Can't Sleep, Annie Wilkes Will Get Me

[JoitheArtist]

I'd been slowly working my way through Stephen King's novel, Misery. It was disturbing, but not particularly scary, so I decided to finish it up last night around midnight.

That was a very, VERY bad idea. Spent the next two and a half hours jumping at noises in my room.

*shudder*

[Andara Bledin]

King's the only author who's ever managed to creep me out.

^-.-^

[Lyse]

I've found that many of his novels have a direct link between how scary it is and how late/dark it is. 😳

[JoitheArtist]

I've found that many of his novels have a direct link between how scary it is and how late/dark it is. 😳

It wasn't scary up until Paul tried to kill Annie, and she WOULDN'T DIE. That's when it got scary.

[iradney]

Oh MAN, that book freaks me out. FREAKS ME OUT! That and IT have given me sleepless nights...

[sms001]

I don't watch many horror films 'cause my 'suspension of disbelief' is kinda high, and many of them aren't very good w/o the scare factor. Same seems to hold true w/ most of the novels in the genre (admittedly very few).
But King has certainly got it. Actually had to put one down WAY before I was sleepy one night, a little too late in hindsight, 'cause it was giving me the heebie-jeebies. And for weeks after "The Stand" I'd get skittish going outside on my graveyard shift when I'd hear movement in the alley: "ack! Walkin' Dude! Get inside, shut door!!!"
Guess there's a reason he's sold a book or two.

[AnaKhouri]

I'm not a Stephen King fan really, but I have a bad habit of watching scary things when my husband is not home. Once he was gone on a weekend conference and I watched the infamous episode of "Ghostwatch" which I KNEW was a hoax and was still too scared to sleep all weekend. Another time I watched a documentary about the Mothman (and it was less about the stories than about how folklore spreads and how the Mothman tale was influenced by local folktales) and was up all night with the lights on. "Can't sleep. Mothman'll get me."

Yeah, I like spooky stuff but am sometimes not real bright about it.

[Quillsilver]

Yeah...I learned last week that reading It and watching "Walking Dead" were not good choices when you have to walk home from work late at night..and you have an overactive imagination.

[firecat88]

I love ghost shows. Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Celebrity Ghost Stories, I've seen 'em all. However, when I watch them, there are certain questions I need to ask myself first:

1) Is it still light outside or at least early enough that I won't be bothering sleeping people with having all the lights in the room on?

2) For that matter, am I the only one awake/home?

3) Is it early enough that, after the show's over, I can unwind and settle my nerves with an hour or two of cartoons/games/stuff-on-YouTube before going to bed?

Basically, I don't watch these shows late at night. The only exception ever has been the Ghost Hunters live investigations on Halloween. For which I shall happily stay up late to watch them in my room....provided that my bedroom light stays on and I have the laptop so I can chat with people.

As far as books, though, the absolute creepiest book I've ever read continues to be Kathryn Reiss' Time Windows. At the same time, though, it's been one of my favorite not-part-of-a-series-and-not-medieval-fantasy books since middle school.

[JoitheArtist]

When Doctor Who series 4 was airing, I watched each episode as soon as the lovely folks in England uploaded it, which usually ended up being around midnight my time. This worked fine...

...until the episode "Silence in the Library."

I made the mistake of watching that episode alone, at midnight, in my room. My room was covered with bookshelves and curtains; i.e., my room was nothing but books and moving shadows.

I slept with the lights on that night.

[firecat88]

...until the episode "Silence in the Library."

Geh!!!! Even with all the lights on in the house and/or in broad daylight, that episode makes me twitch. Hatehatehatehatehate the Vashta Nerada. @_@ Give me Daleks, Cybermen, or Weeping Angels any day.

[depechemodefan]

I've read a lot of Stephen King but can't think of a time I got nigthmares.

I hate seeing skeletons, esp. skulls. If I's watching PBS and they have a program on mummies or human evolution and they show a skull I hide behind my hands. I don't even like fake skeletons.

Though I have no problem watching Bones.

When I was young (maybe 4?) I was watching Doctor Zhivago. IN the beginning of the movie, they buried his mother. After they go back inside the house, young Zhivago looks out the window into the cemetary, and the camera cuts into the coffin of his mother. She isn't moving but I start thinking, "what if she was buried alive?" and I started imagining that and thus had nightmares.

[AmbrosiaWriter]

Ehhh, I'm not really a King fan because of his proclivity for "twist" endings. With entirely obnoxious or pure attempt at "shock factor" twists. Or just does the same flavor or twist across several of his stories.

For me, King is one of those writers where if you've read a couple of his books you have all the stage pieces he uses for the rest of them.

[Eireann]

I find King's work acceptable, but I'm not the fan I used to be, or anywhere near it. I agree with the remark about the stage pieces.

Early in his career, though (and, oddly enough, when he had that massive drug problem), he scared the hell out of me, and still does. "The Boogeyman" is horrible, especially if, like me, you were afraid to look at your closet at night. The Shining, though clearly a retelling of Shirley Jackson's classic novel The Haunting of Hill House, was also one big scary book.

Fredric Brown wrote one of the finest horror stories I've ever read; it's called "Don't Look behind You", and after I read it - on a summer's day, well before sundown - I became acutely aware that I was sitting with my back to an open window. I put the book down carefully, tried not to look out the window, walked through the living room where other family members were placidly watching TV, went outside, and stood in the middle of the street, where I could see all around me.

Yes, it was that scary.

[telecom_goddess]

I haven't read Misery, and don't plan to cause the movie was disturbing enough

However I have read Carrie and own the original film. I used to have his short stories written under the Richard Bachman name but they disturbed me so much I had to get rid of them. I tried read The Stand once and it depressed me so I stopped.

He is talented as hell as a writer, horror or comedy. But he rambles too much in my opinion.

I don't think he's alive anymore, but Thomas Tryon wrote a great book called The Other. And of course William Peter Blatty is the genius that gave us the Exorcist