Would you believe me if I said there was a time where even the slightest spooky thing used to scare me?
Honestly, I almost don’t believe it either.
But there was a time, even though Halloween was always, and somewhat inexplicably, depending on who you asked, my favorite thing in the world from the time I was four years old, that most scary stories were a “no-no” for me. I could sit here for hours spinning yarns about the several years I spent afraid of mirrors thanks to Bloody Mary, or the nightmares induced by a monster made of slime on a show my teenage cousin was watching at our house one evening, but there is one very particular memory I’d like to talk about today.
When I was little, there was a set of books in the library that I didn’t dare go near. A dark compilation of tales known as Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.
Looking at that book cover really brings me back. In my mind, the thought of opening that book was akin to opening the dreaded spell book of the Sanderson Sisters in my beloved lifelong favorite movie, Hocus Pocus. Everything in me told me to stay away. I knew the nightmares that would ensue. I knew I’d spend countless hours looking over my shoulder, or racing up the basement stairs if I had to go down there for any reason, in the hopes that whatever monster that would inevitably take up residence in my imagination wouldn’t be fast enough to catch me. So I tried to avoid the books, but this, of course, proved impossible.
My first real encounter with anything that was inside these books came one day in second grade. It was during reading class, and three girls had asked if they could read something aloud to the class. Of course a teacher isn’t going to discourage a child from reading, and these books were available in our school library, so I supposed she figured, what’s the harm? The result was these three girls (who I mostly have no memory of now but would be willing to bet went through a “goth” phase at some point in their adolescent years following this incident) standing up in front of the class and, very dramatically and, in my seven year old brain, incredibly spookily, reciting what I then discovered was actually called “The Hearse Song”. Up until that point, I’d thought the infamous rhyme about how “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out...” was some ridiculous poem that my aunt liked to say to gross me out. I believe she would recite as something along the lines of “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, through your stomach and out your mouth”, and that was the extent of it. I imagined some cartoony image of a worm getting into someone’s belly button and then being spat out through the mouth. I’d never heard the part about “You may be the next to die...” or anything like that before. To say I was freaked out was an understatement. Those lyrics haunted me for days on end.
I don’t actually remember how I eventually wound up looking inside the books for myself, but I know I did. I never brought them home with me, but I most likely peeked at them in the school library, either by myself or with other kids at my table. And, simple as it may seem in this day and age, those images were enough to scare the pants off me, combined with the stories themselves. At the time, it was like looking at a book of nightmares illustrated by a madman in an asylum somewhere, desperately trying to vanquish his hallucinations but putting them on paper.
Perhaps my greatest memory of these stories, though, comes from a few years later. My childhood best friend and I had a thing about trying to scare ourselves silly as often as we possibly could. One night during a sleepover, we ran across a Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark cassette tape. (Her grandmother, whose house we were in at the time, was a huge thrifter and always had new things laying around for us to discover.) We listened to most of the stories, then decided to go outside, in the dark, for some reason or another, and were, of course, looking over our shoulders like maniacs and jumping at the slightest of sounds thinking whatever apparition that had scared us the most was about to manifest. So, her grandfather decided to get in on the fun and snuck outside and made some horrific noise, and we screamed bloody murder. Her grandmother scolded him for most likely waking up the entire neighborhood.
Years went on and I, obviously, outgrew being afraid of such things and now can much more easily see Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark as a collection of spooky children’s tales. It’s not even something I’d really given much thought to until last year, when the movie was released. I’d known a movie was in the works for awhile, and wondered if it would ever truly see the light of day (or would that be the “dark of night” in this case?) but today, I finally got a chance to watch the movie for myself.
The movie takes place on Halloween (which is an instant selling point for me with any movie, childhood memories aside) 1968, and, actually very similarly to Hocus Pocus, sets up a base story that weaves the other stories together, by having a group of friends break into a haunted house and steal a book of stories written by its mysterious, possibly malevolent inhabitant.
While I know the movie was released in 2019, the style of it actually really brought me back to the children’s horror stories of my youth, such as Are You Afraid Of The Dark? and the Goosebumps series. It’s dark and eerie and probably nightmare inducing to most of the children that watch it, but yet not so dark that it risks crossing a line into more adult territory. I truly think this movie will appeal to both a new generation of horror fans in the making, and the adults that grew up with the original books. I’m particularly impressed with how the filmmakers were able to really bring to life those terrifying sketches of the monsters in the book, without making them look too fake or too silly. Harold the scarecrow is easily my favorite, but everyone knows I have a soft spot for anything that looks like it belongs in a haunted pumpkin patch.
I highly recommend checking this movie out if you’re a fan of the books, or just looking for something spooky or Halloween-y to watch. It starts out a little slow, but.I have to appreciate the way the characters are at least slightly fleshed out and not just there to find the book. And once the action gets going, it sets up such a fun, eerie atmosphere where you can’t wait to see what happens next...Just like reading a good book. Without giving away any spoilers, the ending most definitely seems like it’s setting up for a sequel, and I truly hope that we get one. There are three books in the series, after all.
Give it a watch if you’re interested, and hopefully we will get to see what happens next. And if you’re a horror fan who has never taken a look at these books, I strongly suggest doing so.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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