History NightmareFuel / RoaldDahl

** They made a TV episode out of this for the original ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'', directed by the master himself. The guy making the bet? ''Peter Lorre.'' There is also a version from the 1985 revival of the series, with John Huston in Lorre's role. Both adaptations add one last disturbing detail to the story: after Carlos and his wife leave, the cadet attempts to light a cigarette to calm his nerves (or the cigarette of the young woman he was flirting with in the Hitchcock version)... and the lighter fails to start.

%%[[caption-width-right:299:]]

* The darkly humourous "Lamb to the Slaughter", about a housewife who casually kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. Guess ''how'' she disposes of the murder weapon. Come on, guess! [[spoiler:She ''[[EatTheEvidence feeds it to the police...]]'']]

** [[FridgeHorror Do you know what's really scary?]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Nilsen Things disturbingly close to that]] have ''[[NightmareFuel really happened]]''.
* ''[[http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/south.html Man From the South]]''. Not so much Nightmare Fuel as a distressing insight on how easily people will submit themselves to bodily mutilation if the reward is good enough.
** They made a TV episode out of this for the original ''Alfred Hitchcock Presents'', directed by the master himself. The guy making the bet? ''Peter Lorre.'' There is also a version from the 1985 revival of the series, with John Huston in Lorre's role.

* "Royal Jelly." A story about a man with a natural affinity for bees who decides to give his sick baby royal jelly to cure her. [[spoiler: Except it works too well, and the baby begins to look more like a puffy larva. And the man had been taking royal jelly for months before hand, and is beginning to look more and more like a bee...]]
* "Pig": A rural guy who's been living on a vegetarian farm all his life with his chef aunt, goes to NYC and into a restaurant where the chef serves him the special, pork and cabbage... [[spoiler: The chef invites him to a factory tour where he ends up on the conveyor belt and has his throat slit]]. See the title picture of CharlieAndTheChocolateParody.
* Your imagination just runs wild after reading ''Skin'', eh? [[spoiler: It ends with almost no explanation. Just that the old man's tattoo ''is being displayed in a museum.'' And there's no Bristol Hotel in Cannes...]]
* Go borrow a copy of ''Literature/SometimeNeverAFableForSupermen''.
** Read the ending of part 1.
* "The Sound Machine": The fact that those [[spoiler: plants]] made that horrible noise doesn't detract from the horror that is [[CassandraTruth being able to hear things that no-one else can hear]] lest you are labelled as being mad by society.
* "Beware of the Dog": The short story told from the perspective of the downed British fighter pilot [[spoiler: who's in Occupied France the whole time.]]
* "Genesis and Catastrophe": a couple who already lost several children before are about to have birth again. Her mother worries about the fate of their new child and notices he's very frail. The story ends with Klara praying, "He must live, Alois. He must, he must... Oh God, be merciful unto him now..." Then [[spoiler: the audience learns the boy's name: {{UsefulNotes/Adolf Hitler}}!]]
* A real mindfuck is "William and Mary", about a man who dies, but in his will he explains to his wife that he took part in a scientific experiment [[spoiler: in which his brain is being transplanted from his body after death, and attached to an artificial heart. The brain would be bathing in a Ringer's solution. One of his eyes could also be hooked up so that he would be able to see. Although the doctor is uncertain whether the brain would regain consciousness, he remains hopeful. The brain, he says, could probably live as long as 200 years connected to the machine. If that isn't horrible enough Mary turns out to hate her husband and enjoys having her revenge on him by taking him home and do everything he always prohibited her from doing, while he just lies there in this helpless state!]]
* The ending of "Rummins", one of the stories in the "Claud's Dog" series, narrated by a petrol station attendant. The farmer, Mr Rummins, has called out a rat catcher (as detailed in the previous story, "The Rat Catcher") as he has a problem with rats in his hay. Bert, his son, is having difficulty cutting out a piece of the hay rick, as there appears to be a hard object in there and he has to saw through it. The narrator reminisces about Ole Jimmy, a local drunk who liked to help with the hay cutting, and wonders where he is, as Ole Jimmy has been drinking and has left five empty bottles and his bag behind. Bert pulls the hay out of the rick, and starts screaming. Why was there a rat problem? [[spoiler:Because Ole Jimmy's corpse was in the hay and the rats were eating it. And all this time, Bert has been sawing through ''a dead body.'']]

** Not to mention the title story itself, in which the idle, wealthy, selfish Henry learns about, and subsequently trains himself to have, the ability to "see without eyes" -- specifically so he can see through the backs of cards and clean up at casinos. Dahl viciously describes a sequence in which Henry, feeling "a strange pain in his chest", applies the ability to his image in a mirror and sees a blood clot slowly making its inexorable way to his heart, unstoppable and deadly...Then he reveals that it was only a ''potential'' scenario that didn't actually happen (the story uses a DirectLineToTheAuthor setup), but would have been appropriate since it would have directly referenced the heavy implication that Henry's predecessor suffered a KarmicDeath as a direct result of using his powers for personal gain -- more NightmareFuel! In fact, what "actually" happens is that [[spoiler: Henry's greed ''lessens'' in the wake of the training. He subsequently becomes a sort of Robin Hood, cheating casinos all over the world under a variety of disguises and aliases to fund a chain of orphanages -- the "Wonderful" part of the story]].
** What makes this all the better was that, in the UK at least, ''The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar'' collection was calmly pitched as a short-story collection for children. Older children, admittedly, but still. (In America, it can be found in elementary school libraries.)

* "Pig": A rural guy who's been living on a farm all his life with his chef aunt, goes to NYC and into a restaurant where the chef serves him the special, pork and cabbage... [[spoiler: The chef invites him to a factory tour where he ends up on the conveyor belt and has his throat slit]]. See the title picture of CharlieAndTheChocolateParody.

** The ending, where Mr. and Mrs. Twit are glued to the ground while standing upside down on their heads. Their fate is disturbing enough, but Dahl adds that due to the pressure of their bodies pushing on their heads they are actually pressed together! Their heads disappear inside their bodies and their bodies inside their legs until nothing more is left than their clothes.

* "Pig": A rural guy who's been living on a farm all his life with his chef aunt, goes to NYC and into a restaurant where the chef serves him the special, pork and beans... [[spoiler: The chef invites him to a factory tour where he ends up on the conveyor belt, being turned into a pig and is then sliced apart]]. See the title picture of CharlieAndTheChocolateParody.

* The ending of "Rummins", one of the stories in the "Claud's Dog" series, narrated by a petrol station attendant. The farmer, Mr Rummins, has called out a rat catcher (as detailed in the previous story, "The Rat Catcher") as he has a problem with rats in his hay. Bert, his son, is having difficulty cutting out a piece of the hay rick, as there appears to be a hard object in there and he has to saw through it. The narrator reminisces about Ole Jimmy, a local drunk who liked to help with the hay cutting, and wonders where he is, as Ole Jimmy has been drinking and has left five emppty bottles and his bag behind. Bert pulls the hay out of the rick, and starts screaming. Why was there a rat problem? [[spoiler:Because Ole Jimmy's corpse was in the hay and the rats were eating it. And all this time, Bert has been sawing through ''a dead body.'']]

* The ending of "Rummins", one of the stories in the "Claud's Dog" series, narrated by a petrol station attendant. The farmer, Mr Rummins, has called out a rat catcher (as detailed in "The Rat Catcher") as he has a problem with rats in his hay. Bert, his son, is having difficulty cutting out a piece of the hay rick, as there appears to be a hard object in there and he has to saw through it. The narrator reminisces about Ole Jimmy, a local drunk who liked to help with the hay cutting, and wonders where he is, as Ole Jimmy has been drinking and has left five emppty bottles and his bag behind. Bert pulls the hay out of the rick, and starts screaming. Why was there a rat problem? [[spoiler:Because Ole Jimmy's corpse was in the hay and the rats were eating it. And Bert has been sawing through ''a dead body.'']]

* ''Literature/GeorgesMarvelousMedicine'' is in many ways more lighthearted than many of his others, but the effects of the medicine are described in a detail that gets rather gruesome. However, one scene that is even more scary precisely ''because'' it's so mundane is the part where the grandmother scares George by talking about NauseaFuel things she's eaten and makes him think she might be an actual witch. There is every indication that she's lying about any magic powers she might have or the vile insects she has eaten... meaning that she's simply a cruel old bitch deliberately terrorising her grandson while his parents are out, in such a way that even if he told them about it she could all too easily use the JustJokingJustification or downplay it. This scene taps into both the childhood fear of being helpless in the face of cruelty without the support of your parents (a main reason for why [[{{Literature/Matilda}} Miss Trunchbull]] is so scary,) with the addition of it happening [[DomesticAbuse in your own home]], and the AdultFear of knowing that your own child could go through something similar, and that you yourself might not treat it seriously because it would inevitably get softened in the retelling.

* The darkly humourous "Lamb to the Slaughter", about a housewife who casually kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. Guess ''how'' she disposes of the murder weapon. Come on, guess! [[spoiler:She ''[[EatTheEvidence feeds it to the police...]]''

* The darkly humourous "Lamb to the Slaughter", about a woman who kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. Guess how she disposes of the murder weapon. Come on, guess. [[spoiler:She feeds it to ''the police.'']]

** The tummy monster. Especially since you have no idea how this creature got inside the fat boy's tummy and how it looks.

* The Trunchbull from ''Literature/{{Matilda}}'' - a massive, super-strong, ''psychotic'' woman with a horrifically violent temper and an incredible hatred for children, who just so happens to be headmistress of a primary school. Her punishments only add fuel to the fire - lobbing children out of windows, slinging them around by their hair, force feeding them cake, and, worst of all, locking them in a tiny cupboard in her office called the Chokey, which has ''broken glass and nails'' sticking out of the walls. The absolute worst part about her though? The children have tried to tell their parents about her before, but what she does is [[RefugeInAudacity so outrageous]] that their [[AdultsAreUseless parents don't believe them!]]

* ''Literature/GeorgesMarvelousMedicine'' is in many ways more lighthearted than many of his others, but the effects of the medicine are described in a detail that gets rather gruesome. However, one scene that is even more scary precisely ''because'' it's so mundane is the part where the grandmother scares George by talking about NauseaFuel things she's eaten and makes him think she might be an actual witch. There is every indication that she's lying about any magic powers she might have or the vile insects she has eaten... meaning that she's simply a cruel old bitch deliberately terrorising her grandson while his parents are out, in such a way that even if he told them about it she could all too easily use the JustJokingJustification or downplay it. This scene taps into both the childhood fear of being helpless in the face of cruelty without the support of your parents (a main reason for why [[{{Matilda}} Miss Trunchbull]] is so scary,) with the addition of it happening [[DomesticAbuse in your own home]], and the AdultFear of knowing that your own child could go through something similar, and that you yourself might not treat it seriously because it would inevitably get softened in the retelling.

* ''Literature/Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator'':

** The boy protagonist playing in his tree house until a strange lady (clearly a witch) tries to talk him to climb down and talk to her. Thanks to learning from his grandmother he recognizes what she is immediately and refuses to do so, remaining up the tree, long after the witch finally leaves and evening sets in...! Then finally his grandmother comes looking for him.

[[caption-width-right:299:]]

* The darkly humourous "Lamb to the Slaughter", about a woman who kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. Guess how she disposes of the murder weapon. Come on, guess.
** [[spoiler:You were wrong. She feeds it to ''the police.'']]

----
<<|NightmareFuel|>>

*** Each anecdote is frightening in itself, but then it turns out she herself was once a victim. She refuses to tell what happened to her, but then her grandson asks "Did it have something to with your missing thumb?". This causes Grandma to freeze in shock, thus abruptly breaking off the conversation. The boy then decides to go to bed, wishes her goodnight and the last image he sees of her before going to his room is that she is still sitting in her chair shaking and unable to register what's happening around her. In the next chapter grandma and son are back on speaking terms, but how she exactly lost her thumb remains ShroudedInMyth, causing many young readers' imaginations to go berserk!

** The boy protagonist playing in his tree house until a strange lady (clearly a witch) tries to talk him to climb down and talk to her. He recognizes what she is immediately and refuses to do so, remaining up the tree, long after the witch finally leaves and evening sets in...! Then finally his grandmother comes looking for him.

* The darkly humourous ''Lamb to the Slaughter'', about a woman who kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. Guess how she disposes of the murder weapon. Come on, guess.

* ''Royal Jelly.'' A story about a man with a natural affinity for bees who decides to give his sick baby royal jelly to cure her. [[spoiler: Except it works too well, and the baby begins to look more like a puffy larva. And the man had been taking royal jelly for months before hand, and is beginning to look more and more like a bee...]]
* Pig: A rural guy who's been living on a farm all his life with his chef aunt, goes to NYC and into a restaurant where the chef serves him the special, pork and beans... [[spoiler: The chef invites him to a factory tour where he ends up on the conveyor belt, being turned into a pig and is then sliced apart]]. See the title picture of CharlieAndTheChocolateParody.

* ''The Sound Machine'': The fact that those [[spoiler: plants]] made that horrible noise doesn't detract from the horror that is [[CassandraTruth being able to hear things that no-one else can hear]] lest you are labelled as being mad by society.
* ''Beware of the Dog'': The short story told from the perspective of the downed British fighter pilot [[spoiler: who's in Occupied France the whole time.]]
* ''Genesis and Catastrophe'': a couple who already lost several children before are about to have birth again. Her mother worries about the fate of their new child and notices he's very frail. The story ends with Klara praying, "He must live, Alois. He must, he must... Oh God, be merciful unto him now..." Then [[spoiler: the audience learns the boy's name: {{UsefulNotes/Adolf Hitler}}!]]
* A real mindfuck is ''William and Mary'', about a man who dies, but in his will he explains to his wife that he took part in a scientific experiment [[spoiler: in which his brain is being transplanted from his body after death, and attached to an artificial heart. The brain would be bathing in a Ringer's solution. One of his eyes could also be hooked up so that he would be able to see. Although the doctor is uncertain whether the brain would regain consciousness, he remains hopeful. The brain, he says, could probably live as long as 200 years connected to the machine. If that isn't horrible enough Mary turns out to hate her husband and enjoys having her revenge on him by taking him home and do everything he always prohibited her from doing, while he just lies there in this helpless state!]]

* ''TheWitches'': Easily Dahl's most frightening children's book.

* The non-friendly giants in ''The BFG''. Especially in the film version, which gives the giants blue skin, horrible voices and slobbery jaws. They were pretty much designed to cause nightmares and lack of sleep in children, particularly because they prey on children while they sleep in their beds.
* The Trunchbull from ''Matilda'' - a massive, super-strong, ''psychotic'' woman with a horrifically violent temper and an incredible hatred for children, who just so happens to be headmistress of a primary school. Her punishments only add fuel to the fire - lobbing children out of windows, slinging them around by their hair, force feeding them cake, and, worst of all, locking them in a tiny cupboard in her office called the Chokey, which has ''broken glass and nails'' sticking out of the walls. The absolute worst part about her though? The children have tried to tell their parents about her before, but what she does is [[RefugeInAudacity so outrageous]] that their [[AdultsAreUseless parents don't believe them!]]

* DirtyBeasts:

* GeorgesMarvelousMedicine is in many ways more lighthearted than many of his others, but the effects of the medicine are described in a detail that gets rather gruesome. However, one scene that is even more scary precisely ''because'' it's so mundane is the part where the grandmother scares George by talking about NauseaFuel things she's eaten and makes him think she might be an actual witch. There is every indication that she's lying about any magic powers she might have or the vile insects she has eaten... meaning that she's simply a cruel old bitch deliberately terrorising her grandson while his parents are out, in such a way that even if he told them about it she could all too easily use the JustJokingJustification or downplay it. This scene taps into both the childhood fear of being helpless in the face of cruelty without the support of your parents (a main reason for why [[{{Matilda}} Miss Trunchbull]] is so scary,) with the addition of it happening [[DomesticAbuse in your own home]], and the AdultFear of knowing that your own child could go through something similar, and that you yourself might not treat it seriously because it would inevitably get softened in the retelling.

* ''Genesis and Catastrophe'': a couple who already lost several children before are about to have birth again. Her mother worries about the fate of their new child and notices he's very frail. The story ends with Klara praying, "He must live, Alois. He must, he must... Oh God, be merciful unto him now..." Then [[spoiler: the audience learns the boy's name: {{Adolf Hitler}}!]]

His most famous work, ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'', warrants [[NightmareFuel/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory its own page]].

* ''Literature/CharlieAndTheGreatGlassElevator'':
** The Vernicious Knids who attack and devour a bunch of unsuspecting visitors to a space hotel. What they exactly do to them is left to the imagination, but back on Earth the President and the White House staff hear what's going on over their radio.
** Minusland- where those who overdo Wonka's FountainOfYouth elixir Wonka-Vite go. It's a misty area full of spirits and invisible creatures that can turn you into them (over a long and painful time) with one bite.

'''Children's stories'''

** Not to mention the "Henry Sugar" story itself, in which the idle, wealthy, selfish Henry learns about, and subsequently trains himself to have, the ability to "see without eyes" -- specifically so he can see through the backs of cards and clean up at casinos. Dahl viciously describes a sequence in which Henry, feeling "a strange pain in his chest", applies the ability to his image in a mirror and sees a blood clot slowly making its inexorable way to his heart, unstoppable and deadly...Then he reveals that it was only a ''potential'' scenario that didn't actually happen (the story uses the LiteraryAgentHypothesis), but would have been appropriate since it would have directly referenced the heavy implication that Henry's predecessor suffered a KarmicDeath as a direct result of using his powers for personal gain -- more NightmareFuel! In fact, what "actually" happens is that [[spoiler: Henry's greed ''lessens'' in the wake of the training and he no longer wants the money for himself. He has associates set up a chain of orphanages and becomes a sort of Robin Hood, cheating casinos all over the world under a variety of disguises and aliases -- the "Wonderful" part of the story]].
** What makes this all the better was that, in the UK at least, The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar collection was calmly pitched as a short-story collection for children. Older children, admittedly, but still...
*** In America, it can be found in elementary school libraries.

* Dahl's descriptions of some of the misadventures he actually suffered as a child in "Boy", including almost losing his nose in a car accident and having his tonsils removed without anethstetic are enough to make your skin crawl. The description of the horrid old woman who ran the local sweet shop, digging her filth-encrusted fingernails into a jar of toffee is also the stuff of nightmares.