Has a book ever freaked you out?

[vranger]

I can't say anything ever freaked me out, but I'm not interested in horror or serial killer type thrillers, so that cuts down on the prospect. A friend who was in love with Dean Koontz's books raved about Watchers and I read it. I enjoyed the enhanced golden retriever, but I regarded the predations of the "monster sibling" and the "disturbed serial killer hitman" as gratuitous.

Probably the "scariest" books I've read were a series in the early 80s by Barbara Hambly. I think it was later labeled Darwath.

[Matchu]

[Resists great urge to defend the great Nabokov]

Old now, entering an era where I repeat anecdotal experience. 'Freaked out' nomination remains as 'I Was Mengele's Assistant.' Sense of shame, a voyeuristic kind of shame about reading the terrible memoir like a naughty boy seeking out decapitation videos.

In the genre of fictional horror I nominate The Haunting of Hill House only because the book jumped from the shelf to the floor and remains unexplained. I was on night shift duty inside the haunted house and the incident means I completed the novel in daylight only.

[luckyscars]

[Resists great urge to defend the great Nabokov]

Oh yes...

Most people who criticize Nabokov have either never read his book or have read it in such total bad faith, with such a strong preformed opinion, that there was no point in them reading it.

It's outrage culture, pure and simple. Those who act like it's some kind of 'evil' book are either absurdly puritanical or, far more likely, are simply wanting to moralize because it's low hanging fruit. Either way, it's a symptom of gross stupidity.

No, you don't have to agree it's a great book. No, you don't have to be privately comfortable with the premise. You don't have to read it. However, to treat it as being some kind of apologia for pedophilia is absolute bullshit. If anything, the book is a parable against child abuse: The protagonist's unhealthy obsession leads to his ruin. It doesn't get more anti-pedophilia than that.

Again, people who claim otherwise have either not read the book or are too stupid/arrogant to give it a fair trial and, thus, forfeit their right to being listened to on the subject of literature. Good books often make one uncomfortable, in the case of Lolita that intent is obvious.

[Phil Istine]

When I was 16 or 17, I started reading a compilation of short horror stories. I was okay with the stories until I reached one with a detailed description of someone being tortured by having their eyes poked out while tied up. I never finished the story.

[Pamelyn Casto]

Truman Capote's (true story) In Cold Blood. I didn't stop reading it but it was so scary I was uneasy for weeks. People do terrible things to each other. They always have and I guess they always will.

[indianroads]

A lot of H.P. Lovecraft's stuff freaks me out.

[druid12000]

A lot of H.P. Lovecraft's stuff freaks me out.

*shudders*

[bdcharles]

In Cold Blood, A Voyage to Arcturus - straight onto the TBR..

[Terry D]

Freaked out? No. But some books have had unsettling effects which lingered beyond 'the end'. After reading Fail Safe I dreamed of nuclear mushroom clouds appearing on the horizon. After finishing King's, 'Salem's Lot at about 2:30 AM I started up to bed and had a start when our basset hound was sitting in perfect silhouette against the hall nightlight at the top of the stairs. But probably the most disturbing was, When Rabbit Howls, a non-fiction book about a woman's struggle with dissociative personality disorder and the abuse which caused it.

[JJBuchholz]

Have you ever had to put a book down because it freaked you out/upset you/unsettled you in some way?
What book, what was it that caused you to put it down, and did you go back to it?

Without going into too much detail (mainly because some of the subject matter still bothers me to this day), I read 'Rainbow Six' by Tom
Clancy many years ago (it was a huge novel). I was so disturbed by some of the plot elements (as well as the way some fringe characters
were perishing), that I put the book down and had to wait several weeks to finish it.

As good as read it was, I swore to never read it a second time. This has been the only book to do that to me, and I've read a great deal
of his work, and none have every disturbed me the way that one did.

I just shuddered right now thinking about it.

-JJB