What’s a book or movie that genuinely scared you?
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I have never been frightened by a ghost. I have been frightened by a small boy holding a few pebbles.
My first answer to today’s prompt said that no book or film had ever truly scared me. I can close a frightening book, switch off a movie or walk away from a disturbing scene. Real life, I wrote, is what I fear. It was a comfortable answer, and too quick. One story does not stay shut when the book is closed: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”.1
1. Nothing in it happens in the dark.
A clear June morning in a small village. The men talk of planting and taxes. The boys fill their pockets with smooth stones. It will all be over in time for lunch. A name is drawn from a shabby black box, and only in the last lines do we learn what the winner has won. Her neighbours stone her to death.
As they close in on Tessie Hutchinson, someone hands her small son, Davy, a few pebbles.
Someone. Jackson never tells us who.
2. Its first readers proved its point.
The New Yorker had never received so much mail about a work of fiction. Some readers cancelled in disgust. Others took the story for fact, and wrote to ask where such lotteries were held and whether they could go and watch.
Whether they could go and watch. I find that more chilling than the ending. Jackson said she had hoped to shock readers with “the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives”. Some of them asked for directions.
3. This is a different kind of fear.
I was right that real life frightens us more. Losing someone we love, an unexpected illness, betrayal: these are fears of what may be done to us. Jackson awakens another fear, of what may be done through us.
No one in that square is a monster. They have forgotten most of the ritual and lost the original box, yet they have kept the stones. I might have stood there too, stone in hand, telling myself I was only keeping a custom.
4. A crowd has no first person.
It speaks only in the third person: someone, they, everyone. It never has to say “I”.
Tyrants have always known this. When the Thirty ruled Athens, they ordered Socrates and four others to fetch Leon of Salamis for execution. Plato says they gave such orders to implicate as many people as possible.2 Divide a deed among enough hands and no one owns it. Tamil has it in two words: Koottathodu Govinda,3 to cry “Govinda” because the crowd is crying it.
Sometimes the crowd only looks at the floor. In the Mahabharata,4 Draupadi, gambled away by her husband at dice, is dragged into the assembly and asks the great men there whether she was lawfully won. Most lower their eyes. Bhishma, the most revered of them, tells her that morality is subtle.
5. One sentence can break a crowd.
John’s Gospel holds the scene Jackson never wrote. Accusers bring a woman to Jesus and remind him that the law commands stoning. He does not argue. He says: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” They go away, one by one, beginning with the elders.5
He asked the crowd for a first person, and it came apart.
Athens found one too. Four men went to Salamis. Socrates went home. He did not save Leon, and he might have paid with his life. Courage is sometimes that modest.
6. A fair objection.
A story is only a story, you may say, and a diagnosis or a death in the family asks far more of us than any book. That is true. But those fears we can only endure. Whether I pick up the stone is my decision.
7. Our stones are lighter now.
A rumour forwarded without checking. A laugh at someone who has left the room. A silence while the wrong person is blamed in a meeting. I have held that last one myself. Before joining in, one question will do: would I do this if I had to go first? To rise, sometimes, is simply to put the stone down.
8. So what genuinely scared me?
Not a ghost. A sunny morning, a shabby box, and a crowd of decent people who wanted to be home for lunch. Fictional monsters may entertain me. This story stays, because Jackson left a blank where a name should be, and I cannot swear it is not mine.
Perhaps the greatest fear is not what might emerge from the darkness, but what we sometimes encounter in the light of day: ourselves, holding a stone.
A question for my readers
Has a particular story ever changed the way you understand fear? And when did you last find a stone in your hand that you never meant to pick up?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Notes
1 Shirley Jackson was an American writer. “The Lottery” was first published in The New Yorker on 26 June 1948. The account of readers’ letters follows Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (2016). Jackson’s comment appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on 22 July 1948.
2 Plato, Apology 32c–d. The Thirty were the oligarchy that briefly ruled Athens after its defeat by Sparta in 404 BCE.
3 A Tamil saying. Govinda is a name of Krishna, called out by devotees. The saying describes someone who joins a cry simply because everyone else is crying it.
4 The Mahabharata is the great Sanskrit epic of ancient India. Draupadi’s question and Bhishma’s reply appear in its second book, the Sabha Parva (the Book of the Assembly Hall).
5 John 8:7, 9 (NRSV). This passage does not appear in the earliest surviving manuscripts of John, though it has long been received as Scripture.
John Britto Kurusumuthu
Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in
In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 04 November 2026: What’s a book or movie that genuinely scared you?
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I have never been scared by a book or a movie unless the book is being thrown at me and it is a hard cover heavy book then I might be a tad scared of getting hurt…………lol
Haha! That’s a good one! I suppose a heavy hard-cover book flying towards us can be far more frightening than anything written inside it! At least ghosts don’t usually throw books at us! Thanks for adding a touch of humour to my reflection!