"Scariest Piece of Fiction?" Topic

was written by what author? If the works of HP Lovecraft don't scare you, what fiction does (or has)?

Lovecraft still should be an option.
Stephen King
Edgar Allen Poe
Shirley Jackson
William Peter Blatty
Mary Shelley
Bram Stoker
Horror fiction doesn't scare me

Jasper Kent
hit it out of the park for scary with his debut novel Twelve, set in Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

A number of the books by Robert McCammon.

The Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson. He is rather remarkable in describing some of the critters in his books.

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents— Sir Terry Pratchett.
Seriously. You're laughing throughout the book, and then suddenly you're terrified for the fate of the rodents…

The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs— thoroughly chilling, and you can't put your finger on exactly why…

As a child, Tolkien's Black Riders scared the bejeezus out of me and gave me nightmares. I don't think any other written work has ever done that for me.

I find most modern "horror," when I bother to read it, as either mildly suspenseful (at best) or simply horrific— meaning grotesque and disgusting rather than actually scary. There's a difference.

The Outsider would be my favorite Lovecraft story.

The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror both creeped me out. And I remember, at age 14 or 15, lying on the living room couch after everyone else had gone to bed, reading The Shining, and being too afraid to get up to go pee.

1984 (now more than ever)

Can't argue with that.

The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey.

Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow

+1 for 1984

The others are great and exciting reads, but at the end of the day I'm not scared of vampires. I'm scared for characters that have to face vampires, or dinosaurs, or Cthulhu, or Voldemort, but at no point am I thinking Sauron's orks are coming for me, or that I'm going to end up bricked inside a wall. But it's very easy to convince me that I'm going to be deprived of my freedom because the people in power have convinced the masses that there is danger in comic books or whatever and the government needs to step in.

They're talking about bans and restrictions on 3D printers. I *love* my 3D printers.

So I read Lovecraft often and have enjoyed a few Stephen King books, but Orwell is the scary one.

Who Goes There? BY John W. Campbell

Cormac McCarthy's The Road, easily. He was clever enough to leave out precisely what caused the calamity and thereby short-circuits our innate desire to look for solutions to the problem. We can't even find a glimmer of hope that things will eventually get better on their own because we have no frame of reference. Tell your audience that it was nuclear war, or a super volcano, or a meteor impact and people will immediately start thinking about timelines for recovery. All McCarthy gives us is a planet where everything is dead or dying, including the last gasps of humanity.

The Road was just really depressing, not scary…

King's "Bag of Bones" is pretty spooky.

Clive Barker occasionally hit the fright spot for me.
Lovecraft also occasionally gave me shivers, but was more frightening when thinking about some of his story premises than the stories themselves. I found the ending of Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" to be the best of this type of scare.

One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest for me--the relentless destruction of self "for your own good." Helps(?) that it's more credible too. You don't see a lot of Lovecraftian monsters, but we're paying the salaries of thousands of Nurse (or Activity Director) Ratcheds.

"The Black Cat" (1843) by Edgar Allan Poe
"The Dead Valley" (1895) by Ralph Adams Cram
"The Novel of the Black Seal" (1895) by Arthur Machen
"The White People" (1904) by Arthur Machen
"The Mezzotint" and "Count Magnus" (1904) by M.R. James
"The Willows" (1907) by Algernon Blackwood
"A School Story" (1911) by M.R. James
"The Curse of Yig" (1929) by H.P Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop
"Black Man with a Horn" (1980) by T. E. D. Klein
"Mr. Gaunt" (2009) by John Langan

Whatever was on the news yesterday, by any journalist. It is actually frightening to me that people can't (or choose not to) recognize basic manipulation of rhetoric.

Hound of the Baskervilles.

What's that that hirples at my side?'
The foe that you must fight, my lord.
'That rides as fast as I can ride?'
The shadow of your might, my lord.

'Then wheel my horse against the foe!'
He's down and overpast, my lord.
You war against the sunset glow,
The judgment follows fast, my lord.

'Oh who will stay the sun's descent?'
King Joshua he is dead, my lord.
'I need an hour to repent!'
'Tis what our sister said, my lord.

'Oh do not slay me in my sins!'
You're safe awhile with us, my lord.
'Nay, kill me ere my fear begins.'
We would not serve you thus, my lord.

'Where is the doom that I must face?'
Three little leagues away, my lord.
'Then mend the horses' laggard pace!'
We need them for next day, my lord.

'Next day — next day! Unloose my cords!'
Our sister needed none, my lord.
You had no mind to face our swords,
And — where can cowards run, my lord?

'You would not kill the soul alive?'
'Twas thus our sister cried, my lord.
'I dare not die with none to shrive.'
But so our sister died, my lord.

'Then wipe the sweat from brow and cheek.
It runnels forth afresh, my lord.
'Uphold me — for the flesh is weak.'
You've finished with the Flesh, my lord.

1984 see above …. all true!

Ghost Story by Peter Straub, scared the hell out of me.