"There bain't been no 'ouse there for FORTY YEAR...."

Or are you all too AFEARD to answer?

One thing that frightened me a lot was an episode of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. There was this haunted house with this really scarey picture in it of the guy who used to live there, only it turned out that it was all some kind of scooby doo esque hoax being perpetrated for no obvious reason.

But then at the end the Hardy Boys drove past the house while a storm raged, and one of them said "still, it is a bit creepy, isn't it?" or somesuch, and they got a bit spooked and drove away. And then the camera cut to the inside of the house WHERE THE DEAD GUY FROM THE PICTURE WAS STANDING THERE LAUGHING EVILLY.

I was afraid to open my eyes while in bed that night for fear he'd be in my room.

Yeah, The Hardy Boyz and all Wrestling matches scare me.

I remember being freaked out by quite a lot of things when I was five or so, though I was inured to violence after watching heaps of trash arnie films with my brother. Some highlights were: The Day of the Triffids, Dr Who(?!?!) Warlock, the poison ants episode of MacGyver, as well as some of the victorian ghost stories I used to read. This was not abject terror, but more a pleasant thrill. Why do people enjoy being frightened?

Blair Witch scared the fuck out of me. I literally stayed up the entire night after seeing it. As far as fiction, I'm surprised I can't think of anything considering the shelves full of Clive Barker and Stephen King I have at home. That all seemed more entertaining to me then scary. In fifth grade my best friend and I were obsessed with the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Enough so that we grew our nails out and would often scratch them against the chalkboard for our classmates enjoyment.

Hp Lovecrafts "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". My brother gave me the book when I was 14 or something and the end of that one is really eerie and disturbing. I was having nightmares for weeks.

I know it's obvious, but Poe's Raven poem. Especially the Simpsons version.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth roXor! read it here .

anyone who's ever taken the bus to sligo will feel a chill of recognition.

The Blair Witch Project was weedy rubbish, not nearly as good as CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, hem hem.

As a kid, An American Werewolf In London scared me witless, mainly that transformation scene. Goddamned werewolves still induce fear in me. I have to tread very carefully at night during full moons.

By an amazing coincidence, the one telly prog that scared the bejAYsus out of me i've stumbled on again in the last couple o weeks. i was teeny, so i'm fully expecting it to be a bit weedy. twas "The Changes" a BBC kids drama thing. One of the few things I remember having full on nightmares and not wanting to go back to sleep for fear of more. my tenner is in the post to a very nice man...

Last night in London was werewolf scary; full(ish) moon, winds blowing wispy clouds across the sky and a little chill in the air. i quickened my step walking to the tube.

DG - clever comparison between 'Blair Witch Project' and 'Cannibal Holocaust', but the latter is DISGUSTING rather than scary...

'Psycho', 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre', 'The Shining', 'Last House on the Left' and especially 'Suspiria' all gave me the willies the first time I saw 'em. And I also find certain silent movies - not necessarily 'horror' ones - inexplicably spooky.

Has no-one except Mark and Ronan ever read a frightening book??

I've been on the bus to Sligo. I also spent a weekend in Boyle, Roscommon. If you're not from Ireland and you havent heard of these places it's because they were secret government projects gone wrong.

well i found Foucault's Pendulum a bit scary at one point - frightened even. actually scary/horror books never really scare me. i did go through the usual goth phase of reading poe/lovecraft/barker. barker's books of blood were probably the scariest.

From the ages of 10-17 I read about every horror novel going: King, Barker, Ann Rice, Lovecraft, Poe, etc.

The thing is, I was very entertained by them but none of them ever actually scared me. I would often wish for more horror, blood, death, etc. I don't know exactly why this is so.

However, even the lamest and poorly crafted horror movie can scare me if there's a lot of blood and violence in it. To this day I will cover my eyes during the "scary parts" so I don't get too traumatized. Which is pathetic, I know.

I think Lovecraft is too good to be classed as just horror. His books are literary genius and the english language truly is his bitch to use as he pleases. So what I'm saying is you all should be reading "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" right now.

hanle y as god scares the shit outta me, as does the thought of a celine dion tour.

Oh yeah, obviously there's a world of difference between, say, Steven King and H.P. Lovecraft. But both of them do tend to get lumped into the "horror" or "suspense" genres although Lovecraft produced finer novels than a lot of his peers. Writers always seem to get ghetto- ized into genres if they're not writing about middle class despair or summat.

H.P Lovecraft is high camp, not horror

for a true spine chilling yarn, try "The Boats of the Glen Carrig" by William Hope Hodgson

an online version can be found at: http://eserver.org/fiction/glen-carrig/

Nightmare On Elm Street scared me for ages after I saw it. It never occured to me that even if Kruger was real, my parents wouldn't have been in the gang who killed him so I was safe anyway. At least that's what I tell myself.

One, two, Freddy's coming for you...

Andrew L - true, but I look at it as Cannibal Holocaust = supposed to be horrible and is horrible, Blair Witch = supposed to be scary and frankly isn't.

The scariest thinkg in my childhood was the air condition and heating unit in my closet. As if the noises weren't enough, every night when the air switched on, it would pull the closet door open a centimeter or so. I'd stare at the partial opening until I could make out a face.

The Shining spooked me. Which was the movie with the two children being shotgunned in their beds? That fucked me up as well.

I read pretty much evey Stephen King book up through _Gerald's Game_ (aka _That Boring Piece Of Dross That Almost Made Me Give Up Reading Altogether_) and the only ones that I can remember actually being SCARY were _The Stand_, _It_, and _Salem's Lot_. The others were entertaining, but not frightening, and some of them weren't even entertaining (_The Tommyknockers_, _The Dead Zone_, and especially _Pet Sematary_, a novel which trumpets cockfarmery to the distant hills).

Blimey, I always thought 'Pet Cemetary' was King's best book - the nearest he ever got to genuine kinky necro-madness. 'Tommyknockers' is v. v. bad, tho (I haven't read anything by him since that one.) Also remember 'Needful Things' as being a bit lame - real SK-by- numbers stuff - and have never found any of his bks actually that scary (ok The Shining, a bit.)

The only scene in _Pet Sematary_ that works is the meltdown at the funeral. It's the only part of the book that seems genuine. The rest of it is asinine plot leaps designed to lumber towards poorly- executed good idea of having a psychotic child killer come back from the dead. _It_ is much more effective at simply scaring the pants off you.

We could have fun making the list of King books which would be great if they had an ending, starting with _The Dark Half_...

Hmm...I have answers, but they're mostly one-off short stories from anthologies by authors whose names I don't know. I hate having to be caught in meetings and only offering short answers while they're plotting on-line scheduling, bah. Therefore I hate you all for talking and will hunt all of you down and kill you! SCARY! If untrue.

When I was a child, I saw the TV commercial for "Suspiria" and it scared me out of my mind. I never thought I could get it, or the name of the film being whispered, out of my head. When I saw it for the second time, I ran out of the room.

Almost 20 years later, and it was long forgotten... I was watching the film on video, completely impressed, amazed, its a brillian film, and then after it's over, the bonus is the TV ad, which has footage shot for the ad, i.e. not in the film. When I saw that, remembered it from my childhood, and realized it was the ad for the film I just saw, I almost shit. The most insane recovered memory of my life.

When I was about 11 my parents let me watch Hitchcock's "The Birds" against their better judgement, and it freaked me out about birds for years.

I used to read a lot of H P Lovecraft but I think I gree with whoever it was (sorry I have forgotten already) who said it was High Camp. Its enjoyable rather than frightening. Has any one read any alastair (sp) Crowley? thats a cheap laugh, as I found Dunsany to be. Its hard to think of a really seriously scary novel, I think I found them all too late. The existence of Barbara Cartland novels scares me though, is that horrifying enough?

When I was about eight (?) the girl across the street gave me one of her lurid teen horror novels that I read a chapter of every day and then complained because i coulnd't sleep. My grandmother said, "Stop reading it!" and I said "But I like it!"

A couple of years later I read every ghost story I could get my hands on with great relish and couldn't sleep then either.

And to top off the list of how easily frightened I am, I watched Trainspotting a couple of months ago and laid in bed paralyzed with fear every night for about a week worrying about dead babies crawling across the ceiling. Last Saturday I was babysitting and kept worrying about the one-year-old because of the movie (he was still alive when I left, thank goodness).

The Silence of the Lambs (movie) really frightened me. The part where Clarice is in the house with no lights on and he has the nightvision glasses on, so he can see her but she can't see him.

The fear has stayed with me. The colour processing room has to pitch black, not even safelights. I can't work in there late at night by myself without getting skeered. What if someone GRABS ME?