First horror book I remember reading was Shirley Jackson, Haunting of Hill House. I was about eleven. That's reading on my own, mind you; my evil family used to read me to sleep with Saki, Poe and Lovecraft.

Explains a few things....

'Salem's Lot creeped me out seriously.

My husband read 'Salem's Lot first, and for several nights he kept reading after I fell asleep, occasionally waking me up by saying, "Oh, shit!" I, of course, had to read it after that. I finished the book at about 3 a.m., and I really did get up and go to the refrigerator to make sure we had garlic in the house. Ah, Stephen King back when he was edited.

The first thing I remember really scaring me was a cheesy movie, "Journey to the Seventh Planet." My parents never took us to movies, and a girl in third or fourth grade took us all to the movies for her birthday.

The first book I remember actually terrifying me into staying up all night to read it? The Exorcist. Brrrrrr. Nothing before that, I didn't scare easily.

First horror book I remember reading was Shirley Jackson, Haunting of Hill House. I was about eleven. That's reading on my own, mind you; my evil family used to read me to sleep with Saki, Poe and Lovecraft. Explains a few things....

Ha! It certainly does. FWIW, Hill House is a genuinely creepy book, and so well done and every time I read it (invariably at night in a quiet apartment) it gives me the willies. I love it. I developed a “The Supernatural in Literature” unit that I can’t WAIT to get a teaching job so I can use it. Hill House is the only novel in it. The first paragraph in that book is just a damn wonderful example of writing in and of itself – I love it:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

EDIT This site has a great essay on Jackson, and also provided me with my first pic and description of her.

[link]

The pic reminds me of me, with the glasses and the cig. I wonder if we're related!

I developed a “The Supernatural in Literature” unit that I can’t WAIT to get a teaching job so I can use it.

Neeeaat. I read 'Salem's Lot for a class on The Gothic in American Fiction.

This is what I have for that unit, although I'll probably add/delete stuff as time goes by:

Materials and resources: "Danse Macabre" by Stephen King

"The Fall of the House of Usher" from "Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection" read by Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone

"Christabel" by Samuel Coleridge

Vampires!

"The Eve of St. Agnes" by John Keats

Or maybe this was the vampires.

"The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James

We had this one too, but I only got halfway through it. I should finish it sometime. I saw the play though.

"Carmilla" by F. Sheridan Le Fanu

I have no clue who or what this is.

"The Others" a 2001 film by Alejandro Almenabar

Love this movie. And it's very Turn of the Screw-ish, isn't it?

"The Fall of the House of Usher" from "Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection" read by Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone

Sweet monkey.

No Le Fanu?! Go read it RIGHT NOW. [link]

Christabel is the unfinished lamia poem; St. Agnes is ghosts.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" from "Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection" read by Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone

Along that vein, my folks had an LP of Boris Karloff reading children's stories (mainly scarey ones, with a few classics thrown in) that I used to adore, just for his voice. It made even the mundane creepy.

No Le Fanu?! Go read it RIGHT NOW. [link]

Whoa, cripes. That's long. No time for that at the moment, though I'll bookmark it.