[Lalwendë]

I might have to revise my list, there's so many things that I'd left off it...

...like the inhabitants of the Paths of the Dead, especially when I read in a copy of Vinyar Tengwar about what they did to Baldor:

"The special horror of the closed door before which the skeleton of Baldor was found was probably because the door was the entrance to an evil temple hall [of the same Men of Darkness to which the Oathbreakers presumably belonged] to which Baldor had come, probably without opposition up to that point. But the door was shut in his face, and enemies that had followed him silently came up and broke his legs and left him to die in the darkness, unable to find any way out."

That's just unspeakably horrific...

...but if I was Tolkien I'd have made sure to include it in LotR!

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

8. Mirkwood. Not the spiders, not the presence of Dol Guldur, not the river, not even the Elves (although Thranduil is quite scary in a way)... it's just the atmosphere. Something magical and somewhat unsettling, the dark, the eyes and the lights of the Elves.

That reminds me of another....Old Man Willow!!!!! Malevolent trees just scare me senseless for some reason....it's so primal.

Originally Posted by Folwren

Also, the Nazgul.

I think the Nazgul are the scariest thing in all Tolkien's creation ever in my opinion. They're the only thing that kept me up at night while I was reading the book.

I might bump these up my list of scariness actually, because they're pretty vile and terrifying. Loads of books seem to have similar things too - the Dementors in Harry Potter and the Spectres in His Dark Materials for example. Brrrrr.......

Originally Posted by Rumil

Ordinary sized non-poisonous (UK) spiders are bad enough, even when they are 100 times smaller than you. Now a Giant spider much bigger than you, with a pitch black lair and uncuttable sticky webs - er nasty!!! Not to mention the foul smells and orcs round the corner.

There was one in our house last week, sitting above the cot. I'm not scared of spiders, in fact I think they're quite cool, but it was so big I had to go and fetch a jug to catch it in and it just fell off the wall and nonchalantly scuttled away under the bed, where it remains. I swear it was like a shaved tarantula....