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/lit/ - Literature

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6549119 No.6549119 [Reply] [Original]

I'm wondering if any of you have actually read a piece of literature that made you truly feel "fear".

I've always thought that this particular emotion is something of a weakness in the field of writing. I've never come across something that actually scared people, as in making them want to take a break to calm down.
If you have encountered a really good example of "scary" writing (which let's face it is usually even associated with cheap writing) I'd like you to share.

>> No.6550712
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6550712

I legitimately think that The Thing on the Doorstep is one of the most terrifying pieces of writing I have ever read.

It perfectly communicates its subject matter and those who think it's Lovecraft's weakest are delusional.

>> No.6550866

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

>> No.6550927
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6550927

>>6549119
Does /lit like creepy pastas?

I've read some (just a few, most of them are complete garbage) that make me feel kinda uncomfortable

>> No.6551185

>>6550927
I was thinking about this same thing yesterday? There are no creepypastas that take the medium up a level. The only really eerie ones... are pastes of Lovecraft.

>> No.6551225

Anything by Stephen King. =^)

>> No.6551234
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6551234

>>6549119
When I was around nine or ten I read several Stephen King novels and they were pretty scary then. Not so much now.

I think of Poe, but that's more of a suspense thing.
I think of Lovecraft, but his stuff isn't exactly scary; more like something immense looming.

That one scene in The Road in the basement put some fear or terror in me. Came out of nowhere.

>> No.6551237

Invasion of the Body Snatchers spooked me something fierce when I was in middle school.

>> No.6551238

>>6550927
Some of those scare me. I read them alone at night, and I live in the woods.

>> No.6551241

>>6549119
The times when I'm most scared reading are when I read of an opinion or an action I could not fathom a human actually having. People blaming welfare babies becoming hoodlums and that we need to shoot them before they start rioting again. Fathers raping their children. I don't have anger towards these things, I have fear.

I think fear is too much focused on the victim, at least in a story telling sense. If we follow the killer, and we don't sympathize with him, that can be very very frightening. Make the victim faceless, like a sheep for slaughter, and we paint ourselves in that role.

>> No.6551280

>>6551241
you should read some works by the
Marquis de Sade, that'll spook ya real good.

>> No.6551301

>>6549119
House of Leaves. It is not perfect or even very good. But, man, it really did bring back that feeling of being a kid and just wanting to believe in a ghost story so I would get scared. Some points would legitimately make me feel uneasy and consider looking around me and away from the book. I mean it is about a house so it starts to make you wonder if you look at your room and then look at it again if itll look different the second time.

>>6551234
That scene in The Road was definitely decent. It really made me want to scream "get out" to the man and the child.

A Turn of the Screw is also pretty good. It definitely didn't scare me, but compared to the two mentioned above, it made me feel uneasy while at the same time having just better writing. I mean the fucking thing starts with a bunch of people sitting around a fire telling ghost stories. So nice.

I haven't read these, but I'd consider Blood Meridian, The Haunting of Hill House, and anything by Poe and Lovecraft

>> No.6551385
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6551385

Related, what are the best ghost stories? Are there any works of the Western Canon that can be considered ghost stories besides Hamlet?

>> No.6552669
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6552669

>>6551385
The short-stories of M(ontague) R(hodes) James.
Easily the most patrician 'genre-fiction' in English.

He was a Mediaevalist/Classicist/Biblical-scholar and both a museum-director and college provost at Cambridge in the 1890's... so his work is steeped in the very best authentic antiquarian detail.

His work is broadly similar to Lovecraft in that most of the protagonists are a stand-in for the author - an emotionally reticent, unmarried antiquarian - but the comparison ends there. James' prose is more subtle (not hard to do, lol), his uncanny phenomena less squamous-and-squelching and more humanly malevolent, and the scope decidedly personal rather than cosmic. Lovecraft praises him to the skies in 'Supernatural Horror in Literature'.

If you're looking for 'horror' in form of visceral and psychic unease, James' definitely isn't it, but his ghost-stories are still great fun. Mostly conceived of as after-dinner/holiday entertainment, they're calculated to excite and unsettle rather than scare, and the careful attention to historical/contextual detail that underlies his plots (Danish episcopal-chronicles, Romano-British curse-tablets, the Bloody Assizes, Talmud, the Eleusinian Mysteries...) adds hugely to the enjoyment.

He's available public-domain and in Penguin (multiple volumes), but my personal choice is the c.2013 Oxford World's Classics edition: all in a single volume with good critical apparatus.

If the above hasn't convinced /lit/...
>greeks
Start with "Lost Hearts" and "O, whistle and I'll come to you, my lad".
Hellenistic/Roman mystery-cults are 2spooky.