The Most Horrible Things That Have Happened In Stephen King Novels

... he believed that the tips of his fingers had actually brushed the back of the light jacket Gage had been wearing, and then Gage's forward motion had carried him out into the road, and the truck had been thunder...

Pet Sematary remains one of Stephen King's scariest books and some of his most horrible events happen within this novel. One of the biggest is the death of Louis's young son Gage. After spending more than half the book getting to know him (even though you know he's going to die), it still hurts when you learn Gage is hit by a truck on a busy highway as his father tries desperately to save him. 

Unsurprisingly, a book called Misery doesn't turn out to be all rainbows and sunshine. In the novel, Paul Sheldon is a writer who ends up trapped with his "biggest fan." Those familiar with the movie know that Annie Wilkes breaks Paul's feet by smashing them with a hammer, but the novel takes things even further.

Instead of just hitting him, Annie viciously cuts off Paul's foot with an ax, then cauterizes the wound with a propane torch. 

And George saw the clown’s face change. What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke.

One of Stephen King’s most terrifying creations, Pennywise is pure nightmare fuel. The clown's introduction, in which he kills poor Georgie, still stands as one of the most horrifying things Stephen King has ever written. What makes it even more horrible is how the body is found, with the young boy's slicker drenched in blood and his arm ripped off. Damn you, Mr. King.

Hello Jud, you f*cked with me once. Did you think I wouldn't come back sooner or later and f*ck with you?

Stephen King knows there's nothing more horrifying than children. It's why one of his scariest villains is Gage Creed in Pet Sematary. After dying and coming back, Gage is not the same boy he used to be.

In The Shining, no room is more feared than 217, and for good reason. In the novel, Jack Torrance enters the room and encounters a beautiful woman taking a bath. Jack, rapidly losing his mind, is enthralled, but things go south pretty quickly.

Before his eyes, the ghost known as Mrs. Massey morphs into a rotting corpse that cackles a spine-chilling laugh that causes Jack to flee the room. 

The woman from Room 217 was there, as he had known she would be. She was sitting naked on the toilet with her legs spread and her pallid thighs bulging. Her greenish breasts hung down like deflated balloons. The patch of hair below her stomach was gray. Her eyes were also gray, like steel mirrors. She saw him, and her lips stretched back in a grin.

Stephen King's Doctor Sleep is the decades-later sequel to The Shining, and judging by the opening few pages, it's every bit as terrifying. To be presented with such a horrific image right off the bat is a sign that the book you're reading will most likely traumatize you. In Doctor Sleep's case, that's entirely accurate.