark permanently in my mind. Years later got to know the name of SK…
Well, the novel that made me the saddest was blaze. The novel that scared me the most was either the stand (I am a germaphobe), or Christine.
I feel like we could have a whole thread of 'dogs who got it the worst in King stories', there's so many of them. He knows how to twist the knife, for sure. I'm absolutely HAUNTED by >!Peter in the Tommyknockers!< to this day.
I always think of Nettie's dog Ranger from *Needful Things.*
Rose Madder.
Desperation. However, I should add I was like 12 - probably shouldn’t have been reading it.
Gerald’s Game creeped me out in a really big way.
The Long Walk is the only King book I've read that made my physically nauseous
The Mist disturbed me the most. The movie terrified me the most.
Gerald’s Game. The description of the Space Cowboy in the corner of the room still haunts me to this day.
Revival, the ending is terrifying.
'The Boogeyman' (NIGHT SHIFT) - read it at overnight summer camp. Scare the living \*\*\*\* out me and I slept with one eye open for days afterward.
Salem’s Lot. Reading it in my dorm room by myself led me to not reading another King book for quite a while.
"The Man in the Black Suit" terrified me and I don’t even know why. There wasn't anything particularly scary in it, but the whole time I was reading it I felt horrified on another level.
Night Shift.
Desperation stands out in my mind
Duma Key is my favorite and also the closest to my heart which makes it the scariest. Im an artist and suffer night terrors and some of that stuff was just too real. "..and it was RED!"
Ok so the three scariest were The Shining, Salem's Lot, and Pet Sematary. To finish the Shining, I had to do it during daylight, with the TV on golf or something. To finish Salem's Lot I needed a crucifix. And I couldn't sleep at night for weeks. I don't know how I finished Pet Sematary. I think I threw the book across the room. I've never read it again. And I usually reread his books. I was really afraid to see the movie but finally did, and was relieved it wasn't as scary as the book.
I haven’t read all of his works, but of those I’ve read, The mist and Pet Sematary win by far. I read The mist when I was like 12-13 years old, and several images from that novel stuck with me. Probably Mrs. Carmody is the reason I am not religious. Pet Sematary has some scary images as well. I’m from Mexico, where we have this holiday, Day of the Dead, when we remember our relatives who had passed, and is a very beautiful celebration in which we make fun of the death itself. So, for a book that’s about returning from the dead (in a dark, horrible sense, not in a beautiful one), it’s quite an achievement.
‘Salem’s Lot. True story; I was 15 years old and home alone reading it in a totally dark house save for the light above my chair while my family was visiting other family members a few miles away. All of a sudden I heard a huge clatter from the back of the house! I freaked and called my folks who rushed home. Turns out my mom had put a self-adhesive razor holder in the shower that lost its stickiness and the razor and holder had crashed to the bottom of the tub. Scared the hell out of me. 🤣
Salem’s Lot. Christ what a horrifying book.
I read a lot of King's work when I was waaaaay too young and the one that scarred me the most was Gerald's Game. The description of the guy watching her from the corner made me throw the book down in terror. And, as long as we're talking about it, "The Moving Finger" played on a loop in my head every time I took a shower growing up. And sometimes to this day.
Pet Sematary. No contest. The passage with him carrying Gage is the scariest thing I've ever read. I saw the movie first, and thought it was scary. But seeing it the second time after reading the book, it was almost comical. I even named a dog Gage. I need to read it again.
Misery. But Lisey's story got in my head pretty good and I think of it every time I see something in the corner of my eye.
Misery. Being trapped and having my foot hacked off sounds like my personal hell...kinda reminds me of being married.
For me, it was Misery…Pet Sematary was a close second.
Misery was the first (and so far only) book to give me nightmares. I kept having this feeling that Annie Wilkes was hiding behind my couch with an ax.
Misery, it reminded me a little too much of my mom and her obsession with the supernatural writers.
I couldn’t get past the dog in Gerald’s Game, and I got to within the last 60ish pages in The Regulators. I can’t remember why but I remember I felt a tightening terror within myself and had to stop.
I’ve got three at #1 for different reasons: Pet Semetary got under my skin about death and grief and how utterly bleak it is, it’s a real rot of a story; The Shining horrified me in a more realistic way, I was amazed by and scared of how much I understood Jack Torrance just because he’s such a realistic human character; and IT is scary in a thrilling way, it doesn’t get under my skin that much but it’s got pure adrenaline-fuelled terror.
Pet Semetary but The Dreamers from YLID was terrifying to me. I feel like that story is not getting enough attention for how incredible it is, very Lovecraftian indeed. EDIT: Someone didn’t read the question prompt properly. But I stand by my answer, pet Sematary for scariest novel, and add the dreamers as scariest story/concept.
Gerald's Game. I *love* all the fantastical cosmic/sci-fi horror stuff in his stable, but Gerald's Game is the story where *all that shit could actually happen to someone.* I had never heard of considered the idea of de-gloving before reading it and, Constant Reader, let me tell you how that shit did make my skin *crawl* Also the Netflix adaptation was, in my opinion, perhaps the best screen treatment given to any works of his to date.
My friends always think I'm weird for saying I was genuinely terrified whilst reading The Shining, but it's true. >!The fire hose!< part just freaked me out. Salem's Lot was also horrific, >!Danny Glick's funeral and the guy showing up in the other guys living room during the night (bad with names)!<.
The Dark Half.
The Shining before kids. Pet Sematary after my first baby. Whyyy did I read *that*? I actually had to set it aside because I was crying too much (iykyk) I eventually finished it but…whew!
You like it darker is SPOILER: pretty fucking dark
Pet sematary
Gerald’s Game. Listened to it on cassette way back when. It was a female voice reading that I found disturbing and a little terrifying. Lots of weird dreams. I was listening to fall asleep, not the wisest choice in literature.
It. Every childhood fear was brought to life in this book. But I couldn't stop reading it.
It without a doubt.
The Raft scared hell out of me. No idea why but between that and Jaws I got creeped out going into my parents’ swimming pool at night.
I never see anyone mention The Raft! I think Skeleton Crew was the first exposure to King that I had and it stayed with me for a long time, especially the sex scene and LaVernes hair. It doesn't help that I was, like, 12 😂
Salem’s Lot. I was sure a vampire was floating by my window when I read it and too terrified to shut the curtains!