Glamour magazine has, rather strangely given their choice of horror is normally Body Gothic in the form of extreme dieting and plastic surgery gone wrong, released an article about their top 10 Scariest Goosebump Books. It’s a nostalgic read and shows the overlap between horror and children’s literature. My other youthful choice was the Point Horror series which also featured the great R. L. Stine. Many of these books were more Slasher than Gothic and I took great pleasure in trying to resist flicking to the end to find out whoddunit.
Feel free to comment and let us know your favourite childhood horror novels. And remember, some of the scariest nightmares come from childhood fears …
First, Slappy the doll traumatised generations of children. He scares me even now.
I was terrified of clowns as a child. I still am. And the more memorable episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? and other shows in that vein were terrifying to me. Like the two pilgrim ghost children you didn’t know were ghosts.
Those books were too traumatic! I hate it when there are ghostly characters who you don’t realise are ghosts until too late. I always think the episode of Buffy in which people’s nightmares start coming true are an homage to the Goosebump books.