Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. This week’s prompt is a Halloween Freebie.

Hello Readers! This week’s prompt is a Halloween Freebie and I decided to share some books I’m too scared to read—even though I’ve seen the film version for a few of them. I don’t scare too easily, so the books on this list are ones I’ve heard are hard-core scary. Sometimes I’ll see a scariest books list and they’ll feature several I’ve already read and didn’t think were too scary for me, like The Haunting of Hill House, The Shining, or Rebecca. But I tend to avoid books (but not films 🤷‍♀️) with creepy kids, possession, or serial killers. In other words, the kind of scary things that could realistically happen. 😉

Just creating this post made me feel uneasy. But let’s see what I chose!

1

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Synopsis:

Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

Goodreads

The origin story of this book is enough to keep me away, not to mention the creepy kids—even though I’m definitely intrigued.

2

Ring by Kōji Suzuki

Synopsis:

A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure. 

Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece’s inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan tokyo teeming with modern society’s fears to a rural Japan–a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside clinic–haunted by the past. His attempt to solve the tape’s mystery before it’s too late–for everyone–assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Ring is a chillingly told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and post-modern trip.

Goodreads

One of the scariest films I’ve ever watched is The Ring. I’m not sure why it scared it me so much, but it’s been almost 20 years since I’ve seen it and I still refuse to watch it again. Ha! It may have had something to do with the fact that I worked in a video rental store as a teen?? So, I’ll pass on the book version, as well.

3

Haunted by Chuck Palahnuik

Synopsis:

Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you’ll ever encounter.

The stories are told by people who have all answered an ad headlined ‘Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months‘. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of ‘real life’ that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. 

But ‘here’ turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world – and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell – and the more devious their machinations to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight.

Goodreads

I’m afraid if I read this book, I’d never be able to attend a writers retreat. 😉

4

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

Synopsis:

Four decades after it first terrified the world, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is back! An extraordinary classic work of horror and dark paranormal suspense. In this stunning 40th Anniversary Edition, a desperate mother and two priests fight to free the soul of a little girl from a supernatural entity of pure malevolence.

Goodreads

Uh uh. Nope. Remember my no creepy kids OR possession rule…. this violates both.

5

It by Stephen King

Synopsis:

Stephen King’s terrifying, classic about seven adults who return to their hometown to confront a nightmare they had first stumbled on as teenagers…an evil without a name: It.

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.

Readers of Stephen King know that Derry, Maine, is a place with a deep, dark hold on the author. It reappears in many of his books, including Bag of Bones, Hearts in Atlantis, and 11/22/63. But it all starts with It. 

Goodreads

Out of all the books on this list, this is the one I would say I might possibly read someday. I’ve seen the film, which didn’t scare me too much, but I have a feeling reading it would be a different story.

6

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Synopsis:

The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry.

Eva never really wanted to be a mother – and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

Goodreads

While I can appreciate this one on a psychological level, I think it would be too disturbing for me. Maybe even the scariest book on this list. 😉

7

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi

Synopsis:

Prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, Vincent Bugliosi held a unique insider’s position in one of the most baffling and horrifying cases of the twentieth century: the cold-blooded Tate-LaBianca murders carried out by Charles Manson and four of his followers. What motivated Manson in his seemingly mindless selection of victims, and what was his hold over the young women who obeyed his orders? Here is the gripping story of this famous and haunting crime. 50 pages of b/w photographs. 

Goodreads

I know the story of the Manson murders fairly well. My husband and I listened to a podcast a few years ago (the name has escaped me), but for some reason the idea of reading this book terrifies me.

8

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Synopsis:

Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor in London, is summoned to Crythin Gifford to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, and to sort through her papers before returning to London. It is here that Kipps first sees the woman in black and begins to gain an impression of the mystery surrounding her. From the funeral he travels to Eel Marsh House and sees the woman again; he also hears the terrifying sounds on the marsh.

Despite Kipps’s experiences he resolves to spend the night at the house and fulfil his professional duty. It is this night at Eel Marsh House that contains the greatest horror for Kipps. Kipps later discovers the reasons behind the hauntings at Eel Marsh House. The book ends with the woman in black exacting a final, terrible revenge.

Goodreads

I did not expect to be as scared by the film adaptation of this one as I was, so you won’t find me picking up the book anytime soon.

9

The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

Synopsis:

A serial murderer known only by a grotesquely apt nickname—Buffalo Bill—is stalking women. He has a purpose, but no one can fathom it, for the bodies are discovered in different states. Clarice Starling, a young trainee at the FBI Academy, is surprised to be summoned by Jack Crawford, chief of the Bureau’s Behavioral Science section. Her assignment: to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter—Hannibal the Cannibal—who is kept under close watch in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Dr. Lecter is a former psychiatrist with a grisly history, unusual tastes, and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of The Silence of the Lambs—an ingenious, masterfully written book and an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction.

Goodreads

While the film adaptation of this book scared me, I still enjoyed it when I watched it back in the day. I’m not sure how I’d feel about it now, though. And I definitely don’t want to read the book.

10

Come Closer by Sara Gran

Synopsis:

A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that’s replaced by obscene insults. Amanda—a successful architect in a happy marriage—finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she’s doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.

The new voice in Amanda’s head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. A book on demon possession suggests that the figure on the shore could be the demon Naamah, known to scholars of the Kabbalah as the second wife of Adam, who stole into his dreams and tricked him into fathering her child. Whatever the case, as the violence of her erratic behavior increases, Amanda knows that she must act to put her life right, or see it destroyed.

Goodreads

This one sounds absolutely terrifying.

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Have you read any of these? What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read? Let me know in the comments so I can add it to my never read list! 😉

Happy Wandering!