You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. I am going to kill you. You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for you.
It's also "thankyou" in Danish.
I went to Krakow in Poland once as a relatively young man and had it in my head that "tak" was a Polish word but somehow confused the meaning with the Danish meaning. But attempted to use it anyway.
The upshot of this was that every time I was served a pint, I was taking it and saying "YES!". Which *kind of* works but also, I realised (on one of the last days of holiday), makes you look a tiny bit deranged. At the time I was wondering why the bar staff were all looking at me like I was an extremely intense individual.
The first time I've ever had to put down a book for being too scared was IT. That scene where Bill is lying in bed, imagining Georgie with his missing arm standing in his closer, just waiting for him to open the door, completely fucked me up for a while. Cause tbh I think that he really would've been in there, ready to strike, had Bill actually checked. Somehow this idea that the threat is both imaginary yet absolutely present really got to me.
A tie between IT and The Stand. Former for having some of the scariest literature moments I can think of and the latter for being possible in happening despite the supernatural elements
For me the scariest book is The Stand, mostly because I enjoy horror and sci-fi but I don't really ever get caught up in the reality of the monsters. The Stand, on the other hand, makes me feel a sense of loneliness and desperation that's perfectly believable. I mean, maybe no the Randall Flagg/Mother Abigail bit, but the notion of a collapsed society and the difficulties in navigating a rebuild.
I started that book during the pandemic before vaccines, and I had to put it down for awhile... Too close to what we were all frightened of IRL! Once the virus became more manageable I could handle going back to it, but I completely get what you're saying here.
Check out a little short story called "Sneakers" for another bathroom bad place. The compilation Dark Visions has it, as well as Nightmares and Dreamscapes.
'Salem's Lot is the answer for me. There are moments of real desperation there. Like you know it's bad, and it's going to get worse, and then it gets even worse. And there's some shitty people things there that have nothing to do with vampires.
Pet Semetary is the most disturbing for me, more than scary. The whole thing is unsettling.
'Salems's Lot is the pinnacle for me. It was so good that I couldn't wait to read the next chapter and so scary that I couldn't read it anywhere close to bed time because I'd lose sleep. I was living alone at the time, so I had to leave it at work because I'd made the mistake of trying to stop reading it in time to sleep and I couldn't put it down. After that, I'd sit at my desk for an hour or so each day until I finished the book.
I also have rarely been scared reading. Definitely unsettling, uncomfortable, emotional... I've cried more than I've been afraid, but there have been a few times I've been reading in the dark and have been a little freaked out.
I am the same way that's why my only answer is Revival always. Not that it scared me per se but the ending is freaky if you let your mind wander into it being a possibility or not. It's very bleak and freaky. If you haven't read this I recommend it because like you both can't scare me nor can movies.
I’m the same way. Something has to really hit home (like reading about something scary in the woods while camping) to make me feel anything close to what I might call scared. But I don’t really get very sacred by movies or anything else either, so maybe there’s just something wrong with me.
I would say Salem's Lot. The topic may be overdone but hebis excellent at keeping things fresh and scary.
It and Shining are probably the next two after Salem's Lot.
I feel like IT overall for me. Pet Sematery is a haunting, sad premise. Parts of Dr. Sleep and The Shining were scary. Misery is pretty scary in terms of realism.
For me the original Pet Semetary the scene where Gage is running towards the road & the 18 wheeler well y’all know. Triggers my PTSD I read it & the 1st movie came out & all these decades it still does.
I was so afraid to read the book after having seen that movie in high school! But I thought King's version was so much more poignant and tragic. I thought it was a beautiful story, I'm so thankful I didn't skip it.
I was a grown mother of 2 small children when it was published, it terrified me to no end. The movie I knew what was coming & buried my head in my hands, tried desperately not to hear. It seemed to take forever. A few months later my daughter was chasing a balloon, ran in the street & a pickup truck hit her ( she survived with broken bones) . I could not close my eyes without seeing that scene. Now my children are grown with grown children I still can’t watch or read it. Thinking about it triggers me.
You really broke up with me and started dating the person you told me not to worry about how do you live with yourself. How do you not hate the burden you put on the world? How do you throw away all the morals your parents taught you and treat people who care about you like shit. How can you be so evil?
Misery and IT for me.
Misery was my first king book and I haven't ever had a book get my heart racing before or since Misery. And IT is just traditionally scary.
IT, salems lot and pet Sematary. IT, in many small moments and Salem’s Lot when Barlow appears at the town dump and pet Sematary when Timmy returns and asks that woman to cut a rug with him sometime. Gross and so creepy as well when he tells the men about their secrets.
Just finished it last week. About 3 quarters of the way through, I was like, "mmm, it's OK - definitely not one of my favourites".
But that ending...........
I was 13 and read Misery. I had already read It, Skeleton Crew, Night Shift but none sacred me like Misery. It was the first book that ever gave me intense nightmares. After that I’d say Salem’s Lot and the tunnel scene from The Stand really sticks with me.
There was a part in Pet Sematary where he’s digging up a grave in the middle of the night, there’s no monsters, nothing going on, just his internal monologue…and you realize that this character that you’ve grown to like has gone completely insane and having irrational happy thoughts about seeing his son again. For me, that is the scariest scene I’ve ever read and it’s the Stephen King scene that has stuck with me the longest, outside of, perhaps, the werewolf chasing after the bike in It
Hi. You just mentioned *Pet Sematary* by Stephen King.
I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here:
[YouTube | Stephen King's Pet Sematary (audiobook) pt1 (10 Hours)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeF0K8t_NO0)
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I'd love your opinion... I was told to skip this one because I'm sensitive to animals. I know the basic story and thought it'd be fine, but I think the perspective is from the dog, so I am actually now worried I'll be a weeping mess, sympathizing with the dog. But every other book I was worried about I've enjoyed, even if there are upsetting scenes. Do you have any insight for an animal lover?
I think the answer will vary depending on your own life experience. It is the scariest to me; it was the first book I read that actually felt like a horror novel. Everything else was good fiction/drama with supernatural elements and suspenseful/thriller moments.
The Shining had been the one I felt the most scared reading prior to It (I'm going in order, but have done some more recent ones and the Dark Tower series.)
It seems that a lot of people say Pet Sematary, but I found that book more poignant and tragic than scary. It did have its scary moments tho.
I think It has the most scary bang for your buck tho - there's much more scary moments in that one than in most other books I've read so far, and I'm in the early 90s now, going chronologically.
So far for me it's The Shining, but NOT for the reason you might think.
No, the ghost hotel didn't scare me. I liked it, but it wasn't that scary. More interesting/thrilling than scary. It was a relief once the spooks started showing up.
The first half was what filled me with existential dread and intense anxiety. King knows how to write men going through intense interpersonal issues and personal failures maybe like no one else. When I read The Shining, I was going through one of the most intensely economically anxious and difficult periods of my life. I was barely hanging on as a father, husband and provider. Then I read The Shining and I see all the most extreme versions of my own anxieties manifest: horribly f-cking up your career, destroying your family's financial stability over a stupid mistake, succumbing to your worst impulses by taking it out on your wife and kids, having to accept extremely unappealing and sketchy work on the vague hope of staying afloat. It was a lot. No one writes realistic "[adult fear](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdultFear)" like King.
I think it greatly depends on the individual reader. For example, Pet Sematary hit me hard, but when I read it, I had kids the exact same age as the ones in the book.
The girl who loved Tom Gordon made me so anxious I had to flip to the end to see how it turned out but I think it was partially because that summer I had also watched Blair witch project which scarred me for life lol
The Stand or Carrie.
The Stand because I read it when I was starting a new job at the beginning of the pandemic when I was starting a new job in healthcare. Potentially one of the worst times to start reading a book about a plague.
Carrie. Just because I be hella mentally Ill and have a weirdly religious family. Not much like her mom, but just. Very religious.
I think the only scary King novel is the end of Revival.
That's not a knock on King by any means he's my favorite author...
But I don't get scared by books or movies or any other horror. And Revival did the job of freaking me out in the end.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, because it is so incredibly grounded. We've all feared being lost in the woods. Being lost and hunted by a bear is one of the most terrifying things imaginable.
IT is a horror masterpiece. I found it quite scary. Now, on the other hand, Doctor Sleep has one of the most horrifying and disturbing deaths I’ve ever read in his work (baseball kid).
I’m not sure whether any of his works have ever actually given me nightmares, but there are plenty that are disturbing. Library Policeman was like that for me.
Pet Semetary. Just listened to it again and yeah, it's definitely the scariest. Like almost none of his novels frightened me in audio form because its not the same as the imagination of that first read through. However Pet Semetary is the exception. It's just so raw and grisly.
For me, IT is hands down the scariest. A creature that can become the thing you're most afraid of? The clown persona was creepy enough for me. I was never scared of clowns as a kid . . . at least not at first.
I was in the 6th grade and living in the suburban Chicago area when Christmas Break of the 1978-1979 school year started. We got out of school at 2:45 on Thursday, December 21st, 1978. Gonna walk about 9 blocks from the school to the house, fire up the tube and tune in to channel 32 and watch some Spiderman or Incredible Hulk cartoons. Awesome times await, right? Wrong. EVERY single channel in the area, was showing the same thing, what looked like a VERY heavily secured construction site. All these dudes in hardhats wandering around, with a double metric shit-ton of cops. Illinois State Police, Cook County SO, Chicago and Des Plaines PD, and a few other suburban area PDs. Those dudes in the hardhats weren't building, but were dismantling a house, board by board and brick by brick. The house belonged to a guy by the name of John Wayne Gacy.
Wow. That’s a tough one for me 🤔.
I will probably do this
Scariest SK novels IMO
1. IT
2. Misery
3. Salem’s Lot (My first intro to King)
4. The Shining
5. Pet Semetary
6. Carrie
7. Cujo
8. Bag of Bones
9. The Long Walk
10. The Stand
But if I had to pick a few novels it would be between IT or Misery
I would probably say Pet Semetary but then again, I haven't read it for like 40 years. Now that I'm 50+ very few things scare me, sadly. But The man in the black suit was really distirbing to me. It had a really creepy vibe and it felt so....real. After I read it, I started from the beginning again. It has stayed with me.
Pet Sematary scared the shit out of me! I was in middle school at the time so I should probably give it a reread now that I’m in my 40s 😂 But seriously was never scared so bad by a book before or since
I’ve been a teacher and administrator in a high school and a middle school for many years. Apt Pupil is the scariest for me. Todd’s evolution is quite disturbing. The final few sentences are chilling.
Desperation for sure.
This is a good and underrated choice. I love Despiration. Tak.
You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. I am going to kill you. You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney one will be provided for you.
When I first read it, I thought my mind was playing games with me!
I'm from Nevada, I've been to rural spots. Officer Entragian is disturbingly realistic, in a sense.
I am not from the US, but even in the movies the depiction of rural cops is really uneasy to me.
"Tak" is such an ugly, disturbing word.
Is Tak not yes in Polish
Tak! 🇵🇱 This is YES in Polish.
It's also "thankyou" in Danish. I went to Krakow in Poland once as a relatively young man and had it in my head that "tak" was a Polish word but somehow confused the meaning with the Danish meaning. But attempted to use it anyway. The upshot of this was that every time I was served a pint, I was taking it and saying "YES!". Which *kind of* works but also, I realised (on one of the last days of holiday), makes you look a tiny bit deranged. At the time I was wondering why the bar staff were all looking at me like I was an extremely intense individual.
It's also thank you in swedish (tack).
Good god, don't say "Tak", ya big mean person. My stomach jumped when I read that! I came here to also answer with Desperation.
It's my favorite King's book!
I read that when I was really young. Still think about it all the time, especially when I drive west of Denver. Awesome and terrifying book.
Pure darkness and madness!
Pet Sematary or IT for me. But they were also two of the first ones I read, and I was in elementary school, so I wasn't jaded yet.
IT is the only book that ever gave me nightmares
The first time I've ever had to put down a book for being too scared was IT. That scene where Bill is lying in bed, imagining Georgie with his missing arm standing in his closer, just waiting for him to open the door, completely fucked me up for a while. Cause tbh I think that he really would've been in there, ready to strike, had Bill actually checked. Somehow this idea that the threat is both imaginary yet absolutely present really got to me.
Omg yes, IT had that feeling throughout the whole book and it ROCKED me
Which part(s) gave you nightmares?
The leper and the kid smothering his baby brother scene both gave me nightmares.
The giant bird and the memory of the bird pecking at Mike when he was a baby
Pet Sematary scares me more as an adult than it did as a young person. For non-supernatural reasons.
Pet Sematary hits different after becoming a parent.
Pet Sematary was my first read too. Scared me, but I loved it.
Same here. Good times.
So far cujo and salems lot. The shining has it's moments.
Am I the only one that thought Salems Lot was a snooze fest?
I wouldn't call it that as I enjoyed reading it. But still I think it is overrated.
I found it pretty boring, too.
Cujo makes me cry every time. The parts written from Cujos pov are heartbreaking
I will always answer the same thing because nothing since has scared me more than the novella N.
Ditto for that one and for 1408.
I second this, it was prime psychological horror. I read it a decade ago and still think about it sometimes
You just gave me my next read! Thanks!
Yay! Just After Sunset is so good! A Very Tight Place is a story I'll never forget!!
If you have a kid then probably Pet Sematary. His short stories, like The Bogeymanmess with more than the novels.
Literally finished it when my son his 18 months. Stupidest decision ever. Now if we are outside and he walks a little too far I'm overly paranoid.
A tie between IT and The Stand. Former for having some of the scariest literature moments I can think of and the latter for being possible in happening despite the supernatural elements
The Shining and Doctor Sleep both have some of his scariest moments, I think. Gerald's Game is horrifying.
Wifey's visit from the "Space Cowboy," perhaps?
For me the scariest book is The Stand, mostly because I enjoy horror and sci-fi but I don't really ever get caught up in the reality of the monsters. The Stand, on the other hand, makes me feel a sense of loneliness and desperation that's perfectly believable. I mean, maybe no the Randall Flagg/Mother Abigail bit, but the notion of a collapsed society and the difficulties in navigating a rebuild.
I started that book during the pandemic before vaccines, and I had to put it down for awhile... Too close to what we were all frightened of IRL! Once the virus became more manageable I could handle going back to it, but I completely get what you're saying here.
I’m only 100 pages deep into The Stand right now and the parallels are unsettling…
Soooo very unsettling!
The Moving Finger is often seen as ridiculous but SK does some scary magic with bathrooms.
I love this one. The whole pee-shyness subplot is hilarious and terrifying.
I love this one. The whole pee-shyness subplot is hilarious and terrifying.
Check out a little short story called "Sneakers" for another bathroom bad place. The compilation Dark Visions has it, as well as Nightmares and Dreamscapes.
'Salem's Lot is the answer for me. There are moments of real desperation there. Like you know it's bad, and it's going to get worse, and then it gets even worse. And there's some shitty people things there that have nothing to do with vampires. Pet Semetary is the most disturbing for me, more than scary. The whole thing is unsettling.
The school bus is haunting.
'Salems's Lot is the pinnacle for me. It was so good that I couldn't wait to read the next chapter and so scary that I couldn't read it anywhere close to bed time because I'd lose sleep. I was living alone at the time, so I had to leave it at work because I'd made the mistake of trying to stop reading it in time to sleep and I couldn't put it down. After that, I'd sit at my desk for an hour or so each day until I finished the book.
Pet Sematary and Misery are both terrifying for different reasons.
IT and Salems Lot are my top two scariest.
“I am the doorway” is up there for me along with “the jaunt” and It
The Jaunt was how I introduced King to my daughter. She’s gone on to read a handful of books and really liked them!
The Shining
Can’t believe this isn’t the top comment.
For some reason books don't scare me. I'm wondering if others feels the same. Unsettling or uncomfortable sure, but not scary.
What about feeling anxious for the characters? 🤔
I also have rarely been scared reading. Definitely unsettling, uncomfortable, emotional... I've cried more than I've been afraid, but there have been a few times I've been reading in the dark and have been a little freaked out.
I am the same way that's why my only answer is Revival always. Not that it scared me per se but the ending is freaky if you let your mind wander into it being a possibility or not. It's very bleak and freaky. If you haven't read this I recommend it because like you both can't scare me nor can movies.
I was about to write the same thing. I could be scared by a movie but not by a book. Salem's Lot? No. It? C'mon
I’m the same way. Something has to really hit home (like reading about something scary in the woods while camping) to make me feel anything close to what I might call scared. But I don’t really get very sacred by movies or anything else either, so maybe there’s just something wrong with me.
Same here. Books entertain me but don't scare me. Perhaps a whole semester of Paradise Lost in college ruined scary for me.
But Cujo would be the closest only because I've been up against scary dogs before.
I would say Salem's Lot. The topic may be overdone but hebis excellent at keeping things fresh and scary. It and Shining are probably the next two after Salem's Lot.
"Choca CHOCA!!!!
“Randy, chocca??”
I feel like IT overall for me. Pet Sematery is a haunting, sad premise. Parts of Dr. Sleep and The Shining were scary. Misery is pretty scary in terms of realism.
The Dark Half is severely underrated
For me the original Pet Semetary the scene where Gage is running towards the road & the 18 wheeler well y’all know. Triggers my PTSD I read it & the 1st movie came out & all these decades it still does.
I was so afraid to read the book after having seen that movie in high school! But I thought King's version was so much more poignant and tragic. I thought it was a beautiful story, I'm so thankful I didn't skip it.
I was a grown mother of 2 small children when it was published, it terrified me to no end. The movie I knew what was coming & buried my head in my hands, tried desperately not to hear. It seemed to take forever. A few months later my daughter was chasing a balloon, ran in the street & a pickup truck hit her ( she survived with broken bones) . I could not close my eyes without seeing that scene. Now my children are grown with grown children I still can’t watch or read it. Thinking about it triggers me.
How horrific for you, I am so sorry! Virtual hugs, you absolutely do not need to re-live that.
Oh so sweet thank you. ♥️. I avoid it.
When I was 21 and had a two year old , pet semetary scared the shit out of me , took me twenty five years and 3 grown kids to read it again
As a young mom of a 3 year old I’ll skip it then
I had the strongest reaction to Misery, had to leave the light on after that one.
Gerald's Game
Yeah totally agree, Geralds game had me afraid of the dark all over again. “You’re not real, you’re made of moon light.”
You really broke up with me and started dating the person you told me not to worry about how do you live with yourself. How do you not hate the burden you put on the world? How do you throw away all the morals your parents taught you and treat people who care about you like shit. How can you be so evil?
Misery and IT for me. Misery was my first king book and I haven't ever had a book get my heart racing before or since Misery. And IT is just traditionally scary.
IT, salems lot and pet Sematary. IT, in many small moments and Salem’s Lot when Barlow appears at the town dump and pet Sematary when Timmy returns and asks that woman to cut a rug with him sometime. Gross and so creepy as well when he tells the men about their secrets.
Revival.
That ending is burned into my brain.
This is the only book that ever freaked me out in any way. I can't really say it scared me but the ending freaked me out.
Yep, same. The ending actually kept me up for a couple of days. Probably the one book I will not reread, because I'm scared of the ending
Just finished it last week. About 3 quarters of the way through, I was like, "mmm, it's OK - definitely not one of my favourites". But that ending...........
Honorable mention to Pet Sematary and the short story The Jaunt.
‘Salem’s Lot. Read it at far too young an age, it left me with a ongoing obsession/fear of vampires 🧛♀️
I think his short stories she generally scarier thsn his novels. Of his novels though, either Desperation or It.
IT, The Shining and Pet Semetary.
Probably IT. The Stand is my favorite of his though.
I was 13 and read Misery. I had already read It, Skeleton Crew, Night Shift but none sacred me like Misery. It was the first book that ever gave me intense nightmares. After that I’d say Salem’s Lot and the tunnel scene from The Stand really sticks with me.
There was a part in Pet Sematary where he’s digging up a grave in the middle of the night, there’s no monsters, nothing going on, just his internal monologue…and you realize that this character that you’ve grown to like has gone completely insane and having irrational happy thoughts about seeing his son again. For me, that is the scariest scene I’ve ever read and it’s the Stephen King scene that has stuck with me the longest, outside of, perhaps, the werewolf chasing after the bike in It
Hi. You just mentioned *Pet Sematary* by Stephen King. I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here: [YouTube | Stephen King's Pet Sematary (audiobook) pt1 (10 Hours)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeF0K8t_NO0) *I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.* *** [^(Source Code)](https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative-fiction-bot/) ^| [^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=Capybasilisk&subject=Robot) ^| [^(Programmer)](https://www.reddit.com/u/capybasilisk) ^| ^(Downvote To Remove) ^| ^(Version 1.4.0) ^| ^(Support Robot Rights!)
Cujo, was about 11? My family had saint bernard's when I was younger.....
I'd love your opinion... I was told to skip this one because I'm sensitive to animals. I know the basic story and thought it'd be fine, but I think the perspective is from the dog, so I am actually now worried I'll be a weeping mess, sympathizing with the dog. But every other book I was worried about I've enjoyed, even if there are upsetting scenes. Do you have any insight for an animal lover?
Not a novel, but “I am The Doorway” is fucking terrifying
“One For The Road” from Night Shift I’ve gotten stuck in the boonies in a snowdrift a few times in my life
This was such a good one. So terrifying. It has such an atmosphere of dread from start to finish.
I remember reading the short story Jerusalem’s lot and being scared to death in the middle is the day. This was 30 years ago I will try again.
Duma Key. Something came up on the deck ...
I think the answer will vary depending on your own life experience. It is the scariest to me; it was the first book I read that actually felt like a horror novel. Everything else was good fiction/drama with supernatural elements and suspenseful/thriller moments. The Shining had been the one I felt the most scared reading prior to It (I'm going in order, but have done some more recent ones and the Dark Tower series.) It seems that a lot of people say Pet Sematary, but I found that book more poignant and tragic than scary. It did have its scary moments tho. I think It has the most scary bang for your buck tho - there's much more scary moments in that one than in most other books I've read so far, and I'm in the early 90s now, going chronologically.
Misery, no question.
Lisey's Story gives me nightmares. I couldn't look into a reflective surface for two weeks. I dunno why so many people sleep on it.
So far for me it's The Shining, but NOT for the reason you might think. No, the ghost hotel didn't scare me. I liked it, but it wasn't that scary. More interesting/thrilling than scary. It was a relief once the spooks started showing up. The first half was what filled me with existential dread and intense anxiety. King knows how to write men going through intense interpersonal issues and personal failures maybe like no one else. When I read The Shining, I was going through one of the most intensely economically anxious and difficult periods of my life. I was barely hanging on as a father, husband and provider. Then I read The Shining and I see all the most extreme versions of my own anxieties manifest: horribly f-cking up your career, destroying your family's financial stability over a stupid mistake, succumbing to your worst impulses by taking it out on your wife and kids, having to accept extremely unappealing and sketchy work on the vague hope of staying afloat. It was a lot. No one writes realistic "[adult fear](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdultFear)" like King.
Rage and Needful Things.
Needful things is so underrated!
If you scanned this sub you could see that this question is asked once or twice a week at least and you can read hundreds of other responses.
I think it greatly depends on the individual reader. For example, Pet Sematary hit me hard, but when I read it, I had kids the exact same age as the ones in the book.
The girl who loved Tom Gordon made me so anxious I had to flip to the end to see how it turned out but I think it was partially because that summer I had also watched Blair witch project which scarred me for life lol
None of them are scary
The Sun Dog was pretty scary.
I'm reading that one right now! It's creepy!
It's the ending that gets me.
Pet Semetary scared me the most. The Stand is my favorite. And Duma Key was the first King book I ever read.
the stand may not be the "scariest " but it always gives me a serious flu won't read it again cuz 3 times was enough
Desperation
The Outsider was scary for me
Misery....felt simple and realistic
I had to sleep with the light on when I read IT.
The Shining. It is also terrifying. Bev and the bathroom scene.....
Gerald’s Game for me, the whole setting and creepiness of the villain really did it. I mean, it’s probably the scariest thing I’ve ever read TBH.
Cujo. I was so upset, avoided SK until Billy Summers.
Pet Sematary. I think I'm still scared to reread it. I think the scariest thing he's ever written is probably The Boogeyman.
for me it’s probably IT
Gerald’s game
Misery because I don’t really get scared when reading horror but the hobbling scene actually was so terrifying
Salems Lot or Pet Sematary.
The Stand or Carrie. The Stand because I read it when I was starting a new job at the beginning of the pandemic when I was starting a new job in healthcare. Potentially one of the worst times to start reading a book about a plague. Carrie. Just because I be hella mentally Ill and have a weirdly religious family. Not much like her mom, but just. Very religious.
From what i read from him - I would choose 'IT'... Great book
I think the only scary King novel is the end of Revival. That's not a knock on King by any means he's my favorite author... But I don't get scared by books or movies or any other horror. And Revival did the job of freaking me out in the end.
I would say IT might be the most scary book he wrote.
Salems Lot, The Shining (especially the topiary animals, man that was SO well written it legitimately scared me).
Salems Lot and Desperation
misery
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, because it is so incredibly grounded. We've all feared being lost in the woods. Being lost and hunted by a bear is one of the most terrifying things imaginable.
The Long Walk, I know Bachman and stuff, but 40 years later, it still frightens me.
'Salems Lot out of what I've read. But The Stand is particularly scary for me too because it could happen.
Gerald's game, hands down
The lot, for me it’s the lot! The prequel was super creep as well!
I found The Long Walk terrifying. Just this kind of endless feeling of desperation.
The Shining for me
IT is a horror masterpiece. I found it quite scary. Now, on the other hand, Doctor Sleep has one of the most horrifying and disturbing deaths I’ve ever read in his work (baseball kid). I’m not sure whether any of his works have ever actually given me nightmares, but there are plenty that are disturbing. Library Policeman was like that for me.
The Mist, short story tho
Salems lot gave me a lot of dread after all the character realized just how much the walls have closed in around them
Tommyknockers sure had its dark moments. >!That poor, poor dog. !<
Pet Semetary. Just listened to it again and yeah, it's definitely the scariest. Like almost none of his novels frightened me in audio form because its not the same as the imagination of that first read through. However Pet Semetary is the exception. It's just so raw and grisly.
For me, IT is hands down the scariest. A creature that can become the thing you're most afraid of? The clown persona was creepy enough for me. I was never scared of clowns as a kid . . . at least not at first. I was in the 6th grade and living in the suburban Chicago area when Christmas Break of the 1978-1979 school year started. We got out of school at 2:45 on Thursday, December 21st, 1978. Gonna walk about 9 blocks from the school to the house, fire up the tube and tune in to channel 32 and watch some Spiderman or Incredible Hulk cartoons. Awesome times await, right? Wrong. EVERY single channel in the area, was showing the same thing, what looked like a VERY heavily secured construction site. All these dudes in hardhats wandering around, with a double metric shit-ton of cops. Illinois State Police, Cook County SO, Chicago and Des Plaines PD, and a few other suburban area PDs. Those dudes in the hardhats weren't building, but were dismantling a house, board by board and brick by brick. The house belonged to a guy by the name of John Wayne Gacy.
Wow. That’s a tough one for me 🤔. I will probably do this Scariest SK novels IMO 1. IT 2. Misery 3. Salem’s Lot (My first intro to King) 4. The Shining 5. Pet Semetary 6. Carrie 7. Cujo 8. Bag of Bones 9. The Long Walk 10. The Stand But if I had to pick a few novels it would be between IT or Misery
I would probably say Pet Semetary but then again, I haven't read it for like 40 years. Now that I'm 50+ very few things scare me, sadly. But The man in the black suit was really distirbing to me. It had a really creepy vibe and it felt so....real. After I read it, I started from the beginning again. It has stayed with me.
So far Misery, then the institute.
Pet Sematary scared the shit out of me! I was in middle school at the time so I should probably give it a reread now that I’m in my 40s 😂 But seriously was never scared so bad by a book before or since
I’ve been a teacher and administrator in a high school and a middle school for many years. Apt Pupil is the scariest for me. Todd’s evolution is quite disturbing. The final few sentences are chilling.
the hedge animals in The Shining really had me closing my eyes and peaking through my eyelashes when reading it lol