Editorials
Interesting Facts About “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”
Update: It seems that Imgur user “n3wb” copied all of this information from a Mental Floss post from last October.
Some of my favorite books from my childhood was the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” series from writer Alvin Schwartz and illustrator Stephen Gammell. While the stories don’t scare me anymore as an adult, they definitely sent shivers up and down the spine of the young me. And when it comes to those illustrations, you damn well better believe that they gave me nightmares. But they were the kinds of nightmares that made me come back to the book over and over again, delighting in that delicious fear and trepidation I had when turning each page, not knowing what new horror I would witness.
I found this fun series of facts and information about the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” series on Imgur from user “n3wb“. With their permission, I copied and pasted them over here for ease of reading.
Check them out below and let us know your favorite “Scary Stories Treasury” story in the comments!
ITS AUTHOR DIDN’T START OUT WRITING SCARY STORIES
Alvin Schwartz, the author and adapter behind the Scary Stories trilogy, actually began his career as a journalist, writing for The Binghamton Press from 1951 to 1955. He also had a penchant for wordplay, saying that creating rhymes is a good way for “people to express their feelings without getting in trouble.” After Schwartz left journalism, he started working for a research corporation, which he couldn’t stand, and began doing that part time, devoting the rest of his hours to writing books. One of his first published works: a Parents’ Guide for Children’s Play. His journalistic instincts and whimsical leanings are probably to thank for the Scary Stories’ characteristic surrealism and eerily matter-of-fact storytelling.
THE TALES WERE BASED ON FOLKLORE
Research was a huge part of Schwartz’s process for all his books. When writing his book Witcracks, Schwartz turned to the archives at the Library of Congress and those of the president of the American Folklore Society, using that research and his connections for Scary Stories. Among his sources were books like American Folk Tales and Songs and Sticks in the Knapsack and Other Ozark Tales. He also drew from publications like The Hoosier Folklore Bulletin and interviewed folklorists.
“Some of these tales are very old, and they are told around the world,” Schwartz wrote in the foreword to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. “And most have the same origins. They are based on things that people saw or heard or experienced—or thought they did.”
“Some of these tales are very old, and they are told around the world,” Schwartz wrote in the foreword to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. “And most have the same origins. They are based on things that people saw or heard or experienced—or thought they did.”
When asked about his writing process for an interview with Language Arts magazine, Schwartz said, “Basically, what I do with every book, is learn everything I can about the genre. This will involve a lot of reading and scholarly books and journals and sometimes discussions and scholarly folklorists … In the process of accumulating everything on a subject, I begin setting aside things that I particularly like. What’s interesting is that eventually patterns emerge.”
The first Scary Stories book was released in 1981, and Schwartz would go on to write two more—More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones—before his death in 1992.
PARENTS HATED THE BOOKS…
By the time the Scary Stories series reached the height of its popularity in the early ’90s, the book was condemned by parents nationwide. “There’s no moral to [the stories],” former elementary school teacher and mother Sandy Vanderburg told the Chicago Tribune. “The bad guys always win. And they make light of death. There’s a story called ‘Just Delicious’ about a woman who goes to a mortuary, steals another woman’s liver, and feeds it to her husband. That’s sick.”
One parent even made a connection between Schwartz’s book and a serial killer, citing the story “Wonderful Sausage,” about a butcher who puts people through his sausage grinder and sells the meat to his patrons. “Right away I thought of Jeffrey Dahmer,” Jean Jaworski, then the mother of a fifth grader, told The Argus-Press in 1995. “It’s just not appropriate for children.” She asked the school board to remove the book from the library, but a special committee voted unanimously to keep the books, and the school turned down an appeal.
… BUT THAT DIDN’T BOTHER SCHWARTZ
When discussing how a Christian group had tried to get his book, In a Dark, Dark Room, banned from a Denver library, Schwartz said he wasn’t surprised. Instead, he said, he was “pleased to have that kind of attention. It was ironic and pleasing that, at the same time, their ideas were rejected by the children.”
THE ARTIST BEHIND THE CREEPY ILLUSTRATIONS USUALLY DREW LIGHTER SUBJECT MATTER
The books’ nightmarish illustrations are perhaps as well remembered as the stories themselves—and even less pleasing to parents. One father, J. Daniel Merlino, who called for the books’ removal from his local school’s library, told The Hartford Courant that “I can appreciate the creativity. But the images in those books are surreal. A throat being torn out. A liver being eaten. These images are the stuff of nightmares.”
Michael Wohlgenant, whose 7-year-old daughter had nightmares for months after reading “Wonderful Sausage”—its illustration involved a dismembered hand holding a forkful of human flesh—also pushed for the books’ removal. “You entrust your child to the care of school officials when you send them to school,” he said. “You don’t expect them to be traumatized and harmed.”
Stephen Gammell, the mastermind behind the creepy drawings, won a Caldecott Medal for picture book illustration for his work in Karen Ackerman’s Song and Dance Man in 1989. Though these illustrations were slightly more lighthearted, they showcased the splotchy, watercolor-heavy style that’s exemplified in the artist’s grim, surreal Scary Stories illustrations. (You can watch a fun time-lapse of Gammell’s process here, in the trailer for his book Mudkin.) “Stephen Gammell has made a very important contribution to these books because he has such a wild imagination,” Schwartz later said.
THE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS HAVE BEEN REPLACED IN NEW VERSIONS OF THE BOOKS
When HarperCollins released a new version of the Scary Stories books to commemorate the series’ 30th anniversary, fans were dismayed to see that Gammell’s illustrations had been removed. The reprint features new illustrations by Brett Helquist, whose excellent work you may recognize from the Series Of Unfortunate Events books.
The newer, less creepy illustrations provoked outcry from those who grew up with the books, even prompting a BuzzFeed article called “They’re Ruining Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark.” According to Meredith Woerner in an article for io9, “[…I]f your child couldn’t handle Gammell’s paintings, they’re certainly not going to be able to stomach a short story about a scarecrow who skins a farmer alive and dries out his skin sack trophy on the roof. Gammell’s art is an integral part of this collection. The least they could do is release a special art book as a companion. This is just supernatural blasphemy.
IT’S BEEN ON THE ALA’S MOST CHALLENGED LIST FOR TWO DECADES
The series topped the American Library Association’s list of the Top 100 most frequently challenged books for 1990-1999. Ten years later, the Scary Stories books remained in the top 10, coming in at No. 7 on the list for 2000-2009. The books were most frequently challenged for reasons of “insensitivity, occult/Satanism, violence, (and being) unsuited to age group.”
About that last thing: The books fall between the 600 and 760 Lexile mark (a system used to organize reading levels), meaning that the books’ vocabulary level is most suited for fifth graders. Some of the Scary Stories vocabulary words highlighted by the Lexile system were “clink,” “blunt,” “shrouds,” “drafty” “afire,” and “shatter”—further proving that the series’ simple vocabulary doesn’t rule out spooky content.
WHAT HAPPENS IN “THE RED DOT” PROBABLY WON’T HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE
The story “The Red Dot” may have instilled a deep fear of spiders laying eggs in your face, but don’t worry—according to the National Geographic, it’s not likely to happen. May Berenbaum, entomologist at The University of Illinois, explained that a spider’s egg-laying structure isn’t equipped for injecting. “I suppose a spider could drop or plaster eggs on the skin’s surface,” Berenbaum said, “but it’s not clear why a spider would want to do such a thing.”
ONE TALE GOES BACK TO THE BROTHERS GRIMM
“The Big Toe,” the notorious story in which a starving boy finds a human toe in the ground and makes the terrible mistake of eating it, is based on an old folktale that dates back to early 19th century Germany. (Maybe not surprising; this is the country that brought us Der Struwwelpeter, after all.) Mentions of the tale were first found in the Grimm Brothers’ notes, and a version of the story—with an arm replacing the titular toe—was later a prominent feature of Mark Twain’s public speaking appearances. When he was done speaking, Twain would jump into the crowd and scream at an unsuspecting audience member.
THERE ARE MANY VERSIONS OF THE STORY “HIGH BEAMS”
Because the tales featured in the Scary Stories books came from folklore, there were many different versions of the stories floating around—and “High Beams” was no exception. The story features a girl driving home alone from a nighttime basketball game. “There is a car following her and periodically the other driver will turn up his beams,” Schwartz said. “She can’t understand what is going on, and she becomes progressively more frightened. As it turns out, there was somebody sitting in the back seat. He had slipped in when she left and each time he rose up to assault her the guy in the car in back of her turned on his high beams.”
The story, he said, is one that’s “told all over … It appears in a dozen different versions. … All of these stories, and there are scads of them, are really saying: ‘Watch out. The world’s a dangerous place. You are going out on your own soon. Be careful.’”
“WONDERFUL SAUSAGE” WAS PARTIALLY BASED ON A SONG FROM SCHWARTZ’S CHILDHOOD
Schwartz said that he’d heard a fragmented version of the tale, “which is about a butcher who is sort of a prototypical Sweeney Todd,” in New Orleans. But it was also inspired by a song he learned as a kid at Scout camp called “Dunderbock and the Sausage Machine.” That butcher in the song, Schwartz explained, made sausage from dogs and cats, “and one day the machine slips or falls and he goes into the machine himself. This is the end of [the song]: ‘His wife had the nightmare. / She walked right in her sleep. / She grabbed the crank, gave it a yank, / And Dunderbock was meat.’” You can listen to a version of the song here.
THERE WAS AT LEAST ONE STORY HE WOULDN’T FEATURE
Schwartz said that he only implied violence in his stories, and opted for gore instead. There was at least one story that he said he found very upsetting:
“Infanticide … is a theme in American folklore and European folklore. There is an Ozark folktale … in which a man in his youth goes away and travels and becomes quite successful. His parents are quite poor. He comes back one night after many many years have elapsed and he looks completely different. He thinks he will therefore surprise them. He has come back with a lot of money and he wants to give it to them. They have an inn and he takes a room there for the night. They don’t recognize him and he thinks that in the morning he will announce that he is their son. Well, they murder him during the night for his money. It’s a marvelous story but I would not put it in one of my books. … This kind of thing I avoid.”
THERE’S GOING TO BE A FEATURE FILM …
The Scary Stories trilogy is currently being adapted into a feature film by CBS Films…
The movie is being written by Dan & Kevin Hageman, who wrote The Lego Movie. The last we heard, Guillermo del Toro will be producing and potentially directing.
… AND A DOCUMENTARY
If documentaries are more your speed, there will be one of those too. An upcoming documentary from Chicago filmmaker Cody Meirick will “explore the history and background of one of the most controversial works of modern children’s literature: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” On the project website, Meirick explains that the film will not only explore the impact of the stories on the kids who grew up with them, but also the broader topics of children’s folklore, the heritage of gothic ghost stories, and what draws us to them. The documentary will hopefully be released winter of 2016.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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