Hi guys
A little competition for ya – I’ve got a signed copy of Witchfinder to give
away. All you have to do is send a comment to this page or direct message me on Twitter (@WitchfinderBook) or send me a message at my Facebook page (William Hussey Witchfinder). I want to know the title and author (if known) of the FIRST book or story that really scared you. And I’m not just talking about a little tremor of terror here – I’m talking full-blown didn’t-sleep-for-a-week-think-I-may-just-have-done-a-little-bit-of-wee-bone-rattling horror!
For me that story would be the Brothers Grimm fairytale ‘Snow White and Rose Red’ – it’s not one of the bros more gruesome efforts, but it has that haunting melancholy common to many of their stories. Anyway, I have a vivid memory of being four years old and my grandfather reading it to me and putting on the most terrifying voice for the evil dwarf.
So let me know the first story that really scared you! I’ll randomly select one and a signed Witchfinder (the book that is, not an actual graffitied witchfinder) will be in the post before you can say ‘Boo!’
William Hussey Author's Blog 
The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley was the first horror story I read when I was about 14, and it gave me nightmares for a week!
It wasn’t a story as such but the German poem
The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb by from STRUWWELPETER MERRY STORIES AND FUNNY PICTURES
by Heinrich Hoffman
The first book and only book that has ever scared me is Graham Masterton’s The Mirror: it’s a truly spooky book.
Can I please also give a special mention to Stephen Laws – a very good British author who doesn’t appear to be writing any more. His books are also very spooky. I picked up The Ghost Train at the library when I was about 15/16 and certainly wasn’t expecting ritualistic murders on the first few pages! I didn’t dare tell my parents about the content of the book. This was the first horror book I ever read.
First one that scared me…. has to be ‘Salem’s Lot’ by Mr. King. Those vampire children appearing at the window pretty much did it for me. Tobe Hooper’s adaptation got me good as well!
I guess the first ever book that scared me would have to be Where the Wild Things are. I can remember being so amazed that the boy was all alone without his mummy and daddy and the wild things illustrations were so vivid and I was very worried by them. It is now my favourite children’s book but at the time I was convinced if I closed my eyes the wild things would come out from under my bed and take me away from my family ;0(
The first story that actually scared me was Snow White, but not the fairytale version that we all read about today but the proper version. Scarey xx
It would have to be the Ladybird Book version of the Three Billy Goats Gruff because the troll is horrible… I couldn’t look at that book for years.
That will be by far William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist”. And the funny thing is that it had written on the cover: “Don’t read it with your lights out” and I laughed at that, but after getting in the book it turned out that the statement was correct 🙂
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe really scared me when I read it as a teenager.
Pet Cemetery By Stephen King, why oh why did I start this one? It was unputownable, even though it kept me awake for weeks!
When the movie came out several years later I watched it, but it it just didn’t feel the same!
Hope I’m not too late to this party.
A school book called ‘The Cave’, at least that’s the title I remember but there are loads of ‘The Cave’ out there – most likely it was this one by Richard Church – is the first I remember terrifying me. Around the bit where the torches go out and the boys are trapped in the dark, one of them injured, my mother told me to put the light out and go to sleep but I couldn’t and nor could i speak to explain why not.
Funny that I wasn’t ever afraid of being underground, and was far less nervous caving than rock-climbing.
Leon Garfield scared me a lot too. And both Aladdin and Ali Baba, something to do with hiding and anticipating the disaster of being found, in the treasure cave and the thieves’ den respectively. My excuse for these being such tame examples is that my memory goes back to when I was very little!
As for my son, he can’t cope with the story of the Pied Piper (now there’s one that commands the imagination). That’s less about the bewitchment than the lame boy being left behind, I think, but I’ve never been allowed to read it all through.
I’d rather have the actual graffitied witchfinder, if that’s possible, please.
~ mand (mmSeason)
Woo, sorry, over-long comment.