Top 10 Horrifying Monsters in Literature

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Top 10 Horrifying Monsters in Literature

One thing that most Listversers have in common is a love of good books and a love of monsters, mysteries and the bizarre. This list combines the lot by selecting the most horrifying of all monsters from literature through the ages. Be sure to use the comments to tell us your own favorites.

10
The Giant Squid
Twenty handred Leagues under the Sea, by Jules Verne
Captain Nemo’s underwater ship, Nautilus, is equipped with the world’s most adanced weaponry for the 1800s, including electrified bullets. But near the end of the novel, Nautilus is swarmed by a school of “poulpes,”‌ which is the French word for “octopi.”‌ It is almost always translated as “giant squid”‌ because one pouple in particular becomes entangled in Nautilus’s propellers, and the crew has to go topside and battle it with axes, harpoons and knives.
Verne never gives the squid’s size, but implies it, “one of these animals, only six feet long, would have tentacles 27 feet long. That would make a formidable monster.”‌ While battling it, the squid manages to grab up one crewman and drown him, then devour him before the others chop off its entangling tentacles and drive it away. The real horror of this monster is that Verne was always interested in being realistic in his science fiction, and giant squids are real.
We now have photographic evidence, and the largest species is believed to be at least 40 feet long, with the muscular strength to crush a crush a small schooner like a tin can. Its tentacles are lined with serrated teeth and sharp hooks that can slice human skin like a razor. They have the largest beak of all animals, large and strong enough to bite off a human hand. The largest recorded specimen weighed 1,091 pounds