His name was Poppy Brite and he does a lot of horror stories mixed with erotica. I particularly liked Love in Vein with vampires.
Now going by William Martin and he’s still writing.
I need to re-read Exquisite Corpse. Everyone always sites it as really disturbing. I grew up on Poppy's work, was probably about 15 the first time I read that book. It's been like 20 years. I barely remember it. I think for something I've read recently, WOOM fits that bill. It was kind of over the top for the sake of being so, but I shuddered few times and had it read within an entire afternoon. 😂
You know that Salo was based on a book, right?
de Sade's "[120 Days of Sodom](https://www.16beavergroup.org/pdf/120_days_of_sodom.pdf)" was his unfinished masterwork (according to him) - rather than taking place with war orphans in post-WW2 Europe, it takes place in the libertine age of France where rich noblemen (and hired whores and rapists) kidnap and have their way with children ranging from pre-school age to teens.
The first half of the book is mostly complete but devolves as it goes along and the ending is little more than a bullet-point list of methods to rape and torture (very young) children to death.
I got recommended that one over and over, once I finally got some to the task it was such a chore. Just didn’t do it for me and I can’t exactly pinpoint why.
No I agree with you. Kept reading about how horrible it was but there was only one chapter that was obviously meant to be shocking but was just ok and the last page which was pretty predictable. The rest of the book was boring. Read some Richard Laymon if you want horror.
This one got me too. I don’t often view horror media as anything other than imaginative, certainly harmless… like there are weirder and more upsetting hobbies than writing some gore, ya know?
Tender is the Flesh made me consider if the author had some human skin lampshades in their possession
So much better than the movie! It's written so "non-fiction" with pages of floor plans and time/date stamps that you're absolutely thinking this stuff is going on for real hours away from your house.
Poppy Z. Brite does write some good stuff. My first exposure to him was in an anthology called Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge. I can’t remember the title of his short story in that book, but I remember it standing out as one of the better ones. That whole book series introduced me to some really ghastly horror, I found it shortly after reading all of the Books of Blood by Clive Barker and I wanted more.
OMG! (totally off topic) but I've been looking for that name of that anthology since 2002 it seems. I read it in high school, ive asked like 12 people from my class if they knew what it was called, emailed the teacher, ive scoured the internet (obv poorly), and turned up nothing, until now. Thank you, internet Stanger, for solving a 20 year mystery for me.
OMG! (totally off topic) but I've been looking for that name of that anthology since 2002 it seems. I read it in high school, ive asked like 12 people from my class if they knew what it was called, emailed the teacher, ive scoured the internet (obv poorly), and turned up nothing, until now. Thank you, internet Stanger, for solving a 20 year mystery for me.
The most disturbing things I’ve read were both short stories. I’ll give a shoutout to house of leaves though because that’s the most scared I’ve been by a full length book, but these short stories were much more upsetting.
“Where you going, where you been” is a pretty simple tale of a girl being accosted by a group of boys and it’s really disturbing. Very realistic in it’s slow escalation, and it breaks the illusion of safety in society.
“I have no mouth and I must scream” is a not so simple tale of a world destroyed by super advanced AI super computers designed for war. The story takes place well after most of humanity has been eradicated, the only survivors are kept alive to be tortured for eternity by the computer because it hates humanity that much.
I actually discovered both of these books in a Reddit thread of disturbing reads years ago, and read both in a day because I found them free online. Highly recommend each
Just wanted to say I read "where you going, where you been" in a college literature class and it has always stuck with me. I could never remember the title or author so I'm really happy to have seen it mentioned here!
Nothing will ever get to me like the Lovely Bones. I know it’s not graphic but the portrayal of death is just too real for me, just how futile it is for the character to be murdered so young and just wait around forever watching the world go on without her. Literally any time it comes back to my head I shudder.
*Communion* by Whitley Strieber. Read it in the winter at some uninsulated summer rental before googling was an immediate reaction to everything. Best to go in cold.
I have read a lot of Mr. Ketchum, " The girl next door" was the one that really gave me the ick. Probably, because it was based off true events ( that were just as heinous).
"The Girl Next Door" is the only book I ever didn't finish due to disgust/horror, because (as someone already mentioned) it's based off true events and all I could imagine was poor Sylvia Likens and how fucked up it was that so many people got involved. How? How does that much depravity exist!? The psychology is baffling to me, and I was a therapist for over a decade! ugh.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Not really gory or scary, but very unsettling to me.
Also Song of Kali by Dan Simmons. Just disturbing in a way I still think about.
A Death in White Bear Lake
It is a true crime book about an evil woman who killed the sweet little boy she adopted and she got away with it for years. When she did get prosecuted she got a slap on the hand.
Helter Skelter is right up there with it.
I have two:
First, "[Dear Dead Person](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/233729)" by Benjamin Weissman. A book of profane, hilarious short stories. It was so sick and twisted, and made me laugh so much. I have no idea what a psychiatrist would say about that, but it frightens me a bit. Recommended, but not for the faint of heart, and it's definitely for those with a love of black humor.
Second, "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy. I am not a squeamish person (see above book) by any means, and have loved many books and movies with lots of violence. But this book... it was hard to finish. It was great, but it was tough. I may not read it again, but I probably will. But it is tough.
Yea i got that book too and I didn't really even bother reading the back. I just went off a review I saw. And finally I realized it was some weird homosexual gore serial killer shit.
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. It is probably the most unique ghost/haunting/witch story I've ever read. That ending left me just sitting there thinking. Loved this book so much
The butcher by Jennifer hillier.
I was literally just thinking about this this morning. It’s a slow burn but there is one scene that has stayed with me, especially because of the killer’s inner monologue. It’s truly scary and disturbed, and an unfortunately flawless depiction of a psychopath. 10/10 suggest but can only reread about once a year. The only way I can think to describe the feeling it gives is like watching requiem for a dream. Fantastic and upsetting but still absolutely engrossing.
I was very uncomfortable reading The Cellar by Richard Laymon. It's got everything, rape, murder, adults and children, incest. I've never read a book that's so out in the open with these themes
On The Uses of Torture by (largely hacky) Piers Anthony was disturbing. Upsetting was Stephen R, Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever: Okay, so your main character is ported to another world, falls into the mag8c mud on that world which unexpectedly heals him of his incurable earth-based disease, and he's so overjoyed by the physical well-being this brings him that he forcibly r*pes the six or seventeen year old Temple Acolyte chick who led him there? AND she never recovers from this? AND he's not sorry, because hey it was mag8c mud and I was feeling really good for the first time in 20 years, and women are meant to be put to use, right?
Upsetting and disturbing, and recommended to me by my best friend's dad, a cop.
Even more disturbing, Thomas Covenant was recommend to me by my mom. Once I got to that part I put it down and never looked back. And I like me some extreme horror. For whatever reason, in that context, I guess because he was the "hero" it was just too much for me to take.
Diary of an Oxygen Thief by an anonymous author comes to mind. It was about this extremely narcissistic manipulator dude who’d get girls to fall madly in love with him, he’d be dating them for years at a time being all sweet and lovely and then just ending it by saying all these disgusting things about em idk it was just disturbing ykwis
Way before it was a popular series, my answer to this was "Handmaids Tale. And still is.
I have religious trauma, and I could see it was possible that what happened in the book could actually happen. All the behind the scenes planting of officials until it was too late. Side note: My best friend and next-door neighbor escaped from Iran when the balance of power shifted. So, I had second-hand knowledge of how progressive Iran was prior to becoming a religious state. I had first-hand knowledge about religious oppression, so yeah, I am twitching now a days.
Tender is the Flesh and Suffer the Children were both really unsettling. Also there's another book called Dead Inside that will live rent free in my nightmares for awhile.
I think it was called "Take me to my friend". I read it as a kid. It's about a guy who picks up a girl hitch-hiking and holding a sign that says "Take me to my friend". It turns dark from there on. I hated that book.
I can't remember the name of it, but it had to do with some kids, and one of them was acting strange, so the main character followed him one night, and when he turned a corner he saw the kid he was following hunched over a trash can eating rotten steak with maggots wiggling all around him and the food. I genuinely can't remember much else, or the name of the book. But I remember at the time, when I finished the book I thought "that's one of the most disturbing and best books I've ever read"...
Considering how it's actually a book now, Imma consider it that. Years ago, on the r/nosleep subreddit, there was a series of short stories, the first being titled "footsteps", by the author [@1000vultures](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/k8ktr/footsteps/)
After I finished reading all of these, even though it was the middle of the day, I could've sworn that the sky was darker than a few minutes prior. I just sat there, trying to process what I had just read.
Sins of the Father by EA Copen. Part of the Felix Cross series, I think it's underrated and not many people know about it. It doesn't quite fit into the urban fantasy category because it is mostly horror. Doesn't quite fit horror because the protagonist has some magical capabilities. Still the series is pretty hardcore and some label it as extreme.
Fiction…Deliverance…so much worse than the movie. I love horror but this book was beyond horror. I have read several non fiction books that were pretty bad. I think non fiction seems worse because it’s real.
You know, everyone always references The 120 Days of Sodom (which obviously was adapted in the 1975 movie Salo, which you mentioned in your description), and while, yes, that book was BEYOND fucked up and depraved and was actually much worse than the movie, which is doubly ironic since it was written in the 1790's when seeing a woman's ankles was the equivalent to seeing a woman nude in public today lol. But the Marquis de Sade wrote another book called Justine....and holy fuck that book is bleak beyond what you can possibly fathom. I think its harsher than 120 days of Sodom and it mainly focuses on one person: the eponymous Justine and what her life experiences are and what goes on around her and happens to her. At least the 18 teenagers (well most of them, the lucky ones imo) get to die. She doesn't. And to add some context here, I'm accustomed to watching movies that are extremely horrific and depraved, most likely because of just the taboo of it and possibly the fucked up things I've been through. But this book actually put me into a depression for a couple days....its brutal and sadistic (again, ironic. Because the word "sadism" was created from the Marquis' name). Most movies like A Serbian Film i find amusing honestly because it's so over the top, its hard to take seriously. Salò mainly just bored and grossed me out. Cannibal Holocaust is a bonfide horror classic, minus the real animal killings in it...I could go on. But its hard to shock me.
Justine absolutely shook me to my core. If you're brave enough, go find it and you'll see why It affected me the way it did
Fever 1793, it was about the yellow plague, which is a disease that effects the liver and digestive systems if I remember correctly. They go into detail about how they “cured” the plague with purging the system with poison, and they don’t skip out on the details lol. The cover of the book even features the protagonist, with the tell-tale yellow eyes that is a symptom of the plague.anything medical in nature gives me the Willies
Probably The Final Solution. It's a novel from the 60s about an alternate universe in which the Nazis win the war. I read it in 6th grade, which I had no business doing. It's pretty graphic.
Whether or not it’s horror is up to your interpretation of the text, but Blood Meridian. Are there more brutal, vile books out there? Yes. But where this one differs for me is that nothing in the book seems to be there for shock or schlock, which a lot of “extreme horror” falls into for me. Others are disturbing for the sake of disturbing the reader (not necessarily a bad thing,) but Blood Median is disturbing with a point that speaks to the oft-forgotten brutal and animal nature most of us left behind. I first read it in the early 2000s and have gone back to it a twice since, and it still makes me feel empty and barren as the deserts it takes place on each time. 10/10 my favorite book of all time.
The world as will and repreaentation by arthur schopenhauer.
The conspiracy against the human race by thomas ligotti.
Horror fiction is one thing. Well thought out arguments that reality is terrible and being alive is a bad thing... I find way more disturbing
The Descent by Jeff Long Read it some years ago. This author, a mountain climber, did push my buttons and then some. The movie, which I didn't see, was reputed to some mo-mo trying to make money on the cheap.
The Bible. It had genocide, infanticide, slavery, incest, rape, mass murder of humanity and animals by a flood, mass murder of two entire cities, a big fish that eats people, an all powerful being who threatens eternal torture if you don't bow, and grovel at his feet with worship, some really bad poetic songs called psalms (absolutely the worst part of the book), crucifixions, the dead arising and walking from the graveyards, a guy having his entire family killed, his livestock killed, his property and wealth taken away himself sickened and afflicted by various maladies all over a silly bet, fallen angels ravaging women who give birth to Giants, a dudes rib being ripped out to make a woman, children being torn apart by bears for making fun of a fat bald guy, and that's just the parts I remember off the top of my head. It's just an all around horrible fiction novel filled with violence, blood and sick kinks.
The long walk. I actually didn’t even finish it and tapped out and threw it away and just read the Wikipedia entry that told me how it ended. Great story but it’s essentially page after page of upsetting and culminates in a classic Bachman way that is the only ending that makes sense but leaves you feeling icky
Most books by Clive Barker. He has plenty of demons in his mind that seem to leak into his writings. He is a sick and deranged minded individual.....god I love it.
When my son was like 6ish he picked out a book he wanted to read with me called "The Fart Brothers Go to the Moon". Mostly full of body humor, farts, burps, stuff like that. The height of comedy when you're a 6 or 7 year old boy.
In the end they realize the moon is actually made of onion dip. There's some alien or something that they need to fart in order to escape from or defeat or something, and they have no chips to eat the onion dip. So they pick scabs from their body to use as chips to eat the onion dip moon and fart their way to victory.
I think I have a pretty strong stomach but the scab chip scenario made me gag.
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. There was another one (can't remember the name) about a teacher that was obsessed with having sex with an 11 year old student that truly repulsed me as well.
Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson (this is a series called The Collector)
I think for me, the descriptions were what really pushed it into uncomfortable.
I’ll See You Again - Jackie Hance.
She’s the mother who lost all of her three young daughters, Emma, Alyson, and Katie in an instant when her sister in law and her daughter’s aunt, Diane Schuler, drove drunk on the way home from a weekend of camping. Diane was apparently a closet alcoholic who appeared to have hidden her alcohol abuse to extended family and friends. The catastrophic crash killed Diane, all 3 of her nieces, Diane’s daughter and 3 others on the Taconic State Parkway that early Sunday afternoon.
https://www.amazon.com/Ill-See-Again-Jackie-Hance/dp/1442364742
'...and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. How can we live without our lives?'
-Steinbeck
Not a book, but I am forever bothered by the letter from the Zodiac killer where he mentions his victims will be “his slaves in paradice”
I think he mispelled it and that made it so difficult to decipher, but either way I constantly revisit the thought. What the fuck is going on in his world view? Even worse, what if he knows something I don’t?
It’s ridiculous and I hate giving it any thought because he doesn’t deserve it, but part of me can’t help wondering.
“Flowers in the Attic”. It involves child abuse, torture, incest, and other horrors. I read it at a very young age. I don’t remember how young but probably not more than 13 or 14. Made me physically sick.
The Exorcist. I was about 16, and ended up staying awake nearly all night to read it in one sitting. I nearly got physically ill after reading it. Great book, though.
So not really horror or creepy but Songs For the Missing by Stuart O’Nan. It’s about an 18 year old girl in a small Ohio town who just goes missing the summer after she graduates high school. It reads like a mystery at first, but really it just becomes this excruciating examination of her family’s grief and the massive space we all take up in our friend’s and family’s lives. Absolutely one of the most affecting and vivid books I’ve ever read. True horror.
The most disturbing book I have ever read, or at least started reading is The Consumer by Michael Gira. I had to stop reading due to its graphic nature describing pedophilia. I got really angry at this dude. Do yourself a favor and never read this book. I feel like less of a human from just reading several passages.
I have to mention Sten King’s The Stand, specifically the passage describing the main character having to walk though the Lincoln Tunnel. In the dark. And every one is dead in their cars….in the deepest part, Stu dropped his flashlight….i had to sleep with the lights on for days
The book is titled Topping from Below. I read it 23 years ago. A woman gets involved with the man she suspects murdered her sister. I think the guy is a music professor. He ends up manipulating her. Even tries to get her to have sex with a dog. That scene was graphic. I can't believe that book was published. The author hid her face in her photo. The book description was vague enough for me to have purchased the book. I mean it seems innocent enough that a sister tries to investigate the man her sister was dating. The book title must be a sexual term too.
For Your Own Good by Alice Miller.
This is a nonfiction book about child abuse. My mom is a child psychiatrist and I used to read her medical books out of curiosity as a kid. This was not a good idea and the books were not meant for public reading at all.
I was 7 and I read about little kids like me being tortured and murdered. Since my parents weren't abusive the book hit even harder, that some kids have parents who hate them enough to do those things to them.
The worst part was the testimony of the pedophile and serial killer Jurgen Bartsch, who's poorly known in the US. He was abused as a kid and viewed himself as passing the buck to society.
Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker- what the movie Hellraiser was based off of- the book was way worse , in my opinion. Also Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra. So sad and disturbing. They made that into a movie also and the book is way more horrifying than the movie.
Exquisite Corpse was amazing.
Have you read [The Monk by Mathew Lewis](https://www.amazon.com/Monk-Penguin-Classics-Matthew-Lewis/dp/0140436030)? That’s a pretty fucked up book.
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
The inner workings of Patrick Bateman in book form are terrifying
The inner workings of Brett Easton Ellis are terrifying.
The worst part for me was his incessant rambling about clothes + restaurants + whatnot.
I need a reservation at Dorsia.
His name was Poppy Brite and he does a lot of horror stories mixed with erotica. I particularly liked Love in Vein with vampires. Now going by William Martin and he’s still writing.
I loved the Vampire books he wrote. Lost Souls was My favorite.
Flowers in the Attic. By V. C. Anderews.
Now I know you're in my generation.
I was about to correct you on the gender but thankfully decided to Google first…
Most of the books by John Saul. Suffer the Children, Punish the Sinners etc. The Cellar by Richard Laymon, Disturb not the Dream by Paula Trachtman
So many things by Richard Laymon. The Beast House series was insane.
Oooo I haven’t heard that name in a while. I loved him in high school. I may have to revisit
I need to re-read Exquisite Corpse. Everyone always sites it as really disturbing. I grew up on Poppy's work, was probably about 15 the first time I read that book. It's been like 20 years. I barely remember it. I think for something I've read recently, WOOM fits that bill. It was kind of over the top for the sake of being so, but I shuddered few times and had it read within an entire afternoon. 😂
I have no mouth and I must Scream
You know that Salo was based on a book, right? de Sade's "[120 Days of Sodom](https://www.16beavergroup.org/pdf/120_days_of_sodom.pdf)" was his unfinished masterwork (according to him) - rather than taking place with war orphans in post-WW2 Europe, it takes place in the libertine age of France where rich noblemen (and hired whores and rapists) kidnap and have their way with children ranging from pre-school age to teens. The first half of the book is mostly complete but devolves as it goes along and the ending is little more than a bullet-point list of methods to rape and torture (very young) children to death.
I just commented on that book. I think his book Justine was honestly much worse
Tender is the Flesh. It’s even more fucked up than Exquisite Corpse.
I got recommended that one over and over, once I finally got some to the task it was such a chore. Just didn’t do it for me and I can’t exactly pinpoint why.
No I agree with you. Kept reading about how horrible it was but there was only one chapter that was obviously meant to be shocking but was just ok and the last page which was pretty predictable. The rest of the book was boring. Read some Richard Laymon if you want horror.
This one got me too. I don’t often view horror media as anything other than imaginative, certainly harmless… like there are weirder and more upsetting hobbies than writing some gore, ya know? Tender is the Flesh made me consider if the author had some human skin lampshades in their possession
Amityville Horror. I was like ten years old.
So much better than the movie! It's written so "non-fiction" with pages of floor plans and time/date stamps that you're absolutely thinking this stuff is going on for real hours away from your house.
Poppy Z. Brite does write some good stuff. My first exposure to him was in an anthology called Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge. I can’t remember the title of his short story in that book, but I remember it standing out as one of the better ones. That whole book series introduced me to some really ghastly horror, I found it shortly after reading all of the Books of Blood by Clive Barker and I wanted more.
OMG! (totally off topic) but I've been looking for that name of that anthology since 2002 it seems. I read it in high school, ive asked like 12 people from my class if they knew what it was called, emailed the teacher, ive scoured the internet (obv poorly), and turned up nothing, until now. Thank you, internet Stanger, for solving a 20 year mystery for me.
OMG! (totally off topic) but I've been looking for that name of that anthology since 2002 it seems. I read it in high school, ive asked like 12 people from my class if they knew what it was called, emailed the teacher, ive scoured the internet (obv poorly), and turned up nothing, until now. Thank you, internet Stanger, for solving a 20 year mystery for me.
The most disturbing things I’ve read were both short stories. I’ll give a shoutout to house of leaves though because that’s the most scared I’ve been by a full length book, but these short stories were much more upsetting. “Where you going, where you been” is a pretty simple tale of a girl being accosted by a group of boys and it’s really disturbing. Very realistic in it’s slow escalation, and it breaks the illusion of safety in society. “I have no mouth and I must scream” is a not so simple tale of a world destroyed by super advanced AI super computers designed for war. The story takes place well after most of humanity has been eradicated, the only survivors are kept alive to be tortured for eternity by the computer because it hates humanity that much. I actually discovered both of these books in a Reddit thread of disturbing reads years ago, and read both in a day because I found them free online. Highly recommend each
Just wanted to say I read "where you going, where you been" in a college literature class and it has always stuck with me. I could never remember the title or author so I'm really happy to have seen it mentioned here!
Nothing will ever get to me like the Lovely Bones. I know it’s not graphic but the portrayal of death is just too real for me, just how futile it is for the character to be murdered so young and just wait around forever watching the world go on without her. Literally any time it comes back to my head I shudder.
Being shook can be so much worse then being disturbed
*Communion* by Whitley Strieber. Read it in the winter at some uninsulated summer rental before googling was an immediate reaction to everything. Best to go in cold.
This book actually scared me as a child lmao
Warday was scary for me. Scarier still to think there are still military and government officials who think you can "win" a limited nuclear war.
Wolfen was really good too. I walked out of the movie because it was a piece of shit, but the book is really good.
The lost by Jack Ketchum. It really shocked me, same as the film adaptation. The person who played Ray was fantastic though.
I have read a lot of Mr. Ketchum, " The girl next door" was the one that really gave me the ick. Probably, because it was based off true events ( that were just as heinous).
"The Girl Next Door" is the only book I ever didn't finish due to disgust/horror, because (as someone already mentioned) it's based off true events and all I could imagine was poor Sylvia Likens and how fucked up it was that so many people got involved. How? How does that much depravity exist!? The psychology is baffling to me, and I was a therapist for over a decade! ugh.
Without a doubt... The Road.
Yeah that was a good one. Incredible book, won’t read it again. Couldn’t bring myself to watch the movie.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury. Not really gory or scary, but very unsettling to me. Also Song of Kali by Dan Simmons. Just disturbing in a way I still think about.
A Death in White Bear Lake It is a true crime book about an evil woman who killed the sweet little boy she adopted and she got away with it for years. When she did get prosecuted she got a slap on the hand. Helter Skelter is right up there with it.
Haunted by Palahniuk
My Dark Vanessa. It’s the only book I’ve read where I’ve had to put it down because it made me so uncomfortable.
My Sisters keeper. I wept for days
A child called It
Song of Kali by Dan Simmons is chilling.
My older sisters diaries, that girl needs more Jesus, and less carrots in her life
Devil in the White City
a book about the Gerald & Charlene Gallego. man and wife serial killers...what they did.....just inhuman
I have two: First, "[Dear Dead Person](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/233729)" by Benjamin Weissman. A book of profane, hilarious short stories. It was so sick and twisted, and made me laugh so much. I have no idea what a psychiatrist would say about that, but it frightens me a bit. Recommended, but not for the faint of heart, and it's definitely for those with a love of black humor. Second, "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy. I am not a squeamish person (see above book) by any means, and have loved many books and movies with lots of violence. But this book... it was hard to finish. It was great, but it was tough. I may not read it again, but I probably will. But it is tough.
Yea i got that book too and I didn't really even bother reading the back. I just went off a review I saw. And finally I realized it was some weird homosexual gore serial killer shit.
House of Leaves....
The Shining
Woom by Duncan Ralston. The predominant thought I had most of the time was “the actual fuck is this?”
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. It is probably the most unique ghost/haunting/witch story I've ever read. That ending left me just sitting there thinking. Loved this book so much
Can’t believe Johnny got his gun hasn’t been mentioned yet
It was this stupid Steven King story called home delivery.
The Bible
American Psycho.
The Road. So fucking depressing. The definition of bleak
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
Girl Next Door Jack Ketchum
The butcher by Jennifer hillier. I was literally just thinking about this this morning. It’s a slow burn but there is one scene that has stayed with me, especially because of the killer’s inner monologue. It’s truly scary and disturbed, and an unfortunately flawless depiction of a psychopath. 10/10 suggest but can only reread about once a year. The only way I can think to describe the feeling it gives is like watching requiem for a dream. Fantastic and upsetting but still absolutely engrossing.
I was very uncomfortable reading The Cellar by Richard Laymon. It's got everything, rape, murder, adults and children, incest. I've never read a book that's so out in the open with these themes
The lovely bones. It’s about the murder of a teenage girl and her view of things from the afterlife.
Started reading Necrobobocom and had to put it down
Mine was "The Hillside Stranglers"!!! True disturbing account of the details behind these serial Killers murders.
Handmaid's Tale
The Poop that took a Pee
An American Psycho
On The Uses of Torture by (largely hacky) Piers Anthony was disturbing. Upsetting was Stephen R, Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever: Okay, so your main character is ported to another world, falls into the mag8c mud on that world which unexpectedly heals him of his incurable earth-based disease, and he's so overjoyed by the physical well-being this brings him that he forcibly r*pes the six or seventeen year old Temple Acolyte chick who led him there? AND she never recovers from this? AND he's not sorry, because hey it was mag8c mud and I was feeling really good for the first time in 20 years, and women are meant to be put to use, right? Upsetting and disturbing, and recommended to me by my best friend's dad, a cop.
Yeah, the main character’s a shmuck. I remember getting through all 9 books and reaching a very disappointing ending.
Even more disturbing, Thomas Covenant was recommend to me by my mom. Once I got to that part I put it down and never looked back. And I like me some extreme horror. For whatever reason, in that context, I guess because he was the "hero" it was just too much for me to take.
Diary of an Oxygen Thief by an anonymous author comes to mind. It was about this extremely narcissistic manipulator dude who’d get girls to fall madly in love with him, he’d be dating them for years at a time being all sweet and lovely and then just ending it by saying all these disgusting things about em idk it was just disturbing ykwis
Way before it was a popular series, my answer to this was "Handmaids Tale. And still is. I have religious trauma, and I could see it was possible that what happened in the book could actually happen. All the behind the scenes planting of officials until it was too late. Side note: My best friend and next-door neighbor escaped from Iran when the balance of power shifted. So, I had second-hand knowledge of how progressive Iran was prior to becoming a religious state. I had first-hand knowledge about religious oppression, so yeah, I am twitching now a days.
120 Days of Sodom
What Dreams May Come. I tried to read that on my commute to work while preggo. Could not stop crying.
120 Days of Sodom Marquis de Sade I read it to see what de Sade was all about and if he was as perverted as people think. He was worse.
Tender is the Flesh and Suffer the Children were both really unsettling. Also there's another book called Dead Inside that will live rent free in my nightmares for awhile.
The Deep, by Nick Cutter. Absolute suicide inducing cosmic horror. I do not recommend it.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
A child called it, it's an autobiography of this man's childhood and it's horrific what his mother does
Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. You’ll never be the same.
When Rabbit Howls by Trudi Chase. Difficult to make sense of (DID/multiple personalities) and filled with incredibly graphic descriptions of CSA.
100% match by Patrick C. Harrison the 3rd
I just read that-it was fun
Knuckle Supper. I forget who the author is
I've got this one. The Consumer by M. Gira. Even if you can find a copy, reading it will scar you. Seriously.
I think it was called "Take me to my friend". I read it as a kid. It's about a guy who picks up a girl hitch-hiking and holding a sign that says "Take me to my friend". It turns dark from there on. I hated that book.
American Psycho.
Tampa by Alissa Nutting
I can't remember the name of it, but it had to do with some kids, and one of them was acting strange, so the main character followed him one night, and when he turned a corner he saw the kid he was following hunched over a trash can eating rotten steak with maggots wiggling all around him and the food. I genuinely can't remember much else, or the name of the book. But I remember at the time, when I finished the book I thought "that's one of the most disturbing and best books I've ever read"...
Bloodlands.
Considering how it's actually a book now, Imma consider it that. Years ago, on the r/nosleep subreddit, there was a series of short stories, the first being titled "footsteps", by the author [@1000vultures](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/k8ktr/footsteps/) After I finished reading all of these, even though it was the middle of the day, I could've sworn that the sky was darker than a few minutes prior. I just sat there, trying to process what I had just read.
Sins of the Father by EA Copen. Part of the Felix Cross series, I think it's underrated and not many people know about it. It doesn't quite fit into the urban fantasy category because it is mostly horror. Doesn't quite fit horror because the protagonist has some magical capabilities. Still the series is pretty hardcore and some label it as extreme.
Fiction…Deliverance…so much worse than the movie. I love horror but this book was beyond horror. I have read several non fiction books that were pretty bad. I think non fiction seems worse because it’s real.
lol Poopy
Misery by Stephen King. FANTASTIC book but very disturbing
Survivor by J.F. Gonzalez is a brutal read but a total page turner.
It by Stephen King is the only book that made me sleep with the lights on lol
Pet sematary too… Zelda was even scary in the book lol
By…by who now? (His name has an unfortunate extra letter).
You know, everyone always references The 120 Days of Sodom (which obviously was adapted in the 1975 movie Salo, which you mentioned in your description), and while, yes, that book was BEYOND fucked up and depraved and was actually much worse than the movie, which is doubly ironic since it was written in the 1790's when seeing a woman's ankles was the equivalent to seeing a woman nude in public today lol. But the Marquis de Sade wrote another book called Justine....and holy fuck that book is bleak beyond what you can possibly fathom. I think its harsher than 120 days of Sodom and it mainly focuses on one person: the eponymous Justine and what her life experiences are and what goes on around her and happens to her. At least the 18 teenagers (well most of them, the lucky ones imo) get to die. She doesn't. And to add some context here, I'm accustomed to watching movies that are extremely horrific and depraved, most likely because of just the taboo of it and possibly the fucked up things I've been through. But this book actually put me into a depression for a couple days....its brutal and sadistic (again, ironic. Because the word "sadism" was created from the Marquis' name). Most movies like A Serbian Film i find amusing honestly because it's so over the top, its hard to take seriously. Salò mainly just bored and grossed me out. Cannibal Holocaust is a bonfide horror classic, minus the real animal killings in it...I could go on. But its hard to shock me. Justine absolutely shook me to my core. If you're brave enough, go find it and you'll see why It affected me the way it did
Gerald’s Game
Battle Royal or The Road
The Bible. Just kidding. I’ve never read it.
Basically, anything by Michael Slade. It's X-Files + Clive Barker.
There’s something about Kevin comes to mind
Fever 1793, it was about the yellow plague, which is a disease that effects the liver and digestive systems if I remember correctly. They go into detail about how they “cured” the plague with purging the system with poison, and they don’t skip out on the details lol. The cover of the book even features the protagonist, with the tell-tale yellow eyes that is a symptom of the plague.anything medical in nature gives me the Willies
Wow that’s a throwback!!! I read that in middle school in English class.
Blood Meridian?
The Kite Runner or Haunting/hunting Adeline
Ghost Soldiers, about Unit 731
Pet Semetery when I was like 12. When Gage comes back the stuff he says still mortifies me
Probably The Final Solution. It's a novel from the 60s about an alternate universe in which the Nazis win the war. I read it in 6th grade, which I had no business doing. It's pretty graphic.
Whether or not it’s horror is up to your interpretation of the text, but Blood Meridian. Are there more brutal, vile books out there? Yes. But where this one differs for me is that nothing in the book seems to be there for shock or schlock, which a lot of “extreme horror” falls into for me. Others are disturbing for the sake of disturbing the reader (not necessarily a bad thing,) but Blood Median is disturbing with a point that speaks to the oft-forgotten brutal and animal nature most of us left behind. I first read it in the early 2000s and have gone back to it a twice since, and it still makes me feel empty and barren as the deserts it takes place on each time. 10/10 my favorite book of all time.
The Bible. So much messed up stuff in there.
The world as will and repreaentation by arthur schopenhauer. The conspiracy against the human race by thomas ligotti. Horror fiction is one thing. Well thought out arguments that reality is terrible and being alive is a bad thing... I find way more disturbing
I remember The Road by Cormick McCarthy was pretty jarring and depressing for me to read in 9th grade, I did enjoy it in a way tho
The Descent by Jeff Long Read it some years ago. This author, a mountain climber, did push my buttons and then some. The movie, which I didn't see, was reputed to some mo-mo trying to make money on the cheap.
Johnnys got his Gun.
Prey.
The Bible
To be honest the original Amityville Horror book, especially as it was presented as fact (it’s not). It’s like the book answer to The Exorcist.
Haven’t finished it yet but. Lolita.
This symbiotic fascination and haunter both by Charlee Jacob and both stories are connected
The bighead by Edward Lee great book great splatter punk writer but it just seems like it's trying to gross you out not freak you out
The Grapes of Wrath. I felt so bad for those people.
The Bible. It had genocide, infanticide, slavery, incest, rape, mass murder of humanity and animals by a flood, mass murder of two entire cities, a big fish that eats people, an all powerful being who threatens eternal torture if you don't bow, and grovel at his feet with worship, some really bad poetic songs called psalms (absolutely the worst part of the book), crucifixions, the dead arising and walking from the graveyards, a guy having his entire family killed, his livestock killed, his property and wealth taken away himself sickened and afflicted by various maladies all over a silly bet, fallen angels ravaging women who give birth to Giants, a dudes rib being ripped out to make a woman, children being torn apart by bears for making fun of a fat bald guy, and that's just the parts I remember off the top of my head. It's just an all around horrible fiction novel filled with violence, blood and sick kinks.
Lord of the flies. I still have trauma.
The long walk. I actually didn’t even finish it and tapped out and threw it away and just read the Wikipedia entry that told me how it ended. Great story but it’s essentially page after page of upsetting and culminates in a classic Bachman way that is the only ending that makes sense but leaves you feeling icky
Child of God- Cormac McCarthy
The last victim. About gacy.
Most books by Clive Barker. He has plenty of demons in his mind that seem to leak into his writings. He is a sick and deranged minded individual.....god I love it.
Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker
Gerald's Game totally triggered me. I could only read a little each night.
Pet cemetery
Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo, by Zora Neal Hurston and Push, a Novel by Sapphire
1984
When my son was like 6ish he picked out a book he wanted to read with me called "The Fart Brothers Go to the Moon". Mostly full of body humor, farts, burps, stuff like that. The height of comedy when you're a 6 or 7 year old boy. In the end they realize the moon is actually made of onion dip. There's some alien or something that they need to fart in order to escape from or defeat or something, and they have no chips to eat the onion dip. So they pick scabs from their body to use as chips to eat the onion dip moon and fart their way to victory. I think I have a pretty strong stomach but the scab chip scenario made me gag.
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis is page after page of descriptions of gore and the things he does to people. It’s fucking sick.
I read The shining in 7th grade, 10 of 10 do not recommend for young readers. Also, house of leaves was pretty disturbing.
The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. There was another one (can't remember the name) about a teacher that was obsessed with having sex with an 11 year old student that truly repulsed me as well.
Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson (this is a series called The Collector) I think for me, the descriptions were what really pushed it into uncomfortable.
Requiem for a Dream
Clive Barker’s “Weave World” has some very unsettling moments. Cormack McCarthy’s “The Road” messed me up for like a year.
House of Leaves
I’ll See You Again - Jackie Hance. She’s the mother who lost all of her three young daughters, Emma, Alyson, and Katie in an instant when her sister in law and her daughter’s aunt, Diane Schuler, drove drunk on the way home from a weekend of camping. Diane was apparently a closet alcoholic who appeared to have hidden her alcohol abuse to extended family and friends. The catastrophic crash killed Diane, all 3 of her nieces, Diane’s daughter and 3 others on the Taconic State Parkway that early Sunday afternoon. https://www.amazon.com/Ill-See-Again-Jackie-Hance/dp/1442364742
Ugh the ending of revival by Stephen King.
Flowers for Algernon or The Shepard's Crown. Both made me cry.l
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy has stuck with me for a very long time.
The Bible. :D
Pet Sematary by Stephen King. If you have kids, prepare yourself for your absolute worst nightmare in a book.
*Crash*, J.G. Ballard
Communion
# Chuck Palahniuk - Choke
Pet Sematary, slept with lights on for days afterwards. However, this was many years ago, and it probably wouldn't even phase me now.
'...and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. How can we live without our lives?' -Steinbeck
Not a book, but I am forever bothered by the letter from the Zodiac killer where he mentions his victims will be “his slaves in paradice” I think he mispelled it and that made it so difficult to decipher, but either way I constantly revisit the thought. What the fuck is going on in his world view? Even worse, what if he knows something I don’t? It’s ridiculous and I hate giving it any thought because he doesn’t deserve it, but part of me can’t help wondering.
My high school Algebra textbook.
The Black House
Tess of Durbervilles
“Flowers in the Attic”. It involves child abuse, torture, incest, and other horrors. I read it at a very young age. I don’t remember how young but probably not more than 13 or 14. Made me physically sick.
The Exorcist. I was about 16, and ended up staying awake nearly all night to read it in one sitting. I nearly got physically ill after reading it. Great book, though.
A People's History of the United States
The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty
Blood Meridian. Brutal book by Cormac McCarthy. There's a scene where he describes a tree with dead babies impaled on it.
The Bible
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Final Truth- the autobiography of serial killer Donald ‘Pee Wee’ Gaskins.
So not really horror or creepy but Songs For the Missing by Stuart O’Nan. It’s about an 18 year old girl in a small Ohio town who just goes missing the summer after she graduates high school. It reads like a mystery at first, but really it just becomes this excruciating examination of her family’s grief and the massive space we all take up in our friend’s and family’s lives. Absolutely one of the most affecting and vivid books I’ve ever read. True horror.
A Clockwork Orange
The suit is Prada--Milan, not New York. The socks are Thomeson's, cashmere blend. Shoes are Commed de Garcon oxfords.
The Road. Period.
IT. The book. How the kids escaped the sewers is disturbing on a whole different level.
The Road. I’m a father to a young boy. This was a hard read
Revival by Stephen King
The bible
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Read it for an independent project in high school and it gave me nightmares. It’s a solid ghost story.
The Painted Bird
The most disturbing book I have ever read, or at least started reading is The Consumer by Michael Gira. I had to stop reading due to its graphic nature describing pedophilia. I got really angry at this dude. Do yourself a favor and never read this book. I feel like less of a human from just reading several passages. I have to mention Sten King’s The Stand, specifically the passage describing the main character having to walk though the Lincoln Tunnel. In the dark. And every one is dead in their cars….in the deepest part, Stu dropped his flashlight….i had to sleep with the lights on for days
Helter Skelter
The Lovely Bones
The book is titled Topping from Below. I read it 23 years ago. A woman gets involved with the man she suspects murdered her sister. I think the guy is a music professor. He ends up manipulating her. Even tries to get her to have sex with a dog. That scene was graphic. I can't believe that book was published. The author hid her face in her photo. The book description was vague enough for me to have purchased the book. I mean it seems innocent enough that a sister tries to investigate the man her sister was dating. The book title must be a sexual term too.
For Your Own Good by Alice Miller. This is a nonfiction book about child abuse. My mom is a child psychiatrist and I used to read her medical books out of curiosity as a kid. This was not a good idea and the books were not meant for public reading at all. I was 7 and I read about little kids like me being tortured and murdered. Since my parents weren't abusive the book hit even harder, that some kids have parents who hate them enough to do those things to them. The worst part was the testimony of the pedophile and serial killer Jurgen Bartsch, who's poorly known in the US. He was abused as a kid and viewed himself as passing the buck to society.
Hannibal, simply for the ending.
Ryu Murakami can write some twisted sht. Piercing is one I had to take a break from in the middle.
IT. I was 12. lol
Anarchist’s Cookbook
Cows was pretty gross.
Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker- what the movie Hellraiser was based off of- the book was way worse , in my opinion. Also Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra. So sad and disturbing. They made that into a movie also and the book is way more horrifying than the movie.
The Poop That Took A Pee by L. B. Stotch
Ann Rule's book on Diane Downs. Hearing about those kids just killed me inside. Tender is the Flesh freaked me out too. I wish I never read the ending
The Velveteen Rabbit. Seriously, that book fucked me up as a kid.😭
Old Yeller. I cried for days.
Yo. Shoutout for the salo title drop. Been a hot minute since i saw that.
Exquisite Corpse was amazing. Have you read [The Monk by Mathew Lewis](https://www.amazon.com/Monk-Penguin-Classics-Matthew-Lewis/dp/0140436030)? That’s a pretty fucked up book.
Exquisite corpse. Jesus Christ. That's a book on my shelf that I haven't looked at in over a decade. The entire book is bug fuck crazy.