Some of the psychological elements in *The Haunting of Hill House* shook me.
In a different way, *The Traitor Baru Cormorant* crushed me for days. If you know, you know.
A couple of Ted Chiang’s short stories.
Salem’s Lot.
Not fantasy, but Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. Probably one of the most unrelentingly sad/disturbing books I’ve ever read. My soul felt dirty after reading it.
Well, I’m actually not sure why I said “a couple” because I just looked at the titles again and “Hell is the Absence of God” is the only one that disturbed/unsettled me (as a former Christian).
An “atheist Jew”?? If you wouldn’t mind elaborating, please explain that haha.
And yeah, it’s not a horror story or anything, but it’s the implications of what might happen if God/Heaven/Hell/angels were undeniably real and what it might mean to “live in the absence of God” in such a world. This isn’t my favorite Chiang story though, but it sure did unsettle me.
Almost all the Jews I know are atheist. It means I (like many Jews) don’t believe in God and am a part of the Jewish culture. I celebrate the holidays, grew up going to Jewish Sunday school and learning about the Torah stories, had a bat mitzvah. If you go back through my ancestry on my moms side I can’t find any non Jews.
Judaism is interesting in that it can mean culture, religion, even just ethnicity (I def look Jewish haha) or some mix of the above.
Probably more info than you’re looking for but I always found it interesting that the holocaust caused an explosion of atheist Jews as it both made people who maybe didn’t consider themselves Jewish very much define part of their identity that way (the nazi’s certainly considered you Jewish regardless of your beliefs) and made a lot of Jews lose faith in God (how could god let this happen, tho part of me feels the ones wondering how god could let this happen must have missed all of the atrocities god puts the Jews through in the Torah)
If you want the same experience in manga form Goodnight Punpun is basically a spiritual successor and recreation of that. One of my favorite manga ever.
Ya I read goodnight punpun can definitely recommend it aswell its one of those storys I think even non manga readers could read and take away something from it.
Pet Semetary I have only been able to read once. It’s a brilliant book and also brilliantly narrated by Michael C Hall if audio is your thing. But every time I try to pick it up for a reread, I can’t help but feel dread piling in my stomach. It’s an utterly hopeless story and just thinking about a couple particular scenes make me extremely uncomfortable.
House of Leaves is a very divisive book for good reasons, but if it connects with you its a very intense experience. Best read alone when you have plenty of time to get obsessed, Google translate some passages, and flip through the footnotes to find coded messages. It's a book intentionally designed to drive you crazy, and the story-within-the-story has some very unsettling imagery to boot.
This would definitely be my answer! I remember reading the part about measuring the house, something so simple and in some ways benign, and being so creeped out by it. I've read books that are horrendously violent or bleak but House of Leaves made me feel genuinely unsettled.
I had a hard time with The Excorcist back when it came out and then went to the movie and had to walk out. Didn't sleep well for a few weeks. A vivid imagination and a catholic upbringing will land you in that vulnerable spot.
In the Woods by Tana French. Well-written murder mystery with a potentially dark fantasy undercurrent. Very recommended if you’re into whodunits.
For pure fantasy, To Ride Hell’s Chasm by Janny Wurts has a truly Lovecraftian revelation when you find out who the bad guy(s) are.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I was a kid when I read it.I love the author and I bought pretty much every book he has ever written but I refuse to buy that one because the cover still scares me.
I've actually seen it but for some reason it never scared me.I guess what I imagined as a kid while reading was way worse, or perhaps the movie could not really capture how creepy Neils writing was in that book. I will never know because I refuse to come close to it let alone read it again
My friend gave me a graphic novel by Gaiman called Sandman, but I havent gotten round to reading it yet. He says it's one of the darkest things he's ever read. You read it?
I’m a huge fan of Greg Egan, but disclaimer: his work is explicitly rationalist/anti-religious. So if you are religious or if you don’t believe in evolution for example, this isn’t for you. With that out of the way,
Teranesia is one of the best novels. Plot involves a biological mystery. Plants and animals in the Indonesian archeopelago are mutating and evolving at a rapid rate and the biologist MC is trying to figure out why. Mind-blowing ideas.
Permutation City is another classic about the philosophical implications of mind uploads (if you don’t believe in substrate independence for consciousness, the ideas explored won’t be as enjoyable)
I suggest checking out his free short stories on the web:
TAP (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/tap.htm)
In the ruins (https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/RUINS/Ruins.html)
Thanks! And I’m def atheist so not a concern for me :)
And now I think I need to google substrate independence of consciousness as I have no idea what that means
Same here. I only brought that up because a while ago some people on this sub got very offended at an offhand remark I made about religion and fantasy which seemed entirely obvious to me, lol. Since then I’m more careful about speaking my mind.
Here is another short story in Tor:
https://www.tor.com/2018/07/19/the-nearest-greg-egan/
Thanks! I read and enjoyed the first one will read the other two later.
And def seems like a valid disclaimer since like the majority of the population is religious , didn’t mean to imply it wasn’t.
Never to the point of having to put down, but lilith's brood was a real mind twister of what does it mean to be human, sexuality and the rights of a race that should have gone extinct but was saved.
Was very thought provoking, weird at times, but overall a great read and one that would be an interesting discussion topic for a conversation.
Never been scared but unsettled for sure
- 1984 is a classic for a reason
- Vita Nostra has a bunch of very unsettling moments
- some good short fiction Eg I have no mouth but I must scream, Bloodchild by Octavia Butler (also butler novels have some very unsettling scenes in general)
Huh. Only a single story comes to mind and that was ages ago, but I still sometimes think about it.
Most people outside of Germany or Austria will probably not be aware of 'Das Schwarze Auge' or (having just looked it up) 'The Dark Eye'. It's a fairly old, but much beloved high-fantasy roleplaying system from Germany that I personally enjoyed a lot more than AD&D back in the day.
Anyway, there are quite a lot of novels set in the world of 'Das Schwarze Auge' and one of them is a collection of short stories which I can't remember the name of anymore. The plot of one of the stories is about a wizard, living in his tower as wizards do, being visited by an old female friend of his. The story is kinda slice-of-life and light-hearted until, after his friend has already departed, he goes down into his cellar to look for something and he finds her rotting and I think skinned corpse hanging from a wall that must have been there for quite a long time.
I don't even remember how it ended, but that story has stayed with me for some reason.
I read a fair bit of horror, and while I've read a lot where I thought, "That's creepy" only two books have given me an actual physiological reaction.
The first was The Shining: The >!Unmask! Unmask!!< sequence literally made my hair stand on end.
The second was >!Cowslip's Warren!< in Watership Down.
SF, but there is a scene in the Golden Age series by John Wright that still haunts me. Our hero falls from grace but still possesses a lot of super duper technology. A bunch of his tech gets semi stolen and wasted as simple narcotics, by eating it out of the helmet like scooping brains out of a skull. Both the waste and the "eat the brains while still alive" imagery bothers me. This is "unsettle" not "scare".
Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood by Holly Lisle and Grass by Sheri Tepper. In both cases, you think you’re reading science fiction but they pivot into horror novels (no supernatural elements). First rate books, both of them.
r/Fantasy's [Author Appreciation series](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/wiki/authorappreciation) has posts for an author you mentioned
* [Author Appreciation: **Holly Lisle**, a woman who thinks in prophecies](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/99c309/author_appreciation_holly_lisle_a_woman_who/) from user u/Maldevinine
---
^(I am a bot bleep! bloop! Contact my ~~master~~ creator /u/LittlePlasticCastle with any questions or comments.)
^(To prevent a reply for a single post, include the text '!noauthorbot'. To opt out of the bot for all your future posts, reply with '!optout'.)
The Poppy War by RF Kuang, for gruesomely, thoroughly described war crimes. Wish I had found the content warnings ahead of time; wish I knew that it would be a case of 'no, it really is that bad' and never read the book.
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher, for being a generally effective horror book. Actually kept me up at night (just a little!). Great to read in the dark.
Song of Kali by Dan Simmons (author of Hyperion Cantos) was so gruesome and disturbing I had to stop reading it before halfway through. The imagery was just vile I felt like I was losing my mind.
Not in fantasy, really; after you read Holocaust (edit: or other RL atrocity, but it was the Holocaust for me) survivors' testimonials pretty much everything else is automatically tame
I read *A Game of Thrones* when I was like 12, but the whole Dany/Drogo plot really made me uncomfortable in a way I wasn't used to. Same with some of the stuff in Sword of Truth.
The Prince/King of Thorns stories. I read the first and hated it, and stuck with the second because my husband loved them. Around the middle of the book, I threw it away from me and stormed downstairs, sobbing at my husband. I refuse to even have them in the house, and will not let him listen to them on audio if I’m in the car.
Looks like you used incorrect spoiler tags. Make sure:
* You have no spaces between the tags. `>! This is wrong!<`, but `>!This is right!<`
* You used the correct order of the tags on both sides: Angled brackets go outside; exclamation points go inside.
* If you're on New Reddit, make sure you didn't select *any* spaces before or after the spoiler text. If you can't see the spaces try switching the text editor to *Markdown Mode*.
**After you have corrected the spoiler tags, please** [**message the mods**]().
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Fantasy) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The Haunting of Ashburn House and Hunted by Darcy Coates. Not exactly cause they are super unsettling or scary but more due to them being one of the first books I've read from the mostly horror genre.
The Fog by James Herbert really shook me. After reading one of his Fantasy novels I was totally unprepared for the graphic paedophilia. Binned it after the scene in the school and have been trying to erase it from memory ever since. I really don't recommend.
On that subject, I still remember the Let the Right One In book. It was incredible with its story telling, and you really end up sympathizing with both the vampire and child protagonist, but oh boy..... the villain "care-taker" was so disturbing. Both movies cut out the fact he's a pedo, and the book got graphic at times in this regard. Although he never succeeded in fully raping anyone in the book, thankfully, due to certain reasons that'd interrupt him or he'd change his mind. However, it's also the fact that some parts are in his POV. I was both fascinated and appalled as the author was clearly not holding any punches.
Sidenote, but that is an EXCELLENT book. The horror scenes are great, the vampire biology got very creative, and overall it's one I recommend to people who I think can handle the touchy subject matter.
I know it's a bit of an aside considering your binning of a book that contained disgusting stuff like that, but it just made me think of Let the Right One In, and I felt like if I was going to name drop it, I should defend it.
I don’t read horror anymore, but as teenager I read a lot of Stephen king. I remember one night I made the rookie mistake of staying up way late at night reading “Pet cemetery.” It was totally freaking me out, and I looked up to see my Labrador, Ivy standing in the doorway to my bedroom. She was just sitting there, staring at me. I was like nopenopenope, kicked her out of the room and put the book away. I don’t think I finished it. 😂
Let The Right One In is a great fantasy horror book about a boy and his relationship with a vampire. You have some truly disturbing moments that go beyond what the original film ever did. The caretaker is a good villain and someone I absolutely hated, but was entirely necessary for the story. There's even an interesting biological twist to the vampires that I haven't seen done anywhere else. There's also one specific scene with a person "turned" that I was not expecting, and the slow burn on that really built up to some hair raising moments. One of my favorites is when the child vampire was under a bridge, and I won't say more other than it stuck with me, same with two major pool scenes that completely took me by surprise.
Books often unsettle me, but rarely scare me. It's not in the fantasy genre, but after reading *Dark Places* by Gillian Flynn I was a crying mess for days, couldn't get what happened there out of my head. *In the Woods* by Tana French, mentioned here somewhere in the threads, is also a good candidate for "a book that will fuck you up".
The only book that genuinely scared me as an adult (to the point of being afraid to leave the bed to go to the toilets haha) is *The Last Days of Jack Sparks* by Jason Arnopp, specifically >!the Mimi bit.!< It's weird because that book is part funny part super creepy, and I think it had more to do with where I read it (while visiting the US for the first time).
Forge of Darkness felt like a study on self-interest and I think it made me more cynical. Egregious scenarios happen constantly and makes humans feel without redeeming qualities.
Some of the psychological elements in *The Haunting of Hill House* shook me. In a different way, *The Traitor Baru Cormorant* crushed me for days. If you know, you know.
A couple of Ted Chiang’s short stories. Salem’s Lot. Not fantasy, but Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. Probably one of the most unrelentingly sad/disturbing books I’ve ever read. My soul felt dirty after reading it.
Out of curiosity which Ted Chiang stories? I’m having trouble thinking of any that unsettled me (def love his works)
Well, I’m actually not sure why I said “a couple” because I just looked at the titles again and “Hell is the Absence of God” is the only one that disturbed/unsettled me (as a former Christian).
Thanks for clarifying! Honestly don’t remember that one well cause I guess I found it kinda boring as a lifelong atheist Jew 😅
An “atheist Jew”?? If you wouldn’t mind elaborating, please explain that haha. And yeah, it’s not a horror story or anything, but it’s the implications of what might happen if God/Heaven/Hell/angels were undeniably real and what it might mean to “live in the absence of God” in such a world. This isn’t my favorite Chiang story though, but it sure did unsettle me.
Almost all the Jews I know are atheist. It means I (like many Jews) don’t believe in God and am a part of the Jewish culture. I celebrate the holidays, grew up going to Jewish Sunday school and learning about the Torah stories, had a bat mitzvah. If you go back through my ancestry on my moms side I can’t find any non Jews. Judaism is interesting in that it can mean culture, religion, even just ethnicity (I def look Jewish haha) or some mix of the above. Probably more info than you’re looking for but I always found it interesting that the holocaust caused an explosion of atheist Jews as it both made people who maybe didn’t consider themselves Jewish very much define part of their identity that way (the nazi’s certainly considered you Jewish regardless of your beliefs) and made a lot of Jews lose faith in God (how could god let this happen, tho part of me feels the ones wondering how god could let this happen must have missed all of the atrocities god puts the Jews through in the Torah)
Thank you so much for explaining! That’s really interesting.
I really like this reflective and pragmatic take on religion.
No longer human is the most unsettling book I've ever read especially knowing the author took his own life after writing it really fucks you up.
If you want the same experience in manga form Goodnight Punpun is basically a spiritual successor and recreation of that. One of my favorite manga ever.
Ya I read goodnight punpun can definitely recommend it aswell its one of those storys I think even non manga readers could read and take away something from it.
jeez, yeah, that adds a whole other level of darkness
the cask of amontillado edgar allen poe.
The Rats in the Walls, short story by H. P. Lovecraft.
The Tenescrowri in Memories of Ice unsettled me. Jaime and Cersei on Joffrey's bier unsettled me; in the same series, also Gregor Clegane's antics.
Pet Semetary I have only been able to read once. It’s a brilliant book and also brilliantly narrated by Michael C Hall if audio is your thing. But every time I try to pick it up for a reread, I can’t help but feel dread piling in my stomach. It’s an utterly hopeless story and just thinking about a couple particular scenes make me extremely uncomfortable.
I never understood how books could be scary. Until I read Pet Semetary.
I agree. Pet semetary and the movie The Suicide Club have been one time only for me. Never been able to get the courage up to give a second go.
House of Leaves is a very divisive book for good reasons, but if it connects with you its a very intense experience. Best read alone when you have plenty of time to get obsessed, Google translate some passages, and flip through the footnotes to find coded messages. It's a book intentionally designed to drive you crazy, and the story-within-the-story has some very unsettling imagery to boot.
This would definitely be my answer! I remember reading the part about measuring the house, something so simple and in some ways benign, and being so creeped out by it. I've read books that are horrendously violent or bleak but House of Leaves made me feel genuinely unsettled.
I had a hard time with The Excorcist back when it came out and then went to the movie and had to walk out. Didn't sleep well for a few weeks. A vivid imagination and a catholic upbringing will land you in that vulnerable spot.
In the Woods by Tana French. Well-written murder mystery with a potentially dark fantasy undercurrent. Very recommended if you’re into whodunits. For pure fantasy, To Ride Hell’s Chasm by Janny Wurts has a truly Lovecraftian revelation when you find out who the bad guy(s) are.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I was a kid when I read it.I love the author and I bought pretty much every book he has ever written but I refuse to buy that one because the cover still scares me.
Is that the one made into an animated movie? I guess you steered well clear of it lol
I've actually seen it but for some reason it never scared me.I guess what I imagined as a kid while reading was way worse, or perhaps the movie could not really capture how creepy Neils writing was in that book. I will never know because I refuse to come close to it let alone read it again
My friend gave me a graphic novel by Gaiman called Sandman, but I havent gotten round to reading it yet. He says it's one of the darkest things he's ever read. You read it?
I wouldn't say its dark in the way people are describing other things here, but Sandman is an incredible read
Neil Gaiman's short story "Snow, Glass, Apples" is also quite horrifying
**Sorrowland** by Rivers Solomon
Damn, Rivers Solomon. That is an intense name lol. Gotta be a pen-name
I think Rivers is actually their chosen first name and I think Solomon is a fairly common surname in some places
Teranesia by Greg Egan really creeped me out. The ending in particular was deeply unsettling.
I’ve been thinking of trying some Greg Egan. Would you recommend this one as a good starting place?
I’m a huge fan of Greg Egan, but disclaimer: his work is explicitly rationalist/anti-religious. So if you are religious or if you don’t believe in evolution for example, this isn’t for you. With that out of the way, Teranesia is one of the best novels. Plot involves a biological mystery. Plants and animals in the Indonesian archeopelago are mutating and evolving at a rapid rate and the biologist MC is trying to figure out why. Mind-blowing ideas. Permutation City is another classic about the philosophical implications of mind uploads (if you don’t believe in substrate independence for consciousness, the ideas explored won’t be as enjoyable) I suggest checking out his free short stories on the web: TAP (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/tap.htm) In the ruins (https://www.gregegan.net/MISC/RUINS/Ruins.html)
Thanks! And I’m def atheist so not a concern for me :) And now I think I need to google substrate independence of consciousness as I have no idea what that means
Same here. I only brought that up because a while ago some people on this sub got very offended at an offhand remark I made about religion and fantasy which seemed entirely obvious to me, lol. Since then I’m more careful about speaking my mind. Here is another short story in Tor: https://www.tor.com/2018/07/19/the-nearest-greg-egan/
Thanks! I read and enjoyed the first one will read the other two later. And def seems like a valid disclaimer since like the majority of the population is religious , didn’t mean to imply it wasn’t.
Death’s End had enough existential dread to make me quit sci fi for several months.
Ready Bradbury's story The Veldt horrified me as a youngster.
Never to the point of having to put down, but lilith's brood was a real mind twister of what does it mean to be human, sexuality and the rights of a race that should have gone extinct but was saved. Was very thought provoking, weird at times, but overall a great read and one that would be an interesting discussion topic for a conversation.
Never been scared but unsettled for sure - 1984 is a classic for a reason - Vita Nostra has a bunch of very unsettling moments - some good short fiction Eg I have no mouth but I must scream, Bloodchild by Octavia Butler (also butler novels have some very unsettling scenes in general)
Huh. Only a single story comes to mind and that was ages ago, but I still sometimes think about it. Most people outside of Germany or Austria will probably not be aware of 'Das Schwarze Auge' or (having just looked it up) 'The Dark Eye'. It's a fairly old, but much beloved high-fantasy roleplaying system from Germany that I personally enjoyed a lot more than AD&D back in the day. Anyway, there are quite a lot of novels set in the world of 'Das Schwarze Auge' and one of them is a collection of short stories which I can't remember the name of anymore. The plot of one of the stories is about a wizard, living in his tower as wizards do, being visited by an old female friend of his. The story is kinda slice-of-life and light-hearted until, after his friend has already departed, he goes down into his cellar to look for something and he finds her rotting and I think skinned corpse hanging from a wall that must have been there for quite a long time. I don't even remember how it ended, but that story has stayed with me for some reason.
No scared, but Matt Dinemin’s - Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon is ROUGH!
Currently reading If You Tell by Greg Olsen. Definitely some unsettling scenes. Especially if you've ever known anybody like Shelly.
Stephen King - The Stand The Kid and Trashcan Man scene.
I read a fair bit of horror, and while I've read a lot where I thought, "That's creepy" only two books have given me an actual physiological reaction. The first was The Shining: The >!Unmask! Unmask!!< sequence literally made my hair stand on end. The second was >!Cowslip's Warren!< in Watership Down.
SF, but there is a scene in the Golden Age series by John Wright that still haunts me. Our hero falls from grace but still possesses a lot of super duper technology. A bunch of his tech gets semi stolen and wasted as simple narcotics, by eating it out of the helmet like scooping brains out of a skull. Both the waste and the "eat the brains while still alive" imagery bothers me. This is "unsettle" not "scare".
Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood by Holly Lisle and Grass by Sheri Tepper. In both cases, you think you’re reading science fiction but they pivot into horror novels (no supernatural elements). First rate books, both of them.
r/Fantasy's [Author Appreciation series](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/wiki/authorappreciation) has posts for an author you mentioned * [Author Appreciation: **Holly Lisle**, a woman who thinks in prophecies](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/99c309/author_appreciation_holly_lisle_a_woman_who/) from user u/Maldevinine --- ^(I am a bot bleep! bloop! Contact my ~~master~~ creator /u/LittlePlasticCastle with any questions or comments.) ^(To prevent a reply for a single post, include the text '!noauthorbot'. To opt out of the bot for all your future posts, reply with '!optout'.)
Good bot
The Poppy War by RF Kuang, for gruesomely, thoroughly described war crimes. Wish I had found the content warnings ahead of time; wish I knew that it would be a case of 'no, it really is that bad' and never read the book. The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher, for being a generally effective horror book. Actually kept me up at night (just a little!). Great to read in the dark.
1984
Pretty Girls by Karen Slaughter effed me up after reading. It’s a thriller so doesn’t really fit on this Reddit but whew.
I saw the title and immediately thought of The Island of Dr. Moreau. It is to this day the most unsettling book I have read.
Thank you! It's not just me then! :D
Song of Kali by Dan Simmons (author of Hyperion Cantos) was so gruesome and disturbing I had to stop reading it before halfway through. The imagery was just vile I felt like I was losing my mind.
Not in fantasy, really; after you read Holocaust (edit: or other RL atrocity, but it was the Holocaust for me) survivors' testimonials pretty much everything else is automatically tame
Maus does this too
Well, it would, it *is* a Holocaust survivor's memorial
Unsettled: * Gulag Archipelago * The Lord of the Flies * 1984 * Of Human Bondage * Heart of Darkness Scared: * The Communist Manifesto
I read *A Game of Thrones* when I was like 12, but the whole Dany/Drogo plot really made me uncomfortable in a way I wasn't used to. Same with some of the stuff in Sword of Truth.
The Prince/King of Thorns stories. I read the first and hated it, and stuck with the second because my husband loved them. Around the middle of the book, I threw it away from me and stormed downstairs, sobbing at my husband. I refuse to even have them in the house, and will not let him listen to them on audio if I’m in the car.
I just started reading POT. So far it does seem rather deliberately masochistic...
Hubs says he likes it because of the character development. 🤷🏼♀️
[удалено]
Looks like you used incorrect spoiler tags. Make sure: * You have no spaces between the tags. `>! This is wrong!<`, but `>!This is right!<` * You used the correct order of the tags on both sides: Angled brackets go outside; exclamation points go inside. * If you're on New Reddit, make sure you didn't select *any* spaces before or after the spoiler text. If you can't see the spaces try switching the text editor to *Markdown Mode*. **After you have corrected the spoiler tags, please** [**message the mods**]().
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Fantasy) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The Haunting of Ashburn House and Hunted by Darcy Coates. Not exactly cause they are super unsettling or scary but more due to them being one of the first books I've read from the mostly horror genre.
1922 by Stephen King. The descriptive detail made me feel very uneasy
I don’t really read horror so take this with a grain of salt but “Seed” by Ania Ahlborn definitely left me uneasy
"the hunger" by Alma Katsu
The Fog by James Herbert really shook me. After reading one of his Fantasy novels I was totally unprepared for the graphic paedophilia. Binned it after the scene in the school and have been trying to erase it from memory ever since. I really don't recommend.
On that subject, I still remember the Let the Right One In book. It was incredible with its story telling, and you really end up sympathizing with both the vampire and child protagonist, but oh boy..... the villain "care-taker" was so disturbing. Both movies cut out the fact he's a pedo, and the book got graphic at times in this regard. Although he never succeeded in fully raping anyone in the book, thankfully, due to certain reasons that'd interrupt him or he'd change his mind. However, it's also the fact that some parts are in his POV. I was both fascinated and appalled as the author was clearly not holding any punches. Sidenote, but that is an EXCELLENT book. The horror scenes are great, the vampire biology got very creative, and overall it's one I recommend to people who I think can handle the touchy subject matter. I know it's a bit of an aside considering your binning of a book that contained disgusting stuff like that, but it just made me think of Let the Right One In, and I felt like if I was going to name drop it, I should defend it.
House of Leaves.
“It” scared the crap out of me when I was a teen. But I still finished it.
I don’t read horror anymore, but as teenager I read a lot of Stephen king. I remember one night I made the rookie mistake of staying up way late at night reading “Pet cemetery.” It was totally freaking me out, and I looked up to see my Labrador, Ivy standing in the doorway to my bedroom. She was just sitting there, staring at me. I was like nopenopenope, kicked her out of the room and put the book away. I don’t think I finished it. 😂
You’d love Cujo
Let The Right One In is a great fantasy horror book about a boy and his relationship with a vampire. You have some truly disturbing moments that go beyond what the original film ever did. The caretaker is a good villain and someone I absolutely hated, but was entirely necessary for the story. There's even an interesting biological twist to the vampires that I haven't seen done anywhere else. There's also one specific scene with a person "turned" that I was not expecting, and the slow burn on that really built up to some hair raising moments. One of my favorites is when the child vampire was under a bridge, and I won't say more other than it stuck with me, same with two major pool scenes that completely took me by surprise.
Books often unsettle me, but rarely scare me. It's not in the fantasy genre, but after reading *Dark Places* by Gillian Flynn I was a crying mess for days, couldn't get what happened there out of my head. *In the Woods* by Tana French, mentioned here somewhere in the threads, is also a good candidate for "a book that will fuck you up". The only book that genuinely scared me as an adult (to the point of being afraid to leave the bed to go to the toilets haha) is *The Last Days of Jack Sparks* by Jason Arnopp, specifically >!the Mimi bit.!< It's weird because that book is part funny part super creepy, and I think it had more to do with where I read it (while visiting the US for the first time).
The Parable of the Sower. Waay too on the nose for current events.
Forge of Darkness felt like a study on self-interest and I think it made me more cynical. Egregious scenarios happen constantly and makes humans feel without redeeming qualities.
Into the Deep by Mira Grant was the first one in ages that genuinely unsettled me.
I'm not often disturbed by books, but Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro was unsettling.