The Most Frightening Places in All of Literature

The cave-tunnels that Colin and Susan go through in Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, particularly the place where the tunnel is really narrow... and bends. (shudder)
 
If we're doing individual places, how about Anne Rivers Siddons' The House Next Door, which is a sort of supernatural Room 101? Also, Berlin circa 1964 from Fatherland? Then there are places like the Warhammer universe and the setting of The First Law, where the very laws of nature seem to be skewed in favour of making everyone miserable in direct proportion to how pleasant they are, because, hey, life's tough.

(Also, is it bad form to include your own stuff? Because the Ghast Empire and the Greater Galactic Happiness and Friendship Co-Operative are pretty hellish).
 
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Mordor. A depressing, savage land filled with toil, tribulations, orcs and other ancient evils waiting around every corner. Always filled me with a great despair when I read the Frodo and Sam portions of the later books so much so I always fought back the desire to skip those segments to escape my own emotions. Lol.
 
Shiadar Lagoth the cursed abandoned city in Robert Jordans Wheel of Time series . So dark and evil even the dark lords minions are not safe there.
 
The all consuming mansion in Robert Marasco's book Burn Offerings.
 
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I’m sure, if I was physically transported to 50% of the perilous other-worldly scenarios that I encounter in print, I’d be scared witless but there are a couple that have stuck with me after I’ve finished reading (one for so many years it probably counts as trauma).

Houses already seem to be a theme, so I’d add the one from Catherine Storr’s Marianne Dreams, which my Mum innocently got me from the library when I was off school ill and in bed. If I see an isolated, square house on some moorland, I still catch myself looking for the boulders.

Then, the hidden city in Nicholas Royle’s Regicide. I was hooked by where the map was for, only to discover it was a disturbing, confusing and full-on dystopian place. To be fair it wasn’t a feel-good novel all round, but that was one nasty city.
 
The land beyond the ice wall in Game of Thrones.
 
Darkchrome said:
Houses already seem to be a theme, so I’d add the one from Catherine Storr’s Marianne Dreams, which my Mum innocently got me from the library when I was off school ill and in bed. If I see an isolated, square house on some moorland, I still catch myself looking for the boulders.
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I've not read the book, but Paperhouse is one of my favourite movies. The setting is very creepy as you say! And some real shocks in the film, too ( and I don't just mean the acting!)

pH
 
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