Books That Scared the Hell Out of Me When I Was a Kid



For some reason, I encountered this book long before I discovered its prequel Tales to Tremble By. And I was always more impressed by this book than I was by its prequel. Perhaps because it was one of the first book of horror stories that I ever owned.

The first story in the book -- H. Russell Wakefield's "The Red Lodge" -- scared the hell out of me and even today there are times when I remember certain images from that story in my dreams. Especially the scene when the narrator keeps fighting this urge to get up and look out the window, an urge he dare not give in to lest he'd gaze upon something so hideous that my words can't really do it justice.

I was also scared by the book's other stories such as Percival Landon's "Thurnley Abbey", William Hope Hodgson's "A Voice in the Night" and August Derleth's "The Extra Passenger." For that matter, this book also marked my first exposure to champion ghost story writer M.R. James but alas, I was too young to appreciate it.



Another book I remember from my youth. It was not quite as scary as More Tales to Tremble By but it had its moments. Plus, it gave me my first exposure to the short stories of Robert Bloch -- the author of Psycho -- as well as my first look at William Hope Hodgson's character Carnacki the Ghost Finder.



For some reason, I was a sucker for anything associated with the actor Boris Karloff. I used to stay up late and watch monster movies -- a habit I inherited from my older cousins -- and of course, Boris Karloff often played a key part in such movies. It didn't hurt that he also narrated one of my favorite anthology series Thriller -- no, not the Michael Jackson version. Thriller wasn't always as scary as it should be -- but it had more than its share of genuinely scary episodes. And I like to think the series holds up better than more recent anthology shows like Tales from the Darkside. But then I'm biased.

Anyway, the book itself was very eerie. They eventually published a sequel called More Tales of the Frightened, but for some reason, I didn't care for that book as much as the first.