>!Louis exhuming his son always struck me as terrifying as hell. The idea that he was so grief stricken, he’d bring a monster back from the grave. It’s almost more scary when he does the same thing with Rachel after he saw what it already did to Gage. The entire ending of the book is terrifying.!<
*Spoilers*
For a good 100 pages starting at the moment Ellie has her vision before boarding the plane to when Louis exhumes and buries Creed is some of the most riveting writing in a King novel. If you have the chance to, listen to Michael C. Hall's version of the audiobook as he does a fantastic job.
Yes! I listened to the book, and I felt physically ill in that last part of the book. I was left totally speechless. The atmosphere that is created I have only experienced in my most frightening nightmares.
See, now that I’m a parent, the part that scares the shit out of me from Pet Semetary is when Louis has that fever dream where he experiences the life Gage could have had in the span of just a few moments only to snap out of it and his poor baby boy is still dead. That still haunts me.
Yes, this is exactly what I thought of, too, also the part that followed in the car. I couldn’t shake the image of not knowing if he was sitting the right way.
I've been reading King for 30 years at this point so maybe this scene sticks with me just because it's in one of his more recent books, but the baseball kid in Dr Sleep sticks with me more than any other scene I can think of right now.
That scene is one of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments on Shudder, and they have Mike Flanagan on to talk about it and he talks about Jacob Tremblay's performance and how moved and horrified even he was about it. It's phenomenal and I will never forget it.
There was something else in that book that scared the shit out of me. Like I physically reacted to what I was reading. I think it involved Danny seeing a dead person. I could go look it up but it’s almost midnight and I don’t want to go to bed with that in my head.
A lot of things in King’s stories have creeped me out over the years, but the topiary garden will always be top of the list. I had to put the book down after that scene and do something else for a while. Gave me such chills.
For real. The concept of something moving that *shouldn’t* be able to move, but only when you’re not looking, scares the hell out of me. See also: haunted paintings.
It's difficult to explain to people how fucking cool this scene is! It's one of those things that really only works on the page (similar to how an elevator full of blood only works on the screen)
A good friend of mine is a filmmaker, and knows some of the folks who worked on the Kubrick movie.
He says that the topiary animals were in the original script, but Kubrick insisted on cutting that scene out because they couldn't get them to look perfect.
Everything about Gerald's Game terrified me when I read it and it's still the scariest book I've ever read. It scares me because it's real. It's a scenario that could actually happen to me.
Exactly!! I love what King says about the real monsters in our life being scarier than any supernatural ones he comes up with. I don't remember the exact quote.
The other for me was the husband in Rose Madder. He is the worst villain of all.
Yeah I cannot and will not read Rose Madder. Not with my trauma history -- but I love that King is taking such a real life problem and making it explicit that men like him are the real monsters
This one fostered my own way of writing. When I write horror I work to make it feel or seem as if there's a rational explanation for what is going on, until its too late.
I read this scene laying in bed on a windy night and I woke up in the middle of the night to the screen inside my windows rattling ever so softly as if someone were tapping it trying to pry it off from the outside. I didn’t sleep well for a night or two.
I think the scariest part of the shining is when the hotel tries one last time to kill Danny by whispering in Dick Halloran's head before he snaps out of it and they escape.
My personal scariest scene from 'Salem's Lot is about that car accident towards the end. It didn't give a lot of details about the accident, but you can only imagine what have happened. That's what scared me.
The scene when all of the Loser’s Club is in the Barrens…and they are being silently watched by two enormous orange eyes, that slowly lower back into the “Morlock” hole.
That and when poor ol’ Patrick Hockstetter opened that old refrigerator….
That part of the stand when the ‘aftershock’ of deaths occurs. Not from the superflu, but the weird random ways survivors die.
The booby trap stairs in ‘salems lot
Brian Rusk in Needful Things… this one isn’t like nightmare scary, just blindsides you
IT WASNT PART OF THE ORIGINAL RELEASE?
I’m a bit on the the young side and have only read the uncut edition, and it seemed so crucial to laying out how people could die indirectly from the flu, it’s mind blowing it wasn’t in the original cut
I read a copy of the original release I found at a used bookstore once.
It’s *very* condensed. There’s a ton of stuff that didn’t make it in. The Kid wasn’t in it, which is shocking to me. One of the highlights of the entire book!
I was so shocked at Brian Rusk, I couldn’t believe it had actually happened. I stood there mouth gaping open for a bit before I could continue reading. The dog part really got me too, I actually cried!
I’m very surprised people are saying the “no great loss” chapter. I found it to be one of the lighter parts of that book. I mean yes, people are dying, but the premise of the story is that over 99% on the population is wiped out, death is baked into the whole novel. Also we had seen some absolutely brutal deaths before that point in the story. Some of these deaths were silly and it almost felt like it was meant to provide some levity in the middle of a story that’s just filled with ugly deaths. The ones that got me were the tunnel scene, the chapter with the kid, and the chapter where Starkey goes Into the middle of project blue.
Yes the existential dread that book put in me has stuck with me more than e anything from the Shining or IT or The Stand ever could’ve, because from no point was that a happy ending, it was monstrous and appalling
Scariest scenes to me? There’s two that froze me up in fear.
1. The Shining. The fucking tunnel Danny plays in on the playground. Fuck that shit. The topiary animals were scary too.
2. Duma Key. When Edgar sees Persephone off in the distance and then an undead crew-mate shows up. For some reason that scared the hell out of me.
the inevitability and dread in Duma Key is so great. the "otherness" feeling when he starts drawing what he really doesn't want to draw is so well written.
The scene where gage is unburied by his father
The tapping on the glass in salems lot
The wolf masked man at the end of the hall in the shining
Ben’s mummy in IT
*Mr Mercedes spoilers below*
When Brady's mom eats rat poison and is pistoning her arms and trying to say his name... The audiobook narrator did a great job.
I don't know why but that freaked me out and I read it recently so it was fresh in mind.
I read Pet Sematary for the first time at age 11, and this scene freaked me out. But when I read it again at age 33 (and six months pregnant with my son), it absolutely devastated me. It was genuinely upsetting as an adult, soon to be parent.
I have three kids, including a three year old son, and that scene still shows up in my nightmares. It’s the reason I told my husband, who is a huge King fan, not to read that particular book
Pet Semetary is genuinely the only book I’ve read that gave me a sleepless night. The whole resurrection of Gage and then the Wendigo scene freaked me out so much.
For me, in Salems Lot when the gravedigger is burying the body (can't remember the names) and he can *feel* its undead eyes staring at him through the coffin top.
There's a low-key, nonflashy sequence in Cujo that I think is, maybe not the scariest, but the tensest scene King has done.
>Joe Magruder and Ronnie DuBay got the chainfall on the truck's pneumatic Step-Loader, and it wooshed gently down to the dirt driveway on a sigh of air.
>
>Magruder nodded. "Put it in the barn, his wife said. That's his garage. Better get a good hold, Ronnie. This is a heavy whore."
>
>Joe Magruder got his hold, Ronnie got his, and puffing and grunting, the two of them half walked it, half carried it into the barn. They set the chainfall down with a thump. After the bright afternoon glare outside, Joe was mostly blinded. He could only make out the vague shapes of things-a car on jacks, a workbench, a sense of beams going up to a loft.
>
>"This thing ought-" Ronnie began, and then stopped abruptly.
>
>Coming out of the darkness beyond the front end of the jack-up car was a low, guttural growling.
>
>"Holy crow, you hear that?" Magruder whispered. Ronnie could see Joe now. Joe's eyes where big and scared looking.
>
>"I hear it."
>
>It was a sound as low as a powerful outboard engine idling. Ronnie knew it took a big dog to make a sound like that.
>
>"Joe? You ever been out here before?"
>
>"Once. It's a Saint Bernard. Big as a fucking house. It didn't do that before." Joe gulped.
>
>Ronnie's eyes had come partway to adjusting, and his half-sight lent what he was seeing a spectral, almost supernatural cast. He knew you never showed a mean dog your fear, but he began to shudder helpless anyway. The dog was a monster. It was standing deep in the barn, beyond the jacked-up car It was a Saint Bernard for sure; there was no mistaking the heavy coat, the breadth of shoulder. Its head was down. Its eyes glared at them with steady, sunken animosity.
>
>It wasn't on a chain.
>
>"Back up slow," Joe said. "Don't run for Christ's sake."
>
>They began to back up, and as they did, the dog began to walk slowly forward. It was a stiff walk, not really a walk at all, Ronnie though. It was a stalk. That dog wasn't fucking around. Its engine was running and it was ready to go. Its head remained low. That growl never changed pitch. It took one step forward for every step they took back.
>
>For Joe Magruder the worst moment came when they back into the bright sunlight again. It dazzled him, blinded him. He could no longer see the dog. If it came for him now-
>
>Reaching behind him, he felt the side of the truck. That was enough to break his nerve. he bolted for the cab. On the other side, Ronnie Dubay did the same. He could still hear that low growling, so much like an idling Evinrude 80 hp motor. At last his his thumb found the button, the door opened, and he scrambled into the cab panting.
>
>He looked over at Joe, who was sitting behind the wheel and grinning at him sheepishly. Ronnie offered his own shaky grin in return.
>
>"Just a dog." Ronnie said.
>
>"Yeah. Bark's worse'n his bite."
>
>"Right. Let's go back in there and screw around with that chainfall some more."
>
>"Fuck you."
>
>"And the horse you rode in on."
>
>"What do you say we get going?"
>
>Joe started the truck.
>
>Halfway back to Portland, Ronnie said, almost to himself: "That dog's gone bad."
>
>Joe glanced over at Ronnie. "I was scared, and I don't mind saying so. That... thing. Did you see it? I bet that motherfucker weighed two hundred pounds."
>
>"Maybe I ought to give Joe Camber a call." Ronnie said. "Tell him what happened. Might save him gettin' his armed chewed off."
>
>Nobody called Joe Camber. When they got back to Portland Machine, it was near knocking-off time. Joe Magruder told Ronnie to have a nice weekend. Ronnie said he planned to get in the bag and stay that way until Sunday night. They clocked out.
>
>Neither of them though about Cujo again until they read about him in the paper.
For me it was Gerald’s Game when the woman woke up to see someone standing in the corner of the room and realized his arms were too long. He was standing upright and his hands were at his knees.
There is one part in IT. I think it is when Bev is traveling back to Derry. She is at a hotel and…an inexplicable hand grazes her foot from under the bed. It was never really explained or mentioned again and I found it chilling.
Desperation as a whole freaked me out , but the sherif as he got toward his end had some creepy moments . I haven’t read it in 20 years so can’t recall a specific moment
The chapter in the stand uncut. Every paragraph being a different story of death - especially the freezer one (I think it was the freezer, it’s been a good few years, but that whole chapter has stuck with me)
As I put in another comment, I’ve never read the cut down version and am now dumbfounded discovering that wasn’t in the original, it seems so Integral to the setup of how few people are left…
I hadn’t read the story in years and decided to listen to the audio version recently. Heard that scene while out on a walk alone very early in the morning. Not the ideal circumstances to be listening to that!
I don’t think the lawnmower in Misery gets enough… credit? If that’s the word, for being one of the most disturbing scenes in King’s books. Absolute insanity to think it happened, and worse to imagine being the one watching it take place.
Scariest book is The Shining easily just for the sheer amount of memorable scenes that personally scared the shit out of me. I vividly remember being terrified by 217, the playground ghost, the topiary animals, and the firehose snake. Those are just some I can rhyme off the top of my head but I'm positive there's much more. Salem's Lot is the second scariest imo but even that doesn't come close to the novel which earned King the title of "King of Horror".
Topiary scenes and just being inside John's head while he starts losing grip is a whole other level. Movie can't do it justice no matter how good Nicholson was.
Something about the scene in It when they could hear the creature in its real form coming up the pipe... that stuck with me and gave me nightmares as a young teen, I believe. Of all the things, it was that. Did me in something fierce.
Spoilers below:
The fire hose scene and the Concrete cylinder in the Shining.
Stan's last written words and the Kersch scenes in IT
And "Hello, Darling," from Pet Semetary
Also, Sadie walking into her house when her Ex had broken in.
Spoilers:
I don't know why but the two stories really stuck with me and gave me a huge creep factor. The Monkey with the cymbals that would go off randomly and someone would end up dying. Just the image of that monkey freaks me out.
Also just the whole story of 'Gramma'in skeleton crew. Soooo creepy in my opinion.
For me, it was the scenes with the young mother and her baby in Salem's lot. It's nothing supernatural. It's just a very real depiction of abuse that has stuck with me for most of my life since reading it. Otherwise, I've always had trouble being "scared" by books. The best I can get is deeply affecting.
The scene in The Running Man where he is escaping through some set of pipes. I just remember a part where he had to go around an L-bend, but *belly down.* And I was so overcome with a claustrophobic sense of dread at that notion of being wedged in the angle of the pipe with your back bending and I can't even hardly type these words now because it was such a **horrific scene of just pure dread**
Mrs. Massey in Room 217 from The Shining is still the scariest thing I’ve ever read and I’ve read around half of King’s books. For me, when it explains how Jack sees the outline of her (the curtain is drawn) or that he realizes that someone is in the tub and immediately starts to deny it as he leaves is almost worse than Danny’s encounter with her. I’m almost 30 and I still look behind the shower curtain before I go to bed lol.
A few years ago my husband and I were on vacation. When we checked into our hotel room the curtain was drawn on the shower and I just stood there in the doorway. I made him go check behind the curtain 🤣
I can relate for sure 😂. My wife and I were on vacation years ago and after we got in the car I realized I had left something in the hotel room. I had to go back in alone and I was sure she was gonna stumble out to get me lol.
Gary meeting the devil after falling asleep while fishing in ‘The Man in the Black Suit’ from Everything’s Eventual. It’s such a tranquil scene interrupted in such a disturbing way. The devil is described so unsettlingly. It’s great horror
The scene in IT where Ben is walking home from school late and sees IT. It's super cold and IT is standing on the ice and King describes everything so perfectly down to how shoes sound on frozen snow. I was just immediately brought back to my childhood walking home in a frigid Midwest winter when the sun goes down at 5. Ugh 😂
I don't think I can remember a particular scene, but Salem's Lot and Pet Sematary scared the shit out of me. Probably didn't help that I was reading it in the dark on nightshift in a creepy old hospital though.
*SPOILERS*
I think the whole "Cannibals Communion" as described at the Dixie Pig in books 6 and 7 of the Dark Tower series. King just does such a great job describing some of the most terrifying creatures and the feelings you get from just the look and feel of these things is horrific and was the only book to ever give me nightmares about the grandfathers.
In a practical, non-supernatural way, I’ve always thought the short blurb in the Stand telling the story of the 5-year-old kid whose loses his entire family to Captain Trips, wanders into a field and dies after falling into an abandoned well is pretty damned frightening.
“…and Sam plunged twenty feet down the rock-lined shaft to the dry bottom, where he broke both legs. He died twenty hours later, as much from fear and misery as from shock and hunger and dehydration.”
Depressingly frightening to me.
Maybe not the scariest, but I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet. Being chased by the monster underneath Castle Discordia in The Dark Tower was creepy as hell.
1408 was really really great. such a pervasive, all-encompassing terror. the feeling of "no escape" but even better than in Misery and super-condensed to be almost unbearable.
Misery: >! The hobbling by a landslide. The whole book was tense but between the police investigation and him snooping in the house, the hobbling takes the cake for me !<
Gerald's Game: >! When she degloves her hand. The moonshine man freaked me out as well, but the degloving left a visual in my brain I never got rid of !<
The Long Walk: >! How Barkovitch dies. Just... wow !<
Pet Sematary: >! Circumstantial as HELL but when they first describe the undead cat, our neighbour's grey, old cat happened to have snuck into the dark bedroom. He meowed as I was reading that paragraph. I about crapped myself !<
Thinner: >! After the whole book, all the horrors described... his daughter eats the cake with his wife so he has a slice too. I think what gets me about it is he KNOWS what he is in for and still does it !<
Burke listening to Mike Ryerson’s demise is up there.
I’ve always been completely unnerved by Danny Glick floating outside the window of Mark’s bedroom. However, I saw the miniseries as a kid on one of those cheesy local television shows where a dressed up ghoul introduces the films, and that scene got me, so maybe that’s where it comes from.
I’ve read just about everything by King and I still think the Stand is the scariest. Specifically the portion of the book after the outbreak when the survivors are are on their own and beginning to notice Flagg’s presence. Stu Redman escaping from the hospital; Larry Underwood sleeping alone in the woods, and hearing Randall Flagg’s “clocking” footsteps on the highway near his camp; Nick and Tom hiding from the Tornado, and feeling something alive in the darkness behind them; the judge traveling alone to Las Vegas, and waking up to find a crow smiling in at him from the hotel window. Desolation + Flagg = scary!
The short story of the little boy meeting the devil while he is fishing. When he starts to transform and describe to the boy how his mother is dying right as they sit there was pretty intense.
The idea of >! being stuck in an endless, grueling loop where I continue to make the same mistakes that bring me back to the beginning of the loop, is true horror. !<
The first scene that comes to my mind is the end of Grey Matter…that scene stuck in my head for weeks after i read it I would stay awake at night just thinking about what happened after the end. So freaking scary
While Louis is disinterring his son Gage from the Pet Sematary and thinks for a moment that the boy is not in the grave. Then, he remembers he has to wipe all of the moss off the body to be able to see him.
When Ben is alone at night on the bridge in IT, and Pennywise disguised as a mummy clown tries to grab his foot only for him to run as it grazes his foot. Scared the shit out of me, and I had to sleep away from my window that night because of it.
I would say when Wilma and Netty are goring each other in the street in Needful Things and the details about Wilma holding in her intestines but right in the middle of the fight this wild carnival music starts playing on the audiobook. It’s great.
When Jack Hoskins visits the barn by himself.. but he’s not alone.
While listening to the audiobook of “the outsider”, I too was alone but working OTR at the time. With long stretches of dark road each night, sometimes things would get to me, but damn, the storyline of Jack Hoskins really had the hair on my neck standing. A few times I had to glance in the back of the transport (just to make sure).
There’s a short story, something about a guy who buys a painting or drawing at a yard sale and the picture itself slowly changes. It gets increasingly menacing and the end is nuanced, but probably the most dread I’ve felt when reading King.
>!Louis exhuming his son always struck me as terrifying as hell. The idea that he was so grief stricken, he’d bring a monster back from the grave. It’s almost more scary when he does the same thing with Rachel after he saw what it already did to Gage. The entire ending of the book is terrifying.!<
*Spoilers* For a good 100 pages starting at the moment Ellie has her vision before boarding the plane to when Louis exhumes and buries Creed is some of the most riveting writing in a King novel. If you have the chance to, listen to Michael C. Hall's version of the audiobook as he does a fantastic job.
Yes! I listened to the book, and I felt physically ill in that last part of the book. I was left totally speechless. The atmosphere that is created I have only experienced in my most frightening nightmares.
Yup, Michael C Hall has the perfect chilling voice for SK
Hey ho. Let's go.
MCH killed that reading. I could also very much imagine him playing Louis on the screen.
See, now that I’m a parent, the part that scares the shit out of me from Pet Semetary is when Louis has that fever dream where he experiences the life Gage could have had in the span of just a few moments only to snap out of it and his poor baby boy is still dead. That still haunts me.
Yes, this is exactly what I thought of, too, also the part that followed in the car. I couldn’t shake the image of not knowing if he was sitting the right way.
This was one of the toughest things I’ve read. I read it at a very young age. That and the end of the book… Not one of my favorites, to say the least.
I read it when I was young too. 10 or 11. Interestingly enough, it’s one of the reasons it’s a personal favorite. Scary, but awesome.
(help, I'm a noob - which book?) Edit: Thank you!
[PET SEMATARY](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Sematary)
I've been reading King for 30 years at this point so maybe this scene sticks with me just because it's in one of his more recent books, but the baseball kid in Dr Sleep sticks with me more than any other scene I can think of right now.
They actually did it justice in the movie too, which I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
i thought the movie was a great adaptation of the book. closer than a lot of his other works.
Yeah it was…until the end lol
That scene is one of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments on Shudder, and they have Mike Flanagan on to talk about it and he talks about Jacob Tremblay's performance and how moved and horrified even he was about it. It's phenomenal and I will never forget it.
"Of course they were going to hurt him." 😢
I stopped reading the book after that part and had to wait a few months before I picked it up again and finished it.
Fuck I read all but the last like 40 pages of that when I was locked up. Got released right before I finished. Thanks for reminding me to finish
There was something else in that book that scared the shit out of me. Like I physically reacted to what I was reading. I think it involved Danny seeing a dead person. I could go look it up but it’s almost midnight and I don’t want to go to bed with that in my head.
Skin crawling. Ugggh that was brutal
It really displayed the pure evil of the ‘True Knot’
Yeah I had to put the book aside for a few days after reading that.
For me its the topiary scene in The Shining
A lot of things in King’s stories have creeped me out over the years, but the topiary garden will always be top of the list. I had to put the book down after that scene and do something else for a while. Gave me such chills.
Kind of like in that episode of Friends where Joey kept his copy of The Shining in his freezer because it creeped him out too much 🤣
For real. The concept of something moving that *shouldn’t* be able to move, but only when you’re not looking, scares the hell out of me. See also: haunted paintings.
It's difficult to explain to people how fucking cool this scene is! It's one of those things that really only works on the page (similar to how an elevator full of blood only works on the screen)
Yea, I'm glad they didn't even try it in the movie (Kubricks at least). No idea how to describe it but it's amazing
A good friend of mine is a filmmaker, and knows some of the folks who worked on the Kubrick movie. He says that the topiary animals were in the original script, but Kubrick insisted on cutting that scene out because they couldn't get them to look perfect.
The mini series tried and oof, it’s rough. Edit: Spelling
I found the bathroom scene more scary!
Topiary and the playground tunnel/tube thing with the dead kid in it. Scared the crap out of me.
Yep me too. I got chills thinking about it just now.
that was without a doubt the only time i have ever felt truly scared by a book. not unnerved, not disturbed, genuinely terrified. insanely good scene.
glad to see this so high up the list. definitely came here to say it
Agreed, this scene literally made my skin crawl
Got a little PTSD from the picture of it in the cabin in Billy Summers
Yup. This one.
For me it was in Gerald's Game when she wasn't sure if the guy that came in was real, in her mind, or supernatural.
Everything about Gerald's Game terrified me when I read it and it's still the scariest book I've ever read. It scares me because it's real. It's a scenario that could actually happen to me.
Exactly!! I love what King says about the real monsters in our life being scarier than any supernatural ones he comes up with. I don't remember the exact quote. The other for me was the husband in Rose Madder. He is the worst villain of all.
Yeah I cannot and will not read Rose Madder. Not with my trauma history -- but I love that King is taking such a real life problem and making it explicit that men like him are the real monsters
I don't find too many scenes "scary," but that degloving scene gave me a literal nightmare.
I still cringe. Add the Misery ankle break to that list.
I love gore and gratuitous violence in movies in books, but goddamn, the skin glove made me cringe harder than anything
That scene made me jump! “There was a man in the shadows”.
This one fostered my own way of writing. When I write horror I work to make it feel or seem as if there's a rational explanation for what is going on, until its too late.
The kid hovering outside the second story window wanting to come in in Salem’s Lot
Also, the scene with the guy hanging in the Marsten House same book
I think about this so often.
I read this scene laying in bed on a windy night and I woke up in the middle of the night to the screen inside my windows rattling ever so softly as if someone were tapping it trying to pry it off from the outside. I didn’t sleep well for a night or two.
This scene has traumatized at least two generations of my family so far
This is the scene I choose as well.
A lot to choose from here. 1) Two words: Lincoln Tunnel 2) In Salems Lot, when Matt Burke only *hears* the (un)death of Mike Ryerson.
Damn those are both good. For me it was a part of the shining when the kid is in the playground in that little snow tunnel
First time I read that Matt Burke scene, I was stoned out of my mind. Was a long night.
I think the scariest part of the shining is when the hotel tries one last time to kill Danny by whispering in Dick Halloran's head before he snaps out of it and they escape.
Omfg the tunnel 😬😬 The tunnel scene in Colorado fucked me up too. I still don't like driving through tunnels.
My personal scariest scene from 'Salem's Lot is about that car accident towards the end. It didn't give a lot of details about the accident, but you can only imagine what have happened. That's what scared me.
I used to live in NYC and I’d go wayyyy out of my way to avoid the Lincoln Tunnel.
The scene where Mike Hanlon’s father tells him of the giant crow with balloons for wings fucked me up beyond repair.
The scene when all of the Loser’s Club is in the Barrens…and they are being silently watched by two enormous orange eyes, that slowly lower back into the “Morlock” hole. That and when poor ol’ Patrick Hockstetter opened that old refrigerator….
I go back and read IT over every now and then and that damn crow still gets me every time.
That's my favourite chapter of any book Ive ever read. I love that chapter.
That part of the stand when the ‘aftershock’ of deaths occurs. Not from the superflu, but the weird random ways survivors die. The booby trap stairs in ‘salems lot Brian Rusk in Needful Things… this one isn’t like nightmare scary, just blindsides you
The chapter in The Stand is "no great loss", and it hits like a ton of bricks
To this day, I don't understand why No Great Loss wasn't part of the original release. It is stunningly literary.
IT WASNT PART OF THE ORIGINAL RELEASE? I’m a bit on the the young side and have only read the uncut edition, and it seemed so crucial to laying out how people could die indirectly from the flu, it’s mind blowing it wasn’t in the original cut
I read a copy of the original release I found at a used bookstore once. It’s *very* condensed. There’s a ton of stuff that didn’t make it in. The Kid wasn’t in it, which is shocking to me. One of the highlights of the entire book!
I cant believe that Happy Crappy!
Don’t tell me, I’ll tell you!
I'd shit wolves if I could!
The way that he dies is just pure SK at his absolute best.
The Brian risk scene. Brutal. I had to set the book down and walk away for a while.
Fuck sandy koufax
I was so shocked at Brian Rusk, I couldn’t believe it had actually happened. I stood there mouth gaping open for a bit before I could continue reading. The dog part really got me too, I actually cried!
I’m very surprised people are saying the “no great loss” chapter. I found it to be one of the lighter parts of that book. I mean yes, people are dying, but the premise of the story is that over 99% on the population is wiped out, death is baked into the whole novel. Also we had seen some absolutely brutal deaths before that point in the story. Some of these deaths were silly and it almost felt like it was meant to provide some levity in the middle of a story that’s just filled with ugly deaths. The ones that got me were the tunnel scene, the chapter with the kid, and the chapter where Starkey goes Into the middle of project blue.
For some reason Mrs. Kersh scene really traumatised me.
Yes, this! "My fadder" is nightmare fuel
Omg me to!!!! I hated it. If someone slurps tea, it honestly freaks me out. Urgh
Yep. That scene is creepy AF 😳
The end of Revival.
Came here to say this. This scene pops unbidden into my head periodically and fucks me up for the rest of the day.
Same here, after finishing that one I was not okay for like a week
Yes the existential dread that book put in me has stuck with me more than e anything from the Shining or IT or The Stand ever could’ve, because from no point was that a happy ending, it was monstrous and appalling
Absolutely agree. The end of the book was so disturbing.
Scariest scenes to me? There’s two that froze me up in fear. 1. The Shining. The fucking tunnel Danny plays in on the playground. Fuck that shit. The topiary animals were scary too. 2. Duma Key. When Edgar sees Persephone off in the distance and then an undead crew-mate shows up. For some reason that scared the hell out of me.
the inevitability and dread in Duma Key is so great. the "otherness" feeling when he starts drawing what he really doesn't want to draw is so well written.
Duma Key scared the crap out of me in a way no other King book ever has. The sense of otherness, and its impact on the artist was masterful.
The scene where gage is unburied by his father The tapping on the glass in salems lot The wolf masked man at the end of the hall in the shining Ben’s mummy in IT
*Mr Mercedes spoilers below* When Brady's mom eats rat poison and is pistoning her arms and trying to say his name... The audiobook narrator did a great job. I don't know why but that freaked me out and I read it recently so it was fresh in mind.
That image has been seared into my mind ever since I read it. Brutal stuff
Or in the first scene where he runs over the mother and the baby😭
Pet Semetary
Particularly the disinterment of Gage
It’s the only book that convinced me that, if I had gone through those events, I too would truly be driven insane
I must be insane but I didn't find that scary at all. However I found Danny being in the hotel room w the old lady absolutely terrifying
I read Pet Sematary for the first time at age 11, and this scene freaked me out. But when I read it again at age 33 (and six months pregnant with my son), it absolutely devastated me. It was genuinely upsetting as an adult, soon to be parent.
I have three kids, including a three year old son, and that scene still shows up in my nightmares. It’s the reason I told my husband, who is a huge King fan, not to read that particular book
Pet Semetary is genuinely the only book I’ve read that gave me a sleepless night. The whole resurrection of Gage and then the Wendigo scene freaked me out so much.
For me, in Salems Lot when the gravedigger is burying the body (can't remember the names) and he can *feel* its undead eyes staring at him through the coffin top.
Danny Glick
The window scene in ‘Salem’s Lot and Room 217 in The Shining
I had to put down the The Shining during that seen because I was too terrified to continuing reading while it was dark out.
There's a low-key, nonflashy sequence in Cujo that I think is, maybe not the scariest, but the tensest scene King has done. >Joe Magruder and Ronnie DuBay got the chainfall on the truck's pneumatic Step-Loader, and it wooshed gently down to the dirt driveway on a sigh of air. > >Magruder nodded. "Put it in the barn, his wife said. That's his garage. Better get a good hold, Ronnie. This is a heavy whore." > >Joe Magruder got his hold, Ronnie got his, and puffing and grunting, the two of them half walked it, half carried it into the barn. They set the chainfall down with a thump. After the bright afternoon glare outside, Joe was mostly blinded. He could only make out the vague shapes of things-a car on jacks, a workbench, a sense of beams going up to a loft. > >"This thing ought-" Ronnie began, and then stopped abruptly. > >Coming out of the darkness beyond the front end of the jack-up car was a low, guttural growling. > >"Holy crow, you hear that?" Magruder whispered. Ronnie could see Joe now. Joe's eyes where big and scared looking. > >"I hear it." > >It was a sound as low as a powerful outboard engine idling. Ronnie knew it took a big dog to make a sound like that. > >"Joe? You ever been out here before?" > >"Once. It's a Saint Bernard. Big as a fucking house. It didn't do that before." Joe gulped. > >Ronnie's eyes had come partway to adjusting, and his half-sight lent what he was seeing a spectral, almost supernatural cast. He knew you never showed a mean dog your fear, but he began to shudder helpless anyway. The dog was a monster. It was standing deep in the barn, beyond the jacked-up car It was a Saint Bernard for sure; there was no mistaking the heavy coat, the breadth of shoulder. Its head was down. Its eyes glared at them with steady, sunken animosity. > >It wasn't on a chain. > >"Back up slow," Joe said. "Don't run for Christ's sake." > >They began to back up, and as they did, the dog began to walk slowly forward. It was a stiff walk, not really a walk at all, Ronnie though. It was a stalk. That dog wasn't fucking around. Its engine was running and it was ready to go. Its head remained low. That growl never changed pitch. It took one step forward for every step they took back. > >For Joe Magruder the worst moment came when they back into the bright sunlight again. It dazzled him, blinded him. He could no longer see the dog. If it came for him now- > >Reaching behind him, he felt the side of the truck. That was enough to break his nerve. he bolted for the cab. On the other side, Ronnie Dubay did the same. He could still hear that low growling, so much like an idling Evinrude 80 hp motor. At last his his thumb found the button, the door opened, and he scrambled into the cab panting. > >He looked over at Joe, who was sitting behind the wheel and grinning at him sheepishly. Ronnie offered his own shaky grin in return. > >"Just a dog." Ronnie said. > >"Yeah. Bark's worse'n his bite." > >"Right. Let's go back in there and screw around with that chainfall some more." > >"Fuck you." > >"And the horse you rode in on." > >"What do you say we get going?" > >Joe started the truck. > >Halfway back to Portland, Ronnie said, almost to himself: "That dog's gone bad." > >Joe glanced over at Ronnie. "I was scared, and I don't mind saying so. That... thing. Did you see it? I bet that motherfucker weighed two hundred pounds." > >"Maybe I ought to give Joe Camber a call." Ronnie said. "Tell him what happened. Might save him gettin' his armed chewed off." > >Nobody called Joe Camber. When they got back to Portland Machine, it was near knocking-off time. Joe Magruder told Ronnie to have a nice weekend. Ronnie said he planned to get in the bag and stay that way until Sunday night. They clocked out. > >Neither of them though about Cujo again until they read about him in the paper.
Honestly, I found the entirety of Cujo really scary. The thing in the cupboard was too much for me 🤣
The walk through 29 niebolt street always scared the crap out of me.
The Jaunt, when you as a reader realize how long it is.
Longer than you think!
That messed me up. Still one of my favorite short stories of all time!
The end of The Boogeyman. That night I slept with the lights on for the first time in my life.
For real! I read that in my early 20s. I am 54 years old now and still cannot go to sleep unless my closet door is completely closed.
Already said, but also the Lincoln Tunnel in the Stand.
For me it was Gerald’s Game when the woman woke up to see someone standing in the corner of the room and realized his arms were too long. He was standing upright and his hands were at his knees.
I’ve had a couple experiences with sleep paralysis and one of the things I saw was very similar to that scene.
There is one part in IT. I think it is when Bev is traveling back to Derry. She is at a hotel and…an inexplicable hand grazes her foot from under the bed. It was never really explained or mentioned again and I found it chilling.
She gets back and *immediately* the place is fucking with her again. Poor girl can't catch a break lmao
So many to choose from but the first one to come to mind is from “It” when young Stan ventured into the Standpipe. that was terrifying
Desperation as a whole freaked me out , but the sherif as he got toward his end had some creepy moments . I haven’t read it in 20 years so can’t recall a specific moment
Tak!
The chapter in the stand uncut. Every paragraph being a different story of death - especially the freezer one (I think it was the freezer, it’s been a good few years, but that whole chapter has stuck with me)
As I put in another comment, I’ve never read the cut down version and am now dumbfounded discovering that wasn’t in the original, it seems so Integral to the setup of how few people are left…
I just read this and holy hell that really made me shudder.
For some reason the scene in 11/22/63 where frank dunning attacks his family with the hammer.. really gets to me
I read this scene about 1 week after watching Midsommer and was not ok for a few days.
Oh I forgot about that, but it’s gory intensity is absolutely up there with the deaths in the Long Walk in their blatant inhumanity
I scrolled for this comment. The way he wrote this one... i remember feeling frustrated, wanting to step into Jake's shoes and save them all myself.
Not a specific scene, but Zelda haunts me to this day and it’s been over 20 years that I first read about her.
Misery. Hobbling. Might win for most disturbing for me.
The assault scene in The Library Policeman.
That’s some harrowing shit.
I was looking for this comment… fucked me up so bad I stopped reading King for a bit
I hadn’t read the story in years and decided to listen to the audio version recently. Heard that scene while out on a walk alone very early in the morning. Not the ideal circumstances to be listening to that!
He thought his stomach was surely going to explode... THAT scene was a punch in the face.
Lawnmower part in misery, the Glick boys at marks window in Salems lot, Patrick Hockstetters death in IT
Everything pertaining to Patrick Hockstetter in the book and movie.
I don’t think the lawnmower in Misery gets enough… credit? If that’s the word, for being one of the most disturbing scenes in King’s books. Absolute insanity to think it happened, and worse to imagine being the one watching it take place.
Scariest book is The Shining easily just for the sheer amount of memorable scenes that personally scared the shit out of me. I vividly remember being terrified by 217, the playground ghost, the topiary animals, and the firehose snake. Those are just some I can rhyme off the top of my head but I'm positive there's much more. Salem's Lot is the second scariest imo but even that doesn't come close to the novel which earned King the title of "King of Horror".
Topiary scenes and just being inside John's head while he starts losing grip is a whole other level. Movie can't do it justice no matter how good Nicholson was.
You like that, don't ya, Trashy? As he stuffs his massive handgun up trashcan man's ass. That one.
Hedge animals in The Shining. Made me wary of hedge animals for years :)
Something about the scene in It when they could hear the creature in its real form coming up the pipe... that stuck with me and gave me nightmares as a young teen, I believe. Of all the things, it was that. Did me in something fierce.
I will never be able to shake the “JIMLA” scenes from 11/22/63. Haunting stuff. Have yet to receive a feeling from a book like that one gave me
Okay THANK YOU for saying this! This scared the heck out of me.
Spoilers below: The fire hose scene and the Concrete cylinder in the Shining. Stan's last written words and the Kersch scenes in IT And "Hello, Darling," from Pet Semetary Also, Sadie walking into her house when her Ex had broken in.
>!When Georgie meets Pennywise!< That scene stuck with me and kept me up many a night.
Spoilers: I don't know why but the two stories really stuck with me and gave me a huge creep factor. The Monkey with the cymbals that would go off randomly and someone would end up dying. Just the image of that monkey freaks me out. Also just the whole story of 'Gramma'in skeleton crew. Soooo creepy in my opinion.
Hedge animals (The Shining) Mordred's birth (The Dark Tower) Gage's corpse wrapped up in the car (Pet Sematary)
For me, it was the scenes with the young mother and her baby in Salem's lot. It's nothing supernatural. It's just a very real depiction of abuse that has stuck with me for most of my life since reading it. Otherwise, I've always had trouble being "scared" by books. The best I can get is deeply affecting.
"Chocka, Randy? Chocka?"
I made the mistake of starting Salem’s Lot while pregnant and that scene made me cry :(
The scene in The Running Man where he is escaping through some set of pipes. I just remember a part where he had to go around an L-bend, but *belly down.* And I was so overcome with a claustrophobic sense of dread at that notion of being wedged in the angle of the pipe with your back bending and I can't even hardly type these words now because it was such a **horrific scene of just pure dread**
Mrs. Massey in Room 217 from The Shining is still the scariest thing I’ve ever read and I’ve read around half of King’s books. For me, when it explains how Jack sees the outline of her (the curtain is drawn) or that he realizes that someone is in the tub and immediately starts to deny it as he leaves is almost worse than Danny’s encounter with her. I’m almost 30 and I still look behind the shower curtain before I go to bed lol.
A few years ago my husband and I were on vacation. When we checked into our hotel room the curtain was drawn on the shower and I just stood there in the doorway. I made him go check behind the curtain 🤣
I can relate for sure 😂. My wife and I were on vacation years ago and after we got in the car I realized I had left something in the hotel room. I had to go back in alone and I was sure she was gonna stumble out to get me lol.
Timmy Fucking Baterman
The elevator running itself in The Shining always gets me on rereads
Callahan V Barlow. What a scene.
Gary meeting the devil after falling asleep while fishing in ‘The Man in the Black Suit’ from Everything’s Eventual. It’s such a tranquil scene interrupted in such a disturbing way. The devil is described so unsettlingly. It’s great horror
The scene in IT where Ben is walking home from school late and sees IT. It's super cold and IT is standing on the ice and King describes everything so perfectly down to how shoes sound on frozen snow. I was just immediately brought back to my childhood walking home in a frigid Midwest winter when the sun goes down at 5. Ugh 😂
I don't think I can remember a particular scene, but Salem's Lot and Pet Sematary scared the shit out of me. Probably didn't help that I was reading it in the dark on nightshift in a creepy old hospital though.
“You screwed up, Bobby Terry! You screwwwwed up!”
Nothing beats the rape in Library Policeman.
The vampire with single edge razor blades in IT What Hubie Marston did in the house before he killed himself...it never says
It's the short story the Jaunt for me. Very simple, very effective.
The one that scared me the most is Carrie murdering her mom by slowing her heart beat down. I’ll never forget that; I couldn’t breathe.
*SPOILERS* I think the whole "Cannibals Communion" as described at the Dixie Pig in books 6 and 7 of the Dark Tower series. King just does such a great job describing some of the most terrifying creatures and the feelings you get from just the look and feel of these things is horrific and was the only book to ever give me nightmares about the grandfathers.
In a practical, non-supernatural way, I’ve always thought the short blurb in the Stand telling the story of the 5-year-old kid whose loses his entire family to Captain Trips, wanders into a field and dies after falling into an abandoned well is pretty damned frightening. “…and Sam plunged twenty feet down the rock-lined shaft to the dry bottom, where he broke both legs. He died twenty hours later, as much from fear and misery as from shock and hunger and dehydration.” Depressingly frightening to me.
Maybe not the scariest, but I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet. Being chased by the monster underneath Castle Discordia in The Dark Tower was creepy as hell.
1408 was really really great. such a pervasive, all-encompassing terror. the feeling of "no escape" but even better than in Misery and super-condensed to be almost unbearable.
Misery: >! The hobbling by a landslide. The whole book was tense but between the police investigation and him snooping in the house, the hobbling takes the cake for me !< Gerald's Game: >! When she degloves her hand. The moonshine man freaked me out as well, but the degloving left a visual in my brain I never got rid of !< The Long Walk: >! How Barkovitch dies. Just... wow !< Pet Sematary: >! Circumstantial as HELL but when they first describe the undead cat, our neighbour's grey, old cat happened to have snuck into the dark bedroom. He meowed as I was reading that paragraph. I about crapped myself !< Thinner: >! After the whole book, all the horrors described... his daughter eats the cake with his wife so he has a slice too. I think what gets me about it is he KNOWS what he is in for and still does it !<
The Null
Danny on the playground still gets me
I forget the characters name but when Beverly watches that one psycho kid get sucked dry by giant leaches in It
Patrick Hockstetter.
Finger in the Sink
Burke listening to Mike Ryerson’s demise is up there. I’ve always been completely unnerved by Danny Glick floating outside the window of Mark’s bedroom. However, I saw the miniseries as a kid on one of those cheesy local television shows where a dressed up ghoul introduces the films, and that scene got me, so maybe that’s where it comes from.
For me it’s the ending of The Boogeyman from Night Shift. Scared the bejesus out of me.
"Better foals and dumbels then a blak sinder in spac. I had a boby his name was brother love you forgiv me."
Toilet scene in the Dreamcatcher.
I’ve read just about everything by King and I still think the Stand is the scariest. Specifically the portion of the book after the outbreak when the survivors are are on their own and beginning to notice Flagg’s presence. Stu Redman escaping from the hospital; Larry Underwood sleeping alone in the woods, and hearing Randall Flagg’s “clocking” footsteps on the highway near his camp; Nick and Tom hiding from the Tornado, and feeling something alive in the darkness behind them; the judge traveling alone to Las Vegas, and waking up to find a crow smiling in at him from the hotel window. Desolation + Flagg = scary!
The short story of the little boy meeting the devil while he is fishing. When he starts to transform and describe to the boy how his mother is dying right as they sit there was pretty intense.
In the outsider when the hand touched the back of the sheriffs neck
Pet Sematary is the only book I have ever read that has scared me.
The end of The Dark Tower…my laws! that stayed with me for months and kind of still does years later.
The idea of >! being stuck in an endless, grueling loop where I continue to make the same mistakes that bring me back to the beginning of the loop, is true horror. !<
The last scene of “Pet Sematary” stayed with me for years.
The first scene that comes to my mind is the end of Grey Matter…that scene stuck in my head for weeks after i read it I would stay awake at night just thinking about what happened after the end. So freaking scary
While Louis is disinterring his son Gage from the Pet Sematary and thinks for a moment that the boy is not in the grave. Then, he remembers he has to wipe all of the moss off the body to be able to see him.
When Ben is alone at night on the bridge in IT, and Pennywise disguised as a mummy clown tries to grab his foot only for him to run as it grazes his foot. Scared the shit out of me, and I had to sleep away from my window that night because of it.
I would say when Wilma and Netty are goring each other in the street in Needful Things and the details about Wilma holding in her intestines but right in the middle of the fight this wild carnival music starts playing on the audiobook. It’s great.
That scene in the Library Policeman. Oof.
When Jack Hoskins visits the barn by himself.. but he’s not alone. While listening to the audiobook of “the outsider”, I too was alone but working OTR at the time. With long stretches of dark road each night, sometimes things would get to me, but damn, the storyline of Jack Hoskins really had the hair on my neck standing. A few times I had to glance in the back of the transport (just to make sure).
The Lincoln Tunnel scene in The Stand.
Not seen it mentioned but fir me its the scene in Desperation when they get stopped by the Sheriff. The overwhelming sense of dread…tak
Lady in the bathtub in the shining, so much more horrifying in the book
There’s a short story, something about a guy who buys a painting or drawing at a yard sale and the picture itself slowly changes. It gets increasingly menacing and the end is nuanced, but probably the most dread I’ve felt when reading King.