Your Most Disturbing Ligotti Story

G. S. Carnivals

G. S. Carnivals

Our Temporary Supervisor
My most disturbing Thomas Ligotti story is "The Frolic." A close second is "Conversations in a Dead Language." Both stories seem to be elaborations of potential newspaper reports. There is nothing scarier than the news and what it has to say.

As for outright damnably confounding and maddening fare, I choose "The Medusa." Trust me.
 
The most disturbing stories for me are "His shadow will rise to a higher house" and "The nightmare network".
I wouldn´t vote for any of these "realistic" and "plausible stories" like "The frolic", because real life is far more effective and capable of providing stories much more disturbing than those.
 
"The Frolic" is great. The two Severini mentioned are very creepy, as are "Teatro Grottesco", "Doctor Voke and Mr. Veech", "Les Fleurs", "Dream of a Mannikin", "Our Temporary Supervisor", "The Voice in the Bones", and "The Real Wolf". All get points for originality and pure weirdness.

As for completely unsettling, I could also nominate "The Lost Art of Twilight" and "Nethescurial".
 
In some ways I think that "My Work is Not Yet Done" is one of Ligotti's most disturbing works (not sure that it really qualifies as a "story" - bit long for that).

MWINYD is such a detailed study in the rationalization of multiple homicides, and the event that tips the narrator off into his murderous spree seems so mundane - the theft of a product idea at work. It has the effect of putting you in the mind of someone who cannot see the exits on the highway, and feels compelled to step over the line into murder, although the character seems like a "good person" in other ways. So that's disturbing for me!
 
"The Frolic" lept to my mind, but then I asked myself: Which story of Ligotti's is NOT unsettling?....
 
I too like MYINYD, but wish I could accept/understand it when the character is "bussed" into his supranormal state. To me, the second and third in that volume are creepier.

Very disturbing (albeit rejoicingly so) for me was "The Red Tower." That and "IHASPFTW," CD version narrated by His Tibetness. Even David's voice, I think I can tell, is betraying disturbance 3/4 of the way through that one.

Among the actual images that stick to my mind and disturb, I cannot beat the guy at the counter who watches this slow, billowy clown approach and make a transaction with him. I believe it must be "The Clown Puppet," which I'm closing in on for a reread. Then too the clown who stares down the alley from the rattly parade, and of being "a head on the stick of Mrs. Pyk forever and ever," from respective stories in IAFT,IAFL. Most disturbing images from this past weekend? From "The Cocoons."
 
Any Ligotti story holds some level of horror. IAFTIAFL and IHASPFTW are true horror shows. The real question: Which is the most unreal, most grotesque? "The Voice in the Bones" and "The Greater Festival of Masks" may well be the weirdest.
 
The Silent One";p="3752 said:
Which is the most unreal, most grotesque?
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Ah, a slight detour onto a bumpy road that runs more or less parallel to the one we were traveling on. Not to worry. We'll get there, despite the lack of a map in the glovebox. Didn't I tell you to go before we left? I know you're hungry. We'll be there soon.

Of Thomas Ligotti's works, the one that strikes me as most unreal is "Gas Station Carnivals." I found myself wanting to accept the secondhand account of Quisser's memories as fact. As a child in the 1960s, I witnessed the festive nature of gas stations: the colorful pennants flapping in the wind, the ding-ding as the car drove over the hose, and the gas attendant in uniform, "Earl" or "Stan" embroidered in an oval on his chest. These memories are real. What is unreal is the evocation of a past that I almost recollect.
 
SwansSoilMe/SwansSaveMe";p="3759 said:
Well said, yes! I look forward to the second reading of that, too. That is one creepy image. The title alone does weird things to your brain.
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He woke up screaming it...
 
Dream of a Mannikin always sucker-punched me. I also felt great unease at the end of Crampton. I always flatten out any lumps on my bed after reading The Troubles of Dr. Thoss.
 
most disturbing? perhaps a 4 way tie between Gas Station Carnivals, The Bungalow House, Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech, The Clown Puppet...

i agree, they all have a disturbing quality. i love the "realistic ones" such as The Chymist, The Frolic, Les Fleurs, etc., but the unreal ones do create a greater impact to those who like that sort of thing. i too love David Tibet's voice. i think he should narrate a lot more Ligotti stories with the eerie dark ambient music in the background!

i'm busy re-reading most of my favorites again and selecting Ligotti quotes which i'll be posting in the Quotations section of this forum. feel free to take a gander.

D
 
I absolutely must add "Ghost Stories for the Dead" to this group. I reread it a few days ago. I was instantly reminded of the reason for my not looking at it for a while. This story is profoundly disturbing. It bothers me in much the same way as "The Frolic," "Conversations in a Dead Language," and "The Chymist." It hits too close to the world we might see written up in the newspaper or shown on television (or the internet, for that matter). The more fantastic Ligotti pieces, at least, offer us a sense of removal from the mundane horrors. And then there are the other horrors to comprehend...
 
I'll take the opportunity here to say that I now know there was no experience like reading TL's stories for the first time in TNF. I hoped to be able to realize some of the disturbing quality of the stories the second time around, but while many are still as great (such as "Gas Station Carnivals," which I just now reread), the valence of that disturbing weirdness may forever be lost for me. That's OK. And maybe other, newer tales will upset me as much in the future.

I would highly recommend the music of Bohren and der Club of Gore while reading Ligotti. Today I wanted something over an hour that was moody, broody, but slow and unobstrusive. I just knew it had to be Black Earth. I hope some of you will look it up and experience it. I know sometimes the music just has to go OFF for those like me who might be called addicted to it. But when you just have to have something going in the background for that part of your brain, this seems to me the perfect choice. It's molasses-slow dark jazz in feel...no words either.
 
To me, "Alice's Last Adventure", with the descriptions of how she experiences her deteriation (or what to call it) and the ending is a shuddering favorite of mine.

Something similar can be said about "The Bungalow House". Wow, what maddening events! And so greatly described by Ligotti.

(Now, when finally my copy of the Teatro Grottesqo arrives at my doorstep, I may have other favorites:-})
 
Mine would have to be 'The Red Tower' for very personal reasons. I grew up near an abandoned red-brick factory, and while it did happen to have windows and doors, they were always completely black inside. I never summoned the courage to explore the place (or even throw stones at it!), so it seems to me that 'The Red Tower' provides me with a kind of surrealistic pseudo-exploration of the old building.
 
Personally I find his shorter pieces the most disturbing. Specifically I'm referring to the REALLY short ones that often fit on a single page. Those that are more prose than "story". A shining example of this would be "Ten Steps to Thin Mountain". His very short works strike me as an extra potent, distilled form of his writing; the essential oils of the Ligottian voice. Naturally, due to their brevity, they tend to be vague or leave unanswered questions. This forces or tricks the reader's imagination into filling in the gaps. I believe this is where his work is the most insidious. The reader can't help projecting one's own unique fears into it, therefore becoming unwitting collaborators of a personalized horror. Ligotti hands the reader a skeleton, and one has no choice other than to graft on bizarre flesh unknowingly donated from one's own nightmares.
 
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