14 Books That Traumatized You As A Kid

[Keel M.]

Meh. I don't think 'Flowers in the Attic' is a children's book, exactly. I didn't understand what 'The Lorax' is really about til I saw the movie, which I think happens a lot. I read 'Where the Red Fern Grows' and yes it was sad, but not traumatizing. Also read 'Charlotte's Web' and found it sad, but not traumatizing. Perhaps because I was a teen when I finally read it.

1. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
   
2. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
   
3. The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
   
4. Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
   
5. Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy by R. L. Stine
   
6. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
   
7. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
   
8. Call of the Wild by Jack London
   
9. The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
   
10. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
    
11. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
    
12. Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak
    
13. “The Green Ribbon” from In a Dark, Dark Room by Alvin Schwartz
    
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
    

The link has the reasons why each book is traumatizing.

[Harte]

The Haunting of Hill House. Shirley Jackson

Turned my hair white.

Harte

[BiffSplitkins]

Not a book; but a short story for me. It didn't really traumatize me but it left a very lasting impression.

All Summer in a Day - Ray Bradbury

Edited October 8, 2013 by BiffSplitkins

[Beany]

I had a traumatizing childhood. Books were the least of my problems. I still say to this day I was parented by Louisa May Alcott and her Under the Lilacs series.

[Purplos]

From the books I know on that list, I can only imagine "The Lord of the Flies" and "Flowers in the Attic" to be potentially traumatizing for immature children, or ones who read them at too young an age. I read Flowers when I was 12. My best friend had an older sister who liked such sordid things. It was my first exposure to graphic sex. I remember being a bit taken aback by it, but traumatized is way over the top.

Children, as a whole, need to be more exposed to the gritty reality of life - not the media version of it - but the fact that things die, and people lose touch with reality sometimes, and stuff goes wrong and sadness. And they have to be taught that its not traumatizing. Parents who seek to ban books like this and wail and yell against their precious snowflakes reading about kids killing a pig or parents who lock their kids up for years are part of the problem

[Kowalski]

Meh. I don't think 'Flowers in the Attic' is a children's book, exactly. I didn't understand what 'The Lorax' is really about til I saw the movie, which I think happens a lot. I read 'Where the Red Fern Grows' and yes it was sad, but not traumatizing. Also read 'Charlotte's Web' and found it sad, but not traumatizing. Perhaps because I was a teen when I finally read it.

1. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
   
2. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
   
3. The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
   
4. Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
   
5. Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy by R. L. Stine
   
6. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
   
7. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
   
8. Call of the Wild by Jack London
   
9. The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
   
10. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
    
11. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
    
12. Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak
    
13. “The Green Ribbon” from In a Dark, Dark Room by Alvin Schwartz
    
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
    

The link has the reasons why each book is traumatizing.

Oh, I always liked those Alvin Schwartz books....the illustrations were a bit creepy and weird, but hardly traumatizing.....

I read them and didn't turn out severly emotionally disturbed or anything...

Edited October 8, 2013 by Burt Gummer

[beelzebufo]

You forgot Watership Down.

[Drayno]

Holes by Louis Sacher.

Who wants to dig holes all day?

Edited October 8, 2013 by Hatake Kakashi

[MissMelsWell]

Hmmmm, I had to think about this one. I was reading adult literature at a pretty young age... and I was pretty sensitive as well but I typically didn't read horror stories because the few I did read, freaked me out.

1. Pet Cemetery Stephen King (Easily freaked out remember)
   
2. Where the Red Fern Grows was officially the only book to ever make me cry. My 4th grade teacher read this to us aloud over the course of a year. By the end of the book, she had 27 fourth graders in tears for a whole day. LOL.
   
3. The Velveteen Rabbit was totally creepy for some reason.
   
4. The Secret Garden was one of those love/hate books. It starts off sad, scary and creepy, but turns out awesome in the end. haha.
   
5. Anything Edgar Alan Poe freaked me out. I had nightmares about the Telltale Heart. My 5th grade teacher assigned it to us to read and I did, then had nightmares and my mother called my teacher and read her the riot act. LOL.
   
6. I remember being in 4th or 5th grade and my mother giving me a book called Lovey to read. It wasn't scary by any means, but it was sad. It was non-fiction about a little girl who'd been horribly abused and the psychologist who treated her for years wrote it as a case study I guess. I remember being horrified that any child could be treated that badly, the thought never crossed my mind that anyone would be treated that way.
   
7. Sleepy Hollow freaked me out and gave me nightmares.
   
8. I REALLY didn't like the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel either. LOL.
   
9. Alice in Wonderland freaked me out.
   

I was clearly a child that couldn't take much. Mostly, my folks didn't let me read much that was frightening knowing it would keep me up at night. To this day, I STILL won't watch horror flicks really.

[spacecowboy342]

Diary of Anne Frank

[Donnie Darko]

Night of The Living Dummy was good! It did traumatize me for a good while though

[seaturtlehorsesnake]

odd list, but that's buzzfeed for you.

if i were to add some of my own, there was "sadako and the thousand paper cranes"; that book that was a collection of diaries from hiroshima; another young adult book that was about three mile island... it's no wonder i was terrified of sirens when i was a kid. that and the fact that i read "night of the twisters" around that time. hey, there's another one!

not that they were bad books to read, mind you. but they did give me a lot of fear that i probably didn't need at the time.

[Michelle]

Until I read The Shining when I was twelve nothing freaked me out. It took the entire weekend to read and I was home alone until 3 AM both nights because my mom owned a bar. After the part where the lady ghost was in the bathtub I had to open the sliding shower door with a broomstick before I could go to the bathroom.

I started reading Alfred Hitchcock books when I was in second grade, then quickly progressed to Edgar Allen Poe and on to Stephen King in 1974 with Carrie.

[spacecowboy342]

Until I read The Shining when I was twelve nothing freaked me out. It took the entire weekend to read and I was home alone until 3 AM both nights because my mom owned a bar. After the part where the lady ghost was in the bathtub I had to open the sliding shower door with a broomstick before I could go to the bathroom.

I started reading Alfred Hitchcock books when I was in second grade, then quickly progressed to Edgar Allen Poe and on to Stephen King in 1974 with Carrie.

Stephen King can do that to you. I read Pet Semetary as an adult and it freaked me out

[Funky Poacher]

Tailypo. That's the only thing that scared me as a child. But it did genuinely traumatize me for a couple of weeks (I was in kindergarden - why would that be in a kindergardens' class?!).

[Purplos]

I started reading King at 12 too. My first was the Bachman Books - Rage, the Long Walk etc. They didn't really freak me out much. Pet Cemetery was a bit creepier.

Movies, on the other hand. I couldn't handle ANY horror movies till I was almost 20. I like them now, for the most part.

[Michelle]

I started reading King at 12 too. My first was the Bachman Books - Rage, the Long Walk etc. They didn't really freak me out much. Pet Cemetery was a bit creepier.

Movies, on the other hand. I couldn't handle ANY horror movies till I was almost 20. I like them now, for the most part.

Movies, after reading the books, always disappoint me. My imagination is so much more vivid than anything they've ever come up with on screen.

[little_dreamer]

There were a few books that I did remember from childhood and early teens.

"House of Stairs" - Teenagers stuck in a huge room filled with endless stairs. (Spoiler) They were secretly being studied by a psychologist.

"The Devil's Storybook" - Humorous stories about incompetent devils. One tale has a cremated man's remains mixed up with a pig, and the pig follows him around Hell.

"Ghosts I Have Been" - an unusual tale of an independent-minded girl in the early 1900's with a Gypsy fortune-teller mother, and has paranormal experiences.

I read parts of the first Flowers in the Attic book. It did unnerve me a bit but I found it a bit too depressing to continue. I also read a lot of Edgar Allan Poe as a kid (must have been my goth phase ).

[Regi]

I never read books as a kid or as a teen.

[Simbi Laveau]

The only one of these that bothered me, was Lord of The Flies.

It is just such a horrible story in reality.

The rest, neh.

[rattpoison]

As a very young child we had the book form of 'Dark Crystal.' For some unknown reason the picture near the back of the book, a crystal, really freaked me out. My grandma burned the book to make me feel better. I felt better when I wasn't looking at the picture so she could have thrown it away. I didn't care that she burned it.

But I've always found HP Lovecraft's stories to be pretty scary. They make you use your imagination like a good author's works should do. The imagination is where fear comes from, anyway. I've seen all the Paranormal Activity movies and I think they are stupid. But anyone who goes deep into the woods at night knows that the imagination can conjure greater things than any movie.