it's Halloween, the trick or treaters have gone home and I am thinking of the most frightening books I have ever read:The Mist", Stephen King (in Skeleton Crew)
Rosemary's Baby, Ira Levin
The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty
Stephen King's short story/novella, The Mist, is far and away the scariest reading experience of my life. An unworldly fog traps a group of strangers in a supermarket while nightmarish creatures lurk just outside the plate glass windows. Director Frank Darabont (Secret Window) will helm the movie set to start shooting later this year. He told Fangoria magazine:
"The Mist is a very scary and memorable story. One of Steve’s best ‘muscular’ short pieces, with characters in the kind of pressure-cooker environment that nobody writes as well as King."
The Mist is so good that it is just as unnerving on subsequent readings. It still creeps me out. You can download a clip from the audio book here.
I read The Exorcist when it came out in paperback in 1972 and later discovered Rosemary's Baby. I was nine in 1972 but my mom was reading The Exorcist so I did too. Both books were horrifying when I first read them and, although I don't find them quite so viscerally scary now, they remain deeply chilling.
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