Scaring the kids

I was about to post a query about which books frightened you when you were a child and I found this group.
Can I join in?
oldstick.

Of course oldstick, the more the merrier :)

Was pretty disturbed by The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop. The threat of execution hanging over their heads seemed very real to me as a five-year-old. What a relief when they were pardoned! Didn't stop me liking the book and it's still a favourite.

Yes Momma, that was a creepy one! Also, I found Millions of Cats a bit disturbing. Later I found the stories in the SBS Book Strangely Enough! very scary.

As an older child I discovered those old 70s mass market anthologies, called things like The Pan Book of Horror, as I loved a good scare.

I was about 8 when my dad introduced me to The Monkey's Paw - probably one of the scariest short stories for any age. Not sure it was written with 8 year olds in mind but it may be to blame for having given me a taste for horror ever since.

I always found the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books by Alvin Schwartz to be very disturbing. The stories were weird but the illustrations were the most harrowing feature of those books.

>6 Booksloth::
I used to read a lot of old ghost story anthologies between 8-13 years and they are terrifying at that age.

>7 CurrLee33::
Just read it - the illustrations really do make the book, I found it quite creepy. I would have been sleeping with the light on for a week had I read it as a kid!

Dr. Suess creeped out me and millions of others, with What Was I Scared of? You all know, the one where the pair of pants is encountered on a lonely trail in the dark of night. It is found in Six By Suess.

re: Suess and the scary pants
This story did not come out until I was an adult but I still found it frightening. Only Suess with his totally off the wall innovative look at the world could make a pair of pants be scary!

My favorite Suess story!

I love the horror that is present in so many children's books - Roald Dahl's stories are great examples of this, as are the tales of the Grimm brothers and many traditional folk stories. I remember very clearly the occasion when our infants' school teacher read us Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and one little girl cried so much she was sick and her mother had to be called to the school to take her home. Later on that same year I can't remember if we had a supply teacher or our normal teacher had just forgotten the incident but the story was read again. The teacher couldn't undrestand why we seemed to be ignoring her and staring at little Rosemary in the corner but eventually a cheer went up as the poor girl turned white and started to urge.

Bookwise - The Pit and the Pendulum but that was when I was a teenager. I went into the library and asked for a horror story and the librarian gave me a book about concentration camps!
As a child I loved being scared by stories, but enjoyed it even more when our father had finished reading Treasure Island and I could lean over from the top bunk and tell my younger sister that the pirates were coming for her!
oldstick.

If I ever have children, I'm going to read to them from The Tunnel by Russell Edson. Whimsical little prose poems that are very, very weird.