Scary Stories

When I was in elementary school, we had these fantastic little booklets printed on the worst quality newsprint that would come every month or so. It was an order form that had all kinds of books that we could buy on them. All kinds of books!

I loved to read. When I was in kindergarten, I was one of the first kids in the class who could read. This meant avoiding every other kid in library class. They'd beg for me to read to them, and I couldn't have been less interested.

My friend Brian (also a reader) and I would hide under one of the tables with our books, and the teacher didn't seem to mind. I think he understood.

I was happy to get into somewhat thicker books, too. By second grade, our teacher had introduced us to The Boxcar Children books. He would read a chapter to the class here and there and we slowly worked our way through the series. Most of us started buying those books or checking them out of the library. I would still read one of those books for fun if I had one, but The Boxcar Children aren't a part of this one.

For some reason, in addition to reading, I thought that being scared was fun when I was at that age. I don't know why. Surely I'm not cool with it now short of a zombie movie. I downloaded a demo of "Amnesia: The Dark Descent," (a very scary game), walked maybe 16 steps, and decided "nope."

In any case, I was delighted to see a book series that I had only heard about appear on our order forms one month - "Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark," by one Alvin Schwartz. This sounded awesome. There were so many times that our little neighborhood posse would sit around on someone's porch and tell poorly conceived ghost stories. This would make me a scary story CHAMPION! No one would match me!

Mom approved, the form was sent, and the waiting began. Finally, a few weeks later, the books were in. "Scary Stories" was a fairly smallish with a black border and a pretty horrifying picture on the front. Awesome.

That night, armed with a flashlight, I began to go through this book.

Thinking that reading the book was a good call was my first mistake. See, it wasn't just a scary cover on this book. No, every illustration was horrific, grusome, and scary as anything my little mind had ever imagined. Here, I'll show you what I mean:

WARNING: THOSE WITH WEAK CONSTITUTIONS SHOULD NOT BY ANY MEANS LOOK AT THIS PICTURE, THINK ABOUT LOOKING AT THIS PICTURE, OR SPECULATE ABOUT THINKING ABOUT LOOKING AT THIS PICTURE.

OH GOD OH GOD KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!

What on earth was that about?! This is a kids' book? Don't get me wrong, the stories themselves were tame (for the most part) and required a suspension of disbelief that even my young mind could scoff at. But the pictures, OH the pictures! I couldn't handle it. They were grusome, grotesque, grisly. They haunted my nightmares, my daymares, and other mares that I was previously unaware of.

A few months later, because I suffered the same manic behavior I've found that all small children possess, I ordered the sequel from the book orders. Mom was a little skeptical this time because she noticed my avoidance of the first book, but I convinced her that it was because I had finished it and that it was my favorite book and that I had to, please mom, I HAD TO have the next one!

What on earth was wrong with me?

Well, that book came. I opend it up. The pictures were even worse. Ready?

WARNING: DO NOT LOOK. NO ONE SHOULD EVER LOOK AT THIS.

NO! NOT AGAIN! WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF?!

Just for good measure, perhaps to prove my insanity, I did it again with the third book before I wised up. The three volumes sat in our game room in the basement untouched for years. And because those books were there, with those horrible pictures, I was scared of being in the basement for years, which was hard for me because that's where the Sega Genesis was hooked up.

This lasted until my dad told me we were going to donate books to a place, and wondered if I had any I would be willing to part with. I picked up those books the way you pick up a dead rotting animal, dropped them in the box, and ran away. They were gone. I was safe.

In order to ensure that I qualify for "fair use" of these pictures from this book series, I am going to rate the books as this post was obviously a review of my experience with them. On a scale of one to ten, I give all three volumes that I owned a negative eleventy seven for screwing me up as a kid.