Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

The children’s book series, Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark was written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell. The stories are a mixture of ghost stories, weird tales and urban legends. The three titles in the series are Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark, and More Tales to Chill Your Bones. The first volume was published in 1986, and the books have subsequently been collected in both a box set and a single volume.

Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark

Alvin Schwartz’s most popular and spooky book is filled with tales of eerie horror and dark revenge that will make you jump with fright. There is a story here for everyone from skeletons with torn and tangled flesh who roam the earth to a ghost who takes revenge on her murderer and a haunted house where every night a bloody head falls down the chimney. Stephen Gammell’s splendidly creepy drawings perfectly capture the mood of more than two dozen scary stories and even scary songs, all just right for reading alone or for telling aloud in the dark.

More Scary Stories to Tell in The Dark

Is it possible to die and not know it? What if a person is buried too soon? What happens to a thief foolish enough to rob a corpse, or to a murderer whose victim returns from the grave? Read about these terrifying predicaments as well as what happens when practical jokes produce gruesome consequences and initiations go awry. Stephen Gammell’s splendidly creepy drawings perfectly capture the mood of more than two dozen scary stories and even a scary song, all just right for reading alone or for telling aloud in the dark.

More Tales to Chill Your Bones

Storytellers know, just as they have for hundreds and hundreds of years, that everyone enjoys a good, scary story! Alvin Schwartz’s third collection joins his other popular collections of scary folklore to give readers spooky, funny and fantastic tales guaranteed to raise goose bumps. Who is the Wolf girl? Why is a hearse filled with men with yellow glowing eyes? Can a nightmare become reality? How do you avoid an appointment with Death?

Scary Stories Audio Collection

Walking corpses, dancing bones, knife-wielding madmen, and narrow escapes from death — they’re all here in this chilling collection of ghost stories. Brought to spine-tingling, flesh-crawling life by acclaimed Broadway actor (and master ghoul) George S. Irving, these horrific tales are guaranteed to raise goosebumps. Let the faint of heart beware. Pull up a chair, find a hand to hold, and prepare to be horrified.

Box Set

Walking corpses, dancing bones, knife-wielding madmen, and narrow escapes from death — they’re all here in this chilling collection of ghost stories.

Other Scary Story Collections

The tales are a mix of traditional ghost stories and more modern urban myths. The subject matter ranges from haunted house and graveyard tales to stories of the vanishing hitchhiker plus many silly songs and poems. Many of the contemporary tales center on the theme of dangerous and frightening urban environments, like cities and universities. Each book is also notable for including a selection of humorous ghost stories in the last chapter as well as a selection of songs.

Beyond the stories themselves, the books have two notable features: exhaustively researched and annotated notes and sources sections, and disturbing and evocative illustrations by Gammell.

Also, as the title implies, the stories are intended to be read aloud to an audience. Several of the stories come with “stage directions” that the reader can follow in order to enhance the scary subject matter of the stories, thereby generating a more visceral response from the listening audience.

The art features a variety of gruesome subjects, including corpses, mutilations, and hideous creatures, almost all of which are distinctly unnerving. Most illustrations include surreal or grotesque elements, most notably in the third volume’s “The Trouble” which features a two page abstract illustration symbolizing the bizarre nature of the story. Even relatively mundane illustrations, such as “The Baby Sitter” from the first volume have a disturbing and off center quality.