Do You Remember Your First Time?

[ToALonelyPeace]

My first horror story wasn't in English, and if I translate the title it'd be "Ghost of a Maiden (Virgin)". It was about a virgin who got raped and died in a car accident, then she became a ghost and caused her rapists to be hospitalized in a similar manner. She then disguised as a nurse to confront and finally kill them.
I was 9 at the time, and this story left a deep impression on me. It was sexual and tragic, and the imagery of the (defiled) maiden wearing a nurse white uniform stayed in my head. It didn't help that the hospital was my home at the time, and during one of my long term hospitalization a girl jumped down in front of my window.

[Ibrahim]

"Oh, Eddie, it was always you, just you."

Another Poe victim here.
I remember seeing the Oxford Book Club Associates' edition of Selected Tales on a side table on the landing outside of my room; i was seven or eight perhaps, and i always made sure never to play with my back turned towards the door, no idea why. Only when we'd moved out of that house was i told about the supposedly haunted room on the other end of the landing.
Years later when i finally began reading that book, and was of course hooked, it did seem appropriate that i first saw the book there.

[GirlyGirlMask]

I wish I could credit a less mainstream story, but alas, it was "The Monkey's Paw" for me. I'm guessing I was eight or nine years old. I'd already acquired a taste for the macabre, as my father and grandfather would watch films like "The Shining" and "The Exorcist" with me hiding behind furniture, peeking through the opening between the edge of a sofa and an end table's leg. But reading "The Monkey's Paw" was probably the catalyst for my own imagination/creativity. Of course, teachers began requesting meetings with my mother in regards to my disturbing stories and drawings, ha ha ha. They even recommended counseling. But I was fine...just different.

[schlieu]

For me it was Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural, a hardcover anthology edited by Marvin Kaye that my grandma picked up for me at a garage sale. I later learned that the fantastic cover illustration was done by none other than Edward Gorey.

Included in the anthology were "The Hospice" by Robert Aickman,
"Graveyard Shift" by Richard Matheson, "The Night Wire" by H.F. Arnold, "Sardonicus" by Ray Russell, and "The Music of Erich Zann" by Lovecraft. Needless to say, my young mind was blown. Around the same time my other grandmother lent me her copy of King's Skeleton Crew. For quite a while I only wanted to read horror anthologies (which, in the late 80s/early 90s were easy to find) or single author collections from Barker and Lovecraft.