Do you ever think about the spooky, creepy or downright strange books you read as a young child? The ones that kept you up, with your blanket and torch, tentatively turning the pages out of intrigue and fear? Children's literature is rife with the weird and wonderful, the heroes memorable and the baddies unforgettable!
Here at Willoughby HQ, we've been recalling the scary or spooky books that we loved reading most, ranging wildly from Roald Dahl and the Goosebumps series to the books we were checking out of our school library, but that definitely felt too old and scary to be reading as young teens!
Which scary books have stayed with you the most over the years? Let us know!
As a kid, I shared my room with my older sister, so I could often be found 'borrowing' her books, including the mildly terrifying Point Horror titles. I can remember being as captivated as them, as I was scared, unable to put them down even when I was spooked! The thought of reading Stalker by Carol Ellis and The Hitchhiker by RL Stine still sends a shiver down my spine.
I was always pretty scared by Roald Dahl's books, too. The Witches of course haunted many a child's dreams, but for me it was George's Marvellous Medicine that scared me the most. The grandmother was always so eerie and menacing, despite her tiny frame and old age. I think it was the idea of someone who is seemingly harmless, posing as the biggest threat, that had me so creeped out. The hostility of Grandma was also exacerbated by Quentin Blake's classic illustrations.
I've been searching for a particularly influental horror anthology I used to take with me on every sleepover and read aloud to scare my friends. The title has been lost to the ether but I still remember it being a big part of my 'tween' years. The feeling you experience as a collective when you're storytelling is such a great way of appreciating a scary tale!
So I was, and still am, a complete scaredy cat. I don’t do horror movies; I don’t do scary books or even ghost stories. So even as a kid I stayed far away from any creepy books, never picked up and goosebumps books or antimorphs (those covers were the creepiest things ever, no way was I reading that!) even Skullduggery Pleasant looked like too much for me. Because of this the books that really scared and stuck with me are a little out there as they aren’t the typical kid horror books. I remember the child abuse in Goodnight Mr Tom stuck with me long after I finished it, as did the plots of Lola Rose and My Sister Jodie by Jacqueline Wilson. I think it was the realism of these stories that’s really horrified me.
The one actual horror/thriller book I read was The Lovely Bones when I was about 12 and I lost so much sleep over it. I had to muscle through it because I couldn’t leave it without knowing the ending, but it solidified to me that Thrillers and graphic murder or horror books were just never going to be something I’d enjoy. Also special shout out to the Gone series by Micheal Grant for relieving of me of the idea that world comprised of just kids would be amazing, instead I had six books of some of the most gruesome kids deaths I have had the displeasure of reading. Surprisingly I did actually enjoy this series but had to skim over quite a few scenes.
I loved spooky books, and have clear memories of the Usbourne Book of the Unknown, poring over the 'good bits' of the very well loved library copy. This was reissued a few years ago as it was such a classic.
The most popular spooky book in the classroom library was Haunted House by Jan Pienkowski, a joyful pop up book full of slime, monsters, and sneaky surprises. It was a good reminder to always tuck your feet under the covers at night. And of how great bubble writing is.
From a fiction point of view I loved Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr.
A young girl is bedridden with a long illness, and whiles the time away by drawing. She finds herself dreaming inside the pictures she has drawn during the day, where the only other person is another child who is also ill, whose life she is remotely connected to in the 'real' world. This is not a particularly 'spooky' book, but is is psychologically pretty dark and rage-filled, and as the plot develops the tension rises as Marianne and Mark try to escape the dream world. In fact I think it'd be an interesting one to re-read, that's Halloween reading sorted!
I remember reading Room 13 at school, I think I was either in year 4 or 5 in primary school. We read it as a class as we had to answer comprehension questions on it afterwards. It’s about a class who goes on a school trip to Whitby, and they stay in a slightly spooky hotel with suspicious things happening behind the door of room 13. Soon some of the class start to feel ill and become pale with two bright red dots on their neck in common.
I remember being very spooked out by the book cause almost everyone goes on a school trip! What if someone did get bitten by a vampire? I can still see the purple cover in my mind today and when I think about it, it makes me shiver a little. I’m not really a horror or spooky fan, so this may seem quite mild to others, but it scared me!
I grew up reading the Goosebumps series and then moved on to the Point Horror series when I was a bit older…in fact, these are the only books I remember really reading growing up.
One of the Goosebumps books that sticks out for me is ‘The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight’ I remember getting this from the school book club magazine and rushing home to read it. The front cover is scary enough with a ghoulish looking scarecrow in a dark field, but the story follows Jodie, who finds visiting her grandparents farm for the summer really boring, until one night she wakes to find the scarecrows twitching in the fields. I think this would probably scare me more nowadays then it did back then!
The Point Horror books were aimed at an older audience so the stories were a bit more convincing, therefore were probably more scary than the cartoonish Goosebumps books. This didn’t stop me racing through them as soon as I got a new one though. Again, I feel these books would probably be scarier now than they were back then.
As much as these books were the only genre I read growing up, I’m not brave enough to read horror books now.
- Chloe
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