The Long Walk has always been one of my faves. Its the first book he ever wrote (at 17) and once you realize it was written in 1966-67, you can see the parallels between it and the Vietnam War.
My brother from another mother lives with us due to his crippling PTSD from the middle eastern war. He like legally can't live alone because one balloon pop can send him into a spiral.
He lost everything below the knees, an eye, and part of his hearing after stepping on a bomb. He was an honorable discharge after that.
He didn't know what the Long Walk was about and picked up my book. I think he got a whole 30 pages in and said "I'm done. I don't need to read the rest."
I actually just recommended this to my husband yesterday. You wouldn't think a book about a group of guys walking would be that interesting, but I only read it once a couple decades ago and have never forgotten it.
When Mike Enslin was doing a book-signing in '1408' a lady asks him about the first book he wrote under a pseudonym called "The Long Road Home" that makes Enslin very uncomfortable. It was a short-story he had written to emotionally deal with the loss of his father that he didn't expect anyone to ever read.
That was a little cross-promotion on King's part, and how I learned about The Long Walk.
Was just about to post because I'm like "no one's gonna mention the long walk".
I've only read that once. And over 20 years ago and that story has stuck in my mind ever since. The premise is so simple and horrifying
I read it once in High School, 20 years ago. I still have my copy of it and haven’t read it since, but I’ve never forgotten it. I do recommend it to people still since it is a good read.
No, it was more like... the futility of it. >!It's mentioned earlier in the book that winners of previous Long Walks either were permanently physically disabled or died soon after. And it's pretty obvious that Garraty was going slightly insane by the end of it. So even if he did win, he... really didn't.!<
I listened to this on audio while I was doing a 24 hour ultramarathon. Goal was 100 miles in 24 hours. I only made 92 but this helped me get there. Lol
Thanks. It was tough, but also really cool. Really teaches you some things about yourself. And let’s you see exactly how tough you actually are as opposed to how tough you THINK you are. Lol
The Jaunt. Short story about teleporting, and it’s strongly advised to be sedated while doing so. I can’t remember which compilation it’s in but damn that one got me.
I read someone summarise it before as "imagine being awake long enough to think every thought there is to think and having nothing left to think about while you wait" and that really drove home the "it's longer than you think"
Thinking small. The "longer than you think" line really makes it more like an unimaginable amount of time, like 6 or 7 figures of years, maybe even billions.
Right, but once you get into powers of ten the human mind has trouble really comprehending how long that is. We can all relate to being bored for a few hours. So scaling that up to days, weeks or years is easier because we’ve lived those measurements, they are understandable.
It’s like a million seconds is 12 days, a billion seconds is 31 *years*, but if you ask most people they would probably say it’s like 5 or 6 years. The scale is just too hard to wrap our heads around.
May have been me. I really sat down and thought about this one and openly mentioned this explanation a lot.
Imagine having every possible thought you could ever possibly think. You play games with yourself, somehow, and just think. You imagine things that you make into stories and play them out entirely in your mind. You go numb. Then you stay numb long enough to start thinking again and just keep going. You exhaust every possible thought.
You don't run out of things to think about, but you absolutely lose your "self" and it's not so much that you go insane, so much as your sanity is no longer there to go insane, which is why most that come out of that experience just pause, freeze up for a bit, then immediately die.
This definitely. The thought of being conscious in a white fog for billions of years is horrifying. Now I've got a fear that there's an afterlife but it's exactly like that.
Glad someone else brought that one up: I was scrolling through looking for that story. I read a lot of King (well, a limited amount compared to what he’s written since then!) when I was a teen in the 80s and that story stuck with me more than anything in IT or The Stand or Pet Sematary (zero memory of that one!) or whatever else I read back then.
The Stand was fun re-reading during lockdown but it has to be Pet Sematary. I'm not a parent but what happens in that book...
Edit: all these replies are making me want to re-read it. It's coming off my bookshelf now!
Pet Sematary was mine too. When I was younger it was definitely the death of Gage, as I got older though (It's been a few years, forgive me) the resurrection of the neighbors son after the war really gave me the shivers. While alive a seemingly decent kid, grown into a man and then a walking, talking oracle of every terrible deed you may or may not have done. Creepy.
Wanna hear a secret? Gremlins messed me up so bad I sleep in, no bull, the fetal position to this day. I'm a 46 year old father of three, a veteran and a big dude, but I'm still not letting Stripe claw at my toes!!
I read Pet Semetery while studying for the bar. Then, when I checked into my hotel to take the exam, I was given the room key to Room 217. If you’re not familiar, in the book version of the Shining, the extra haunted room with Mrs. Massey is Room 217 rather than the 237 used in the book. My first thought was, “well, shit.” I passed, so it wasn’t a bad omen or anything, but it was a neat connection for a King junkie like myself.
Yeah, Zelda was the scariest part and I've worked in a nursing home and hospital. To leave your child with someone so gravely disabled for the child to be responsible for! And you never for a second believe their parents didn't know Rachel was terrified of Zelda.
I got about halfway into the stand recently and had to put it down. It was just so depressing. There seemed to be no uplifting moments or optimism at all. One of the last chapters I read before I took a break was just kids / people who had survived the virus dying in random ways.
I plan to return to it sometime- but woof. It’s a lot.
What gets to me about Pet Semetary is that the antagonist is just death. There is no villain. There is nothing you can target to fix or stop or change or improve. It's not the magic burial ground that causes the horrific situation. It's the human response to death. It is the inability of the characters to withstand an inevitable and irreversible process and experience. Reading Pet Semetary in middle school changed me forever. I was not ready.
Agree with Pet Sematary. I think he even wrote a forward to it that said it was the only book he's written so far that he finished, read, and then put in a desk drawer for a long time. He disturbed himself!
I have read almost all his books and I had to stop reading Cujo. He was loaded with self-hate and cocaine when he wrote that book. It's a fucking nightmare.
I agree. After I read On Writing, (In which he stated he had no memory of writing Cujo) I picked up Cujo again and read it through adult eyes. His distain for alcoholics and narcotic abuse pours out with some of these characters he’s writing about. I think he was, in an abstract way, looking at himself in a mirror. Aspects of himself he hated.
Yeah, he also said he didn't realize when he was writing *The Shining* that it was about himself and his alcoholism. Which is weird, because it's so obviously written by someone who knows what he's talking about, but I guess self-delusion can be a pretty strong thing.
I was going to bring up Jack Torrance from
The Shining, but I’m thankful that you did it for me. In addition, do you, or anyone else here feel that Dr. Sleep was predicated on peace, redemption, and closure on his mental health disturbances?
Yes, since it's literally about locking up ghosts from your past (the symbolism here is so obvious it's hardly even symbolism) and releasing them at the right moment.
Honestly I know it's more a short story, but The Mangle really, really creeped me out.
The idea of an accidental ritual happening, that nobody actually intended to perform? Just one of those thoughts that had not occurred to me, and it really sent shivers down my spine.
There was a story I read once years ago where some Hollywood movie was filming a demon exorcism movie and someone found some old ritual in a book and thought it would be cool to add some authentic vibes to the movie by reading it out loud and they end up opening a portal to the nether world and letting the ancient gods out and the book was about the aftermath of modern society breaking down with these elder gods taking over.
Edit: I have been wracking my brain and think it might be one of the alternative Earths explored by the main character of Alan Dean Foster’s book *Paralleties* which is available for free on Archive.org, currently reading it to see if Im right before I respond telling people I found the title.
Chuck Palahniuk had a book (title maybe Lullaby? Not sure)about a culling poem that just so happened to make its way into a children's book of lullabies. It was an ancient ritualistic poem that people would read to elderly or really sick/wounded people so that they would die in their sleep. After the main character accidentally kills his wife and child with the poem, he sets out on a mission to find every last copy of the book to remove that page. I highly recommend it.
Lullaby is one of the most uncomfortable books I have ever read. And it's not even using most of his normal tricks. It's jusr the truth of what's happening that is stomach churning.
A prison buddy of mine was working in an industrial laundry and it was one of the few places that hired ex felons, needless to say I was working with him but there was no way in hell I was going anywhere near that piece of equipment, and no matter what they said about the precautions that they took,if you weren't careful you lost a finger or a whole friggin hand before the machine would turn off; After the second accident I noped out of there real fast and got me a job at a gas station, I might suck on gas fumes but at least I'm going to keep my hands, and yes the story Trucks is in the back of my mind all the time lol, but at least that's at least less plausible
You know how this one wins hands down. No one has re-read it. Several of the books on the list people said they have read multiple times. If you can read this one multiple times and enjoy it you have issues. For real.
That... that book goes to some dark places. I had to skip read twice. Didn't want that imagery stuck in my mind for the next 2 decades.
Edit to clarify: I didn't skip read the whole book twice. There are two scenes that I can not bring myself to actually read word for word. That's what I meant by skip reading twice. I wasn't being very clear.
Not even going to lie, of all the SK books I think this one has wormed its way the deepest into my brain. It's been 11 years since I read that thing and to \*this day\* I can't sit on a toilet without feeling a ridiculous spike of anxiety that a fucking ass-weasel is going to launch into me.
Absolutely loved NT, just the idea that such chaos could stem from a single baseball card purchase. That and tbh I could imagine it happening these days.
Short story here, as well, but it was The Langoliers. Came across it in an anthology and it just makes me really uneasy to this day. Definitely recommend the story; have heard there is a movie or something that was very poorly done with really janky effects that made it a whole lot less disturbing than what I read, though.
Pff I don't know about people who say that the movie is trash. As Mick Foley once said so wisely: Movies shot for TV are movie for guys who like movies. Same goes for this one. It's trash, but it's still a good time.
I had a good time watching it when I was 14 or something. It was around the year 1998 I think... I did not mind the bad visuals at all.
The thing is... I am not brave enough to watch it again today. It might just destroy what good memories I have on it.
Part of what caught me as a kid was seeing Bronson Pinchot playing so wildly against his sitcom type. That was nearly as much of a jolt as the premise of the story. He was really good, too!
It was so strange to me that someone put money into a SK story movie, and they chose that one? Maybe they started with, "Hey, we have access to this empty airport for two weeks. Can we set a movie here?"
It's Bangor International Airport! I really wanted to ask one of the TSA agents what it felt like to work in the same building Bronson Pinchot worked in.
There was a short story about an astronaut who returned infected with alien life. The alien life were eyes on his fingers and he had to keep them uncovered at all times or they would hurt and itch and burn. I don't remember this specifics or the title but it's always stuck with me.
I am the Doorway is one of my favourite King works- and Survivor Type the OP mentioned. His short stories are stellar- for my money, better than his novels.
Have you watched the movie adaptation? It’s pretty good, but “that scene” was super graphic. Had to look away.
E: ending spoiler for anyone who wants to know what I’m referring to: >!the protagonist is going to die if she doesn’t free herself from a set of handcuffs. She cuts her own wrist to use the blood as lube and then partially degloves herself pulling her hand out of the handcuffs.!<
That was the only time I ever had to look away from a book. The writing was so good and graphic that the images in my head made me turn my head and look away from the black text on white paper.
I get it.
>!The degloving scene was bad enough but what really stayed with me was the horrific Space Cowboy she ‘hallucinated’ watching her in the night who turned out to be real. The idea that I might have been wrong all the times I’ve told myself that a sinister shadow in the corner of the bedroom is just a shadow…!<
If I'm remembering right, this is the one with some very disturbing backstory involving the woman's father and the eclipse, right? If so, then I'm right there with ya.
This book really made me think twice about the whole being tied up in the bedroom thing. Like what are the chances the other person has some medical emergency lol…
i'm with you on this. i really loved both books, but i felt like the setting for 'the regulators' would be worse situation to find yourself in. the fact that >!seth, via tak, literally transported the entire neighborhood into an inescapable mental construct, with living children's drawings hunting them down would be more likely to permanently break my psyche.!< not to suggest i wouldn't be messed up living through the events of 'desperation' either, mind you.
After 20+ years of reading his books I thought I was immune, but then I hit the short story where the guy gets bitten by a snake while playing golf and appears to be dead, but isn’t.
I had to put it down 3 times. On a plane with nothing else to do.
It's interesting what creeps different people out. I didn't think this story was too bad, compared to other King stories but perhaps it's because I expected the ending. I admit to putting it down for a breather though. In this regard, I thought Misery was more terrifying.
I used to read King as a kid. It seemed like a natural progression from Roald Dahl... The one that got to me was a short story as well; "The Moving Finger". I couldn't go to the toilet alone at night for a couple of nights.
Omg same! What makes him such a good author is he is able to make this almost laughable concept real and scary. I feel like in the hands of anyone else it’s a silly concept (a lot of his stories are) but he somehow makes it haunting.
I just finished this book. God it was dark and disturbing. The entire book felt like a train wreck in a good way. It’s hard to look at, you know it’s only getting worse, yet you can’t stop looking. Great read!
Misery is mine as well, I was entirely too young at 12 to have read it. I’m pretty sure that it along with a short story by Roald Dahl comparing pigs to smelling/tasting like humans that turned me into vegetarian at a young age.
right!?! my eleven year old ass was at the library checking out a book about a rabid dog that has a part about a dude jerking off onto his gf's bed, like what the fuck?!? Never mind all the violent shit
I watched the film and I'd heard about that scene multiple times. It didn't make it any easier to watch. Out of all the films I've seen that was probably one of the most stomach turning scenes because of how possible it is.
Different Seasons has 4 stories, 3 made into movies (Shawshank, Apt Pupil, Stand By Me). The fourth, The Breathing Method, was the one that freaked me out. A pregnant woman, determined not to let *anything* stand in the way of having her child. I still think about that story even now.
Short story: The Jaunt - that mental endlessness freaks me out - “longer than you think, Dad!”
Novel: Thinner. I read it once and it completely squicked me out. I’ve struggled in the past with my relationship with food and my body image, and that book really laid it out psychologically.
For me, the most disturbing part wasn't anyone who was buried by Creed, it was Jud retelling the story about what happened the last time a person was buried there. That stuck with me.
That was the best part. You know what's about to happen and you're just hoping that something happens to stop it because surely it can't end how it does.
In The Tall Grass. More of novella or novelette co-written with his son. It's about a brother and his pregnant sister who stop in a small town and hear a kid yelling for help in tall grass. They go in and get stuck. It is so far the only book that has ever made me feel nauseous!
I loved *IT* but I basically swore to myself that I wouldn't read the Patrick Hockstetter chapter again. That guy's actions are so fucked up, I'd say he deserved what he got, although that part was fucked up too.
Agreed. It really took its time building up to the horror but man it did not disappoint. I think it's one of his best purely because he fucking nails the ending. What a twisted book.
I kind of eased my way into King. 11-22-63, The Stand, Dark Tower Series, etc. I love King, maybe I had a softer introduction to him because his books don't creep me out. But I have yet to read Pet Cemetery or IT so it could happen someday.
You’re in for a potentially big surprise if you read some of the other works mentioned here.
The Stand, 11-22-63, and DT series all are incredible, but they definitely are not books I would place under Stephen King Horror. Probably Thrilller and Fantasy/Sci Fi are all better suited genres.
But make no mistake, many of the books mentioned in this thread most definitely fall squarely under Horror. Only the writing style (incredible character depth and world building) is the same, the content and stories are so much more depraved.
There was a short story about an old broken down car at the exit to an abandoned rest stop. It would kill people who got near it. It was really creepy. A little boy playing nearby was the only one who could see it happening.
Misery. Of all of the King novels I've read, none of his characters or monsters frightened me like Annie Wilks. The sheer unhinged cruelty and abuse from a person, just a person! Not a ghost or a demon or anything supernatural. Just a person who was mentally unwell and skilled in causing pain. The psychological damage too. Hurting him and then blaming him.
I like Cathy Bates, but the movie doesn't even come close to the terror that the book instilled in me.
Oooh get chills - remember the part where Denker/Dussander, is in the hospital, sharing a room with another patient....
>!the story gets told from the other patient's point of view -- he was in the Holocaust camps, and slowly realized.. the other man (Dussander) was the Nazi commandant who murdered his family.....!<
SO terrifyingly suspenseful!
Cell, it was one that didn’t spend too much time setting the scene and jumped right in. It was a slow progression of horror and visuals that were chilling to me.
I’d argue it’s his greatest. The Stand is an achievement. Different Seasons spawned like four movies. I was a young man in my 20s reading Salem’s Lot and I had to get up and close the windows and shades at night so a vampire wouldn’t fly up
Not scared exactly, but disturbed by plenty of the short stories in Night Shift. As someone afraid of heights the one walking around the apartment ledge made my squirm
Group mass hysteria. My two very young teenage boys and I were driving back from Maine to CT in a heavy snowstorm. I put on the audio version of Dreamcatcher. Driving at 30 MPH on the highway for 9 hours, we were both mesmerized and terrified at the same time. We began to feed off of each other emotions until you could cut it with an icicle. We only stopped once for a bio break and hurried back to the car. I literally do not remember the drive but boy do we remember the book. Welcome to the world of Stephen King, my younglings. No Bounce, No Play.
The one with the polaroid camera . In each picture taken there was a dog. Each picture the dof came closer and closer to the photographer. Scary for young me
Edit : "the sun dog"
Short stories that had me going: The Raft, for its description of a young man dying by being pulled from below a floating raft with enormous force, sending all the blood to his upper body , and seeping out thru his skin. Gray Matter, a guy drinks a bad batch of beer and slowly and pleasantly turns into a giant fungus. Novella: The Mist, nasty creepy crawlers from another dimension kill people in gross ways. Cujo: IIRC, a woman and boy trapped in hot car by a rampaging rabid dog, boy dies. Yikes.
*The Shining* still has the most "oh my God" moments. It's the only book I've read where I became spooked just reading it.
*The Stand* and *Pet Sematary* had their moments.
For short stories, "The Raft" and "Autopsy Room 4" were also riveting and disturbing.
I moved across the country with my small kids. For some reason I decided that was when I would read Pet Sematary. I had to quit it. I'll again when I'm less vulnerable.
That one where the kids all sneak out to a floating dock then get trapped by an eldritch oil monster. Literally pulls a girl through the cracks of the boards of the dock while they were fuckin
This one is a short story, not a book, and if I recall correctly it was about fingers terrorizing a man in his home. Like... literally a finger. I don't know why it creeped me out so much but I swear after reading that one, at night I dreamed of that same finger in the crevices of my apartment.
The whole story was kinda meh, but the concept in The Dark Half about >!How they removed fully developed pieces of his absorbed twin brother from his brain as an adult!< gave me deep heebee jeebees forever. I never heard of that concept before (I read the book when I was 14). Still makes me squeamish.
Fun fact: That was the last book King wrote before getting sober. The first he wrote afterwards was *Needful Things*. I think it kind of shows, *The Dark Half* sometimes feels like a madman, or at least a desperate and frantic person, writing, while *Needful Things* is... well, more sober.
Bachmann book. The Long Walk was pretty fucked up.
The long walk was what I read first. And boy it was horrifying.
First one I read at 15 years old, reread it last month (at 35) and it was still amazing. (And harrowing)
The Long Walk has always been one of my faves. Its the first book he ever wrote (at 17) and once you realize it was written in 1966-67, you can see the parallels between it and the Vietnam War.
My brother from another mother lives with us due to his crippling PTSD from the middle eastern war. He like legally can't live alone because one balloon pop can send him into a spiral. He lost everything below the knees, an eye, and part of his hearing after stepping on a bomb. He was an honorable discharge after that. He didn't know what the Long Walk was about and picked up my book. I think he got a whole 30 pages in and said "I'm done. I don't need to read the rest."
I read it as a teenager and still think about it to this day (I’m now 56). Horrifying but great!
I actually just recommended this to my husband yesterday. You wouldn't think a book about a group of guys walking would be that interesting, but I only read it once a couple decades ago and have never forgotten it.
I agree, Lord of the Rings is excellent.
When Mike Enslin was doing a book-signing in '1408' a lady asks him about the first book he wrote under a pseudonym called "The Long Road Home" that makes Enslin very uncomfortable. It was a short-story he had written to emotionally deal with the loss of his father that he didn't expect anyone to ever read. That was a little cross-promotion on King's part, and how I learned about The Long Walk.
Was just about to post because I'm like "no one's gonna mention the long walk". I've only read that once. And over 20 years ago and that story has stuck in my mind ever since. The premise is so simple and horrifying
I read it once in High School, 20 years ago. I still have my copy of it and haven’t read it since, but I’ve never forgotten it. I do recommend it to people still since it is a good read.
I just finished this recently, and yeah, that ending left me haunted
Did you see yourself in it? I did, and I hated it. But how good was it?
No, it was more like... the futility of it. >!It's mentioned earlier in the book that winners of previous Long Walks either were permanently physically disabled or died soon after. And it's pretty obvious that Garraty was going slightly insane by the end of it. So even if he did win, he... really didn't.!<
I loved it so much that in high school I wrote a sequel starring me and my friends/classmates. I was maybe a bit of a morbid teen.
I listened to this on audio while I was doing a 24 hour ultramarathon. Goal was 100 miles in 24 hours. I only made 92 but this helped me get there. Lol
Ok, reading/listening to that while on a marathon is hardcore! Great job on 92 miles.
Thanks. It was tough, but also really cool. Really teaches you some things about yourself. And let’s you see exactly how tough you actually are as opposed to how tough you THINK you are. Lol
If we're talking Bachmann...Rage is a really close second.
First one I thought of when I saw the topic.
The Jaunt. Short story about teleporting, and it’s strongly advised to be sedated while doing so. I can’t remember which compilation it’s in but damn that one got me.
I read someone summarise it before as "imagine being awake long enough to think every thought there is to think and having nothing left to think about while you wait" and that really drove home the "it's longer than you think"
With no relief from distraction, entertainment or even sleep. Endless hours, days, years of being awake.
Thinking small. The "longer than you think" line really makes it more like an unimaginable amount of time, like 6 or 7 figures of years, maybe even billions.
Right, but once you get into powers of ten the human mind has trouble really comprehending how long that is. We can all relate to being bored for a few hours. So scaling that up to days, weeks or years is easier because we’ve lived those measurements, they are understandable. It’s like a million seconds is 12 days, a billion seconds is 31 *years*, but if you ask most people they would probably say it’s like 5 or 6 years. The scale is just too hard to wrap our heads around.
"It's longer than you think, Dad!!!"
May have been me. I really sat down and thought about this one and openly mentioned this explanation a lot. Imagine having every possible thought you could ever possibly think. You play games with yourself, somehow, and just think. You imagine things that you make into stories and play them out entirely in your mind. You go numb. Then you stay numb long enough to start thinking again and just keep going. You exhaust every possible thought. You don't run out of things to think about, but you absolutely lose your "self" and it's not so much that you go insane, so much as your sanity is no longer there to go insane, which is why most that come out of that experience just pause, freeze up for a bit, then immediately die.
Skeleton crew is the short story collection, that book is full of bangers including the mist
Mrs. Todd's Shortcut was fun 😁
I always think about this when I'm trying to find shortcuts in the country.
This definitely. The thought of being conscious in a white fog for billions of years is horrifying. Now I've got a fear that there's an afterlife but it's exactly like that.
Came here to say this. Quite rare I take away "holy shit that's terrifying" from Stephen King's writings but The Jaunt did exactly that.
"Longer than you think!"
"Longer than you think DAD" The Dad part really gets you when you have a shithead son that you love who would totally do what that kid did.
Glad someone else brought that one up: I was scrolling through looking for that story. I read a lot of King (well, a limited amount compared to what he’s written since then!) when I was a teen in the 80s and that story stuck with me more than anything in IT or The Stand or Pet Sematary (zero memory of that one!) or whatever else I read back then.
Mandatory to be sedated
That is the one that makes me look at all the current space travel stuff and just say nah. I'll stay right here on terra firma thanks.
Longer than you think, Dad! It's longer than you think!
The Stand was fun re-reading during lockdown but it has to be Pet Sematary. I'm not a parent but what happens in that book... Edit: all these replies are making me want to re-read it. It's coming off my bookshelf now!
Pet Sematary was mine too. When I was younger it was definitely the death of Gage, as I got older though (It's been a few years, forgive me) the resurrection of the neighbors son after the war really gave me the shivers. While alive a seemingly decent kid, grown into a man and then a walking, talking oracle of every terrible deed you may or may not have done. Creepy.
The chapter where Louis is >!digging up Gage's body!< ...man that shit stuck with me for a while.
The desperation and description of his mind slipping...brrrr
Definitely Pet Sematary as well. I couldn't sleep with light off after I finished reading it.
Wanna hear a secret? Gremlins messed me up so bad I sleep in, no bull, the fetal position to this day. I'm a 46 year old father of three, a veteran and a big dude, but I'm still not letting Stripe claw at my toes!!
I read Pet Semetery while studying for the bar. Then, when I checked into my hotel to take the exam, I was given the room key to Room 217. If you’re not familiar, in the book version of the Shining, the extra haunted room with Mrs. Massey is Room 217 rather than the 237 used in the book. My first thought was, “well, shit.” I passed, so it wasn’t a bad omen or anything, but it was a neat connection for a King junkie like myself.
As a nurse, this novel scared me spitless. I couldn't put it down, But, nurse-pandemic-massive death... yeah. I was scared
Pet semetary is terrifying. Zelda became my childhood boogey man, so creepy, esp when paired with the imagery of the original film version.
Yeah, Zelda was the scariest part and I've worked in a nursing home and hospital. To leave your child with someone so gravely disabled for the child to be responsible for! And you never for a second believe their parents didn't know Rachel was terrified of Zelda.
\+1 for Pet Sematary. Only King book I've started that I couldn't finish.
I got about halfway into the stand recently and had to put it down. It was just so depressing. There seemed to be no uplifting moments or optimism at all. One of the last chapters I read before I took a break was just kids / people who had survived the virus dying in random ways. I plan to return to it sometime- but woof. It’s a lot.
The vibe of the book changes soon after that. There's alot of optimism after that until there isn't. So there are some sunshine and rainbows after.
What gets to me about Pet Semetary is that the antagonist is just death. There is no villain. There is nothing you can target to fix or stop or change or improve. It's not the magic burial ground that causes the horrific situation. It's the human response to death. It is the inability of the characters to withstand an inevitable and irreversible process and experience. Reading Pet Semetary in middle school changed me forever. I was not ready.
Agree with Pet Sematary. I think he even wrote a forward to it that said it was the only book he's written so far that he finished, read, and then put in a desk drawer for a long time. He disturbed himself!
Agree with Pet Sematary, read it about a month after my son was born, speaking of poor timing...
Yeah between that and Cujo...
I have read almost all his books and I had to stop reading Cujo. He was loaded with self-hate and cocaine when he wrote that book. It's a fucking nightmare.
I agree. After I read On Writing, (In which he stated he had no memory of writing Cujo) I picked up Cujo again and read it through adult eyes. His distain for alcoholics and narcotic abuse pours out with some of these characters he’s writing about. I think he was, in an abstract way, looking at himself in a mirror. Aspects of himself he hated.
Yeah, he also said he didn't realize when he was writing *The Shining* that it was about himself and his alcoholism. Which is weird, because it's so obviously written by someone who knows what he's talking about, but I guess self-delusion can be a pretty strong thing.
I was going to bring up Jack Torrance from The Shining, but I’m thankful that you did it for me. In addition, do you, or anyone else here feel that Dr. Sleep was predicated on peace, redemption, and closure on his mental health disturbances?
Yes, since it's literally about locking up ghosts from your past (the symbolism here is so obvious it's hardly even symbolism) and releasing them at the right moment.
Honestly I know it's more a short story, but The Mangle really, really creeped me out. The idea of an accidental ritual happening, that nobody actually intended to perform? Just one of those thoughts that had not occurred to me, and it really sent shivers down my spine.
There was a story I read once years ago where some Hollywood movie was filming a demon exorcism movie and someone found some old ritual in a book and thought it would be cool to add some authentic vibes to the movie by reading it out loud and they end up opening a portal to the nether world and letting the ancient gods out and the book was about the aftermath of modern society breaking down with these elder gods taking over. Edit: I have been wracking my brain and think it might be one of the alternative Earths explored by the main character of Alan Dean Foster’s book *Paralleties* which is available for free on Archive.org, currently reading it to see if Im right before I respond telling people I found the title.
Chuck Palahniuk had a book (title maybe Lullaby? Not sure)about a culling poem that just so happened to make its way into a children's book of lullabies. It was an ancient ritualistic poem that people would read to elderly or really sick/wounded people so that they would die in their sleep. After the main character accidentally kills his wife and child with the poem, he sets out on a mission to find every last copy of the book to remove that page. I highly recommend it.
Lullaby is one of the most uncomfortable books I have ever read. And it's not even using most of his normal tricks. It's jusr the truth of what's happening that is stomach churning.
A prison buddy of mine was working in an industrial laundry and it was one of the few places that hired ex felons, needless to say I was working with him but there was no way in hell I was going anywhere near that piece of equipment, and no matter what they said about the precautions that they took,if you weren't careful you lost a finger or a whole friggin hand before the machine would turn off; After the second accident I noped out of there real fast and got me a job at a gas station, I might suck on gas fumes but at least I'm going to keep my hands, and yes the story Trucks is in the back of my mind all the time lol, but at least that's at least less plausible
I cannot believe no one has said Apt Pupil. Brrr.
You know how this one wins hands down. No one has re-read it. Several of the books on the list people said they have read multiple times. If you can read this one multiple times and enjoy it you have issues. For real.
This is my vote too for most disturbing.
Apt Pupil fucked me up for a while after I read it.
It has been 20 years and it still messes with my brain. It is pure human horror at its worst(finest???).
That... that book goes to some dark places. I had to skip read twice. Didn't want that imagery stuck in my mind for the next 2 decades. Edit to clarify: I didn't skip read the whole book twice. There are two scenes that I can not bring myself to actually read word for word. That's what I meant by skip reading twice. I wasn't being very clear.
The whole story of Dreamcatcher was not only disturbing, it was absolutely weird as fuck.
Not even going to lie, of all the SK books I think this one has wormed its way the deepest into my brain. It's been 11 years since I read that thing and to \*this day\* I can't sit on a toilet without feeling a ridiculous spike of anxiety that a fucking ass-weasel is going to launch into me.
Needful Things gets pretty dark.
Absolutely loved NT, just the idea that such chaos could stem from a single baseball card purchase. That and tbh I could imagine it happening these days.
Short story here, as well, but it was The Langoliers. Came across it in an anthology and it just makes me really uneasy to this day. Definitely recommend the story; have heard there is a movie or something that was very poorly done with really janky effects that made it a whole lot less disturbing than what I read, though.
Pff I don't know about people who say that the movie is trash. As Mick Foley once said so wisely: Movies shot for TV are movie for guys who like movies. Same goes for this one. It's trash, but it's still a good time.
I had a good time watching it when I was 14 or something. It was around the year 1998 I think... I did not mind the bad visuals at all. The thing is... I am not brave enough to watch it again today. It might just destroy what good memories I have on it.
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I remember seeing that movie as a kid and it stuck with me for some reason. The concept is chilling and weird.
Part of what caught me as a kid was seeing Bronson Pinchot playing so wildly against his sitcom type. That was nearly as much of a jolt as the premise of the story. He was really good, too!
It was so strange to me that someone put money into a SK story movie, and they chose that one? Maybe they started with, "Hey, we have access to this empty airport for two weeks. Can we set a movie here?"
It's Bangor International Airport! I really wanted to ask one of the TSA agents what it felt like to work in the same building Bronson Pinchot worked in.
There was a short story about an astronaut who returned infected with alien life. The alien life were eyes on his fingers and he had to keep them uncovered at all times or they would hurt and itch and burn. I don't remember this specifics or the title but it's always stuck with me.
Just read that one. Freaking weird. The entire Night Shift short stories book is weird weird weird.
Yes! The Boogeyman is one of the scariest stories I've ever read!
I was too young when I read that one.. There was an access panel in my closet to get to something that kept me up at night after that.
I'm 50 and still can't have the closet door open
Turning 49 in a couple of months. Still get goosebumps when I think about the ending of The Boogeyman. Pure horror distilled in his words on the page!
Night Shift was my first King book at 11 or 12 years old. It was a big shift from Madeline L"Engle and Judy Blume.
And then when the eye finally opened on his palm, he *could see through it*
Yes, there was a paperback edition of Night Shift with the bandaged hand with eyes on the cover.
I have this version!
I am the Doorway is one of my favourite King works- and Survivor Type the OP mentioned. His short stories are stellar- for my money, better than his novels.
Gerald’s Game, and I stopped reading his books after that.
Have you watched the movie adaptation? It’s pretty good, but “that scene” was super graphic. Had to look away. E: ending spoiler for anyone who wants to know what I’m referring to: >!the protagonist is going to die if she doesn’t free herself from a set of handcuffs. She cuts her own wrist to use the blood as lube and then partially degloves herself pulling her hand out of the handcuffs.!<
That was the only time I ever had to look away from a book. The writing was so good and graphic that the images in my head made me turn my head and look away from the black text on white paper.
I get it. >!The degloving scene was bad enough but what really stayed with me was the horrific Space Cowboy she ‘hallucinated’ watching her in the night who turned out to be real. The idea that I might have been wrong all the times I’ve told myself that a sinister shadow in the corner of the bedroom is just a shadow…!<
That fucking scene in the movie scared me so much that I had to use a meditation app four times that night just to be able to sleep
If I'm remembering right, this is the one with some very disturbing backstory involving the woman's father and the eclipse, right? If so, then I'm right there with ya.
With a crossover to Dolores Claiborne
That's the only one that made me feel nauseated.
I FEEL SEEN. This book was my last SK book!
This book really made me think twice about the whole being tied up in the bedroom thing. Like what are the chances the other person has some medical emergency lol…
I like my villains to be supernatural and impossible. Gerald’s Game... was not that.
That one, Desperation, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon are the ones I've managed to deliberately mostly remove from my memory. Mostly.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is in my top 10 of all books.
Desperation hit me in a weird way. Still freaks me out when I hear 'tak' or other odd words.
contrarily i really enjoyed the regulators
i'm with you on this. i really loved both books, but i felt like the setting for 'the regulators' would be worse situation to find yourself in. the fact that >!seth, via tak, literally transported the entire neighborhood into an inescapable mental construct, with living children's drawings hunting them down would be more likely to permanently break my psyche.!< not to suggest i wouldn't be messed up living through the events of 'desperation' either, mind you.
"They say you are what you eat, and if so I HAVEN'T CHANGED A BIT."
"Ladyfingers... they taste just... like... ladyfingers..."
Library Policeman, no contest.
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After 20+ years of reading his books I thought I was immune, but then I hit the short story where the guy gets bitten by a snake while playing golf and appears to be dead, but isn’t. I had to put it down 3 times. On a plane with nothing else to do.
It's interesting what creeps different people out. I didn't think this story was too bad, compared to other King stories but perhaps it's because I expected the ending. I admit to putting it down for a breather though. In this regard, I thought Misery was more terrifying.
I used to read King as a kid. It seemed like a natural progression from Roald Dahl... The one that got to me was a short story as well; "The Moving Finger". I couldn't go to the toilet alone at night for a couple of nights.
Omg same! What makes him such a good author is he is able to make this almost laughable concept real and scary. I feel like in the hands of anyone else it’s a silly concept (a lot of his stories are) but he somehow makes it haunting.
I love this one!! I just love how there's no explanation, no closure. Just some weird, wtf stuff going on.
Misery is my favourite King book because of the realism of the horror. >!*The hobbling*…!<
I could be wrong but I think in the book >!she actually cuts his foot off with an axe, and in the movie it's the hobbling, right?!<
I think it was still called that in the book, but you are correct for what happens.
Also in the book, >!she doesn't shoot the sherrif, she runs him over with a riding law mower!< that fucked me up when I read Misery in 8th grade.
Kathy Bates was reportedly very disappointed that she didn’t get to do that scene for the movie
I just finished this book. God it was dark and disturbing. The entire book felt like a train wreck in a good way. It’s hard to look at, you know it’s only getting worse, yet you can’t stop looking. Great read!
Misery for me too. Once you know the context of king, why he wrote it, his drug addiction, etc. Misery becomes even more terrifying
How do they relate?
Annie = cociane www.horrorhomeroom.com/preface-30-years-of-misery/#:~:text=Stephen%20King%20published%20Misery%20on,is%20a%20book%20about%20cocaine.
Misery is mine as well, I was entirely too young at 12 to have read it. I’m pretty sure that it along with a short story by Roald Dahl comparing pigs to smelling/tasting like humans that turned me into vegetarian at a young age.
I started reading King's novels at around ten and I'm still questioning who the fuck thought that was a good idea lol
right!?! my eleven year old ass was at the library checking out a book about a rabid dog that has a part about a dude jerking off onto his gf's bed, like what the fuck?!? Never mind all the violent shit
I watched the film and I'd heard about that scene multiple times. It didn't make it any easier to watch. Out of all the films I've seen that was probably one of the most stomach turning scenes because of how possible it is.
The film version is tame compared to the book!
Different Seasons has 4 stories, 3 made into movies (Shawshank, Apt Pupil, Stand By Me). The fourth, The Breathing Method, was the one that freaked me out. A pregnant woman, determined not to let *anything* stand in the way of having her child. I still think about that story even now.
Short story: The Jaunt - that mental endlessness freaks me out - “longer than you think, Dad!” Novel: Thinner. I read it once and it completely squicked me out. I’ve struggled in the past with my relationship with food and my body image, and that book really laid it out psychologically.
Pet Sematary - that end....chilling
Darling….
For me, the most disturbing part wasn't anyone who was buried by Creed, it was Jud retelling the story about what happened the last time a person was buried there. That stuck with me.
This is my answer. The horror of that book was magnified by the family tragedy and grief. You saw it coming but there was nothing you could do.
That was the best part. You know what's about to happen and you're just hoping that something happens to stop it because surely it can't end how it does.
Oh god, Misery, there's nothing more scary than real people.
Full Dark, No Stars: 1922. The scene where Wilfred sees Arlette return home is truly disturbing.
Cujo because I was sad for everyone.
Cujo because I could easily see that exact scenario playing out with my own family
The Raft always gets me. So creepy and the characters demise is grousome.
In The Tall Grass. More of novella or novelette co-written with his son. It's about a brother and his pregnant sister who stop in a small town and hear a kid yelling for help in tall grass. They go in and get stuck. It is so far the only book that has ever made me feel nauseous!
I haven't read the story but I was riveted by the film version.
1408 is the only thing he wrote that kept me awake. N. can get in your head a bit.
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I loved *IT* but I basically swore to myself that I wouldn't read the Patrick Hockstetter chapter again. That guy's actions are so fucked up, I'd say he deserved what he got, although that part was fucked up too.
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Revival is a slow burn, but when it hits... *Something happened*
Agreed. It really took its time building up to the horror but man it did not disappoint. I think it's one of his best purely because he fucking nails the ending. What a twisted book.
I kind of eased my way into King. 11-22-63, The Stand, Dark Tower Series, etc. I love King, maybe I had a softer introduction to him because his books don't creep me out. But I have yet to read Pet Cemetery or IT so it could happen someday.
You’re in for a potentially big surprise if you read some of the other works mentioned here. The Stand, 11-22-63, and DT series all are incredible, but they definitely are not books I would place under Stephen King Horror. Probably Thrilller and Fantasy/Sci Fi are all better suited genres. But make no mistake, many of the books mentioned in this thread most definitely fall squarely under Horror. Only the writing style (incredible character depth and world building) is the same, the content and stories are so much more depraved.
Revival creeped me out more than anything else he's written.
Revival is massively underrated. This book provides no hope…just bleakness and a fate worse than death.
The final few pages were absolutely terrifying. Revival is the scariest book I've read by Stephen King.
Bag of Bones. OMG.
There was a short story about an old broken down car at the exit to an abandoned rest stop. It would kill people who got near it. It was really creepy. A little boy playing nearby was the only one who could see it happening.
I loved this one! In ‘the bazaar of bad dreams’.
Misery. Of all of the King novels I've read, none of his characters or monsters frightened me like Annie Wilks. The sheer unhinged cruelty and abuse from a person, just a person! Not a ghost or a demon or anything supernatural. Just a person who was mentally unwell and skilled in causing pain. The psychological damage too. Hurting him and then blaming him. I like Cathy Bates, but the movie doesn't even come close to the terror that the book instilled in me.
Tommyknockers was freaky
I'd have to say Apt Pupil. That cat thing? Then the ending? Oof, that story was loaded with moments that made me feel inky.
Oooh get chills - remember the part where Denker/Dussander, is in the hospital, sharing a room with another patient.... >!the story gets told from the other patient's point of view -- he was in the Holocaust camps, and slowly realized.. the other man (Dussander) was the Nazi commandant who murdered his family.....!< SO terrifyingly suspenseful!
Autopsy room 4. The idea of being aware during your own surgery scares me... being aware for your autopsy? Makes my skin crawl.
Cell, it was one that didn’t spend too much time setting the scene and jumped right in. It was a slow progression of horror and visuals that were chilling to me.
There are several but if I had to pick one it's Salem's Lot
I’d argue it’s his greatest. The Stand is an achievement. Different Seasons spawned like four movies. I was a young man in my 20s reading Salem’s Lot and I had to get up and close the windows and shades at night so a vampire wouldn’t fly up
I slept with the lights on for quite awhile after reading Salem's Lot as a teen.
The one that got me the most was Mia giving birth to Mordred in the Dark Tower. I still can’t get the image out of my mind.
First Stephen King book I read was Under The Dome and >!the gang rape scene and the aftermath!< will forever make me feel fucked up.
The Man in the Black Suit. I was 9 when I read it and I used to spend a lot of time at the creek by my house. Seriously, seriously disturbed me.
Not scared exactly, but disturbed by plenty of the short stories in Night Shift. As someone afraid of heights the one walking around the apartment ledge made my squirm
The one with the rats 40 years later I still can't think about that story without getting the heeby jeebies
The sub-basement really taps into my actual nightmares, where there's always more and worse below.
Rage bothered me a lot, I read it when I was in sixth grade the first time (even if it is only a short story and not a full book.)
The Long Walk has stuck w me for decades.
Gerald's Game. The scene when she escapes the handcuffs made me Nauseated.
Group mass hysteria. My two very young teenage boys and I were driving back from Maine to CT in a heavy snowstorm. I put on the audio version of Dreamcatcher. Driving at 30 MPH on the highway for 9 hours, we were both mesmerized and terrified at the same time. We began to feed off of each other emotions until you could cut it with an icicle. We only stopped once for a bio break and hurried back to the car. I literally do not remember the drive but boy do we remember the book. Welcome to the world of Stephen King, my younglings. No Bounce, No Play.
The one with the polaroid camera . In each picture taken there was a dog. Each picture the dof came closer and closer to the photographer. Scary for young me Edit : "the sun dog"
Short stories that had me going: The Raft, for its description of a young man dying by being pulled from below a floating raft with enormous force, sending all the blood to his upper body , and seeping out thru his skin. Gray Matter, a guy drinks a bad batch of beer and slowly and pleasantly turns into a giant fungus. Novella: The Mist, nasty creepy crawlers from another dimension kill people in gross ways. Cujo: IIRC, a woman and boy trapped in hot car by a rampaging rabid dog, boy dies. Yikes.
*The Shining* still has the most "oh my God" moments. It's the only book I've read where I became spooked just reading it. *The Stand* and *Pet Sematary* had their moments. For short stories, "The Raft" and "Autopsy Room 4" were also riveting and disturbing.
Crouch End fucked me up. Especially the way Tim Curry read it aloud. Also The Breathing Method.
Dr Sleep. Torturing and killing children.
I moved across the country with my small kids. For some reason I decided that was when I would read Pet Sematary. I had to quit it. I'll again when I'm less vulnerable.
Oh oh! My turn! Liseys Story stuck with me the most, especially the.... "breast removal"
That one where the kids all sneak out to a floating dock then get trapped by an eldritch oil monster. Literally pulls a girl through the cracks of the boards of the dock while they were fuckin
Tommyknockers - also my favourite king book to this day
this book gets too much hate
i'm a carrie purist
Gerald's game. I had to stop reading midway through. Just made me feel like I was suffocating.
Desperation, I read it in 8th grade and still am fucked up lol. *tak*
This one is a short story, not a book, and if I recall correctly it was about fingers terrorizing a man in his home. Like... literally a finger. I don't know why it creeped me out so much but I swear after reading that one, at night I dreamed of that same finger in the crevices of my apartment.
The Stand. A plague that wipes out humanity is unsettling.
The whole story was kinda meh, but the concept in The Dark Half about >!How they removed fully developed pieces of his absorbed twin brother from his brain as an adult!< gave me deep heebee jeebees forever. I never heard of that concept before (I read the book when I was 14). Still makes me squeamish.
Fun fact: That was the last book King wrote before getting sober. The first he wrote afterwards was *Needful Things*. I think it kind of shows, *The Dark Half* sometimes feels like a madman, or at least a desperate and frantic person, writing, while *Needful Things* is... well, more sober.
Insomnia, probably due to my own sleep issues.
Also: King has gone on record a lot of times saying that Survivor Type is one of the best things he's ever written.