Which book installed a new fear in you?

Submitted by confrita t3_z3xx5a in books

For me it was 'Red Dragon'' by Thomas Harris. I read it when I was pretty young and I clearly remember that the scenes describing the murderer breaking into the house of those families gave me hard shivers. I actually had to limit the reading to daytime, because it was impossible for me to read that book in the silent of the night...

Until that point in my life I haven't thought of the possibility of some mad murderer actually breaking into my house, but after that I had some nightamers for a week

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TanaFey t1_ixo71vv wrote

Stephen King's "It". I was probably too young to read it at the time.

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Coffee-Annual t1_ixo98hb wrote

Joe Abercrombies 'The blade itself' has made me keenly aware of how absolutely horrible torture can be, my friend said he had to quit reading after a 'dentistry' session happened in the book, it was just too much

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Coffee-Annual t1_ixoadqp wrote

Replying to confrita (#657,974)

I loved the story, can't really tell that much without spoiling, but it's set in a dark fantasy setting, and very gritty. It also only follows a few characters, so you don't need to memorize a huge cast like in a song of ice and fire. If you're into that kinda stuff I'd say go for it

Taste is always subjective though, so you should probably see what others have to say about it as well

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heyclaude t1_ixoamlf wrote

The Boogeyman by Stephen King.

The closet door must be firmly closed at bedtime.

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lazyprettyart t1_ixoatbu wrote

Ubik by Phillip K. Dick managed to make me afraid of metaphysics

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sirbinchicken t1_ixod29e wrote

Exact same book for me but for some reason it was the scene of him eating the painting that got to me. I was already uneasy reading about the murders and then he eats that painting and suddenly I had to turn the light on and couldn’t get to sleep.

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Future-Ad-1347 t1_ixodvjc wrote

Salem’s Lot. I don’t like basements at night…

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Least_Requirement_54 t1_ixogdlm wrote

“A Stolen life”memoir of Jaycee Dugard. Made me forever paranoid. I found it so hard to not worry about my kids at all times when they were not with me.

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momohatch t1_ixoglnq wrote

The Collector by John Fowles. Couldn’t walk through a dark parking lot without being extra paranoid for weeks after reading it.

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carbondrewtonium t1_ixohxlk wrote

Exhalation by Ted Chiang. Being a fearful/thinking person, sci-fi can set my mind down a path of how things are likely to get worse

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Amazing-Panda-5323 t1_ixotlzy wrote

I read 1984, in 1984 when I was 13. It made me fearful of losing my free will. I had nightmares that the mall food court was taken over by the government and served "healthy" gross-tasting food.

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Franz_Pistos t1_ixoufkl wrote

There is only one: mayonnaise and raw bacon. A character in "Dreamcatcher" eats this combinations and his stomach goes in kamikaze mode.

Other than that, maybe Solaris is going to give me some fears, but I am not so sure.

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PM_ME_WHAT_YOU_WOULD t1_ixp1pgw wrote

Replying to Coffee-Annual (#658,076)

I didn't find the dentistry scenes too bad, FWIW.

As for The First Law book series, I'd recommend it. In the fantasy space, it's grittier than WoT or Mistborn, but less so than GoT. You definitely have to approach it as a trilogy though because a lot of the plots and themes don't pay off until the third book.

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pearliewolf t1_ixp7251 wrote

The Shining by Stephen King and The Amityville Horror. I read both as a 13 year old and nope. Scared to death.

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midnight_7877 t1_ixpax8q wrote

Stephen King's Insomia gave me a fear of going to sleep late

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boxer_dogs_dance t1_ixpb1yr wrote

Coma made me more afraid of doctors and health care providers.

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MarzannaMorena t1_ixpjjx5 wrote

Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery. First book that confronted me with the idea of military drafting and posibility of losing a sibling.

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Umm_is_this_thing_on t1_ixprfj9 wrote

Replying to Future-Ad-1347 (#658,528)

And I was never really comfortable around second story windows after that one either. I had both, a basement and upper windows. The thought of Danny Glick just floating out there nearly did me in. I wanted to sleep with my parents but that meant exposing my feet to the creature under the bed.

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Autarch_Kade t1_ixpryup wrote

XX instilled a new fear in me of my brain being hijacked/used as a reproduction organ for ideas that then spread to other people and continue to reproduce.

It makes it deeply uncomfortable to recommend that amazing book, because you have a fear that you're doing exactly what it wants you to do so it can propagate.

The book itself is meta enough that it already breaches the wall between story and the real world. So it feels like a more real phenomenon than it otherwise would if it was strictly self-contained.

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unlovelyladybartleby t1_ixqkkc2 wrote

Rosemary's Baby

It wasn't the "evil" that scared me, it was how she was lied to and betrayed by everyone she counted on. That one still gives me the shivers

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Head-Kiwi-9601 t1_ixqsv7k wrote

The guy who slaughtered a family because he had the wrong address. I used to leave my doors unlocked. No more.

Edit: In Cold Blood. I knew I would remember as soon as I posted.

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lilythefrogphd t1_ixraiol wrote

When I was younger, I read a young adult book called Elsewhere which followed a 15-year old girl who died, went to heaven, but in heaven (called Elsewhere) you age backwards until you are a newborn and then you are sent back to Earth to be reincarnated. When I was like 13 reading that book, it gave me this fear of dying and then not being able to reconnect with my friends/family afterwards (not spoiling the book by saying this, but that is a big thing the protagonist grapples with)

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FiliaSecunda t1_ixrl2o0 wrote

I don't think it started the fear, just solidified it, but reading The Mysterious Benedict Society as a kid had me afraid of losing free will and being forced, not just to act happy, but to feel happy when it wasn't appropriate.

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Send-help_3854 t1_ixtjb8p wrote

The Perfect Predator by Steffanie A. Strathdee. I had no real concept of antibiotic resistant bacteria until reading this brutal book where it feels like the first three quarters of the book, the author is basically watching her husband getting worse and slowly dying.

I love a good horror or crime novel, but nonfiction will always find a way to be scarier.

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FiliaSecunda t1_iy3jgns wrote

Replying to confrita (#697,368)

Just so you know, The Mysterious Benedict Society is a kids' book that I read in my childhood, so I don't know how it will be to an adult reader. I think it was one of those smart kids' books though.

Just remembered another story that solidified a fear for me: the short story The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain. It's sort of a bleak anti-religion (or at least anti-Christian) story - there was probably dark humor in it too, since it's Mark Twain, but I read this as a child so I didn't catch it. Anyway the ending had me obsessively afraid that the world around me (and God and logic and the people I loved) might turn out to be an illusion.

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