The scariest characters in the LOTR?

My vote goes to either the Balrog of Morgoth or Sauron.

[The 1,000 Reader]

I don't know why, but I got a rather odd sense of being in a dark, hidden world no man was meant to be in when reading about Aragorn and company passing through the Paths of the Dead. Tolkien did a terrific job of making time seem foreign there, and, if I recall, there was some village located there, cut off from the rest of the world, which mistook Aragorn as the King of the Dead and entered a panic. Very creepy, and it seemed like a different world altogether.

The Nazgul gained my respect as the book went on. From normal men who hissed when they spoke, they basically became Middle-Earth's personal Grim Reapers who could go anywhere incredibly quickly thanks to the fell beasts that they rode. Infact, whenever a Nazgul "entered the scene" everything seemed to become more interesting. In ROTK, the parts with the Witch-King in them just seem to glow with an aura of awesomeness.

Sauron, however, did not seem frightening at all. When Sauron fought with the Ring, two minor characters (Elendil and Gil-Galad) slew him in combat. Right off the bat, that made me think that the Ring wasn't so mighty, and since minor characters are typically less important than major characters (they are minor characters after all,) it made me think that Sauron was a pushover. Throughout the entire story, Sauron is just some dude sitting in a large tower we only see once (the tower, not Sauron.) In the end, Sauron just seemed like a weakling who hid from everybody and waited until his armies killed everything before he'd come out. He was only a figurehead and, like Big Brother, felt like he was not real and only a symbol to rally under. He was like Gollum or Grima, but without the will to take action on his own (Gollum) and without the trickery (Grima.) He corrupted Denethor, yes, but Denethor was already rather unstable, and it felt more like Denethor was insane than corrupted.

[Lord Halsar]

hmmmmmmm.


scariest thing in LOTR?
i'd have to go with shelob.
if Sauron came up to me, i'd ask for some pointers. if it were the WK, i'd be too exited to be scared. but shelob, she cant be reasoned with.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by The 1,000 Reader

When Sauron fought with the Ring, two minor characters (Elendil and Gil-Galad) slew him in combat. Right off the bat, that made me think that the Ring wasn't so mighty, and since minor characters are typically less important than major characters (they are minor characters after all,) it made me think that Sauron was a pushover.

I wouldn't call Elendil&Gil-Galad "minor characters" In the LotR book they do not appear, of course, but personally I think that at their times they must have been more famous than seven Boromirs put together. Oh, and we don't see the tower once, we see it at least three times I think, maybe more. But this doesn't matter.

Anyway... I'd subscribe most of what has been said here of the Nazgul, and I think the Balrog of Moria is pretty scary as well. Not speaking of the Watcher in the Water - as always, the creepiest things are those you don't see. This however, at least in my case, does not work for Sauron. Definitely not in LotR - of course in Silmarillion, this is something else (in the tale of Beren and Lúthien, not only in Tol-in-Gaurhoth but also the Gorlim part), however, Mansun introduced this thread as only for LotR, so I'll leave this now. Generally I'd say that I agree with most of the things the 1000 Reader said about Sauron - succintly, Sauron is too much "sitting in a tower doing nothing" to be able to awake some "personal" feelings in the reader. There is, however, still one moment where Sauron seems creepy to me, and it is the moment when Pippin looks to the Palantír. There Sauron looks exactly how I think he should all the time - this is the closest we get to him. He speaks (through Pippin, but...), he is scary, well, I think this is one of the most emotionally thrilling moments of the book.

[Volo]

I'd say orcs in general. They are not so big and mighty, but there is a lot of them and I'd say that they are pretty scary. Maybe because they feel much more real that f.ex. Sauron or the Nazgul.

[Lord Halsar]

The balrog doesn't strike me as terribly frightening. it's a powerful monster, but thats about it. and it seems pretty slow. i meen, it didn't really catch up to the Fellowship until they got to the bridge. they saw it before that, but thats about it.
there's those points, and didn't Gandalf hold onto it's leg while he was down in the REALLY deep places. you don't grap onto the leg of a frightening monster.

[Sir Kohran]

Shelob. There's something very alien and creepy about spiders, with their eight legs and eyes and their sticky, trapping webs and their deadly poison, and Tolkien carries it off brilliantly. The thought of entering a dark, slimy, stinking tunnel filled with webs with the thought of a giant spider lurking somewhere within is quite terrifying. I remember the movie version of ROTK - at one point Frodo hears movement somewhere. He spins around, checking all possible sources of sound...completely oblivous to the giant black moster that is silently suspended just above him! Very scary.

[The 1,000 Reader]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

I wouldn't call Elendil&Gil-Galad "minor characters" In the LotR book they do not appear, of course, but personally I think that at their times they must have been more famous than seven Boromirs put together. Oh, and we don't see the tower once, we see it at least three times I think, maybe more. But this doesn't matter.

The thing is, we didn't know that, Elendil and Gil-Galad didn't do very much, and they weren't packing any powerful First Age muscles or strong magic. They were not too far from the main characters in LOTR, and the reader doesn't really know about them. That is what I mean.

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

There is, however, still one moment where Sauron seems creepy to me, and it is the moment when Pippin looks to the Palantír. There Sauron looks exactly how I think he should all the time - this is the closest we get to him. He speaks (through Pippin, but...), he is scary, well, I think this is one of the most emotionally thrilling moments of the book.

He wasn't that scary to me. Pippin was probably already afraid of the palantir's power, and Sauron was just puzzled and then simply told Pippin that Saruman wasn't getting "his piece of the pie," so to speak. Besides, Pippin's a hobbit and barely knows anything about the world.

[Boo Radley]

I too, vote for Shelob.
I've got this thing about spiders in general (Watching Arachnaphobia just about sent me up the wall) and seeing what Peter Jackson did with Shelob was pretty toe-curling for me.
I remember the very, very first time I read LoTR and when I got to that part, thinking "A spider... Why'd it have to be a spider?*

(Blatant rip-off of Indiana Jones. -15 points)

[ninja91]

Scary? Well, put it this way: would you rather be locked in a castle with the Balrog or the Mouth of Sauron lurking around?

The Mouth of Sauron definitely takes the cake here for me. Plus, he is just so mysterious and unknown...

[Folwren]

I hate spiders, but I loved Shelob. The hobbits, in the books, are so fantastically heroic at that part that I can't help but love it.

The scarriest was definitely the Nine Nazguls. They made me stop reading the book. They terrified me. I would lie awake at night, after my sister had fallen asleep beside me, and just tremble, thinking that any moment, they'd come crawling through the window, or from under the bed. Oh, no, I didn't have monsters under my bed - I had Nazguls.

-- Folwren

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by ninja91

Scary? Well, put it this way: would you rather be locked in a castle with the Balrog or the Mouth of Sauron lurking around?

The Mouth of Sauron definitely takes the cake here for me. Plus, he is just so mysterious and unknown...

Oh, I would like to be there with the Mouth, rather. Though he might be a mad, fanatic sadistic sorcerer, he is still a human (at least a little bit). You might call his name through empty corridors and try to negotiate, and you can expect his reactions (though they can be negative, or just a mocking laughter from somewhere, but still it is something you can expect, however terrifying it might be). The balrog then is something definitely... alien. You don't know what it thinks about, it even does not have to speak at all, it might look like a beast in flames or it can douse a be just a shadow lurking in the darkness... (Not to mention you don't even know if it has wings!) I wouldn't want to be locked in a castle or catacombs with something like that, I can quite understand the Dwarves in Moria. (Has anyone seen the movie Alien 3? This is how it could look like.)

Ha, seems I unintentionally answered the question. The Balrog it is for me.

Originally Posted by Lord Halsar

and didn't Gandalf hold onto it's leg while he was down in the REALLY deep places. you don't grap onto the leg of a frightening monster.

Well, this only speaks that there were REALLY much more frightening monsters down there ("nameless things"). And after all, when you get so far to fight something, it is not so scary then. The point is, Gandalf could fight it. I, being in his place, well... uh.

[Selmo]

Originally Posted by The 1,000 Reader

I don't know why, but I got a rather odd sense of being in a dark, hidden world no man was meant to be in when reading about Aragorn and company passing through the Paths of the Dead.

I feel the same.
I first read LoTR in the early 1960s and, more than forty years later, I can still vividly recall sharing Gimli's fear on the paths of the dead. That chapter cost me some sleepless nights.
It wasn't the ghosts themselves that were scary, but the situation. When the army of Dead were revealed and explained, the fear was gone.

In The Hobbit, I was as scared as Bilbo when he went down the tunnel to meet Smaug for the first time. In all the underground sequences, the walk in the dark towards the unknown was scarier than whatever waited at the end of the tunnel. As soon as there was a tangible enemy to fight or outwit, my emotion turned from fear to exitement.

To me as a youngster, Shelob was the most scary creature in LoTR (I used to have a phobia of spiders), but the walk in the dark before the encounter with her was worse.
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