Oldest horror story around?

[Kyriakos]

What, to you, should be seen as the first ever horror story?

I had once mentioned the 9nth chapter of the Odyssey as a good candidate for that. There we see the rough terrain of the island of the Cyclopai, and Polyphemus' appearence could be argued to be a first moment of horror. This is soon followed by the (extremely to the point, and powerful in my view) revelation that Polyphemus not only looks like a monster, but is a monster ethically too, when he picks up two of Odysseus's men and after destroying their heads on the ground of his cave, devours them.
Finally we have more violence, with two pinacles: first the blinding of Polyphemus, and then the scene where he tries to destroy the ship of his enemies, by hurling gigantic boulders onto the sea.

All that is in my view clearly a proto-horror story. But i was wondering if you have to name something before that. I have not read the epic of Gilgamesh, or the indian epics, so i would be interested in reading about them

 

[Verbose]

Possibly this one:
http://ib205.tripod.com/setne_1.html

Late Period ancient Egypt, with the protagonist Setne Khamwaese being one of Ramses II's actual historical sons - Khamwaese, not a Setem priest but iirc the Second Prophet (the temporal head of the temple, the First being the spiritual) of the great Ptah temple in Memphis, become legendary, possibly interred in the Serapeum, whose remains, if the identification is correct, is today kept in the Versailles museum in Paris.

A cursed scroll originally belonging to the god Thoth, kept with the dead who died from its curse, sought by the learned Setne, who hears their sad story from the mummies themselves, and ends up having to play a game for it with the dead priest it once belonged to, with his life at stake for the scroll, and while he manages to procure it, through powerful magic, the dead priest puts him under a spell that makes him seemimgly fall in love with a mysterious woman and finally kill his children for her sake, though it all ends happily since these disturbing events turn out to have been merely visions.

 

[FriendlyFire]

The first recorded human writing, the epic of gilgemesh which has zombies ......

 

[Verbose]

There are some creepy demons in the story of the Sumerian godess Inana's descent into the Underworld:

290-294 So when Inana left the underworld, the one in front of her, though not a minister, held a sceptre in his hand; the one behind her, though not an escort, carried a mace at his hip, while the small demons, like a reed enclosure, and the big demons, like the reeds of a fence, restrained her on all sides.

295-305 Those who accompanied her, those who accompanied Inana, know no food, know no drink, eat no flour offering and drink no libation. They accept no pleasant gifts. They never enjoy the pleasures of the marital embrace, never have any sweet children to kiss. They tear away the wife from a man's embrace. They snatch the son from a man's knee. They make the bride leave the house of her father-in-law (instead of lines 300-305, 1 ms. has 2 lines: They take the wife away from a man's embrace. They take away the child hanging on a wet-nurse's breasts). (1 ms. adds 3 lines: They crush no bitter garlic. They eat no fish, they eat no leeks. They, it was, who accompanied Inana.)

http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr141.htm

 

[Leonel]

And when Ung went into dark cave, he saw sticks were bright and hot like fire in sky AAAAAH!!

 

[Cutlass]

Does anyone know about when the story of Beowulf first appeared?

 

[Smellincoffee]

There's a man in the sky watching everything you do, and if you do something we disapprove of, he'll GET you.

 

[Takhisis]

And he won't give you presents for Christmas!

 

[azzaman333]

The Bible is pretty horrific.

 

[ghostmaker650]

Speaking of horror stories, there is a "tumblelog" on tumblr with absolutely fantastic short horror stories, I'd love to give a direct link but unfortunately the link itself has a couple curse words so I'm not sure if I'd be allowed to link to it The content it's self is clean though. But hopefully I can get away with giving you the link this way:

<the F word>yeahspooky<poo>.tumblr.com <insert obvious curse word here>

Be warned though, these stories can get pretty freaky. Definitely recommend having a dog in the room with you so your not alone (safety first )

Just finished reading the story currently at the top called "Psychosis", definitely a great read.

 

[Winner]

Does anyone know about when the story of Beowulf first appeared?

8th century A.D., IIRC.

Way too late for it to be the first horror story, even if it could be interpreted as one.